Has it ever occurred to you that it requires the entire weight of the mainstream media–ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the AP, Reuters, Hollywood, and all the hundreds of other leftist legacy media and news organizations in the United States–to relentlessly lie, misinform, disinform, omit facts, ignore facts, leak state secrets and even highlight our most bitter enemies’ propaganda to brainwash enough Americans to scrape together a respectable number of votes? And they still lose elections?
If you can still lose an election with all that going for you–all that, and Soros, too–your ideas are a tough sell, indeed. If the media promoted the Right with such vigor and enthusiasm, you could fit the entire remaining Left on the campus at UC Berkeley and still have room to double the size of the Quad.
Can you imagine what a vote might look like if the media were even relatively dispassionate or objective?
If it weren’t for the tireless and hysterical efforts of the mainstream propaganda machine, chanting for the Left at the top of their lungs– 24/7, year after year after year–the inherent unpopularity of the Left would be exposed in all its poverty.
What, the same morons who think that there may have been a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda? Why should I care what they think?
How were we able to even start this back then popular war against this assault? maybe something else was going on.
Hell, imagine what the WORLD might look like if the media were even relatively dispassionate or objective!! Our FOREIGN enemies are nowhere near as dangerous as the poisonous media vipers living amongst us. If we were not constantly hamstrung by these professional traitors, we could help the world be a much more peaceful and prosperous place.
Never have so few enabled so much misery, and taken such pride in doing so. I don’t know the words to adequately express my loathing for them.
TW: He could “give56” names of journalists who would make the world a better place by having an aneurism, but “Dan Schorr” is the first name.
Yeah, but if you start talking like that, actus, who knows where it might lead. Maybe to university presidents suggesting that there are differences in the functioning of men’s and women’s brains. And if one were to admit that . . .
God only knows what the ramifications might be.
We’d laugh at the neoliberal economist. And then see if he’s being a good university president. If not, we could try to force him out, since we have the luxury of choosing our bosses.
What does this mean?
actus: i’m with geeze. what do you mean?
geez, I believe that actus is saying, in effect, that if the hegemony were as total as ahem claims, there would have been no push-back. It’s all, y’know, very Matrixy.
But that’s not what they’d do. They’d use the sacred canard as a means to gin up enough outrage that they guy would be forced out, whether or not the scientific evidence supported his conjecture or not, because some articles of faith ought not be subject to freedom of academic inquiry.
Its more that, if hte hegemony is this total, how was the war so popular, or even started? What role did the hegemony play in starting the war?
I, for one, blame CNN.
Hrm. Ya. Because a saddam offer of asylum means he wants to be your partner… not your warden. Thanks CNN, for justifying the war 4 years too soon.
Simple, actus. The federal government, or in particular, the congress, is so corrupt overall, that they enjoy the ‘war’ game. They’re their own subculture– so, if the idea that the war is a good idea flies in the Washington DC political subculture, then nobody cares what the U.S. thinks or the media says.
That explain it for you?
TW: reaction17—this is only the 17th. beware the 1st.
But how does that explain the popularity of the war?
How does that explain the unpopularity of it now?
I don’t know. Maybe the intelligence agencies were right, or maybe the average US moron on the street is more intelligent than the arbiters of public opinion. Stephen Grey was on NPR yesterday boosting his book Ghost Planes, about the CIA renditions, and repeated the idea that it had been established that Saddam had no al-Qaeda ties. The anti-warriors have a significant investment in presenting this conclusion as a concluded fact. It is not.
Probably lots of factors explain the unpopularity of the war now.
I think just about everyone saw iraq actually attacking US interests. So I don’t see what the big deal here is.
Perhaps the conclusions were getting to with this line of thinking are so absurd, that its time to examine our assumptions.
You yourself have said it.
However, you missed my point, which, to my chagrin, I must admit that I intended.
I would assert that whether we went to war or not has little to do with public opinion at all.
Perhaps. But on the other hand, maybe people didn’t like Iraq actually attacking US interests. You’d be hard pressed to find a news agency that would admit to that right now, though, wouldn’t you? Have you seen either of the pieces from Captain’s Quarters covered at all by anyone in the MSM? Why not?
Perhaps it’s time to examine our evidence.
In truth, much of the public popularity for the war came from the fact that the first war was unfinished. Period. Everything else was just evidence of that foregone conclusion.
I say this with a deep respect- I too am not a fan of unfinished wars.
Admit to the fact that people don’t like iraq targetting planes in the no-fly zone? I wouldn’t see a news station talking about it because its not news.
Exactly. Perhaps its time to examine what we’re basing our conclusions on.
If by hegemony we mean MSM hegemony, perhaps it was because Bill Clinton’s policy of Iraqi regime change was still lingering in the “journalist” news-cycle-cocktail-soire circuit. The MSM accepted the necessity of the war because it was still part of Clinton’s legacy (not Bush’s), and they had to keep building Billy so the masses wouldn’t notice that Billy really hadn’t amounted to much.
Then, when things started getting practical and so, therefore, tough, the Dems found an opportunity to use an unspoken alliance with the enemies of the nation to gain political power.
