In this case I got into a discussion with a guy who I knew was never going to agree with anything I had to say about politics. He has made his opinions know in the past. He is a full fledged liberal.
The topic of the Patriot Act came up and he made a comment about all the Bush Administration’s illegal wiretapping of American’s telephones. When I challenged his comment he responded “You know as well as I do that all the President wants to do is tap our phones so he can find out who will go along with his politics and who won’t.”
When I scoffed at this comment he told me “Domestic wiretapping is the first step on a slippery slope that will end with loyal Americans being dragged out of their homes and disappearing forever simply because they were careless enough to criticize the President while they were talking on the phone.”
This led me to ask him “Cite one case where an American’s domestic phone call has been tapped under the patriot act.”
He started ranted on about how it is happening every day and if I didn’t believe it then I was naïve. Again I asked him to cite me a case. I tried to reason with him that if domestic wire tapping is happening to the degree he claims then it surely will be easy to find a reference to a single lawsuit, or complaint. All he need do to convince me is cite one case. Instead I was accused of being a fool if I didn’t believe that our government was violating our civil rights on a daily basis.
I left this discussion torn between being confounded at the lack of intellectual honesty in his arguments and a deep sense of sympathy for this man. He lives in the most free and prosperous society in the history of the world and yet he lives in terror of oppression by the very government that he works for. To live a world where you only see evil and oppression everywhere you look must truly be an awful life.
This started me thinking about the way liberals think. Unfortunately I had to stop thinking about it because it was making my brain hurt.
I simply cannot comprehend many of the thought that must run through liberal heads. I know several liberals quite well. For the most part they are not evil people. They are hard working, in a couple cases - very spiritual, and honest, trustworthy people. But they all have several common traits:
• Without Exception they all hate George Bush with a passion that is sometimes frightening. I despised Bill Clinton for eight years (ok I still despise him) but I have never once wished him to be dead. I just want him to retire, shut up, and go live in peace somewhere where we don’t have to listen to him anymore.
• They all mistrust the government, yet they hold civil service jobs and will vote for and support any program that will expand the government’s control over their lives.
• They all believe to the depths of their souls that most people are stupid and need to be directed and cared for at all times.
• They do not believe that the average citizen in America has anything to fear from terrorists.
• They all think that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the Global War on Terror and that we should just pack up and pull out immediately regardless of the consquences for the Iraqi people or America.
Well I was thinking about how liberals think again today while reading a news report about Iraq War spending bill passed by the House yesterday. The headline read “House passes bill to get out of Iraq.” No mention of victory, of success, or consequences. Just get out!
Then I found his video:
It’s a little long, about 48 minutes, but well worth listening to. Evan Sayat, who I have never heard of before, has a pretty good idea about what liberals are thinking when they do and say they things they do.
What it boils down to is they aren’t thinking. According to Sayet
“the modern liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.”
He claims this is not because they are evil or stupid but because
the modern liberal looks back on the whole of human society and sees that none of the ideas that mankind has ever come up with, none of the religions, none of the philosophies, none of the ideologies, none of the forms of government, none have succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, crime, poverty and injustice. So they are convinced that since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong. The real cause of war, crime, poverty and injustice must be found, can only be found in the attempt to be right. See, if nobody ever thought they were right, what would we disagree about? If we didn’t disagree surely we wouldn’t fight. If we didn’t fight of course we wouldn’t go to war. Without war there would be no poverty, without poverty there will be no crime, without crime there will be no injustice, its the utopian vision. And all that is required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all fact, reason, evidence, logic, truth, morality and decency. All the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people and to make the world more right by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving towards it.
Watch this video, it is worth the 48 minutes of your life if for no other reason than it might give you a little insight into why arguing with liberals never seems to accomplish anything other than to make your head hurt.
3 comments:
As a fellow Ridgecrest resident I've been following your blog with interest for a while now. Sometimes I agree with you, but mostly not.
You post on “How Modern Liberals Think” inspired me to respond. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a liberal by almost any definition of the term. I'm an active member of the local Democratic Club and have been known to associate with many avowed liberals. I feel qualified to tell you that your characterization of what “all” liberals think is total . . . well you know.
First let me point out that you use of the absolutes “all' and “without exception” with respect to liberals obviously puts you on the wrong side of truth from the start. Liberals aren't part of a Borg collective. We disagree with each other on many issues, just as conservatives often disagree among themselves. And certainly most liberals don't hold the outrageous views that you ascribe to them. You've apparently been reading too much Ann Coulter – or maybe listening to too much Michael Savage.
Now let me address a few of your so called facts:
“Without Exception they all hate George Bush with a passion that is sometimes frightening. I despised Bill Clinton for eight years (ok I still despise him) but I have never once wished him to be dead. I just want him to retire, shut up, and go live in peace somewhere where we don’t have to listen to him anymore.”
