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Leftism’s Lack of Foundation Gives It Strength
I’ve often been amazed by how angrily leftists defend political arguments that they clearly don’t understand, and to which they clearly haven’t given a great deal of thought. There are many possible reasons for this, of course. They may have been taught that conservatives are evil, so if anyone says anything that doesn’t sound clearly leftist, that person must be evil, and should be loudly and publicly vanquished. And perhaps leftists can’t defend their arguments because they’ve never had to – they’ve lived in an echo chamber, and have never been challenged to back up their ideas. But still, I wonder, why do they care so much about stuff they clearly haven’t really thought about?
Imagine living in the world of academia. Is it possible that 95% of those who work in that field are leftists? That seems exceedingly unlikely, like flipping a coin 100 times and getting heads 95 times. It’s possible, I guess. But in every school in the United States? What are the odds? How could that happen? Well, one way that could happen would be to require any new hires to prove their liberal bona fides before offering them a job. Ok, so does that mean that they’re all liberal? Of course not – it just means that they want to teach chemistry or whatever. They may not believe in socialism or abortion, but they do believe in summers off, nice benefits packages, and relaxed office hours.
My point is that many of them probably don’t care about politics as much as they care about their job (a healthy attitude, in my opinion), but they understand what they have to say to get the job. Ok, fine. But why would someone who cares little about politics, and knows even less, defend his poorly considered views so viciously? Well, imagine how that conversation sounds to him. Imagine somebody like me approaching him at a party, in front of other people, and saying, “The leftist politics that you profess to believe in hurts people, removes hope, and destroys lives. But you don’t care, because you want some government money in exchange for doing not all that much work. So I suspect that you really don’t believe this stuff. You’re not that stupid. You’re just that amoral.”
Ok, that conversation will not go well. And of course, I would not say those things, but that is what he would hear when I started questioning his belief system. He would perceive my questions as a personal attack.
I’m not questioning his beliefs, because he really doesn’t have any. So I must be attacking him. And all his friends. Of course, he doesn’t like that.
Nobody likes having their belief system challenged. But I am not threatened by such questions, because I’ve arrived at my beliefs only after decades of careful study and uncomfortable challenging of my own presumptions. I know what I believe in, and I know exactly why. So ask me whatever you like, and I’d be happy to explain how I got here. And I’d be happy to hear your arguments. And I’d be happy to debate the topic with you. And if you make some good points, I’ll be happy to learn something. But if you make it obvious that you don’t even understand your own beliefs, I’ll also be happy to laugh at you.
But suppose you have someone who is somewhat insecure and has not given a great deal of thought to matters of philosophy. Like a child, for example. And suppose that child is immersed in the homogenous environment of academia for the first 18-25 years of their life – all the way to adulthood. That child is likely to say whatever they need to, to get along. Regardless of what they believe in, which they haven’t really worked out yet anyway.
And then one day, they’re 25 years old, and they have a few glasses of Pinot Grigio at a party, and they encounter Dr. Bastiat with a bourbon in his hand and a smirk on his face (real or perceived).
Again, that conversation will not go well.
And the more immature and the less secure that 25-year-old is, the worse that conversation will go.
The American left has built an empire through their control of the schools, the news media, the entertainment industry, social media, and so on. Many supporters of leftism don’t really understand or care about it all that much, and many conservatives view that as a weakness that could be exploited.
Not me. I think that only hardens their resolve.
If they understood their beliefs, they would be happy to debate them, so they could prove conservatives wrong.
But if they don’t understand their beliefs, they view any question as a personal attack. Add to that a weird mixture of narcissism, immaturity, and insecurity, and you have someone who will fight to the death over trans-sexual bathrooms. Their lack of a solid foundation makes them even more determined to defend whatever they’ve been told to believe in.
It’s true that the house of leftism is built on sand. But I think that gives it strength because it rules out rational debate, which is all conservatives have.
Without rational debate, leftists win. Every time.
As I so often say, I really hope I’m wrong about this.
What do you think?
Published in General
We called them zori.
Thongs and flip flops are soooo different.
Doc, you’re absolutely right about fundamentals. Get real basic. Just ask them to point to an instance of socialism or communism that allowed its citizens to leave. That’s a very BFD, yet its a near constant in what became very repressive regimes. While that’s never a part of the Utopia promise they promise, it’s a permanent feature of the reality their enlightened theories inevitably bring.
Just ask them if it’s a remarkable coincidence. It isn’t.
In Oregon in the 1960s-70s, you wore thongs on your feet, and flip-flops were a kind of electronic circuit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)
Ask them to point to any society that didn’t get rich through some version of the free market.