Downing their beers and martinis, the press dogs fled back to their word processors and begain to hide what Dems had done to support the war, beginning to portray them as patriotic critics of the failure to find “significant” WMDs. Throw in the nutroots, the conspiracy theorists, and the old, reliable academics, and we have what we have today, which is a nation in doubt about itself.
It is an Islamists and Democrat dream. Will it come true?
It isn’t popular, actard, it’s necessary, and the fact it’s necessary naturally has that leftist media “hegemony” doing anything to deny it as such.
Remember, the left is primarily greedy and therefore dishonest: Socialism is theft; leftist social and racial intolerance is fear (greed’s counterpart) manipulating government for personal social effect and gain is dishonest and hateful. If the Left would abandon these various features, it’d not be the Left, it’d be realistic and therefore rational, even truthful. It might even be conservative and anti-authoritarian.
Then and only then would it, collectively, cease with it’s chronic denial of reality. And pursuant that, it would accept the harshness of genuine evil and carefully, methodically, declare some situations simply beyond talking down. Iraq was one, there are others.
The Left’s great “rush to war”—it’s rhetorical “drumbeats” and fantastic McChimpyHaliburton oil scams—are manifestations of that media hegemony. But enough folks, to ahem’s point, aren’t self-deluded. The Left’s psychosis isn’t universal and so the effort goes on.
The war isn’t “popular”; that’s yet another hysterical leftist stereotpye. It’s necessary and there’s enough normal humanity, for the moment, to overcome the media’s long history of Left-leaning broadcast antennas.
None of this means that this effort isn’t being waged incompetently, hasn’t been corrupted to one degree or another, or that the outcome is assured or pretty. It only means that there was more than ample evidence, danger, justification and agreement to go forward with it. The Left’s subsequent ankle-biting is mere transparent political opportunism disguising itself as patriotic authority-questioning, ala VietNam.
The war is not popular with those advocating it’s successful conclusion, but it’s only blind opportunity—depending on the latest “news” from the region—to the leftist media and it’s customers.
actus: I’m suggesting that despite the intense efforts of the Left, the Right still manages to express itself. That’s little short of a miracle in the media climate of the last 50 years. By all rights, Conservatism/Libertarianism should be almost nonexistent. Were the situation reversed, the Left’s message would not have similar strength. It would dlargely disappear. It has to resort to subterfuge for all its so-called victories.
Or, in other words, if the media were more even-handed, the American politcal landscape would change overnight. At least, that’s my theory.
C’mon you guys, repeat after me: “Playing with Actus isn’t good practice.”
Say that to yourself every time you’re tempted, and eventually you’ll break yourselves of this disgusting habit.
ahem is right. The Left is surviving on utoian promises it can’t keep and bumper sticker bromides it doesn’t really believe deep down in its cynical hearts.
Because, crazy as it seems, the whole higher taxes, less freedoms thing isn’t really a big seller—and Stalin, Chavez, Castro, et al weren’t the best spokespeople for the cause.
– We’re all cultural warriors. It’s just that the left’s culture begins and ends with the arts, and think “spectator sports” means shitting where you eat.
So is the “MSM” is okay when it’s calling for Clinton’s impeachment or running fake stories about Saddam’s “WMD” for the prowar crowd?
Or are they somehow secretly supporting the Democrats even then?
Cultural Warriors?
Wouldn*t it be funny if becuase of sensitive times just before an election, the administration continued to pull punches in the ME, failed to hold the fort against the infidel world fatwa, unleashing an unstoppable avalanche swarm of jihadist cells who quickly, with razor edged shmitars, shaped us into queasy bearded ragheaded bhurka wearing dhimmi slaves?
Now theres an exciting cultural shift for you.
BTW, I was amazed to learn that Nuclear power plants were being propped up by powerful invested lobby groups and the techplan is outdated, inefficient, costing us a fortune thru it*s specialized secret [security, y*know], fraudulent public funds rip-off.
In fact, world class,[Germen tech experts],state that the nuke gen system should have been in the Tech Museum by now.
Google *BendGovernment* for proof & links. = TG
Link to the pro- nuke lobby there too.
Which alternate reality did this happen in?
The Washington Post editorialized: “By just about any standard but, apparently, his own, the President pretty plainly lied under oath in a court proceeding and repeatedly in public and private thereafter….Our position continues to be that Congress needs to open a formal impeachment inquiry and decide as that unfolds what course to take.”
http://reason.com/9812/ed.vp.shtml
The alternate reality known as…actual reality, McGeHee.
You guys are still welcome here after the election…
*chuckle* …. monkeyface … you’re anti-American screeds and deliberate antagonistic crap, is being tolerated for the moment, by people that really do show tolorance, even to the most idiotarian nitwits like yourself ….. don’t push your luck bunky…
– BTW….I notice you dropped the “Hehe”. whats the matter sissyboy, was your petticoat showing…..
It used to be popular. At least more than it is now. I think people also used to think it more necessary than they do now.
Well i think the miracle is easily explained by counting the voices on TV. Look at counts of sunday morning lineups, for example. Count progressive vs. middle vs. right voices. Count labor vs. management voices. I think this ‘miracle’ will mostly be explained.
