Leaving the left

SFC ^ | Sunday, May 22, 2005 | Keith Thompson

[the anti-liberal]

Leaving the left
I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

[jigsaw]

To a liberal, it's 'all about me'.   Don't you dare judge me!
That I judge you demonstrates my contempt for you, but then
because you don't agree with ME, you deserve the contempt.

To be a democrat is to never grow up.

[Smartaleck]

This is why Dean needs support from the right. LOL

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[An Old Marine]

[the] left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

An amazing sentence that concisely defines most of the core differences between conservatives and liberals.

[Osage Orange]

Yep i suspect alot will be doing this for awhile at least the ones with common sense anyway ...

Let's hope you are right.....

Although the old saw.."Hope is NOT a plan" comes to my mind. Heh, heh, heh....

FRegards,

[JWinNC]

good column bump

[reformed_democrat]

The pity they see in everybody's eyes is humiliation enough.

MUST you remind me . . .

[FastCoyote]

"The dribble has turned to a tide and eventually a tsunami. Expect to see more capitulation in the days ahead. Go easy on them; no need to tell them you told them so.

The pity they see in everybody's eyes is humiliation enough."

I've kept telling people on the right not to give up, because the left was built as a house of cards and would collapse of it's own weight given time. Reid, Kennedy, Byrd, Dean, Kerry, Pelosi - are raving lunatics and they are now soooo shrill that even those with IQ's below 100 can't help but notice.

[Gritty]

It took a lot of years, but this guy finally "gets it".

Welcome home!

[Liberty Valance]

"In short, I became a card-carrying liberal, although I never actually got a card. (Bookkeeping has never been the left's strong suit.)"

LOL!

[LexBaird]

The fact that a 10 year old boy could identify evil and the American left could not is something that stuck with me for life. To this day they still cannot identify the forces of evil in this world.

In 1977, as a HS sophomore, I went on a student tour of Europe. We flew from Athens to Belgrade, and landed at the national airport of Yugoslavia. Between the runways, a crop of wheat was being harvested by old women using hand scythes, while able-bodied young men in uniforms and carrying machine guns watched from across the tarmac.

I learned that day all I ever needed to know about Communism. Later, in college, when the leftists tried to speak of the wonders of socialism, I knew that they were just gullible dupes.

[Sam Cree]

Extreme Left = Total governmental control (Totalitarian Communist) Extreme Right = 0 governmental control (anarchy)

"Where would you place 'liberalism' in this scale?

Forgive me for not getting back to you for awhile, eventually I fell asleep :-)

18th century, or "classical" liberalism, is pretty close to extreme right in that scale, IMO. But I believe "extreme right" in the 18th century referred to complete monarchy, which was also totalitarian.

By today's definitions in America anyway, I'd place "liberalism," (in that the term can be pinned down) somewhat to the left of center at times, and close to the extreme left at other times.

IMO, most people who call themselves liberals don't actually have any guiding principles or political philosophies at all. They still vaguely cling to the old clasical liberal ideals of individual liberties, while simultaneously embracing contradictory leftist ideals of greater and greater state control over our lives in pursuit of egalitarianism and "fairness." I think this fellow is such a one, who eventually did feel compelled to develop some personal guiding principles.

And there are others who call themselves liberals who are very definitely leftists or even socialists. Some of these are purposely dishonest about whom they are.

[Sam Cree]

I pretty much agree with your #36, except that I would call the dominating philosophy of academia socialism, or perhaps rationalism. Only because I think the term liberalism has become kind of amorphous.

[Hand em their arse]

Why do the letters "En" in enemy and "te" in state have so much more space between them than the others?? :)

[Archon of the East]

Forgive me for not getting back to you for awhile, eventually I fell asleep :-)

I didn't know sleeping was allowed here!

IMO, most people who call themselves liberals don't actually have any guiding principles or political philosophies at all.

I absolutely agree in that they don't specifically choose to follow a particular philosophy, they just follow. That lead IMO is ruled by post modernism which result in the "new" liberals actions. Ideas do bear fruit and what I see going on now in action is a direct result of the culture set by academia's experiment with post-modernism. Some experiments go horribly wrong though.

[Sam Cree]

I have to plead ignorance here. Can you fill me in as to the meaning of "post modernism?"

I hear the term used in the art world, of which I am now a part, but actually don't know its meaning.

[hosepipe]

So then....
This is what goes through the mind of a RINO just before they leave "commie" central.. and actually THINK they have moved ideologically in some way.. and join the republican party, then vote for Arlen Spectre, John McLaim, Snowe, Chaffee, Jeffords, or a host of other confused democrats in drag..

Interesting Opus and study of the RINO mind..

[the anti-liberal]

Interesting Opus

Note: This is not my Opus, just a posting...

But I agree that it's an interesting study.

Related thread:

Former state Democratic party chairman changes to GOP The News & Observer ^ | May 23, 2005 | Rob Christensen

Posted on 05/23/2005 8:32:58 AM PDT by mlc9852

Lawrence Davis, a former state Democratic Party chairman from Raleigh, has switched his registration to the Republican Party. Davis said he decided to switch parties because his personal beliefs on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriages and the lottery differed from the positions of the Democratic Party.

"Basically, it's an effort to bring some coherence between my beliefs and my actions," Davis said. "I felt my [former] party was on the wrong side of right-wrong issues."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1408738/posts

[nutmeg]

Here it is... Rush reading this on air now. Music to my ears!

[hosepipe]

[ Note: This is not my Opus, just a posting... ]

Not YOUR Opus.. Keith Thomson's Opus from the "left"...