Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
"Dad, Dad you've made it onto Urban Dictionary!" said the kids.
"Oh good. Nice, I hope?"
"Er, not exactly," they sniggered. "Have a look."
And what I saw was - well, if you're strong of stomach have a look for yourself at the two definitions of "Delingpole".
"Gosh," I said. "However did they know?"
No not really. I suppose actually I'm quite flattered by the attention. But the thing I'd like to know is this: why on earth did they bother?
I mean, if I were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Barack Obama or George Soros or Al Gore I could understand the hate. Here are men with real power to change people's lives - almost invariably for the worse. Me, I'm just a blogger. A fairly outspoken blogger, admittedly. But it's not like I'm going to nuke Israel any time soon; or destroy the US economy; or use my massive wealth to collapse the markets and engineer a sinister New World Order of one world government; or make millions of dollars from "Climate Change" hysteria - the biggest and most expensive scam in history.
That question I asked earlier, though, it was purely rhetorical.
I know exactly why it was that those two individuals took the trouble to post on Urban Dictionary derogatory remarks about my personality and my wedding equipment; just as I know why it was that a member of that tireless global warming activist body the British Antarctic Survey felt compelled to play some dirty tricks with my website address; and why it was that Sir Paul Nurse - a left-leaning scientist associate of George Soros - was given carte blanche by the BBC to make a hatchet job documentary, completely misrepresenting what Climate "Skeptics" like myself believe about "global warming"; and why so many of the trolling comments below my blogs focus on autobiographical irrelevances like my depression or the fact that unlike my Oxford chum David Cameron (whatever became of him, I wonder) I never gained access to the legendary drinking society the Bullingdon.
It's because I'm right wing. And therefore evil.
Several you reading this, I know, suffer from a similar handicap. Not the "being evil" bit, necessarily. But the "being assumed to be evil for no other reason than that you're not on the political left", part.
And you're probably as puzzled as I am. Why is it evil to want people to be allowed to keep more of the money they earn and enjoy more freedom? And why is good to believe that the government's job is to take more and more taxpayers' money, borrow still more, and squander it buying stuff that nobody wants for people who don't deserve it?
When you put it like that it's a no brainer. And this I think is what answers my question.
The problem with the ideology of the left - and I include all its variations from socialism, Marxism and Fabianism to its most virulent modern forms eco-fascism and communitarianism - is that it has no rational basis. It is based on raw emotion, abstract theory not empiricism. Wherever it has been tried - Lenin's and Stalin's Soviet Union; Castro's Cuba; Mao's China; Pol Pot's Cambodia; Hitler's Germany; Obama's America - it has failed utterly, making people poorer, unhappier and very often more dead. So what's the only thing you can do when you have no evidence to support your argument, when indeed the facts of life and history are entirely against you?
You can't play fair, so you play dirty.
- Comment (41)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
You're not just wrong, "you're evil." They know, because they fired God and took his job.
Aug '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. Nevermind those blatherers.
To use your countryman's retort in different words ... in the morning, they'll still be wrong...
Dec '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
The left cannot believe anyone would behave different than they would. Given complete freedom they'd spend it all on hooch and whores, so everyone else on the planet would do likewise. It's not a constrained view, it's a catastrophic view. Liberty must be excised from society lest the entire mass of humanity disolve into a drunken orgy with the nuclear launch codes. A few of our heroic betters sacrifice themselves by exercising their unique, Herculean restraint to save us all. The only other option would be like giving a box of loaded pistols to a room full of toddlers.
Apr '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Don't fret about your enemies defining you. Especially when while defining you they demonstrate that they are nearly illiterate.
May '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
You must have really hit a nerve, James. I just don't get the level of antagonism directed towards you. And I cannot fathom the virulent hate directed toward Pres. Bush, VP Cheney, Sarah Palin and, I would expect if elected as the Republican candidate, Rick Perry.
Edited on September 13, 2011 at 4:40pmMar '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
James - you have asked the most important question of our times. And, it is gonna get much worse, I am afraid.