Wow! Thank god the powell manifesto saved the power of money!
CSPAN’s heads are tilted and Brian Lamb is on TILT.
“The Left is surviving on utoian promises it can’t keep and bumper sticker bromides it doesn’t really believe deep down in its cynical hearts.”
The left is surviving because of our modern public educational system.
The first half of a child’s experience in public education is devoted not to teaching a child how to think independently—it is devoted to teaching him to follow. Not to judge and evaluate, but to go along with the crowd.
Almost from the beginning he is bombarded with slogans and catch-phrases designed to freeze his young mind and discourage him from making the effort to learn to think. There are no objective facts—he is told—reality is only an illusion created by your consciousness and everybody’s reality is different. Nobody can be certain of anything, everything is a matter of opinion. Who are you to think you know better than your elders, your opinion is no better than anyone else’s. that might be true for you but it isn’t true for anyone else. That might have been true in the past, but it is no longer true today. That might be logical but logic has nothing to do with reality. That might be good in theory but it is not good in practice. How do you know there even is a reality, you might just be a brain floating in a vat wired to a computer. Every attempt he makes at thinking on his own is met with one or more of these notions.
The child learns that he dare not any attempt to form an independent view of things, especially if it does not agree with the views of others, most especially if it does not agree with the views of his teacher. Any such attempt will be frustrated and punished. He will be singled out, humiliated by his teachers in front of the other children, laughed at and ridiculed. He quickly learns that the easiest way to get along is to just go along—just follow.
The second half of his education—high school through college—is dedicated to teaching him who to follow: the left.
He is taught that capitalism requires and is based on slavery—and only the left can stop it.
He is told that America is a racist society founded by rich white men for the purpose of insuring their own power over blacks and minorities—and that only the left can restrain America’s racism.
He is told that capitalism leads to wars, that American imperialism is the source of vast suffering around the world, that American CIA-backed death squads have murdered thousands in order to secure American hegemony—and that only the left keeps America’s imperialistic drives in check.
He is told that capitalism leads to poverty for the masses, that unchecked businesses never pay more than starvation wages for the workers and that power becomes concentrated in the hands of big business—unless the left forms unions to help the little guy get his fair share.
He is told that the ruling class in America committed genocide against the peaceful, noble Indians, stole their land, confiscated their property and would do the same to all minorities today—and that only the left can resist the power of the ruling elite.
He is told that “big oil”, “big business”, Wall Street, Walmart, Republicans and their cronies rule the financial system and bleed dry women, blacks, minorities of any sort while they destroy the environment and consume the last of the world‘s natural resources—and that only the left can fight these massive injustices.
He is told that capitalists routinely launch wars of aggression and commit war crimes to steal the oil and resources of other nations—and that only the left can oppose these American crimes.
Every bit of it is a lie—but his ability to distinguish lie from truth was aborted long ago.
By the time he is finished with college, he is a confused little puppet, incapable of independent thinking, filled with hate and rage at the vast list of injustices he faces in the world, and ready to twitch and protest and accuse and scream as the media, the intellectuals, the politicians and the vase horde of liberal pundits pull the strings his teachers left in place of a reasoning mind.
In what is left of his brain, every statement by Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Maureen Dowd and the whole leftist/liberal crowd—everything they say rings true to him, MUST be true, because that is all he has heard for all of his adult life.
These are the foot soldiers of today’s leftist movement. Brainwashed, mentally stunted little mediocrities, completely dominated by their emotions which comprise mostly a venomous, spitting hatred, incapable of seeing the truth or thinking independently, incapable of a civil exchange of views, and utterly beyond the reach of reason.
Does every child that goes to public school get this full treatment? Fortunately no, but most children going through our public education system get at least some of it—and all too many get a great deal of it.
Now, catholic school? thats where you gets a real edumacation! Worked for a bit with me.
Only one example? It’s just the exception that proves the rule. You just proved yourself to be a liar, monkie. QED.
Hehe, klrfz1,
Remember…the truth is actually a lie…Stay the Course! and vote Republican in November!
And Michael Smith hits it outta the park. All the more evidence that leftism is an artificial construct, dependent on The Lie and on The Lie’s willing subject victims. It’s not really the useless noise of Left vs Right; it’s the quiet, intense clarity of up vs down.
Oh, and monkeyboy, in my reality the WaPo is anything but the deep, wide cross section of the alphabet media you project it is. In reality, the Leftist fraud Mr. Smith has kindly illustrated easily explains the great bulk of Western media. When the state became insulating, inculcating, indoctrinating nanny, that’s when objective reality ended and the new religion began.
And now we can’t get that tar off our fingers.
Ah, the usual low spark of a high-heeled actus, sorting turds at the bottom of the sewer.
6gun,
You guys sound like whiny sports fans blaming your team’s loss on a few bad calls by the refs instead of their rotten performance on the field.
Did you guys really think the Republican’s policies of endless wars, massive debt and removal of Constitutional guarantees would be that popular with America?
Which endless wars, monkeyboy? Cite em.
