Posted on 05/14/2007 9:09:51 PM PDT by jazusamo
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans? How often have conservative students on campus shouted down a visiting speaker or rioted to prevent the visitor from speaking at all?
The source of the anger of liberals, "progressives" or radicals is by no means readily apparent. The targets of their anger have included people who are non-confrontational or even genial, such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
It is hard to think of a time when Karl Rove or Dick Cheney has even raised his voice but they are hated like the devil incarnate.
There doesn't even have to be any identifiable individual to arouse the ire of the left. "Tax cuts for the rich" is more than a political slogan. It is incitement to anger.
All sorts of people can have all sorts of beliefs about what tax rates are best from various points of view. But how can people work themselves into a lather over the fact that some taxpayers are able to keep more of the money they earned, instead of turning it over to politicians to dispense in ways calculated to get themselves re-elected?
The angry left has no time to spend even considering the argument that what they call "tax cuts for the rich" are in fact tax cuts for the economy.
Nor is the idea new that tax cuts can sometimes spur economic growth, resulting in more jobs for workers and higher earnings for business, leading to more tax revenue for the government.
A highly regarded economist once observed that "taxation may be so high as to defeat its object," so that sometimes "a reduction of taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the Budget."
Who said that? Milton Friedman? Arthur Laffer? No. It was said in 1933 by John Maynard Keynes, a liberal icon.
Lower tax rates have led to higher tax revenues many times, both before and since Keynes' statement -- the Kennedy tax cuts in the 1960s, the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s, and the recent Bush tax cuts that have led to record high tax revenues this April.
Budget deficits have often resulted from runaway spending but seldom from reduced tax rates.
Those on the other side may have different arguments. However, the question here is not why the left has different arguments, but why there is such anger.
Often it is an exercise in futility even to seek to find a principle behind the anger. For example, the left's obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high -- or higher -- incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel.
If the reason for the anger is a feeling that corporate CEOs are overpaid for their contributions, then there should be even more anger at people who get even more money for doing absolutely nothing, because they have inherited fortunes.
Yet how often has the left gotten worked up into high dudgeon over those who inherited the Rockefeller, Roosevelt or Kennedy fortunes? Even spoiled heirs like Paris Hilton don't really seem to set them off.
If it is hard to find a principle behind what angers the left, it is not equally hard to find an attitude.
Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left, the political melodrama starring the left as saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks that they have taken on.
It seems to be the threat to their egos that they hate. And nothing is more of a threat to their desire to run other people's lives than the free market and its defenders.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.
Just wanted to repeat it.
Reminds me of a Berkeley communist with whom I once had a little chat.
This was about 10 years ago.
When I told him that communism had failed everywhere, he said, "No, it hasn't. It's never been tried."
For sure. And, let’s not forget how much they hate the 2nd Amendment which empowers the Great Unwashed which the Left is scared to death of. If the Hildabeast is elected POTUS be assured she will make an attempt to have it rescinded or neutered in some fashion.
Absolutely correct. That statement is even more amazing considering that there never was any debate. The global warming doomists simply announced their verdict before any real discussion could begin. There is now a growing number of scientists and informed people who are quite skeptical. The debate is definitely NOT!!! over.
All of this Leftist anger is more understandable when you realize that the purpose of socialism is not equal prosperity, but equal suffering, pain, and death.
They won’t be happy until they’re supervising the killing fields.
Mash here folks...
http://samvak.tripod.com/journal10.html
“I feel entitled to more. I feel it is my right - due to my intellectual superiority - to lead a thrilling, rewarding, kaleidoscopic life. I feel entitled to force life itself, or, at least, people around me - to yield to my wishes and needs, supreme among them the need for stimulating variety.
This rejection of habit is part of a larger pattern of aggressive entitlement. I feel that the very existence of a sublime intellect (such as myself) warrants concessions and allowances. Standing in line is a waste of time best spent pursuing knowledge, inventing and creating. I should avail myself of the best medical treatment proffered by the most prominent medical authorities - lest the asset that is I be lost to Mankind. I should not be bothered with proofreading my articles (or even re-reading them) - these lowly jobs best be assigned to the less gifted. The devil is in paying precious attention to details.
Entitlement is sometimes justified in a Picasso or an Einstein. But I am neither. My achievements are grotesquely incommensurate with my overwhelming sense of entitlement. I am but a mediocre and forgettable scribbler who, at the age of 39, is a colossal under-achiever, if anything.
