Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals "Think" (Excellent but long read)

The Heritage Foundation ^ | March 5, 2007. | Evan Sayet

[meowmeow]

As I was reading, I thought, "Hey, this sounds like that Allan Bloom book." Then I scrolled down and hit,

There's a brilliant book out there called The Closing of the American Mind by Professor Allan Bloom.

Scary stuff. Not sure what the solution is, except to fight to the end and lay up treasure in heaven.

[Actually_in_Tokyo]

I highly recommend the video. After I watched it a year ago I wrote to thank him for his speech and received a nice response.

[Hardastarboard]

Frankly, if it were just stupidity, they'd be right more often.

This is the money line from the article, IMHO.

[raybbr]

I have been posting links to the video for some time. This should have a permanent link on FR somewhere. The man brilliantly captures the insanity of thinking like a liberal.

[mo]

“We all know too many people who fit this category but who aren’t evil: many of my lifelong friends, the people I grew up with, relatives, close relatives.....”

He has yet to deal with reality of the above; unfortunately some are his friends and family.

[theKid51]

ping

[Aria]

mark for later

[rbg81]

I saw this talk on YouTube a while back. He has some good observations, but I disagree with him on a few points. I think many Leftists are indeed evil. They use these tactics as a way to get power by destroying the existing power structure piece by piece. This has been going on for a LONG time, but the pace has definitely accelerated in the last 20 years. What they seek is a compliant, non-judgemental populace that will accept their dictates as gospel. That is their idea of Utopia. Think secular mullahs (which is why so many Leftists drool over Islam). The best way to do this is to demonize any form of “judgement”. Their greates enemy is an independent minded, free thinking people.

For those of you literary types, read (or reread) Elsworth Toohey’s rant to Peter Keating near the end of “The Fountainhead”. Its a bit dated, but the fundamentals of the strategy are still the same as back in the 30s.

[Iris7]

I have been talking about this for years.

Machiavelli, using the Ancient’s insights, said there were three types of government. Each type could be either good or bad.

The first is Monarchy. Monarchy is bad when it is Tyranny.

The second is Aristocracy. Aristocracy is bad when it is Oligarchy.

The third is Democracy. Democracy is bad when the people become licentious - that is, when the people refuse to distinguish right from wrong.

Aristotle observed that Democracy seems to universally degenerate into licentiousness over time. Following the licentious Democracy, Aristotle notes, comes Tyranny, where a demagogue is elected to power on a platform of punishing the wicked rich who, as any Democrat knows, have plundered the little guy mercilessly and want to make the public their slaves. Examples of tyrants rising to power by this method are endless, Mugabe, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc.

The American Founders were very well versed in these ideas and attempted a “mixed form” of government using checks and balances in the attempt to deal with the certain decay of democracy. Most were not optimistic. As Ben Franklin put it, when asked what form of government was being considered at the Constitutional Convention, “A Republic, Madame, if you can keep it.”

[r-q-tek86]

ping