Which socialist national debt, monkeyboy? Follow entitlement expenditures
latelyover the last 40 years much?And which Constitutional guarantees, monkeyface? Establishing a national public school religion? Attempted national “health care” tyranny? Forced taxation, wealth redistribution, and even private-sector pricing management and control that clearly amounts to socialist policy?
Freedom to speak freely on taxpaid property? The incessently-harassed right to bear arms?
Vis a vis liberal family law, freedom from discrimination, loss of property, and involuntary incarceration without jury trial? Freedom of expression when it comes to “hate speech”?
Political correctness legislation? Feel-good nanny/socialist legislation to incorporate the family into the State by creating a politically-profitable dependent class? Spending half of my tax dollar on feeding you?
Yeah, that Constitution and those epidemic Leftist corruptions of its principles.
It’s been said before: Fuck off. Don’t even pull that Tom Jefferson crap with me, you political parasite.
still waiting for the proof of “removal of Constitutional guarantees” here. it’s been a few days…. take your time, i’ve got a week’s worth of papers to catch up on.
And the difference between opening an impeachment inquiry, and actually voting yes on impeachment is obvious to those of us evolved beyond tailed simians.
What did WaPo have to say about the actual vote to impeach, MissingLinkBoy? Hmmmm?
Of course, Michael Smith is correct. I was trying to limit the scope of this particular post, but if you want something in education toward which to direct your anger, you can look at this article in the City Journal.
Some nitwit named Eric Gutstein actually promotes something called ‘teaching math for social justice’. It gives a whole new meaning to ‘solving inequalities’ and it does a terrible injustice to our kids. Get angry, folks.
The agenda in education is a whole other topic which can only be remedied by undertaking some of our children’s education ourselves.
As far as Clinton is concerned, they did cover the scandal, but he would have been carted off to prison without their efforts to exonerate him. He’s a criminal.
Fascism, maggie. I’m guessing the Constitution‘s clear prohibition against fascist oil robbers who did coke once and made lousy basebell club owners is what monkeyboy is all wrapped around the axle about…
1776 wasn’t about that, nor was the Tea Party. It surely was about government making everything all better.
Little known factoid about monkyboy. He used to be a Republican, before the nuns got to him.
actus
Ah-ooo! The victim card.
All my sympathy glands have jerked into overdrive.
Poor thing was held captive by the catholic school but managed an escape.
Curls down lower lip and vows, “Never again.”
Then the nightmarish cycle repeats as the poor thing succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome in the public school.
And now the poor thing is perplexed, “Why do I spend so much of my time at PW? All these people stubbornly cling to a worldview which simply cannot be right. Why can’t they see this? Why won’t they listen to me? Why do I bother?”
The Poor Thing.
Dan: Like I believe that.
Maybe the Left is surviving because conservatives have never challenged the fundamental premise which makes socialism a moral duty: altruism. They haven’t challenged it, because they don’t disagree with it. That might also explain why, given a majority in Congress and a Republican President, all they could give us was more socialism. They haven’t dismantled one single social program, even though they have been campaigning against the welfare state for at least the past 40 years. The president couldn’t even push through private retirement accounts as a way to get rid of the Social Security ponzi scheme. Conservatives and leftists agree: if there is a person in need, it is our moral duty to help that person. They only disagree about the exact mechanism for how to go about it, but neither has any qualms about soaking the taxpayers in order to fund it. The reason for this is that both share a fundamental view of morality shaped by 2000 years of Christianity. Out of power, Conservatives find it easy to criticize how the Left manages the welfare state, but given the reins of power, they cannot take any action that would make them appear unChristian. That’s why, as long as our only choice is between Conservatives and the Left, the welfare state will always be with us.
<blockquote>Now, catholic school? thats where you gets a real edumacation! Worked for a bit with me. <blockquote>
I thank the telephone pole for the perfect condensation of leftist thought. Said pole is above dirty indoctrination tricks, but pole worries about the little people
Fascinating. The Catholic scool system in countless inner-city settings provides the only alternative for poor minorities to escaper the bankrupt education provided by leftist, union-dominated apparatchiks (commonly known as teachers). Students from Catholic schools consistently outperform their public-school equivalents in most subjects and enjoy crime-free environments for learning that forbid the moral leniency a liberal political cult requires of its adherents.
People who graduate from Catholic schools are far less likely to be the obedient constituents of lib Democrat politics, I think, since they are given an education that frees them from dependency and liberal indoctrination. They know viable alternatives to the state religion taught to victims of public education.
Good point. What we have to do is show how welfare state policies actually deprive people of opportunity and dignity, which is to show how the welfare state is unChristian.
Which was was more justifiable:
1) Kosovo (no threat to US interests, since all that was going on was a little ethnic cleansing)
2) Iraq (which had attempted to assassinate a retired US President and was attempting to shoot down US and UK planes in the no-fly zones almost every day and was engaged in a lot of ethnic cleansing and had at least 500 pieces of WMD laying around – not to mention all the ones smuggled to Syria and which the US was still at war with except for the cease fire that was being violated all the time and which was bribing every lefty politician and journalist with Oil For Food money)
He is also told by his parents, his church, his teachers, and every tin-voiced, brain-dead pop star, and every neurotic, guilt-ridden actor that our highest moral duty in life is to help others. It doesn’t take a genius to concluse that if that is true, then either capitalism cannot work or the world is an evil place, because capitalism gives its greatest rewards to those who devote themselves to their own self interest.