Of course, the feeling of supremacy often serves to mask a cancerous complex of inferiority. Moreover, I infect others with my projected grandiosity and their feedback constitutes the edifice upon which I construct my self-esteem. I regulate my sense of self-worth by rigidly insisting that I am above the madding crowd while deriving my Narcissistic Supply from this very thus despised source.
But there is a second angle to this abhorrence of the predictable. As a narcissist, I employ a host of Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanisms (EIPM). Despising routine and avoiding it is one of these mechanisms. Their function is to prevent me from getting emotionally involved and, subsequently, hurt. Their application results in an “approach-avoidance repetition complex”. The narcissist, fearing and loathing intimacy, stability and security - yet craving them - approaches and then avoids significant others or important tasks in a rapid succession of apparently inconsistent and disconnected behaviours.”
Tax cuts enhance revenue only in the long term, and liberals stupidly believe that such long-term revenue enhancement would have been even greater absent tax cuts, that the American people essentially enjoy paying taxes and do not attempt to avoid confiscatory levels thereof.
When I told him that communism had failed everywhere, he said, "No, it hasn't. It's never been tried."
You should have told him, "Communism has succeeded everywhere it has been tried - what's worse, when people found out what the success of communism meant, it has taken them decades to get out from under it."Communism - all socialism - is nothing more than the use of power (in the case of milder forms of socialism such as is called "liberalism" in America, PR power) to arrogate credit from those who deserve it to those who have that power. All socialist schemes are perpetual-motion machines which "work" only in the sense that the perpetrators of the schemes are able to deflect blame for the ill effects of their schemes onto third parties.
For example, the minimum wage is actually always zero, which is what you get when you are not employed. When the socialist raises the "minimum wage," the socialist gets the credit for the raises that young workers get at that time which they would have gotten anyway a little later. If the employer never ever would have voluntarily paid that particular employee the new "minimum wage," the employer would have resorted to his only other recourse, which would have been to fire that employee. More generally, an increase in the "minimum wage" raises the bar for the productivity of the entry-level worker - who must then show greater credentials, or at least greater prospects, than before in order to justifiy being initially employed at the higher "minimum wage" rather than remaining unemployed at the true minimum wage of zero.Socialism exists to make socialists look good to people who don't ask the second question.
The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith
It’s also amazing how illiberal these leftists are. True liberals tolerate, even encourage debate. They would want the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to be free. They wouldn’t tolerate the government telling us what to eat or think. These aren’t really liberals, they’re leftists.
Bears repeating.
It always goes back to the age-old question, "Are they evil or are they just stupid?"
Thanks for posting Dr. Sowell’s brilliant observations! He gets it right, yet again!
The Left is perpetually angry because they view themselves as superior, and cannot understand how they keep losing to inferiors.
“What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.”
While the Left has always hated Ronald Reagan, they didn’t exude hatred every time they opened their collective mouths as they do today with George Bush, or Dick Cheney, or Karl Rove.
Seven years ago, you could engage an avowed liberal in forums like this, and most of the time have a fairly civil ‘conversation’. Those days are long gone however.
Now, in forums that allow all sides of a political debate, the Leftwingers mount campaigns against specific posters, from the harmless ‘just don’t respond’ to more aggressive acts, such as finding a posters email address and spamming those they disagree with. Sometimes goes even farther than that, still relatively harmless, but initially annoying action.
Whats curious to me is the Left won the last election cycle, and they appear even more angry today than last September.
Its almost mass hysteria, in short.
The good news is this type of irrationality causes the Left to overstep, to misread, and to exhibit infantile behavior normally expected by spoiled sixth graders.
That should work in the GOP’s favor when the time comes in 2008.
Just look at how vicious the discourse in the leftwing forums has become in regards to their own candidates.
Why do liberals/leftists hate? Envy and resentment.
Hillary as President, Bill as Secretary General, the US taken over for the “common good” by the UN during some trumped up “emergency”- find my tinfoil hat, please.
Community of Goods:
"Hutterites live in community, that is they share all of their possessions; The idea of Community of Goods stems from many examples found in the bible, including the following:
"And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily, with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favor with all people."
This man is an icon, and clean too.
Pray for W and Our Troops
“it is hard to find a principal behind what angers the left....”
the left may be unprincipled but the factor which underlies leftist anger is pure, unadulterated, unvarnished, insanity; the insanity of the eternal adolescent, the insanity of an up-bringiing with no regard for reality except the internal reality of sick beings, distorted to the point of demanding continnual gratification and fulfillment based upon visceral need as is a rabid animal.
leave it to the so-called “american electorate” to contiinue to elect animals who will be the insane pigs at the trough of “social justice” who will open the gulags in order to find eternal social justice, ad nauseum.
Bumperoo!
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