THAT RIGHTWARD SHIFT

A Leftist tries to cope

There is a book review in the NYT of "Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys". For the reviewing task, the NYT picked Stephen Metcalf -- well-known for vitriol -- and so the review is predictably hostile and, as such, very lightweight. There is no attempt to engage what the writers say at all. He summarizes two of the essays in the book as: "Pig popsicle, bad; babies, good"!

The purpose of the review is not of course scholarship of any kind. It is meant simply to prop up threatened Leftist egos. And the threat that enrages the Left most of all is the way conservatives connect so easily with ordinary mainstream white Americans -- something most vividly seen in the popularity of conservative talkshow hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. So how come? asks our reviewer. Is there some way Leftists can piss on that?

Our reviewer has the answer: Conservatives connect with the workers because conservatives were social failures at college who were marginalized and never got the girl: By experiencing failure conservatives learnt to understand others who are failures in life. The elitism and stereotyping of that explanation is breathtaking, of course. The claim that the ordinary mainstream white American feels a failure shows how little our Leftist reviewer knows about the people concerned. He has obviously lived most of his life in a little like-minded Manhattan social bubble. He seems quite unaware that most ordinary mainstream white Americans are hard-working people who find great joy in their families, their friends, their church, their hobbies and even often in their work. They do NOT consider themselves failures! They look at the "success" they see in places like Hollywood and are thankful for their own more wholesome lives.

I suspect that it is a dim awareness of that happiness which really makes Leftist elitists like Metcalf hate ordinary mainstream white Americans. He has to project feelings of failure onto them to boost his own feelings of superiority. Accepting that they may well be happier than him would be just too intolerable -- though even that he would no doubt be able to dismiss temporarily with some contemptuous adjective such as "bovine".

But all good lies have an element of truth in them and that conservatives often feel alienated and marginalized in their college days is no doubt true. I certainly did. I arrived at university having already read most of the Greek canon, from the miracle of Homer to the bright clarity of Plato, and already knowing such arcane things as what a Pindaric ode was. I met very few others as culturally grounded as that. Babblers like Sartre were what passed for sophistication and culture among most people I met and there were not even many of those -- even though I attended a major university.

But the major reason why conservatives feel alienated at university is the lack of intellectual diversity there. American universities seem to think that a thing as superficial as skin color is the only important sort of diversity. The lockstep Leftism that characterizes most professors (at least in the Humanities) would alienate and marginalize any conservative, no matter how well-adjusted he might be.

Fortunately, however, academe is just one rather deviant bubble within the wider world and conservatives often do well outside it. I myself particularly enjoyed my time in the Army -- where I reached the rank of Sergeant. Bitter elitists like Metcalf no doubt have in their heads a comforting stereotype of the army as a bunch of rockheads but reality is much more complex than that. The army in fact particularly values and rewards the all-round man (e.g. General Petraeus) and in my army unit I was far from alone in my liking for Bach and Palestrina.

That the real reason for the conservative communicative advantage might lie in the fact they do not inhabit the Left's mental cloud-cuckoo land Metcalf cannot of course concede.

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ELSEWHERE

Another corrupt Democrat: "What West Virginia lacks in jobs, population, and reasons to live there, it more than makes up for in receipt of loads of government money. So who can blame Rep. Alan Mollohan> for unethically steering millions of dollars to his “poverty-ridden district” (and, uh, to his own personal poverty-ridden bank account)? Turns out lots of people can blame him for this, including the FBI, and now the House Rules Committee. Mollohan rather hurriedly asked last night that all his earmarks be stripped from the Agriculture appropriations bill, because the Republicans were about to point out that he was still funneling money to the shady nonprofits he set up with former aides and business partners. Lawmakers requesting that their own earmarks be removed from bills is pretty much unprecedented and definitely hilarious.

100 Taliban believed killed in air strike: "The Afghan government has said it believed more than 100 Taliban may have been killed in an air strike in the south of the country and did not rule out civilian casualties. But General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a defence ministry spokesman, rejected some media reports that scores of civilians were killed or wounded in the US-led coalition strike Thursday in Helmand province. Gen Azimi said it was unclear how many people had been killed in the attack on a large gathering of Taliban. "But the enemy casualty is very high,'' he told a press conference in the capital, Kabul. "There might be more than 100 killed.'' Hospitals in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, and in the nearby city of Kandahar, said Friday that nearly 40 civilians had been brought in for treatment. But Gen Azimi questioned this figure, saying: "Even if there were civilians, there were very few of them. Their number would not reach 10.'' He added: "How can you distinguish when someone is a civilian or not? When he has his gun laid on the ground, he's a civilian but when he has it on his shoulder, he is not?'' The area had been under aerial surveillance for more than 24 hours before the strike, Azimi said, and images showed there were no women or children in the group".

Broadcast Networks Ignore Murder of Oakland Post Editor: "When a member of the journalism community is murdered, wouldn't you expect most news agencies to report it? Well, on Thursday morning, Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was gunned down by an at that time unknown assailant. On Friday morning, Oakland police arrested seven people at Your Black Muslim Bakery in connection with Bailey's murder. Yet, despite all this, ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't said a word about this shooting, or the connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Why?"



Duggar family not stopping at 17: "An Arkansas couple had a baby daughter on Thursday - their 17th child and seventh girl - and the pair say they're still not ready to give it a rest. Jennifer Danielle was born at 10.01am at a hospital in Rogers, Arkansas, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said in an interview. "We'd love to have more," Michelle said, referring to baby girls. "We love the ruffles and lace." Jennifer joins the fast-growing Duggar brood, who live in a 650sq m home in Tontitown. All the children - whose names start with the letter J - are taught at home. The oldest is 19 and the youngest, after Jennifer, is almost two. "We are just so grateful to God for another gift from him," said Mr Duggar, a former state representative. Mr Duggar, 44, is a real estate-agent who served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002. He was a candidate for the US Senate in 2002 but lost the ballot. Mrs Duggar, 41, and her husband are politically conservative fundamentalist Christians. They reportedly live debt-free. [This latest birth will no doubt make the hideous Mark Morford hate the Duggars even more]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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