TW: making money…
Me: Exactly.
Nah, the liberal media monopoly is broken, and has been broken for ten years. It still feels funny calling BS on some distortion in the legacy media, since it’s delivered in those mellifluous tones and all. But the elections aren’t two-on-one anymore.
I corrected your spelling.
tw: times32
got me.
Sen. Kemp’s book is 27 years old now, Geezer. Don’t you think that was long enough to get the message out? It’s not like all this stuff wasn’t well known in pro-capitalist circles long before. The message of Conservatives like Jack Kemp, though, is that we shouldn’t cut social services, we should just grow the economy so that it doesn’t feel the drag. There is no room in Conservatism for the principle that government has no right to take money from one man and hand it to another. They agree with the Left that it is our moral duty to give, and the debate for the past 40-50 years has been over how much, and how do we pay the bill.
Micheal Smith,
I blame it all on Freud, all of it: Communism, relativism, the 60’s, Vietnam, multi-culturalism, the “Me-Generation,” Global-Warming, the “Vagina Monologues,” Media hyper-empowerment.
He left us with an unhealthy obsession with ourselves.
-Steve
All this talk of the left being responsible for wasting our tax dollars. Not one word about the GOP’s record government spending, handouts to constituents, pork-barrel projects, opaque accounting practices, and lax contractor oversight.
I suppose that handing out money to your campaign contributers is okay as long as you don’t give anything to those pesky welfare mother, who are so lazy don’t you know.
”….[as] long as you don’t give anything to those pesky welfare mother, who are so lazy don’t you know.”
Bzzzzzzzzzz
– Tripping on your own feet penalty by the confused Left. One minute the Left is bitching about all the giva-away programs that are suffering under the evil Neocons and Bush. Problem is that the largest share of that other thing they’re constantly sniveling about, runaway government spending, goes for theit pet welfare programs. Either they want it, or they don’t depending when you ask and which talking point they’re yammering about at the moment.
– 15 yard penalty. Loss of down and ball, and give back the record 392 billion in freebee’s, just in the first Bush term.
PLAY BALL!
HAHA!. My sides are busting over here trying to imagine a Democrat who is opposed to government spending, handouts to constituents, pork barrel projects, opaque accounting practices and lax contractor oversight. That’s a pretty good one, AJ.
Here’s another joke for you:
These two prostitutes are standing on a street corner. The first one asks the second one, “So how much did you make last night.”
The second one says, “Fity dollars. You?”
The first one crows, “Two hundred, baby!”
The second one glares at her and says, “You whore.”
You have encountered a political reality rather than a moral one, although I am sure there are many Christians who will assert that we must care for those who cannot care for themselves. But using government to achieve that is not a moral compulsion. Christians must care for those who cannot care for themselves, but Christianity does not require Christians to force others to do so.
And now, a brief intermission…
<soft music>
Great thread. Ardsgaine responsibly cites the Pubbies for their socialism, and thegeezer brings up a need to properly define players.
I’d question “conservatives” as an apt description of either the Right or said Republicans, Ardsgaine; surely the latter having not a stick of libertarian sense in their diminishing little pile of tricks. I think their impending second meltdown in fewer than a dozen years is testament both to their failure to enact genuine conservatism as well as the country’s apathy toward original constitutional strucure, but that’s beside the point.
The point is thegeezer’s: Ethical benevolence can only occur individually or in small numbers, and Christianity is easily as workable a philosophy and method for doing so individually as any on earth. On the other hand, unethical collectivism as government policy is a known failure that matters not at all to the contemporary Left, regardless of which Party enacts it, and both surely do by this time.
That denial plagues the Left as a wishful, willful pathology, one they arrogantly use to cast moral aspersions not against the tiny minority of quiet, functional, private charities, but at a political “Right” that’s gotten so far behind in the game of social government it can’t see or be bothered—your choice—to correct its ways. Government is simply corrupt, the larger the more corrupt.
The voter has failed the nation at least as much as the politicans have failed the voters. But this isn’t a question of Conservatives vs Liberals at all. It’s a question of relative levels of authoritarianism. We’re over two hundred years old and have lost nearly all perspective.
By the way, thinkers like AJB illustrate partisan American socialism perfectly: Shouting down Republican socialism, goes the falacy, surely validates Democrat socialism. Meanwhile, the truth goes under radar: They’re both corrupt.
Who gains? The willful socialists; the Democrats. The Republicans are swept-along socialists, either ignorant or just vote whoring to a slothful constituency too caught up in beating the Democrat psychopathology to remember to slash government.
Yet I’ve never heard a Democrat admit to either their socialism or it’s inevitable failure. Probably the lazy, first-effect mind at work, intentionally crying nyah-nyah-nyah at history. Republicans, on the other hand, admit it all the time.
