Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee

New York Observer ^ | 10/9/02 | Ron Rosenbaum

[jalisco555]

So basically, the left wants us to ignore a huge FUTURE death potential here in the US.

Actually, I don't think that's his point. His point is that if 250,000 people had died on 9/11 the Left wouldn't have been bothered any more than the actual 3,000 deaths bothered them. Since we are Americans we deserve to be killed by the avenging hand of, well, whoever hates us.

[rudypoot]

"The leftists listen to the evidence against Saddam and reply, 'There is nothing new here'."

You can bet that if a video comes out tomorrow showing Saddam sitting next to bin Laden while bin Laden is flashing islamic-ganster signs (random finger pointing) as he is bragging about how much VX gas he just received from Iraq, the left will still say "there's nothing new".

When a lefty says, "there was nothing new", just reply, "that's the point".

[Mind-numbed Robot]

I think Rosenbaum is in the process of totally revising his worldview. He has a long way to go and it will take time but eventually he may well become one of us.

Perhaps you are right as education is a continuing thing, but, at the moment, he still resides in The House of the Left. He may have thrown open the drapes to allow a little sunshine in but he has yet to open the door and walk into that sunshine. Only then will he feel a sense of having arrived. Common sense and the recognition of reality beats musing philosophically everytime.

[MinuteGal]

He can have all the time in the world for his hand-wringing and mental confusion, but none of my time. RIGHT NOW is the critical time for our country.

Everything he wrote about has been clear to us for decades and he STILL doesn't know which way to jump? Is he eighteen years old?

I don't feel his pain at all. If he ever brings his introspective self to jump the leftist ship (which he says he won't) I'd be the first one to welcome him aboard.

Horowitz had the mental acuity and steely strength of character to cut his Marxist and liberal ties completely and become a hard-working champion of the conservative cause.

This guy has nothing of Horowitz's traits in him as anyone can see by closely reading his article and cutting through the touchy-feely emotionalism.

He can call me when he has the guts to make the break but I won't be hanging by the phone.

Leni

[mlo]

Wordy, but very interesting.

[WL-law]

He condemns the Left without truly breaking from it.

He doesn't really want to leave the Roach Motel, that's what jumps out at me. He wants to stay. He wants the left to Change Their Ways so he can stay.

He wants to stay for the social life. It's similar to why many of us in the 70's played the guitar -- it was for the chicks as much as for the music -- and we didn't argue with success on that point.

[Dan Day]

The Nation still has assets of course: the incomparable polymath literary critic, John Leonard; the fierce polemical intelligence of Katha Pollit

*Excuse* me??

Whenever I have come across the words of Katha Pollitt, either in print, or hearing her debate issues on the radio, I have always found myself wondering just which junior high school they recruited her from.

Her "thoughts" are rambling, ill-formed, and on the level of vapid bumper-sticker slogans. When asked to give her reasons for one of her positions, she stammers and draws a blank.

She's a typical empty-headed liberal, who gets by on parroting slogans instead of having a firm understanding of the issues about which she spouts oh-so-firm convictions (and oh-so-certain dismissals of opposing opinions).

The FreeRepublic thread, "Well, Your Stammering is Eloquent" (Andrew Sullivan makes a fool of Katha Pollit on NPR) has some good observations on her lack of actual thought. Here's a sample from one of my own posts in that thread:

After she expressed uncertainty (it wasn't even focussed enough to call it "criticism") about the current military campaign, Sullivan asked her to describe what *her* plan of action would be, she stammered and false-started several times. That's when Sullivan pithily observed, "Your stammering is eloquent". When Pollit testily retorted that it wasn't fair to not give her time to think, Sullivan delivered the well-deserved knockout punch: "If you haven't thought this through by now..."

Pollit's lack of thought was further revealed near the end of the debate, when Sullivan asked her whether she understood that if Al Qaeda had nuclear weapons, they would not hesistate to use them on us. Pollit's response: "I'm sure they'd use the Tooth Fairy on us too if they had it". To Pollit, the world is forever made up of hypotheticals and unknowns and speculations to be endlessly debated -- never anything concrete, never anything that might actually require conclusions and action in the here and now.

[Britton J Wingfield]

A whole lot of people who believed in what King was doing are now part of the Right.

People like Chuck Heston.

[Billthedrill]

A very interesting read, almost a stream-of-consciousness relation of the scales falling from someone's eyes. Now let him begin to use them to really see.

What Mr. Rosenbaum is really confronted with here is perhaps more basic and threatening than any mere political epiphany, it is the stunning realization that for all its academic posturing, for all its endless spates of jargon-laden theory, for all its adherence to by All The Best People, the very foundations of leftist thought are intellectually bankrupt. There is a tendency bordering on desperation of the majority on the left to assure themselves that yes, they really are independent thinkers and yes, they really are smarter than anyone else, when in fact they are demonstrably "lockstep" to use Rosenbaum's borrowed locution, and in fact show a superficiality and lack of humility that define a second-rate intellect.

