Rage of the Rights Talkers

Washington Post ^ | 10/10/2009 | George Will

[Saije]

Consider nature...as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda...you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy.

Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore advanced thinkers are agreed that conservatives are especially susceptible to it. As everyone knows, all liberals are advanced thinkers and all advanced thinkers are liberals. And yet...

Recently Paul Schwartzman, a war correspondent for The Post, ventured into the combat zone that is the Chevy Chase neighborhood in the District of Columbia. It is not a neighborly place nowadays. Residents are at daggers drawn over . . . speed humps.

Chevy Chase is..."a community that views itself as the essence of worldly sophistication." Some cars there express their owner's unassuageable anger by displaying faded "Kerry/Edwards" and even "Gore/Lieberman" bumper stickers. Neighborhood zoning probably excludes Republicans, other than the few who are bused in for diversity.

Speed humps -- the lumps on the pavement that force traffic to go slow -- have, Schwartzman reports, precipitated "a not-so-civil war . . . among the lawyers, journalists, policymakers and wonks" of Chevy Chase -- and Cleveland Park, another D.C. habitat for liberals. The problem is that a goal of liberal urbanists has been achieved: Families with young children are moving into such neighborhoods. They worry about fast-flowing traffic. Hence speed humps.

And street rage. Some people who think speed humps infringe their rights protest by honking when they drive over one. The purpose is to make life unpleasant for the people who live on the street and think they have a right to have the humps...

[Saije]

One resident, whom Schwartzman identifies as the husband of a former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, recently sat on his porch and videotaped an angry driver who honked 30 times. Other honkers "gave residents the finger as they drove by." Can't liberals play nicely together? Not, evidently, when they are bristling, like furious porcupines, with spiky rights that demand respect because the rights-bearers' dignity is implicated in them.

Anyone living in this country for the last 8+ years knows that when it comes to irrational anger and bizarre unremitting rage, the lefties have it all over the conservatives.

[jessduntno]

They are in Chevy Chase...and I’m not.

[1rudeboy]

Nicely perceptive column by Will (is he one of them “intellectuals” we must necessarily ignore?).

[FreeKeys]

They are in Chevy Chase...and I’m not.

[gaijin]

Amazingly great article from the quaint RINO I love to hate..! All that he’s lacking is the butterfly tie....

Another characteristic of the Rights Talkers (Will’s term) is their strong love of every incarnation of “me” —I, myself, individually, etc.

Sometimes they will get sucked into a mysterious “me” vortex and use these words multiple times even in short clauses —doing so bolsters the legitimacy of their claim on something, they think, because to the liberal PASSION isn’t just important, but the alpha and the omega.

Another penchant is a love for the F Word: If something is important, conservatives try to keep this one from view, but liberals are the diametric opposite; it should be pushed front and center, with dazzling lights and spin-around rims.

[Right Wing Assault]

10-15 years ago, first time in DC area, I had my wife and a van full of kids. We were going around (I believe) Chevy Chase circle at 45 or so with the locals, trying to locate one of a half-dozen streets leading off it.

I was navigating and told my wife, “This one!” It was the wrong one, and we hit a speed bump hidden in the shade. I thought we had all bought the farm with broken necks and snapped vertebrae. The coolers and luggage bounced off the ceiling of the van. Good thing we didn’t have the dog with us or he would have been smashed.

When we got our senses back and pulled into a driveway to turn around, an irate local started yelling at us for speeding on his street. It was hard to ignore him but that we did.

They decided to live there. No one made them do it.

[muir_redwoods]

They're just angry because the foolishness of their life-long cherished dreams is finally playing out in front of the whole world and only the "foolishness" part is showing.

The left is also angry because as unreason ages it becomes rage.

[hinckley buzzard]

I thought Chevy Chase was in Maryland, not DC. ??

[AnotherUnixGeek]

When we got our senses back and pulled into a driveway to turn around, an irate local started yelling at us for speeding on his street.

I'll never get over the "won't someone think of the children" types who believe the street in front of their house is their kid's playground and resent cars for daring to drive on it. When I was little, our parents told us not to play in the street.

