Great article at American Thinker that connects up with what I was on about yesterday, on self-loathing and sympathy for The Other.
But this is not about chimps, nor about native peoples. I’m only talking about the incurable tendency of liberals to kowtow in awe of “The Other,” as the trendy English professors like to call it. According to academic myth, The Other is supposed to be the scapegoat for one’s own unacceptable side; there is something to that, but for the dominant culture of America today, the truth is exactly the opposite. For liberals, it is The Other who is above criticism, and it’s the in-group — like us folks — who are irredeemably Evil. Why do you think they voted for Obama? To prove to themselves how much better they are. It certainly had nothing to do with the reality of picking a sensible leader for the country. Obama voters are living in a comic strip of their own devising, and it may take a really life-threatening national crisis for them to come down to earth. Just wait for the Iranian or North Korean Bomb, and we’ll see.
The trouble with all that peace and love — which I don’t mind people fantasizing about — is that seems to go along with a real hatred of one’s own. It’s interesting just to ask your nearest liberal friend — “Can you say anything good about America? Anything at all?” — and watch them flounder and stammer.
What are we to make of liberal Americans who live with obsessional hatred of their own country? Especially when their country is the most prosperous, lovable, and overall, the most benevolent country in the world?
Climb aboard, sailor: Donald Douglas has more on Angie Harmon. Haram-arama from Jules.
Kathy Shaidle, insufficiently worshipful of The Other, is nevertheless appearing with Ezra Levant and Salim Mansour at a talk and booksigning event in London, ON
Stacy McCain on The Liberal Troll Army
Comment by Americaneocon on 3/31 @ 11:45 am #
Looks like a great piece. Thanks for the find!
Comment by sdferr on 3/31 @ 1:51 pm #
Why indeed? Sometimes I’ve got a cloudy thought that their passionate compassion arises in the absence of a clear, strong, faith tradition in a sort of perversion of Christian teaching which, they think, gives them the license of the Creator himself. But as I say, that thought is cloudy and not very well formed.
Comment by Jeff G on 3/31 @ 2:50 pm #
I dealt with this a bit yesterday here. One of the sessions at the School of Crit and Theory I attended featured a host of guest lecturers who all hit on this same theme — without once realizing their own rather dripping condescension toward those they were ostensibly speaking for (by telling us that we have no right to speak for them or of them).
What I was most amazed by was the looks these people gave me when I brought it to their attention — as if I had violated some club rule by mentioning the obvious. Like I farted at a cocktail party right over the punch bowl. What they couldn’t do, however, was provide a coherent answer.
This is just how we do things, and we don’t much appreciate your highlighting the flaws in our arguments that, frankly, we’re already quite aware of. That’s what their looks all said.
Quite a lot for a look to say, I grant you. But then, they were quite some looks I got…
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 3:20 pm #
I think it is kind of stupid to bemoan colonialism when – if not for colonialism – plenty of folks would still be shitting upstream from where they drink and bathe.
Plenty of The Other couldn’t get his/her/its shit straight without a little help from The Other Than The Other.
But then again, I own more than one Ascot, so take that as you wish.
Comment by AJB on 3/31 @ 6:29 pm #
Colonialism was about conquering and ruling over other people without their consent and exploiting them by stealing their natural resources and forcing them to labor on plantations and in mines. It often resulted in genocide against the native populations, sometimes through mass famine, and was dependent upon terror and repression in order to stay in place.
It had very little to do with teaching people how to properly use santitation facilities, which about half the world currently lacks access to anyways.
Pingback by The Rousseauvean Other on 3/31 @ 7:00 pm #
[...] Dan (who himself dealt with this topic yesterday) comes this piece from James Lewis touching on the [...]
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 7:17 pm #
“Colonialism was about conquering and ruling over other people without their consent and exploiting them by stealing their natural resources and forcing them to labor on plantations and in mines.”
No, that’s what your professors taught you to say as a matter of reflex. I’m not certain what use diamonds or oil are to people who didn’t have the technology to cut the former and didn’t have internal combustion engines to take advantage of the latter – unless you just hate the West, which I’m rather certain is the case. Famine was the rule, and not the exception, for most of what we call the Third World. Now most former colonies have nifty things like Law and commerce and not eating one another as a result.
Comment by dicentra on 3/31 @ 9:28 pm #
Obama voters are living in a comic strip of their own devising, and it may take a really life-threatening national crisis for them to come down to earth.
Something like 9/11? And we see how that brought them down to earth.
AJB: Whatever else you can say about colonialism, it resulted in many countries having a European language as an official language. I know some people who immigrated from the Congo (Kinshasa), and they work customer service phones for callers from Quebec.
Indians speak English. Much of Africa speaks English, French, or Portuguese. That helps them get a leg up in the newer economies.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 3/31 @ 10:03 pm #
“Whatever else you can say about colonialism”
I say it gave the British roads, and a nifty wall to keep out those blue faced types up north. The British seem genuinely grateful.