Posted on 06/16/2005 12:26:55 PM PDT by MikeHu
Liberal’s disease involves a subset of liberal-oriented people. Its chief symptoms are negativity, jealousy and an enlarged ego. Liberals who focus all of their attention on the need to help others don’t have this disease. They are only concerned with the potential good that can be done for those in need. Liberals who don’t claim great knowledge or expertise in the understanding of public policy don’t qualify since they don’t have the ego symptom of this disease.
The person suffering from liberal’s disease is most easily identified by the types of arguments they make. Words like “greed,” “selfishness,” and “exploitation” spatter their writings and speeches. Emotive language rather than reasoned arguments take center stage. The hatred of the “rich,” “capitalism,” etc., is the center point. Such a person will dismiss arguments about workers having a higher standard of living in free market economies than they do in socialist ones on the grounds that free markets allow some people to have “too much money.” One can only assume that this attitude springs from jealousy and envy.
The problem of jealousy becomes more evident when the ego aspect of this disease is also examined. A person with liberal’s disease is often highly educated. If not formally educated they have made up for it by having done a lot of reading. In discussions they are always quick to quote some famous author of philosopher in a childlike attempt to substantiate their status as an intellectual. They love to find statistics and studies that seem to support what they are exposing. The problem is, despite all of their readings and studies, the ability to think in a logical and rational manner eludes them. They are pseudo-intellectuals. They have knowledge, but lack wisdom, understanding and the ability to engage in rational thought on issues involving economics.
This disease is prevalent among journalists and educators. It is particularly engrained in our university system. The tax-funded support of this sort of irrational babbling by university professors is one of the greatest threats to a healthy democracy. University professors are particularly at risk of falling into this problem due to their own internal ego rankings. The University ranks people by numbers of degrees and academic achievements. Those in this system believe very strongly that they are the best and the brightest, the top achievers in America. Why then do they earn so much less than financiers and industrialists? Answering this question can lead a less secure person to feelings of jealousy and contempt for anyone in the world with more money. There is a deep psychological need to tear down the leaders of the capitalist system and the system itself that allow those leaders to earn so much more than those in academics.
Of course the problem of left-leaning academics in our university system and in our news media is not news. The issue in my thinking is to what extent this problem may have its roots in a genuine mental disorder. And of course what should we do about it. Libertarians do not support involuntary funding of education. So in a libertarian model the same market place that exists in business would apply to universities. Less affluent students would be paying their own way and would be much more serious about the extent to which the courses they selected furthered their career goals. Universities would have to adapt to attract students. Streamlining of curriculum and dismissal of dead weight personal would vastly reduce this whole problem. Clowns like Ward Churchill would be on their way out the door.
Tracy Ryan, chair of the Libertarian Party of Hawaii, can be reached by email at: mailto:tracy.ahn.ryan@worldnet.att.net
HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com
The disease seems to be airborne and transmitted when large groups on infected folks talk to one another. Thankfully they isolate themselves from mainstream Amercans and remain out of touch with middle class hard working citizens....
"Words like “greed,” “selfishness,” and “exploitation” spatter their writings and speeches. Emotive language rather than reasoned arguments take center stage. The hatred of the “rich,” “capitalism,” etc., is the center point."
That is a perfect description of SOCIALISTS... don't let them get away with being called liberal (which is rooted in the Latin word for "free"), there is nothing free about their ideology.
...Dead on...
The analog I use is
Knowledge is food...
Thinking is the workout that metabolizes the food to muscle
Wisdom, understanding and the ability to engage in rational thought is the muscles and athletic ability developed
If you just consume Knowledge/food with out the other… your just a fat head
Conversely there are many that built a lot Wisdom/muscles by Thinking /workout… sometimes on very little consumed Knowledge/food…
It’s called original think vs. just puking up some quote from some famous author of philosopher that you consumed
Well if theyre Socialists, why dont they all move to France where they would be happy with their frog buddies?
