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Liberal Rage
FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 4/28/04 | Keith Burgess-Jackson

Posted on 04/28/2004 2:22:25 AM PDT by kattracks

Why are liberals such as Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, and Howard Dean so angry and aggressive? I like to think that I have insight into this matter, since I was a liberal for a long time. If you haven't been a liberal, you may be puzzled by what you hear and read from them. They may seem -- dare I say it? -- insane, or at least discombobulated.

The first thing you must realize is that liberals have a program. They are visionaries. They envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources. Nobody is born to privilege or disadvantage; or, if anyone is, it is swiftly neutralized by the state. To allow disadvantage, they believe, is to become a participant in it. Society, to the liberal mind, is a massive engineering project. Most of us distinguish misfortune and injustice. Not the liberal. No misfortune goes unaddressed by the social engineers. It is presumed -- conclusively, without evidence or argument -- that disparities in wealth are the result of morally arbitrary factors (accidents of birth or circumstance) rather than individual character, effort, discipline, work, or merit.

 

As the philosopher John Kekes has pointed out so eloquently (see here), liberals disregard or discount concepts that loom large in the thinking of most of us, such as personal responsibility and desert. Most of us believe that responsibility and desert should play a role in the distribution of benefits and burdens. Liberals disagree. Deep down, liberals deny that anyone is responsible for anything. What we are, in terms of personal character, is a function of circumstances beyond our control. How we behave depends solely on our environment. Our very choices are determined, not free. Liberalism dissolves the person. To the liberal, we are loci of movement rather than initiators of action, patients rather than agents, heteronomous rather than autonomous beings. Liberals will deny this, of course, but look at their beliefs and policy prescriptions.

 

Liberals, unlike conservatives, are zealous. Like all zealots (true believers), they are eager to implement their program, but when they attempt to do so, they meet resistance. This resistance frustrates them immensely and eventually leads to anger toward and aggression against those who stand in their way (or are perceived as standing in their way). Ideally, liberals would rationally persuade those who resist in the hope of bringing them around. But this doesn't work. Belief in personal responsibility and desert is widespread and entrenched. Time and again, liberals run up against it. Since it seems obvious to them that the belief is baseless, they tell themselves a story about why it's pervasive.

 

It's a multifaceted story. First, the liberal imagines that the belief in question is rooted in ignorance. Opponents of the liberal program simply don't know the facts about responsibility and desert. But when liberals try to convey these "facts," they get no uptake. Indeed, they get denial. This leads to the stupidity hypothesis. Opponents of the liberal program aren't so much ignorant of facts as incapable of reasoning from and about them. In other words, they're stupid or unintelligent. They're incapable of thinking clearly or carefully, even about important matters such as equality, justice, and fairness. This explains the liberal mantra that conservatives, such as Presidents Reagan and Bush, are stupid. (See here for an explanation of this false liberal belief.) Note that if conservatives are stupid, liberals, by contrast, are intelligent. It's all very self-serving.

 

Deep down, liberals know that conservatives are no less intelligent than they are. It just makes them feel good to say as much. So they attribute the pervasive belief in responsibility and desert to greed. Opponents of the liberal program are greedy. They won't admit the truth because they don't want to share the wealth. They take the positions they do, on matters such as affirmative action and welfare, to solidify their social position. Greed is bad, of course, so if you reject the liberal program, you're evil. You put self-interest ahead of justice.

 

Here, in one neat package, we have all the liberal platitudes. Conservatives are ignorant, stupid, and evil, or some combination of the three. Either they don't grasp the obvious truth or they're incapable of thinking clearly or they don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Liberals, of course, are the opposite of all these. They're knowledgeable, intelligent, and good. Note that if you believe your opponents to be stupid or evil, you don't try to reason with them. Stupid people, like animals and children, need guidance by their superiors. Evil people need suppression. It's often been remarked that liberals are less adept than conservatives at arguing for their views. Now you see why. They don't practice.

 

That, in a nutshell, is the liberal mentality. It explains why liberals are so angry, hateful, and spiteful and why they resort to courts rather than to legislatures to implement their vision of the just society. They have given up hope of engaging their adversaries on rational ground. They know that they can't muster a majority for their causes. To liberals, only the outcome matters, not the process. Without power, their egalitarianism is mere fantasy. But conservatives should be careful not to dismiss it as such, for liberals have demonstrated that they will do whatever it takes to secure and retain power. We saw it in the case of Robert Bork. We saw it in the case of Bill Clinton. We see it in the case of war in Iraq.

 

To the liberal, the end justifies the means.

 

Take it from me, a former liberal.

 

Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D., is a frequent contributor to Tech Central Station. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he teaches courses in Logic, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophy of Law. He has two stinkers, Sophie and Shelbie, and two hyperactive blogs: AnalPhilosopher and Animal Ethics.



TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: angryleft; liberals
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1 posted on 04/28/2004 2:22:25 AM PDT by kattracks
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To: kattracks
I still think liberals are insane
2 posted on 04/28/2004 2:27:29 AM PDT by GeronL (We are the Lapdogs?? Woof Woof!)
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To: kattracks
responsibility and desert

Desert?

