Posted on 08/26/2006 6:55:30 AM PDT by bubman
It is a tired conceit of the political left that conservatives, simply because they hold different views from their own, are inherently stupid. Consequently, whenever a Republican occupies the worlds most powerful political office the U.S. presidency the incumbent is generally portrayed as sort of an idiot-in-chief. It was the case both for great Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and lesser ones like Gerald Ford, who opponents said was so stupid he couldnt walk and chew gum at the same time. Predictably, this slander has now attached itself to George W. Bush.
(Excerpt) Read more at ee.canada.com ...
Actually when they finally reach "the age of reason" (not everyone makes it) is when they pierce the veil of Liberalism and realize the fundamental anti intellectual, emotionally hysteric nature of what is wrongly called "Liberalism" in modern terms. The Left bases everything on FEELING. The whole pretension to intellect on the part of the modern Political Left is an absurd fiction.
What they call "intellect" is in fact mere rote regurgitation of their political programing with not the slightest hint of any intellectual rigor anywhere.
Once you start to intellectually demolish the emotional foundation of Modern Liberalism the whole rotten edifice crashes down in total intellectual ruin. Do so with a committed Leftist and within minutes they will be foaming and the mouth with rage screaming hate at you. If is amusing as all get out to watch.
There is a reason people grow OUT of their "Liberal" youth. Usually, not always, with age comes wisdom. Winston Churchill said it best. "A man who is not a Liberal at age 18 has no heart. A man that is STILL a Liberal at age 40 has no head"
Thxs for your insight. On a segway, did you have a problem opening the article from the sourced link?
"On a segway, did you have a problem opening the article from the sourced link?"
I had a problem. Something about my browser not being equiped to handle it. Too bad. Great beginning to a probably very interesting set of insights.
Ditto on the TY for the posting.
The media is finally getting some of its own medicine.
It asked me for permission to put cookies on my system and what sort of contection I had. After I clicked the approprate button it connected me to what thought was the on line addition Took maybe 30 seconds start to finish.
Typical.
Might be a great article, but their Web staff is doing them no favors.
Publication: National Post; Date:2006 Aug 26;
Section:Issues & Ideas;
The lefts new bad guy
A N D R E W C O Y N E
At some point in his first or second year, the average undergraduate comes to a dreadful, shocking, thrilling, intoxicating realization: Everything I was taught to believe until now is a lie. Were not the good guys. Were the bad guys: the West, white people, my parents, whatever. Grasping this insight is the key to enlightenment, and enlightenment is the key to, among other things, pulling chicks. As time passes, most of us move on to a more balanced understanding of life. But that first rush of exhilaration at having pierced the veil, at being granted the power to see through the lies that hold others in their thrall, never really leaves us, and retains its ability to shape our thoughts throughout our lives. In its most benign form, it presents itself as a harmless contrarianism, of a kind to which this column might occasionally succumb. But under pressure, worked and reworked through the recombinant loops of the obsessive mind, it can progress through various strains of Marxism to conspiracy theories, UFOlogy and worse. The reflexive oppositionism of so much of the left, its instant identification with whoever or whatever is most hostile to the society of which it is a part, most closely resembles that of the undergraduate. It is a badge, a pose, a lifestyle, an arrangement of reality that is pleasing to believe, a reminder to the believer of the third eye of enlightenment that is his gift. Yet in this country it can take on a rather uglier form, insofar as the object of its loathing can be displaced onto another society, quite apart from our own. Until now, the locus of this disaffection was the United States. Lately, disturbingly, it has centred more and more on Israel. Anti-Americanism has mutated into something that might at best be called anti-Israelism, and at times looks alarmingly like anti-Semitism. Which brings us to the present wretched state of the Liberal party. That the partys left wing has long been a hotbed of anti-Americanism is news to no one. Indeed, so entrenched was this attitude among certain sections of the ruling party that it resembled something of a state religion. (A leftist in the States is compelled by his beliefs to remain profoundly alienated from his country, and from such notions as patriotism. In Canada, such was his patriotism.) But that tendency to locate all the blame for the worlds ills in a single country has now attached itself to Israel. I dont wish to pick on poor Borys Wrzesnewskyj, the partys former deputy critic for foreign affairs, who has suffered enough. He meant well, I am sure, and probably regrets having ever opened his mouth on that illstarred trip to Lebanon. But the habit of mind his words revealed did not spring from nowhere, nor is he by any means alone in the party. And while Boryss worst sin is an (admittedly spectacular) lack of judgement, there are others in the party, such as the recently departed vice-president of the Young Liberals of Canada in B.C., Thomas Hubert, who plainly harbour more virulent sentiments: if not that Israel is the most vile nation in human history, one that survives on the blood of innocent people, certainly that it is the primary source of conflict and instability in the region, and that its own human rights failings are of such a kind that it should be singled out, amongst all its neighbours, for condemnation. Understand, this is not even moral equivalence, though God knows the party has enough subscribers to that particular doctrine: the lazy, poisonous belief that the struggle between Israel and its antagonists, like that earlier between the West and the Soviet bloc, is an unseemly squabble on which we should take no sides, but rather should stand apart, ready to serve as honest brokers. To the left, to Mr. Hubert and his ilk, Israel is not merely just as bad as those who would destroy it, but if anything somewhat worse because, one assumes, they are on our side. At least, I hope thats all it is. Or perhaps there is a link between them: between the pseudoneutrality that is one strain of recent Liberal foreign policy, and the anti-Americanism, shading into anti-Israelism, that is the other. An unwillingness to take sides was, of course, one of the ways in which we were supposed to distinguish ourselves from the Americans: They were warlike and ideological, we were peacekeeping ecumenicals. But perhaps there was something else at work. A refusal to make moral judgments, to distinguish between the merely flawed and the truly evil, may in time lead to an inability to do so. Having gotten out of the habit of judgment, the muscles can atrophy: If one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, then it is all too easy to forget, not only who the terrorists are, but who are the freedom fighters. If anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, perhaps anti-Israelism is the pacifism of knaves. National Post ac@andrewcoyne.com
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