Oh, btw, Sir Paul Nurse is a disgrace, typifying the takeover of science by the lefties. It's very sad to see the Royal Institution reduced to this (I would resign, but I am not a member).
As for the depression, I recommend lots of sunshine - something that the lefties haven't yet taken away from the USA. You should spend more time here, where you wont feel quite so isolated.
Aug '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
James Delingpole, Guest Contributor:
The problem with the ideology of the left - and I include all its variations from socialism, Marxism and Fabianism to its most virulent modern forms eco-fascism and communitarianism - is that it has no rational basis. It is based on raw emotion, abstract theory not empiricism.
"I feel, therefore I am."
May '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
The Left has an amazing capacity for projection. If one believes, as liberals do, that one's cultural opponents are both dangerous and hateful, then it becomes easy to dismiss any legal or moral concerns in dealing with that threat. This common end-justifies-the-means attitude is not merely wrong but dangerous.
One of the most important books I ever read was Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza about the Rwanda genocide. It's a story of faith in God, but it contains another important lesson. Neighbors who were opposed but generally friendly started hunting and butchering each other almost overnight. For years, media encouraged people to dehumanize their enemies, referring to them as "cockroaches" and such. It was kindling waiting for a spark. How many wars began similarly?
My point is not that we're headed toward a bloody confrontation. My point is that the Left is currently exercising restraint based on weakness, rather than on deep moral regard for us, their opponents. That we can still enjoy sports and barbecues together does not mean we will long remain a civil society.
Coulter is right. The Left is a mob. The facade will not last.
Feb '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
It's all tied together on the left: voter fraud, the politics of personal destruction (remember that one?), vulgarity, blind obedience to leftist dogma, and most of all...intolerance.
Dec '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Sorry to go slightly off topic, but here are my two cents on the Paul Nurse front. I attended a lecture by Nurse two years ago; it was, far and away, the best scientific talk I have ever heard. Engaging, funny, humble, encouraging to us grad students, he walked us through his career in cell biology and the advances that led (rightly, I might add) to his Nobel Prize.
Imagine my dismay, then, when I found him to have gone off the deep end regarding AGW. It is situations like this that give lie to scientists' claims that they are motivated by the science, not the ideology. If he was motivated by the science, Nurse would state that "I'm very interested in AGW, but it's not my field so here's my friend Dr. Climate who can tell you more." As James pointed out on his blog, Nurse has no experience in climate science. It doesn't matter, though, because scientists in the academic echo chamber tell convince themselves that their vicious ideology is really rationalism, which gives them superiority over the evil/stupid knuckledraggers on the right, and thereby the right to pontificate at will on anything.
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Wow, your urban dictionary entry made me realize that I first encountered your writing during Climategate, in which you were instrumental in getting the evidence out there. In fact, I recall posting your article "Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of AGW?" (which I think I saw on Drudge?) on my facebook page and receiving a bunch of rabid lefty responses informing me that I was an idiot moron who doesn't understand science. To your point, I suppose.
Dec '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
What amazes me is how deluded the left is, and how effective they have been over the last several decades in convincing themselves that their "raw emotion, abstract theory not empiricism" is in fact rationalism and empiricism. When confronted by the fact of their anger, they justify it by saying that the right is so evil, how could they not be emotional/angry. They have redefined the terms, inverting them to avoiding admitting their failure. Rather than dealing with the world on a case-by-case basis as they would if words meant anything, their relativism means that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. This in turn gives them an easy way to squeeze everyone on the right into a big satan sandwich, and at the same time lets them feel that their emotionalism is morally justified.
May '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
James, have you tried removing the entry? I believe there's a form for that at Urban Dictionary, and they may be especially amenable to entries naming individuals.
I'm guessing there are a lot of folks who have submitted entries equating themselves as chock full of awesome, and likewise grudge entries chock full of nasty.