It really is a disease, a mental illness. In an earlier time, they called it delusions of grandeur -- that they are just so much smarter than everybody else, fooling everybody else, deceiving everybody else, manipulating everybody else. Their favorite sport is to set up everybody else -- against one another. You see it on the editorial pages -- and the "selected" letters to the editor. According to their plan, we are a nation incessantly and relentlessly at each other's throats. And they alone, are the objective and impartial peacemakers -- at the newspapers and universities.
Recall Ayn Rand's "Ellsworth M. Toohey" in The Fountainhead?
Whenever you give a person a spotlight or the microphone, some people cannot handle the power -- because they haven't lived their whole lives preparing for that moment -- and responsibility. That's why many of these lottery winners instantly lose their fortune and go even farther into debt. Because the more important thing is not the money -- but the ability to manage it.
That's why the proposal to have people manage individual accounts is so important -- and not just the money people will receive once they retire. If they haven't learned to manage money well, no amount of money will be adequate; with the money-handling experience and skills, a little can go a long way.
The materialists place great importance only on these material things -- thinking that is all that matters. But no amount of resources is enough if the people are not resourceful enough to multiply its value and usefulness.
Freedom is the same kind of precious resource.
If people haven't learned throughout their lives how to manage it, conserve it, expand it -- they think it is the freedom to victimize others. One cannot expect to liberate a country and the next day, they are up and running a full-fledged democracy -- without problems, without a learning process. So for these congressman to expect that "Our work is done, we got Saddam, goodbye and good luck," is obviously setting up a country and people for failure.
Obviously that's what these "liberals" want, as further proof of their own superiority.
Plenty of people came to consider themselves conservatives or Republicans because of the arrogance of liberals or Democrats. They weren't experts, but something seemed wrong and insulting in the cockiness and haughtiness of liberal politicians, journalists, and economists, and the liberal conviction that the whole world was moving in their direction. I think we recognized that we didn't have all the answers, and that anyone who pretended they did was probably bluffing or deluded, and not to be trusted.
Libertarians who claim to have all the answers push the same button in people. Confidence that one has all the answers begins to look arrogant after a while. If you remember and were outraged by liberal attempts to portray their opponents as stupid or pathological, you probably wouldn't be so receptive to the same old abuse sent in the opposite directions.
Answer people's arguments. Show them where they're wrong. But try to avoid abusing them unnecessarily or pretending that you've got some master science up yours sleeve that will give you the right answers without having to really puzzle things out for yourself. The audience that matters is the undecided audience, and too much reference to one's opponents as diseased, depraved, or mentally deficient doesn't win converts.
A few accurate characteristics of many socialists does not add up to "a perfect descritpion of socialists." I agree however that they should not get away with being called "liberal" when so little about them qualifies as being liberal. The author makes an interesting observation that:
Liberals who focus all of their attention on the need to help others don't have this disease. They are only concerned with the potential good that can be done for those in need.
But will not the focussing of all of ones attention on one thing tend to open ones self up to "disease" as characterized by the article? It seems to me that an unbalanced lifestyle will lead to a weakened state and thereby leads to the narrow outlook described as the "liberal disease." The author then qualifies that:
Liberals who don't claim great knowledge or expertise in the understanding of public policy don't qualify since they don't have the ego symptom of this disease.
So then we may assume that liberals such as the bleeding heart types who always vote democratic but claim no special understanding of public policy have another sort of mind disease. Hmmm... At any rate, the described disease might be better called the authoritarian view point. It can be found among conservatives as well as the many different kinds of liberals. If left unchecked, it often leads to a condition that is completely anti-conservative as well as anti-liberal.
I wonder what disease would cause conservatives to not conserve the meaning of words. The word "liberal" has a definition which is quite attractive and persuasive, especially for young minds. What kind of suicidal political sickness would want to drive off young minds?
"I wonder what disease would cause conservatives to not conserve the meaning of words."
Yes, that was my point. Calling the Democratic Party "liberal" implies that they are the party of more freedom when the exact opposite is true.