It is more than a set of basic political assumptions, it is an entire worldview containing its own axia, theories, and internal logic, a "paradigm" to use Kuhn's much-abused word in its original sense. Paradigmatic followers have an emotional attachment not subject to the dictates of logic, the questioning of which is profoundly threatening and the reaction to which threat is often profoundly irrational. Hence the hysteria attached to what would otherwise be trivia: Bush must be dumb, goes this train of reaction, for if he isn't it calls into question everything we hold most dear. This accounts for a stubborn intractability that has led many to couch leftist thought in the terms of religion.

The mental toughness that will allow Mr. Rosenbaum to maintain his grip on his newly-acquired intellectual independence is not easily come by for those used to the comfortable womb of groupthink. Hitchens has managed it, as has an entire Hall of Fame of enlightened ex-leftists, from Bertrand Russell to Whitaker Chambers to Sidney Hook to Thomas Sowell and well beyond. All of these had to face ostracism from a group that formerly counted them as One Of Us, and that sort of ostracism isn't for the morally and intellectually weak. I wish Mr. Rosenbaum luck in his new life and hope he manages to maintain it.

[Britton J Wingfield]

I'm glad for the progress that has been made - it's better than no progress whatsoever.

Very true, but letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is almost an official pastime on Free Republic ;)

[Chemist_Geek]

I'm glad for the progress that has been made - it's better than no progress whatsoever.

Very true, but letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is almost an official pastime on Free Republic ;)

Between that and the Leaping To Conclusions, the FR team would surely win the Admiral Gorshkov prize...

[thisiskubrick]

At the very least, it's a step away from the idiot-Left. Leftism attracts so many morons that every so often intelligent and decent people that subscribe to some of its tenets (yes Virginia, they do exist) have to wash their beliefs out with soap. It's much like the steps the modern conservative movement had to take away from the racists and the Conspiracy crowd a few decades ago.

Is that the nature of politics - if you support a party or movement that's large enough, you'll always have to put up with some nutters? Personally (and I am in a very small minority here on FR), I prefer to remain independent, because I think all sides are guilty of apoligizing for their extremists.

[antidisestablishment]

Such is the arrogance of the academic class. Clarity is equated with stupidity while opacity is substituted for intellingence. Your analogy to religion is exactly correct. As the Good Book says:

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their own craftiness";

1 Corinthians 3:19

[Interesting Times]

Excellent post.

I have relatives who are calcified Roosevelt Democrats. In their worldview, leftists are sophisticated intellectuals and conservatives are parochial rednecks. So for example, any mention of Rush Limbaugh draws a reflexive sneer at his 'moron listeners'. I have pointed out that Rush's audience is significantly above average in both education and disposable income, and that's why his demographic is so valuable to advertisers. But this observation doesn't fit the paradigm and so it was never said. Conservatives, by definition, are uneducated boors, and any evidence to the contrary cannot exist. It's absolutely unnerving to watch these folks ignore the most obvious contradictions to protect their mythology.

The truth isn't in them. It can't be -- they're hermetically sealed against it.

[headsonpikes]

Bump your thoughtful post.


Too many here forget that men such as Orwell, Djilas, and Koestler have convinced more Leftists to abandon their delusions than any intellectual from the 'Right'.

And there's Chambers, and Burnham, and Solzhenitsyn....

Any one of whom would be a better champion than Trent Lott for the cause of human dignity.

[dark_lord]

To Pollit, the world is forever made up of hypotheticals and unknowns and speculations to be endlessly debated -- never anything concrete, never anything that might actually require conclusions and action in the here and now.

Well, duh. She's an intellectual. :-)

[Erasmus]

He's making progress. He used to be a useful fool. Let's see where he goes with this - I can see a move into the libertarian camp, for instance.

Well, here's a possible program for him:

Step 1: No longer useful.

Step 2: No longer a fool.

[beckett]

Higgledy piggledy
Herr Rektor Heidegger
Said to his students:
"To Being be true!
Lest you should fall into
Inauthenticity.
This I believe--
And the Führer does too!"

Good piece by Rosenbaum. But some parts of the article remind me a little of what the philosopher JL Austin once said about intellectuals:

"First there's always the bit where they say it and then the bit where they take it back."

[beckett]

Nice post. Yes, Sidney Hook was a tough SOB. I read his memoir Out of Step this year and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in an accurate history of the left in 20th century America.

[maica]

What Mr. Rosenbaum is really confronted with here is perhaps more basic and threatening than any mere political epiphany, it is the stunning realization that for all its academic posturing, for all its endless spates of jargon-laden theory, for all its adherence to by All The Best People, the very foundations of leftist thought are intellectually bankrupt. There is a tendency bordering on desperation of the majority on the left to assure themselves that yes, they really are independent thinkers and yes, they really are smarter than anyone else, when in fact they are demonstrably "lockstep" to use Rosenbaum's borrowed locution, and in fact show a superficiality and lack of humility that define a second-rate intellect.

Excellent post! Twits like Chris Matthews can be described by these words.