Or alternately, maybe keep the entry and consider it a badge of honor? :-)
Sep '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
You describe a big fear of mine, Aaron. Because the body politic is so polarized, and everything so politicized, there's no escaping the constant need to limit conversations to small talk (which I'm lousy at). The strain of "not going there" is very wearing on the social fabric, and sometimes I become afraid that it might actually tear apart, revealing a diversity of threads that can no longer hold together.
Aaron Miller: The Left has an amazing capacity for projection. ... This common end-justifies-the-means attitude is not merely wrong but dangerous.
Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza [is] ... a story of faith in God, but it contains another important lesson. Neighbors who were opposed but generally friendly started hunting and butchering each other almost overnight. For years, media encouraged people to dehumanize their enemies, referring to them as "cockroaches" and such. It was kindling waiting for a spark. How many wars began similarly? ... [the] Left is currently exercising restraint based on weakness, rather than on deep moral regard for us, their opponents. That we can still enjoy sports and barbecues together does not mean we will long remain a civil society.
Aug '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
While most propositions thrown into the idea marketplace desire primarily to be heard, there are those who's proposition it is to shutdown the marketplace all together. The justification is always intellectual, that some great mind has figured the issue out and therefor any opposition is clearly idiotic. In the end, the suggestion is that you don't need to think anymore, they've done it for you. It's clear that you crossed their elitist thinking line and proposed something with enough common sense to possibly agitate the masses against them. Their only recourse is to start throwing mud in hope that some amount of character damage will occur vindicating their moral superiority.
Keep thinking and speaking James.
Oct '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Congratulations! you seem to have all the appropriate enemies and a level of vitriol that indicates how effective you've been. We should all strive to attract that kind of rancor.
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Thanks everyone. I find your comments comforting (in that I know I'm not alone) and frightening (that Rwanda analogy, not least). And your journey off topic Das Motorhead wasn't off topic at all. Sir Paul Nurse embodies precisely this problem I describe. The main reason I take such flak is - as Diane rightly notes - because of my role in exposing Climategate. I don't wish to take credit for doing any of the legwork. But for better or worse - thanks to Drudge - mine was the name that became most closely associated with revealing the scandal. It followed, as far as all those bent scientists, corrupted institutions (like the Royal Society, of which Nurse is currently president; and its US equivalent the National Academy of Sciences) and MSM enviro-activists were concerned, that I was the target that needed taking down. Nurse's BBC Horizon documentary was their chosen tool. It's depressing on so many levels: that our state broadcaster (funded by a compulsory license tax, constitutionally obliged to be balanced) could be allowed to engage in political propaganda; that a Nobel laureate could promote junk science.
Feb '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
One of the best distillations of the left that I have ever read.
Edited on September 13, 2011 at 6:40pmAug '10
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
Bent scientists and dodgy data alone qualify for immortalization in the wispy 'pages"of Ricochet !
Or as they probably say at the Royal Academy, " nice ass-kicking Jimmy !".
Al Gore will not be soliciting your assistance on the Telethon, which starts in 1 day, 7 hours, and endless blood and gore---so that's about all I can offer up as a prize for your work on uncovering those faux hockey sticks.
Jul '11
Re: Why the Liberal-Left Can't Help Playing Dirty
I think the raw emotion is just a symptom. Faith is the ultimate culprit. The western society renders religions of the past out of fashion - so here we have the religion of the Earth Mother. And when it comes to religion and faith, believers need vilification of some sort. Galileo was poisoned for pursuing science - and in your case, as of others who speak up for science, character assassination via Urban dictionary is the modus operandi.
It is scary to think how similar we are to the perished civilizations of the past with their rituals and sacrifices that amounted to no salvation, earthly or otherwise. We recycle plastic bottles not goats, and we fly long distances to attend earth day rituals.
Reason only works as an instrument of persuasion if one's convictions were based on reason in the first place. Unfortunately in the present as in the past, there is a significant portion of the population that needs faith. What we need to move forward is a messiah...