Posted on 11/05/2019 3:49:26 AM PST by Kaslin
The left-right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable.
There are three reasons.
First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be.
The right believes the founders' vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The left (not liberals) shares none of those values.
Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.
Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide.
Left and right have different perceptions of reality.
I have been aware of this for many years, but it was dramatically brought home last week when I was a guest on "Real Time With Bill Maher." Given that the other two guests on the panel and more or less the entire studio audience were on the left, their reactions to what I said proved my point.
For example, I said that though there are, of course, racists in the United States, America is the least racist multiethnic and multiracial country in the world.
I was booed.
I said the United States military has brought so much liberty to the world it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was booed.
Clearly, there is an unbridgeable divide in the way we perceive the reality of the American military's role in the world.
I said that it turned out the Russia-Trump campaign collusion never happened.
I was booed.
There is an unbridgeable divide in the way left and right perceive this reality.
I said the Trump-Ukrainian president phone transcript did not show a quid pro quo.
I was booed, and one of the other panelists said it actually showed "extortion."
This, too, constitutes an unbridgeable divide between the way left and right view reality.
I said John Brennan, the former CIA director, has voted communist. (He has admitted that he voted for the Communist Party USA presidential candidate Gus Hall in 1976.) I was dismissed as having made something up. Bill Maher sarcastically responded that he didn't recall Mao having been on any ballot.
And I said that people on the left say men can menstruate.
For that, I was not merely booed; I was laughed at by the panel, Maher and the audience.
Anyone can Google this and learn that I was entirely right. Just type "can men menstruate." One of the first results will be from the popular left-wing website The Daily Beast: "Yes, Men Can Have Periods and We Need to Talk About Them," reads one of its headlines. "How is this possible?" you might ask. Well, if a woman declares herself to be a man, then "a man" can have a period. In fact, last month, Procter & Gamble announced that it will remove the female Venus symbol from its Always line of menstrual products. After all, not only women menstruate.
The irony is that as soon as most progressives become aware that LGBTQ groups say that men menstruate, they will say that men menstruate. And that will be another differing perception of reality.
On each of these issues -- all the issues for which I was booed -- right and left have different perceptions of reality. That -- even more so than differing values -- makes the left-right divide unbridgeable. When you cannot agree on what is real, there is no possible bridging of the gulf.
The left believes the president colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. The reality is that there was no collusion. This is the conclusion of the Mueller report, but still, the left doesn't accept it.
The left is certain President Trump said the neo-Nazis are "very fine people" when referring to the protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. The right is certain the president didn't say there are good neo-Nazis any more than he said there are good "antifa" members. When he said there were "very fine people on both sides," he was referring to those demonstrating on behalf of keeping Confederate statues and those opposed. See "The Charlottesville Lie" by CNN analyst Steve Cortes.
The left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide -- "You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism" -- but a reality divide.
The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation's future. On that point, ironically, left and right can agree.
Dissolve the Union, or prepare for the use of force
They now follow blindly into the dark with conviction
convinced that the outcome would be to their liking and if its not they can cower in a safe room in mommy and daddy’s basement for protection from the cruel world.
The man on the street segment run on waters world and other programs asking basic questions to the young woke’s about people and politics proves their steadfast and belligerent arrogant stupidity about issues and history they are willing to fight you about
Fortunately, it is not "half of the country". It is likely no more than 30%, at most.
Nearly all of those 30% have a false perception of reality because the vast majority of the media have a false perception of reality and work hard at promoting that perception.
The media and most of the left have violated one of the most basic of moral codes: to thine own self be true.
They constantly lie to the themselves, believing themselves to be like gods, and capable of changing reality with their words.
“The left” are elitists. Elitist sneer at the bourgeois who are mired in reality. The elite are above the limits of reality. To an elitist, reality is what the uber-elites declare it is.
The left is evil.
The Bible actually talks to this. Whether you knew it or not, you just confirmed it.
Cheers, 'Pod
Let’s be specific about who this is about what being a ‘racist’ is? Does this include the Black and Hispanic Caucuses for example? Or in the writers eyes does it only pertain to white people?
I fear the only way to cure this cancer now is a CW.
It is going to come down to kill or be killed. The Left will not stop without vast use of force or they will kill or enslave the rest of us.
I came to this conclusion some time ago (and decided to make this my new tagline): Finding middle ground with tyranny or evil makes you either a tyrant or evil. Often both.
And many of us have decided we simply won’t do either of them anymore. The Left has, through calculated incrementalism, pushed us further and further into a corner.
We aren’t going to step out of that corner we have been painted in to find either comfort or acceptance. It isn’t that important to many of us anymore.
When I first read this book, I found it to be a spy thriller.
The second time I read it, I thought it was a political book.
The third time I read it, I realized it was a man's search for God.
And that was when the book really hit me. This passage from Witness explains it, and encompasses the conversation we are having on Free Republic today, as both of you readily see:
“...It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.
It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in his image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God...”
The left seeks to, and has largely succeeded in replacing God with Man on this earth. Some of us won't go down that road, and that makes us alien and outcast to them. I can't think of any badges, honors, or medals I would rather wear than that.
I am with you, Wayne.
I also appreciate the distinction Mr. Prager makes between “The Left” and “Liberals”.
Liberals are often not the enemy, they are simply misguided, without reflective thought, education, or intelligence. They often may be the enemy simply because they give weight to the Left it might otherwise not have.
But the Left is indeed our enemy through and through.
“...the vast majority of the media have a false perception of reality and work hard at promoting that perception.”
And pubic (gov) schools, colleges, universities, Hollywood, unions, churches, social media and Democrats. All are aligned on social Marxism taking over America.
No, you are totally wrong
Liberals are the enemy. They must be destroyed. Liberals have eaten up all the garbage they have been fed and ravenously ask for more.
Your friends and relatives that are liberals are a danger to America
The hardest lesson for the pc tolerant to learn.
One of the most disturbing things to me is the Left’s perception of “truth”.
If you listen to them, they often say things like “That’s YOUR truth”, and it illustrates that to them, “truth” is malleable.
We all know that a large part of truth to many people is perception, what the senses tell them, and it is not uncommon for people witnessing an event to have very different versions of what they saw.
But the fact is that humans are flawed, our senses and our perceptions run through the filter of our bodies and environment are often flawed.
And that highlights one of the most dramatic differences between Conservatives and Leftists:
Conservatives must exercise a high degree of introspection which requires thought and conscious effort. We not only recognize we are flawed and CAN be wrong, but we are forced through the efforts of the Left to constantly do critical examinations of our belief systems and be prepared to defend them, simply because they are constantly being derided and attacked by the Left.
The Left has no such imposition or obligation, and they instead lean on groupthink and the weight they feel that imparts on their belief systems. We see that demonstrated time and time again in every single issue ranging from environmentalism to abortion.
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