[Minn]

Honking while going over neighborhood speed bumps is a great idea.

[Right Wing Assault]

A lot of the people are DC people.

[bfree]

I agree and plan on doing it from now on!!

[Minn]

When I was little, our parents told us not to play in the street.

OK, Show of hands. How many here ever played in the street when growing up? Would a motorist doing 40 mph through your ball game have been somebody exercising his rights as a taxpayer, or a negligent ass looking to spend well deserved time for reckless homicide? If you are speeding and end up in some sort of incident with a pedestrian, you deserve fry, whether or not you believe the kid belonged in the street.

[tophat9000]

Hell yes we play in the street and we never got hit.. we just yelled “CAR” when we saw one and got out of it way

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Would a motorist doing 40 mph through your ball game have been somebody exercising his rights as a taxpayer, or a negligent ass looking to spend well deserved time for reckless homicide?

Depends. If the posted speed limit is 40, the negligent ass in question is clearly the parent. If parents moving into a neighborhood seek to interfere with established traffic patterns by lowering the existing speed limits or building speed bumps to enforce this behavior, they want drivers to bear the cost for their inability to parent. Streets are meant for moving traffic - they aren't the neighborhood playgrounds.

If you are speeding and end up in some sort of incident with a pedestrian, you deserve fry, whether or not you believe the kid belonged in the street.

Agreed. But if you're a parent who lets your children play on busy streets (as opposed to walking on the side, which is what pedestrians do), you share in the blame.

[Cacique]

btt

[FreeKeys]

Witness the inability of people nowadays to recommend this or that health-care policy as merely wise or just. Each proposal must be invested with the dignity of a right. And since not all proposals are compatible, you have not merely differences of opinion but apocalyptic clashes of rights.

Rights talk is inherently aggressive, even imperial; it tends toward moral inflation and militates against accommodation. Rights talkers, with their inner monologues of preemptive resentments, work themselves into a simmering state of annoyed vigilance against any limits on their willfulness. To rights talkers, life -- always and everywhere -- is unbearably congested with insufferable people impertinently rights talking, and behaving...

UNlike liberals, let US be clear. 

1. RIGHTS come from the requirements of man's nature as a choice-making rational being (in other words, from God), not the Constitution.  The Constitution is just to designate the structure of the federal government, and as far as rights go, it is supposed to protect them, not grant them.  Rights are innate in every human.  If they are "granted" by a Constitution or any other act of human beings they are nothing more than revocable privileges. This is WHY we use the term "rights" rather than "permissions" and insist upon their distinction.

2. RIGHTS are expressions of LIBERTY, as claims of immunity from, and to distinguish them sharply from, any use of coercion.  They are the recognition of every individual's independence, or ownership of his or her own life.  Thus you have rights to assemble, move, work, play, speak, write, worship, etc. and make your OWN decisions about yourself.  This is not to deny our social nature.  Instead, it clarifies the fact that one's social contacts are to be chosen by or consented to, not forced upon, each individual.

3. In order to be a right, a condoning of liberty must be applicable to EVERYONE in the same sense at the same time.  If it is not, it must be considered to be only a permission or a license, and cannot be construed to be a right. 

4. In order to be a right, a condoning of liberty of one kind must not entail the violation of another kind.  Your right to swing your fist ends where another person's nose begins.

5. Whenever anyone postulates such a thing as anyone's "right" to health care  (or any other goods or services, for that matter) then they are implicitly, if not explicity, postulating that coercion is involved BECAUSE THE LIBERTY OF OTHERS MUST BE VIOLATED TO FORCE THEM TO PROVIDE IT.  BUT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "RIGHT" TO VIOLATE RIGHTS.

PERIOD.
http://freedomkeys.com/rights.htm
http://freedomkeys.com/teapartysigns.htm

[KarlInOhio]

But how do speed bumps relate to the outfield hills at Crosley Field and Minute Maid Park? Or even an odd bounce on a grounder up the middle hitting the mound?< /george will obligatory baseball reference>

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[the OlLine Rebel]

Wow, now I just got ideas about what to do when facing these damnable bumps.