National Organization for Women doesn't actually care about women

ModernConservative.com ^ | Christopher Cook

[connell]

NOW is "not putting out a statement or taking a position."

.......One of the most striking examples comes in the area of wars and conflicts. The left is bubbling over with concern about human rights...right? At least, that's what they want you to think. Unfortunately, if you take a detailed look at all the conflicts that get them upset—and all the conflicts about which they are silent—you discover a disturbing pattern. So, as I said in Selective Outrage: How the left's agenda trumps genuine concern for human suffering:

Simply put, the left gets completely outraged at conflicts in which the side perceived to have more power is from the groups and ideologies they "dislike," but they remain silent when the side with the power comes from an ideological position they support. You can reverse those components too—they are outraged when they "like" the victims and silent (or worse) when they don't. It doesn't matter how brutal the conflict is, or who has a better claim to use force in their own defense—the only thing that appears to matter is group identity.

More recently, I also hit this topic in Human Rights are not the primary concern of Human Rights Watch. I probably wouldn't have hit this subject again so soon, but Tammy's article gives me the chance to make sure this is absolutely. crystal. clear.

So, these groups and individuals on the left get outraged if the "perpetrators" are...

• center-right
• allies of the United States
• white
• Christian or Jewish

and/or the "victims" are...

• enemies of the United States
• from a "protected" ethnic group, i.e., blacks, Hispanics
• Muslims
• anywhere on the political left

However, they are largely silent (and in some cases, supportive) if the "perpetrators" are...

[connell]

And notice how many of those problems women here in the U.S. suffer are actually the fault of the left. If you have any interest in actually starting an organization of the type to which you refer, please FReepmail me and we can discuss that further.

[connell]

BTW, I stole the DVG/DOG idea from John Derbyshire

Good stuff, and I would love to read more about this. Have you written anywhere on this in more detail, and/or do you have the links to the Derbyshire stuff?

[freekitty]

Yes, that was an eyeopener. To defend a rapist. That about says it all.

[connell]

I don’t know. It always seems like the left has more money for its causes than we do.

[connell]

It’s all about the left’s needs. The constitution is only valuable to them if it supports the left’s aims. Otherwise, it’s worthy of destruction: remember the SNL/Smeigel cartoon “No constitution”?

[connell]

Yep. See my tagline :-)

[goldstategop]

The Left doesn't believe in freedom or universal principles so its not a surprise its moral outrage is as selective as the causes it champions.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Sherman Logan]

DVG/DOG terminology is pretty common online.

Here’s a link to a truly excellent Derb article from several years ago.

http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200403241040.asp

[Sherman Logan]

But, you see, I believe that the adherence to Marxism/Leninism was for most never really a sincere ideological belief, it was just another tool the intellectuals used when convenient to bash Western Civ.

When one tool breaks or loses its edge, they just drop it and pick up another. The common factor is not the tool, its the target.

Communism was for a good many decades the most powerful available tool, so they used it freely. When the futility and failure of Communist ideology became so self-evident it couldn’t be ignored any longer, few of them stopped to look around to see whether their opposition to Western Civ was perhaps in error. Instead, they just dropped the Communism tool and picked up the environmental, multi-cultural or feminist tool and continued whacking away at the greatest evil in the history of mankind.

[connell]

I will read it. Thanks!

[connell]

That’s an interesting view. However, it raises a question: if that were so, where did this reflexive anti-Western view come from? With my explanation, it has a clear, traceable genesis. With yours, I am not sure I see the source of it. There may be one, but I am not seeing it. Can you further elucidate this view?

[Beagle8U]

I don’t know much about SNL cartoons but I know how the left operates.

[Sherman Logan]

I don’t know its source, but I think it can be pretty easily traced back well before Marx.

Since well before the French Revolution probably a majority of the leading “intellectuals” of society have been in a default mode of antagonism towards the institutions of Western Civ. This has usually been presented as antagonism towards failures or evils of our society (which of course are not at all unique to this society): religious persecution, racism, slavery, subjugation of women, poverty, oppression, etc.

Yet as each of these evils was more or less overcome, their tendency was not to celebrate that our society was getting better, rather it was to look around for another evil to get outraged by and use as a new reason to attack their host society. AAMOF, I think an objective observer would agree that as the evils decreased the outrage increased.

One of the reasons I’ve read for the default antagonism towards their own society of “intellectuals” is as follows:

During the Middle Ages, the most important and respected group in society was the churchmen, the only really educated and intellectual class.

As a class of secular intellectuals developed and sharpened their criticism of the Church, they expected this position of great power, respect and influence to fall to them. Of course, it didn’t, with the middle classes taking over the power dropped by the Church and aristocracy. The intellectuals have resented it ever since, explaining their opposition to both the society in general and the middle class in particular.

Just a theory, and I’m not sure it is accurate. But I thought it was interesting.

I do know that intellectuals (or more accurately those who think of themselves as such) believe they should be in charge. They are Thomas Sowell’s “Annointed” and they resent the hell out of it that the rest of us don’t buy into their high opinion of themselves.

[fish hawk]

And a few young hot babes career minded and a very large chip on their shoulder. Either way, undesirable.

[connell]

I think that all you have said here is---or at least appears likely to be---quite accurate. As far as the pre-Marx stuff that was specifically proto-communist, that can be found in the works of Gracchus Babeuf and others.

For the rest of it, I think you are correct in your depiction of the source of, explanation for, and results of the attitude (problem) of intellectuals. And that attitude can either been seen as a part of, or a source of, the development of Marxism. At very least, the phenomenon you have described created a climate favorable to the growth of Marxism.

I suspect the truth is a deeply complex interweaving of these and several other circumstances, events, movements, and climates.

(All of this said, I am something of an intellectual. How is it that I too do not wish to subjugate the world under my elitist idea of an I-know-better-than-you totalitarian paradise?)

[GATOR NAVY]

Derb bump. That link is a classic.

[Sherman Logan]

I’m not sure either.

David Gelernter, a really excellent author who was one of those injured by the Unabomber, has written about the difference between what he calls “thinkers” and “intellectuals.” I don’t remember clearly all the details, but intellectuals are generally antagonistic to our society and see themselves as separate from it, while thinker do not. Maybe you and I are thinkers.

[connell]

I love the thinker-intellectual distinction! I believe I will try to use that from now on. I would love to read Gelernter on this; is it from a book or an article?

[Sherman Logan]

I read this in his Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber, which covers a wider range than it sounds.

From a review in National Review.

“In Gelernter’s view, these developments all flow from the same source: the silent, slow-motion coup that replaced one American elite with another. The old elite was largely commercial, practical-minded, distrustful of grand abstractions. In the world of letters, it produced a specifically American type of “low church” thinker, who was typically irreverent, fascinated by technique, distrustful of grand designs, traditionalist about family values.”

“The new elite, composed of intellectuals and those trained by them, is guided by reason and ideas rather than experience or common sense. It is notably lacking in respect for what in the Talmud is called derekh eretz, “the way of the world,” a phrase that also means “deference” or “humility.” For the new intellectuals in power, all of society can be remade to conform to abstract principles: for instance, universal tolerance (one of their favorites), enforceable by the courts.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n17_v49/ai_19751441

[connell]

This is really interesting stuff-—I will read it over breakfast. Thanks!!!