I agree with you here. But I have a little problem understanding what you mean. One of the main attractions to libertarianism is the understanding that no one has all the answers. If I'm correct here, then their are no such libertarians as you claim. Maybe you imagined them.
...too much reference to one's opponents as diseased, depraved, or mentally deficient doesn't win converts.
On this I agree. There are many former democrats who today stand against the Democratic Party. Many of them had been converted. Being wrong does not make one "diseased, depraved, or mentally deficient."
How strange it is that conservatives take a political stand against such ideals right off the bat at the introductory get go.
Some irony or skepticism is also valuable -- if not with regard to one's beliefs, then at least with respect to one's ability to live up to them or express them in art: Rand wasn't one of the great novelists herself, and plenty of the writers she admired probably wouldn't be impressed by her work, an indication that she may not have had all the answers in aesthetics either.
There are also the Rockwellites, who go through history giving A's or F's to figures from the past, based on their economic views. Now of course, we do have to judge past leaders and thinkers, and it may be that tariffs or regulation are inherently bad and always liable to have negative consequences. But things looked different to people at different times.
The options that we have now weren't always available. One can't simply step into the past from an economics classroom, and say what should be done. People in the past lived their way through experiences that taught them different lessons from what Rockwell or Rothbard teach. Very often, one made a choice in dark uncertainty between options that were all bad.
We also don't have the evidence about what would happen if an alternative course had been pursued -- if we'd never had protective tariffs, or consumer and environmental protection agencies, or social security -- and people disagree about the possible consequences of such an alternative course. What we'd need is a model of what would happen if the Rockwellites got their way on everything. We don't have that, and it's very possible that such a world would have just as much wrong with it as our own.
Writing history usually requires more modesty and skepticism than the coach Rockwell and his armchair quarterbacks usually display. The way that historians like Schlesinger and Hofstadter or ideologues of the left like Chomsky and Zinn always claim to know what should have been done is embarassing and unattractive. When one sees that sort of cockiness coming from the right it's equally off-putting. In theory, libertarians do believe that no one has all the answers, but in practice it's not always the case.
It's more a question of manner than of matter. One can certainly say that this painter or that policy was disastrous. Sometimes a commentator has to say that. But it's the refusal to grant the other side its due and to admit that one may be wrong about specific works or events or situations that galls people. The conviction that one always has a moral ace up one's sleeve or the revealed truth in one's vest pocket often leaves a bitter taste in other people's mouths. My guess is that Tracy Ryan thinks that "you can't think rationally about economics" is the successful end of an argument. It looks more like a beginning -- and not a very promising one at that -- if it's not simply avoiding an opportunity to win people over and simply preaching to the converted.
Your apparent agreement with me that you prefaced with the words "in theory," takes nothing from the position that "libertarians do believe that no one has all the answers." Equally, your most accurate assertion that "...in practice it's not always the case," also takes nothing from my initial disagreement with you.
I was however curious how you might think that accurately criticizing the style of a few libertarian writers out of several hundred says anything about libertarians. Additionally, it may be worth considering that style can also be a matter of tactics and strategy. In that regard, your criticisms on which I am in full agreement with, are only situationally and circumstantially accurate. Of course you did set out in your original reply (#10) that "the audience that matters is the undecided audience." But what you may be over looking is that in targeting that audience, it breaks down into a rather large number of distinct potential groups, each with their own characteristics and standards of attraction.
I did however find one small area that I do not agree with you. The only thing is, is that I actually do not disagree either.
Rand wasn't one of the great novelists herself, and plenty of the writers she admired probably wouldn't be impressed by her work, an indication that she may not have had all the answers in aesthetics either.
From the best I can tell, Rand as a novelist was pretty much praised by her critics, including by those who hated her ideas. Not being a fiction reader myself, with the Fountainhead being the longest fiction I've ever read, I'm not one to judge your criticism here. I do know however that she has received much praise over the years from many who are qualified in this regard.
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