3 posted on 04/28/2004 2:36:51 AM PDT by patj
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To: kattracks
In short...Liberals are gloriously sanctimonious in their willful ignorance.
4 posted on 04/28/2004 2:38:05 AM PDT by Jagdgewehr
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To: kattracks
Dean said it best, "YEEEAARRGGHH!"
5 posted on 04/28/2004 2:54:36 AM PDT by Ken H
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To: patj
Desert n. 1. Worthiness of reward or punishment 2. a just reward or punishment

In this case it's pronounced like 'dessert', as in getting your just deserts.
6 posted on 04/28/2004 2:55:49 AM PDT by Sapper26 (I like W because he shoots first and asks questions later, you get fewer questions that way.)
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To: kattracks
Most of the libs pushing their utopia are ultra rich...the drunk, hildabeast, hanoi john, bs, etc.
7 posted on 04/28/2004 3:36:07 AM PDT by GailA (Kerry I'm for the death penalty for terrorist, but I'll declare a moratorium on the death penalty)
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To: kattracks
Read later
8 posted on 04/28/2004 3:36:57 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (You can see it coming like a train on a track.)
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To: kattracks
Extreme ideologues on both the left and the right fit into this category. Neither understands why moderates don't share their views, never will, and moderates will never want laws imposed on them.
9 posted on 04/28/2004 3:37:30 AM PDT by tkathy (nihilism: absolute destructiveness toward the world at large and oneself)
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To: kattracks
He describes RANK AND FILE liberals very well.

They envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources. Nobody is born to privilege or disadvantage; or, if anyone is, it is swiftly neutralized by the state.

The problem is that their LEADERS are a class unto themselves. They believe that their "morally superior" views entitle them to perpetual power, wealth and privilege. They BECOME "THE STATE". To the more cynical of them the rank and file liberals are mere dupes and tools to enforce their arbitrary will. They come to believe in their own position and "liberalism" to them is merely a propaganda tool. "Equality" of everybody else is simply a means of ensuring that no one else acquires enough to challenge their hegemonic and hereditary will.

Look at the Kennedys, the Kerrys, the Rockefellers, the former mandarins of the Soviet Union. Eventually, however, their decadence and the mind numbing dreariness and failure of enforced equality destroys the myth of liberalism and the system collapses. Unfortunately if liberalism gets that far there isn't much left.
10 posted on 04/28/2004 3:41:20 AM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Rumble Thee Forth...)
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To: Sapper26
Thanks for the info. I was reading it like it was the Sahara.
11 posted on 04/28/2004 3:42:38 AM PDT by patj
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To: patj
as in 'just deserts'. Appropriate reward..
12 posted on 04/28/2004 3:51:42 AM PDT by tje
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To: Tax-chick
later
13 posted on 04/28/2004 3:53:41 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I was swimming with dolphins whispering imaginary numbers in the fourth dimension.)
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To: tkathy
Moderatism boils down to abortion and drugs.

"Moderates" want it all, wealth and immorality. They fail to understand, particularly in modern western civilization, that immoral permissivenes is a tool of the Left with which to buy the support of the dissolute. And furthermore, immorality and wealth have always been incompatible. Immorality leads inevitably to downfall and poverty.

It is not necessary to define liberals or moderates as "evil". They are quite evidently self-destructive and drag down the rest of us.
14 posted on 04/28/2004 3:57:23 AM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Rumble Thee Forth...)
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To: Sapper26
In this case it's pronounced like 'dessert', as in getting your just deserts.

I always thought the saying was referring to cake and ice cream.

So this "desert" is pronounced "dessert," not "desert" as in the Sahara, but "desert" as in "abandon." And it has the same root as "deserve."

Why did they have to make English so confusing??

15 posted on 04/28/2004 4:05:00 AM PDT by wai-ming
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To: kattracks
"To the liberal, the end justifies the means"


As a conservative Christian and a man who loves and believes the bible totally; the liberals are zealots of the death culture that is a scourge to society much is Islamic terroism is a scourge to society. Every social and political and religious organization they touch and manipulate is gauranteed to become corrupt and evil and worthless as has been and continues to be by their evil social manipulations. Their good intentions are paving the road to hell. One day the Lord will bring in the kingdom of Jesus Christ on the earth and He will put away the sickness of liberalism. Isaiah 32 spoke of this kingdom age and even of liberalism when he quoteded the Holy Spirit of God saying;

1. Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.
2. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
3. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
4. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
5. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
6. For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
7. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
16 posted on 04/28/2004 4:07:17 AM PDT by wgeorge2001 ( But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness....)
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To: kattracks
"The first thing you must realize is that liberals have a program. They are visionaries. They envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources. Nobody is born to privilege or disadvantage; or, if anyone is, it is swiftly neutralized by the state."


This is hogwash. The leadership in liberalville is of wealth and privilege, actually they believe they are "gods", pretending that they are for "equality". They have been exposed with their UN "Oil for Food" con-game, and these self absorbed elitist only regret is that they could not save that PROGRAM!
17 posted on 04/28/2004 4:07:19 AM PDT by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts

I think they envision a world in which everyone controls the same amount of resources, but they control everyone.
18 posted on 04/28/2004 4:11:05 AM PDT by kattracks
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To: wai-ming
Why did they have to make English so confusing??

I don't know.

19 posted on 04/28/2004 4:15:53 AM PDT by kanawa (Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.)
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To: kattracks
I agree, their emphasis is what they can control, selling delusions to the masses under what they know about themselves, envy and greed! Reenacting "Animal Farm" those in control are the most equal Enlightenment "PIGS"!
20 posted on 04/28/2004 4:16:57 AM PDT by Just mythoughts
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