SAYET RIGHT

Evan Sayet is doing a great job of showing up the follies and inconsistencies in Leftism. His analyses of Leftist thinking are in many ways spot-on. And I encourage people to have a read of his blog right now. You will note that he freely admits, however, that some things about "liberals" are just incomprehensible to him. He is not alone in that. Leftists are incomprehensible to a lot of people. And the reason they are incomprehensible is that we treat Leftists with more courtesy than they deserve. We take seriously statements they make that are not at all serious. We assume that Leftism is a set of ideas or even a philosophy when it is neither of those things. Leftism is a posture, not a set of ideas. And as such it can only be understood psychologically rather than logically. The Leftist is not at all bothered by his inconsistencies or failures to recognize reality. So to discover inconsistencies and unreality in his utterances is both easy and irrelevant. A Leftist utterance is not aimed at any sort of serious explanation of the world at all. It is aimed simply at making the Leftist feel good -- and hopefully of persuading others that he is a good guy too.

So the Leftist can quite cheerfully say that there are no genetic influences on human behaviour when discussing IQ and then go on immediately to say that homosexuality is genetically inherited ("the gay gene"). To conservatives that sounds like inconsistency and it is certainly logically inconsistent. But the Leftist isn't really bothered about logic. What he says is psychologically consistent. In both cases he is casting himself in the heroic role of the defender of the underdog.

In the case of homosexuals, the disgust that most normal people feel about homosexuality means that they will always to some extent be underdogs so the Leftist aims to show how much kinder and wiser he is by defending them. And if "they can't help it" ("the gay gene" theory) seems to be the best defence of them he will say that. But in the case of IQ the idea that there is an inborn disposition to be good or bad at solving most problems implies that people who prosper may be prosperous for a good and just reason. And that conflicts with the Leftist's desire to feel and look kind and wise by championing the poor. So in this case he has to DENY that the poor "can't help it". It sounds a lot better to say that poverty is the result of wicked and unkind people conspiring to keep poor people down. And saying that shows the Leftist as "caring" about the poor and as being so wise as to see causes of poverty that others cannot. So he denies that there is any such thing as IQ, let alone an inherited IQ. He claims that poverty is the result of "oppression" and "injustice", not of lesser ability to make good decisions in life. A century of evidence about the reality, importance and heritability of IQ does not bother him because evidence is not what he is concerned about. So let us apply that understanding to two of the things that puzzle Evan.

1). He cannot understand how his New York liberal relatives are so reflexively anti-American: But he tries foolishly to apply logic to their statements when there is no logic there. Their anti-Americanism is a CLAIM on their own behalf, not a rational proposition. It is a claim to being superior. They are in effect saying: "We are good and smart and wise -- not like all those other dumb Americans around the place". They knock Americans as a way of feeling better about themselves -- just as Europeans do. And, like Europeans, such knocking shows that they secretly fear that they may in reality be inferior. If they really were demonstrably superior they would not feel any need to put other people down.

2). He cannot understand why American Jews are so Left-leaning when the Left is so antisemitic. But again what we see there is a claim: "We are superior -- We are not like all those ignorant Goyim who infest the place". So again their anti-Americanism takes precedence over everything else. Their egos are more important to them than gratitude for the safety that only those dumb Americans give them. One should really feel sorry for people whose egos are so weak as to need propping up in that way. But I guess that thousands of years of persecution should be expected to engender some defensiveness.

Just to be totally clear, I should stress that I am above talking about Left-leaning Jews, not Jews in general.

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ELSEWHERE

Stephen Eric Bronner is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also the modern-day equivalent of a Soviet apparatchik. Take this bald assertion, for which not a shred of evidence is offered: "Leaders of all the "great powers" who built the postwar compact were complicit, some perhaps more and others perhaps less than their predecessors and successors, in shaping the nightmare of poverty and instability that still hovers over the once colonized world.". When Britain gave independence to its former African colonies, it handed over well-organized, stable and generally peaceful countries. Since then all of the countries concerned have descended into repeated orgies of bloodshed and violence -- with the poverty that must result from that. That was the doing of the British? And in Singapore and Malaysia, the British followed much the same policies. And those countries have prospered mightily since independence. So if it is British policies that stuffed up Africa, how come the same policies did not stuff up Singapore and Malaysia? And how come Hong Kong prospered so mightily under British rule? Bronner is a perfect illustration of how Leftists ignore any facts that don't suit them.

Are libertarians more highly evolved? "Are libertarians higher evolved politically? One California professor thinks so. In 'The People's Romance: Why People Love Government,' Daniel Klein says that humans have an instinct for big government. Klein, an Associate Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University, argues that humans have a communal urge that is an evolutionary vestige which should be discarded in favor of individual freedom. In his 50-page paper in The Independent Review, Prof. Klein quotes Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, 1776 & Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759) and Karl Marx to explain his thesis. Prof. Klein argues that people have a 'yearning for encompassing sentiment coordination.' This means that people have a primal instinct to be part of One Great Clan; we naturally want a common experience of shared values and we need 'focal points' for this togetherness, and government is a natural focal point."

An excellent article here on how the Bush tax cuts have led to a big INCREASE in government revenue. It's a plain fact but don't expect any Leftist to acknowledge it.

Some group of loopy Leftist do-gooders have just published a pie-in-the-sky "Manifesto of Wellbeing". There is a satirical look at it here.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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