Which is more central to Christian morality: making sure that lewdness and obscenity are kept off the public airwaves, preventing people from ruining their lives with drugs, preventing women from terminating unwanted pregnancies, stopping internet gambling, or helping those in need? (Hint: Jesus didn’t say “give your money to the AFA and follow me.”)
What makes you think that Conservative Christians will ever apply the principle of non-coercion to helping the needy when they don’t apply it to any of these other moral issues?
Not so incidentally, AJB, those pesky welfare mothers were created by socialism. Entire urban centers full.
Despite all the Hollywood stereotypes of villainous white Christians, if all of those wasted tax dollars were cycled through private assistance headed by real Christians, religious or otherwise, they simply wouldn’t exist.
thegeezer’s implication is correct: Leave the most morally integral ways and means alive to do the job, reign in an intolerant, special interest-plauged national government program shot through with known corruption and waste—Republican and Democrat—and the problem recedes roughly as deep as ever in history as the simple inverse of the relative wealth of this capable nation.
But that’s not happening. We’d rather tax ourselves into two-income exhaustion and then ask a corrupted, incompetent, wasteful government entirely run by warring political factions to pay our way out. How’s that working?
By “Christian”, Ardsgaine, I mean Christian, not Republican Right. I agree (and implied) that the RR is functionally crazy to use government to influence moral policy. That’s not walking their talk.
Aside from general deep cuts in domestic programs (seen any lately?) the economic policy the RR influences has little bearing on reducing government waste in order to assist the poor by unemcumbering the economy.
I can’t understand why they won’t learn … except for the habitual nature of a half century or more of what amounts to bipartisan American socialism coupled with competing with the Democrats at bread-throwing.
The way these terms are used and abused in practice is a knot I don’t want to try to untangle. I can only tell you how I use them. As far as I’m concerned “Republican” is a political party, not a philosophy. A Republican is someone who is a member of the Republican Party. Period. I define the right/left political spectrum in terms of individualism vs. collectivism. Conservatives in my view are advocates of the American system who, due to their religious beliefs, attempt to defend capitalism on altruistic grounds.
Arguing that capitalism is the better system because it generates more wealth to help the poor is the hallmark of a conservative, imo. They concede the principle that we have a moral duty to give to the poor, and quibble with the socialists about how best to fulfill the duty. It is not ignorance that causes them to be swept along into socialism, nor is it corruption. It is the inevitable result of their moral principles.
In the 2000 year history of Christianity, the creation of the USA was like a freak accident: a system of government set up so that those who selfishly pursue their own rational interests can grow immensely wealthy. This is not how Jesus lived, piling up riches, building material empires devoted to the creation of wealth. At the same time that many embraced this way of life, many others were revolted by it, and even among those who embraced it many felt a guilty twinge that could only be assuaged by giving lots of money to the poor, or endowing a foundation or two.
For the past two hundred years we’ve been trying to work out whether our moral prinicples really allow us to live in a system that rewards selfishness, or whether we hadn’t ought to destroy it. The answer is that the two are clearly incompatible, and if we want to keep living this way, we’re going to have to get a new set of morals, one not based on self-sacrifice.
Which on the one hand is very sad, but on the other hand is why I’m here rather than at Daily Kos. The principle of self-sacrifice in the Left has metastized into a pathology. It no longer requires a beneficiary for the sacrifice; the sacrifice is an end in itself. They don’t want to help the poor, they want to destroy the rich. That is the essence of nihilism: the craving for self-destruction projected outward. That is why they recognize the Islamists as their soulmates.
TW: Think
Me: Amen, TW.
“That is why they recognize the Islamists as their soulmates.”
– With at least one tiny detail of difference between the two camps. The Left is self destructive, and the Islamists will be glad to help them out at the first opportunity.
The reason is summed up in the term compassionate conservatism. Here’s a quote from the article I linked above:
Compassionate conservatism made official the longstanding tradition of moral collapse on the right anytime they were faced with accusations that they were being heartless towards the poor. The Republicans had been me-tooing the Democrats for years on social spending, even while condemning the profligacy it engendered. By embracing the title of compassionate conservative, Bush managed to get ahead of Democrats in helping the needy, and that’s why he’s been spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. The Democrats were completely disarmed, because all they could do was what Republicans had been doing for years: sit on the sidelines and complain about the method of the spending. They couldn’t object to the spending on principle.
Morality matters. What people believe about right and wrong is what motivates their actions. The morality of altruism is what is destroying our country. If it is our moral duty to sacrifice for others, then we do not have rights. We only have what others decide it is okay for us to have. Insisting that we have the right to our property is selfishness. Insisting that we have the right to decide for ourselves what is moral is selfishness squared.
The Islamists are every bit as self destructive as the left. They are, after all, the ones blowing themselves up. The only difference is that the violence in the Left’s position is dormant so long as they can get their way through the political process. Only the ones at the extreme end of the spectrum openly advocate violence, and only the rare kook admits that what he seeks is death and destruction. The Islamists see it as part of their glory.
– And thus the age old question:
“Am I my brothers keeper?”