I imagine it begins with a contradiction.
People have a need to matter. But Leftism is fundamentally nihilistic.
So we have a psychological “matter/antimatter explosion” that is everything the the wordplay suggests. There is no rational way to resolve the cognitive and moral dissonance that arises, so irrationality is the only refuge.
You also need to know the difference between socialism and welfare capitalism, and why welfare capitalism works in some countries. Neither one of them are going to work in this country. For one thing, you need to be a lot more sociologically homogenous.
https://freemanbeyondthewall.libsyn.com/episode-215
There is no limiting principle on the left, and they don’t think things through very well. They just want more central planning and social engineering, no matter what. It doesn’t work, and since there is no limiting principle everything keeps moving left, which makes us do more. The time to put a lid on this in the traditional way that traditional Republicans think was between the fall of the Soviet union and the Iraq invasion. Now things are very messy.
I think this is right.
When they try to move off of public policy, it may have merit, but it gets really complicated, and then it’s very hard to keep the integrity of the discussion.
When any Republican or leftist moves off of public policy, my guard goes up. You have to slow things down, or you are not going to go anywhere constructive.
This is exactly my experience. My brother-in-law gets so mad or, alternatively, he starts pacing around like the ministry of silly walks. He’s way smarter than me, but he just doesn’t study public policy enough and he can’t accept that some of the Democrat central planning and social engineering doesn’t work.
This is an explanation of how welfare capitalism could actually work. It’s probably more accurate to describe it as intelligent central planning. We are just too dumb and corrupt to do it.
https://investresolve.com/podcasts/mike-green-the-fourth-turning-and-reimagining-the-american-dream/
If you are interested in this, there is a transcript, but I would probably start with his interview on the block works YouTube channel.
Debate ended 10 years ago. There is no longer any basis upon which to have a country.
I think this is a very good point. Many leftists circumvent difficult moral questions by defining morality as utilitarianism or consequentialism – i.e., “whatever works” – which is generally the form taken by secular morality. This shifts the question of “What is moral?” away from its essential meaning of “What is the right end?” to the tangential issue of “What is the right means?”
For most proponents of secular morality, this allows the question of “What is the right end?” to be answered with the conclusion of “Whatever I feel that it should be.” Therefore, to someone who believes that it is moral to destroy people of a particular race or class or condition, you can’t really argue that murder is immoral. It is clearly “what works.”
Saw a short interview done in Seattle years ago, one of those quick question-and-answers sessions with people on the street. I remember, “Moral and immoral are just words for like and dislike. So, if you ask me about murder, I’ll say, ‘I don’t like murder.'”
Punk didn’t look as though he had lived long enough to get that stupid, but somehow he managed it.
Reagan ‘ They ‘know’ so much that just isn’t so’
Fine people, drink bleach, Russian collusion, CNN and The NY Times are unbiased, and a hundred others things in just the last five years and going back to the ‘party switch’ of the 60 s when the Republicans somehow became racists , I fear it will take generations to unpack it all. I have wondered though why they get so angry about things like trans ‘rights’ to use the Ladies room or making Jack Phillips bake a cake , things that concern a minuscule portion of the population .
Forcing expression at gunpoint. Really great idea.
Why are ALL the rickety rafts going one way between Cuba and Florida? Likewise the Berlin Wall and Korean border, why can’t the Stupid Party make hay with these simple facts and constantly point out that Lincoln was a Republican? The Democrats are selling emotion and free ice cream, Republicans are talking about tariffs and marginal tax rates and broccoli.
I’m afraid you’re right, Dr Bastiat. I’ve talked to Leftists at parties who act as if they feel the counter argument for the view they’ve stated (on a subject THEY brought up) is a personal attack in them.
You do start to suspect that what’s going on is an unacknowledged guilty conscience, or an unacknowledged fear of being called out for knowing one thing and doing another.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but if there is no objective truth to be found, argument is pointless. If a leftist is motivated only by his/her feelings, even if those feelings are the product of a malformed conscience, any disagreement is a personal attack on those feelings and the person.
But I suppose we should all keep in mind a quote, the source of which I can’t remember: Respect the man who seeks the truth. Be wary of the man who claims to have found it.
I’m sure he had lots of help.
Did you come up with that yourself? It’s brilliant.
I don’t think so, others have said similar things.
Broccoli and ice cream and emotion vs. facts have been said before. But putting them together is a bit of witty brilliance.
More and more non-public goods. More and more central planning. This doesn’t work, so they do more. They invent more things. Then something gets momentum. Then you won’t have a straightforward conversation about policy because that actually gets the damn thing over the line.