Liberals don't “hate” George W. Bush any more than most conservatives hate the Clintons, or Ted Kennedy, or Howard Dear, etc. I personally never heard a liberal wish Bush dead, although no doubt that has been know to occur. It's a big world, after all. In fact, wishing people dead is more the conservative mindset than the liberal. (Read Ann Coulter for example.) I have personally heard conservatives wish harm on Bill Clinton. One was a China Lake police officer and another was a conservative friend and co-worker. Also, it seems to me that there's a fine line between despise (your view of the Clintons) and hate. Most liberals don't even despise Bush. Mostly they just wish he were still managing a baseball team.
“They all mistrust the government, yet they hold civil service jobs and will vote for and support any program that will expand the government’s control over their lives.”
Wow, you must of pulled this one out of thin air. The conservative meme is that liberals just love government and want more and more of it. You know, tax and spend big government liberals. The fact is that it's the conservative that mistrust government. As Reagan said, government is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The people you talk with who you interpret as liberal but don't like government are probably just libertarians. Oh, and it's the conservatives who want control our personal lives. That's what conservative “values” are all about. Conservatives don't want to let women control their bodies, they don't want gays to have legally recognized committed relationships, etc. Also, most liberals don't hold civil service jobs.
“They all believe to the depths of their souls that most people are stupid and need to be directed and cared for at all times.”
You got this one 180 degrees out, too. Conservative don't trust people to do the right thing. That's what the conservative “values” issues are about. Post the Ten Commandments in schools and court houses to remind people how to behave. Make laws so people won't do “evil” things like look at porn. Use the office of the government to keep shoving “god” into peoples faces so that they won't revert to paganism, atheism, or something. (By the way, I'm a Methodist, just like George W. Bush.) Liberals trust people, conservatives trust corporations. That the real difference.
“They do not believe that the average citizen in America has anything to fear from terrorists.”
Most liberals think Islamic terrorism is a grave threat and that the Bush administration has grossly mismanaged our response to it. I personally think we will be attacked again and that the effect will be at least an order of magnitude worse that the 911 attack. I think that Bush's actions have made this more likely, rather than less likely.
“They all think that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the Global War on Terror and that we should just pack up and pull out immediately regardless of the consequences for the Iraqi people or America.”
Hey, you're almost right on this one. Just change “has” to “had” and you have it. Iraq had nothing to do with 911 or al Qaeda, but now our Iraq adventure has strengthened al Qaeda, giving them a source of new recruits, and a possible future operational base. (By the way, the only al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the war was possibly a training camp is the Kurdish north, a region over which Sadam had no control. The DoD proposed a strike to take it out, but the Bush administration squashed it because it would reduce the justification for invasion. Even the Bush administration has admitted that there was no working relationship between the Iraqi government and as Qaeda. In fact, ben Laden despised Sadam as a secularist.)
By the way, Even Sayet has also apparently also been reading too much Ann Coulter.
Regards,
Tom
Tom,
Thanks for reading my blog, you are in rare company.
Thank you for your comments. I want to emphasize that when I characterized my observations of common traits about liberals I was not speaking of all liberals, I have not met all the liberals in the USA, thank goodness.
I was referring specifically to traits of the liberals I know personally. The traits I listed there are not things I made up, they are all taken directly from many conversations that I have had with my liberal friends. Or from conversations that I have overheard them having among themselves. (I work in a cubicle farm and there is little privacy)
I did not say that these are traits of all liberals. My exact words were:
"I know several liberals quite well. For the most part they are not evil people. They are hard working, in a couple cases - very spiritual, and honest, trustworthy people. But they all have several common traits:"
I'm glad that you know liberals who are not like the ones I know. It gives me hope that all is not lost for our country. Because if all liberals were like the ones I keep running into or the ones I keep seeing in the news and Congress we would be a heap of trouble.
As for Evan Sayet, I don't necessarily agree with everything he says. But since I have such a hard time understanding the way so many of my co-workers think it was kind of refreshing to hear an explaination that in some ways makes sense. Because if it was up to me I would have to say they are all certifiably insane.
BTW I don't read Ann Coulter, I find her abrasive, rude and far to skinny to be atractive, and I have no idea who Michael Savage is.
As for what Sayet reads, your guess is as good as mine.
As to your refuting my list of liberal traits, you have your opinions and I have mine. I won't try and argue the points with you. I doubt either of us will be able to change the other's mind. But I'll leave your thoughts here for anyone who wishes an opposing view.
Thanks for you kind response to my comments.
I'm glad that you don't believe all liberals are as you describe them. I guess I thought that when you used the terms “without exception” and “they all” in describing liberals you were referring to all of us. I tend to jump to conclusions like that.
I'm glad to hear that you don't read Ann Coulter's screeds. But from reading you post you seem to have internalized some of her talking points (and some of here approach to political discourse). Maybe you picked that up from the Fox News Channel (where Anne Coulter is a frequent guest, incidentally). Anyway, I respectfully suggest that you do a little research to find out what most liberals really believe and where mainstream liberal discourse is before you jump to conclusions based on comments from your “liberal” friends and co-workers.
By the way, are you sure that your so called liberal friends aren't just trying to push your buttons?
Tom
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