“….in conjunction with “morally, coorced, or forced?”
“….do I have a “right” to expect succor, cradle to grave, at the expense of others, if I choose not to participate fully?”
“….do I have a right, as a productive member of society, to reject the entire approach of corporate welfare, deciding instead to turn to natural human charity, through private institutions”
“…who gets to decide?”
“…where does all of our founding documents fit into this?”
“The Islamists see it as part of their glory.”
– I disagree. It’s a leadership trick of indoctrination for obvious purpose when your movement requires mindless zealots, religious or otherwise.
– I doubt highly that the Imam’s in Iran are interested in getting blown up. Nor do I think any of the terrorist leaders are really dedicated to that endgame.
Why add the “if” clause? Why not just: “Do I have a “right†to expect succor, cradle to grave, at the expense of others?”
And then the answer: “No.”
I’m sorry I missed the balance of this discussion after my tirade about the mind-killing public education system. Ardsgaine has done an excellent job articulating the key weakness of the conservatives/Republicans and of the whole American system: the failure to challenge the morality of altruism.
To his comments I can only add the following. Do not be taken in by the false alternative pushed by the advocates of altruism. They will tell you that altruism simply means a willingness to consider the needs of others—and they will scream that if you oppose altruism, it means you advocate trampling the rights of others.
That notion is false on two counts. First, altruism is not merely about a benevolent willingness to help your fellow man. It is, as Ardsgaine has pointed out, the demand for the sacrifice of your values for the sake of others, it is the declaration that the needs of others trump your rights and convey to them the unlimited right to take from you as much as they wish. If you doubt that this is the actual meaning of altruism, observe that its proponents have no interest in private, voluntary charities—they are interested only in using the coercive power to government to take from you and give to others (and thereby win the votes of those “others“)– and to hell with what it does to your life.
Second, the choice is not between a willingness to sacrifice one’s interests to others versus a willingness to sacrifice others to one’s self. Or to put it another way: the choice is not between being a Mother Teresa or an Adolph Hitler. That false alternative presupposes that someone will be sacrificed, and we merely have to decide who it is. But the magnificence of capitalism and of the system of government created by our Founders is that it is a non-sacrificial system, wherein every man has a right to exist for his own sake, neither being forced to sacrifice himself to others nor having the power to sacrifice others to himself.
The founding fathers of our country did a magnificent job identifying the key to a free, non-sacrificial society: the individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. Their failure, however, is evident in the very phrase that proceeds the articulation of those rights in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…..â€Â.
Well, those truths are not self-evident. They depend on a certain view of man and a certain view of morality, which is the opposite of altruism: it is the morality of egoism. If we wish to defend freedom and reverse our relentless march to statist tyranny, we must learn to uphold egoism—everyone’s moral right to exist, non-sacrificially, for their own sake—and everything that implies.
Fortunately for us, a genius named Ayn Rand has articulated and proven the moral validity of egoism and all the philosophic principles on which it rests. She has refuted all of the mind-numbing catch-phrases and notions I mentioned in my earlier post, and she (with help from others) has refuted all the lies about capitalism and America that I listed in the second part of that post. Every word I’ve written here I learned from her. The best advice I can give anyone who wants to defend America is to read what she has written—and think.
Ardsgaine: About Christianity, and Christians not seeming to work to stop government interfering with other people…?
I believe truly that all pathologies are rooted in a lie. What if that lie lives in every church building?
(Hint: what I’m suggesting is, Christians in general have fallen into the old Jewish rut: Trusting the traditions of the elders. This way leads to corruption.)
Consider this: How much Christian money is wasted on church buildings? Electric bills for them? Pastor salaries? And for what? To feed the poor, the widow, the homeless, to care for the prisoners, the fatherless, and the stranger? Or to pay for a big, self-important building and then demand that the government do the actual work every Christian is to be doing with his or her own hands?
Yeah. All pathologies begin with a lie.
TW: Greater is he that is in me, than is in the world…
Here, then, as my secondary post, I will destroy as best I can this idol, altruism.
The fundamental principle of this world is selfishness, as best as I can tell.
If such is the case, no worldly system can work that is not based on this principle.
Contrariwise, no spiritual system can work that is based on that principle.
If we try to base a worldly system on something other than selfishness, then we are doing one of two things:
1. Trying to make a spiritual system ‘worldly’
2. Trying to make a worldly system ‘spiritual’.
More or less, if you want to be altruistic, it will only succeed through spiritual means. The nature of an altruistic government actually contradicts reality, and thus will eventually fall apart.
The redemption of this system is, more or less, that even as rational, selfish actors within the context of the temporal, if people are also possessing of conscience, then selfishness is kept in check. Law is a compilation of the collective conscience of man; to murder is wrong even if it gains us something, because the damage allowing murder does harms both the murderer and the society more than what is gained from the action.
We now should be aware that altruism, while having a root in conscience, loses all of its effectiveness when placed in the edifices of government. It becomes an emtpy expression of moralistic ideas.
It may pass the test of conscience, but does not pass the test of selfishness. It belongs to the realm of the spiritual.
Side note: the ten commandments do not include a requirement to give to one’s brother. Any giving, biblically, that is regarded as required is either of an extremely limited scope, or is anathema. There are no exceptions to this rule, despite what pastors tell their congregation every Sunday morning.
If any Christian does not believe, find your favorite passage defending tithing or forced giving and actually analyze the context, meaning and purpose of the statement. You will find that your own pastor believes a lie (whether or not he realises it.)
Ok, rollin’ out.
Am I my brother*s keeper?
Yes, but only to the extent that he has a place to go for a coffee, so that I don*t trip over him as I come and go from the liquor store. = TG
Naw, To be honest, I*m a soft touch for the down and out.
No way I can pass up an open guitar case for a busker either.
Just call me North American, I guess. = TG
About altruism, kindness is a high principle and is as essential as truth, honor, and especially, love. Dispensing kindness must therefore not be sullied by governments tainted by ethical fraud and moral corruption.
The problem isn’t altruism, it’s a suitable structure for expressing it. The private, individual Christian doesn’t have that problem. If he is found to be unprincipled in his “altruism”, he isn’t genuinely Christian … and therefore cannot create and exist within such a suitable structure, to Ardsgaine’s perhaps inadvertant point.
Christianity isn’t the issue, the religious Right is. In substantial portion, it is no more Christian than NeoCons are conservative.
There are two religions attempting to dominate the State. One is empty Christianese and the other is the cancer of Liberalism. Politics is the meaningless noise it makes when and since both are simply wrong.
I sincerely don’t believe that it is the gov’s job to do handouts at all. Helping others must be done on a person-to-person basis for the most part, which is something governments are terrible at.
As for personal altruism, its fine (when done in good conscience. ‘altruism’ without conscience is just as evil, in the end, as selfishness without conscience. It just looks better for awhile.)
Partly we are afraid that the poor won’t get taken care of if we don’t set up some group of people to do it for us.
Its something that needs to change in our hearts and minds.
Kindness and love are not principles. You should not be kind to people, or love people, on principle (and I have noted that you are not, and you don’t). A person ought to be kind only to those who deserve it, and love only those who have earned it. That is the principle of justice. In that case, though, neither the kindness nor the love could be considered altruistic. When bestowed justly, they are not a sacrifice of values, but an affirmation of them.
What exactly does it mean to be a principled altruist? If altruism is the willingness to sacrifice oneself for others, then to be a consistent altruist, one must be willing to sacrifice everything. The principle of self-sacrifice cannot be bought off with money. Money is the easiest thing in the world to give. If an altruist really wants to sacrifice himself to others, then he must be willing to sacrifice his most deeply held spiritual values. He will not hold to his honor when others need him to do something dishonorable. He will not be honest when others need him to lie. He will not adhere to his own independent judgment when others need him to warp his perception of reality.
That is altruism. If you thought it was just giving a few dollars to the poor, you were mistaken. Altruism–other-ism–makes promoting the welfare of others the standard of moral worth. Those things which one does for oneself may be pragmatically necessary, but they have zero moral worth by the standard of altruism. The only actions which one can judge moral, according to altruism, are those which one does for others–and the less value those others have to a person, the less any hint of selfishness can attach itself to his action, and the greater his virtue in making the sacrifice.
To tie this back into Michael’s excellent post on the state of education, altruism is what is being taught to our children in the public schools: reflexive deference to the consensus of the collective, and self-worth as a function of service to others.
Not sure I follow: Kindness and love are preconditions also expressed by principled souls for the universe of man (and the universe itself, i.e., towards oneself. Doing so prepares the path of experience properly.) I see kindness and love as principles. They exist in the face of anti-principled animosity and hatred.
To your next point and pursuant the above, I am indeed not tolerant of the lie. I despise it and am harsh with liars. That is principle. It does not mean I do not or cannot love them or even be kind to them under certain circumstances, so again, I see kindness and love as principles. But I see vigorous intolerance of The Lie as principled.
Further that, one of the greatest frauds of Leftism is that tolerating intolerance is compassionate. The Left’s collectivizing victimhood so as to, in effect, create dependants, is the very height of hatred. The Left’s arrogance in externalizing this fraud on others is both The Lie and the most arrogant hatred.
Assuming a linear model of principle—a ray extending from an endpoint in nihilism to the infinity of perfection—then one cannot sacrifice authentic spiritual values, Ardsgaine. The others, perhaps. But there must be a constant motion and perspective upward, a standard.
Back to the point of fiscal altruism, redistributing money is perhaps the most fraudulent misuse of the notion of benevolence imaginable. Obviously, forced redistribution (by way of morally questionable special interest, as it invariably turns out) is simply theft. Socialism is theft, and I think that’s the point of a political dialog about socialism.
Excepting that you should further define that misled and failed notion of self-worth as corrupted by the experience and perspective of that highly limited and intolerant collective. Exercised privately and with principle, self-worth, as you say earlier, is utterly tied to service to others.
At any rate, the other failure of Leftism is their first-effect thinking, as if giving money solves poverty. Combined with their arrogance and intolerance, this stupidity is flat dangerous. And offensive, deserving disdain.