The same people who successfully curtailed nuclear power in America are now insisting that we must be “energy independent.” The same people who argued that Reagan’s tax breaks would destroy the economy enjoyed a quarter century of economic growth. The same Democrat party that accommodated southern and northern racists for decades continues to argue that race is all-important and that government should be engaged in the task of dividing people by race and gender and giving special privileges to some groups. And of course, the international left is now the main repository and champion of mankind’s most ancient and vile prejudice, anti-Semitism.
One of the greatest conceits of the Left is that they are “intellectually curious,” “open-minded,” or “reality based,” when it would be difficult to find minds more parochial, narrow-minded, and hermetically self-enclosed people than those responsible for the idiotorial pages of the New York Times, or NPR, or CNN, or virtually any MSM outlet.
Why are they stuck? In my view, this is not a psychopathology but a pneumapathology -- a disease of the soul. Since leftism is a faux religion, they really need something closer to cult deprogramming. This is why conventional psychology is powerless to explain it or to do anything about it.
In a way, it is analogous to addiction, another problem of the soul that psychology is generally powerless to remedy. I don’t know if it’s the same way now, but when I was in graduate school, I was even taught that it would be unethical to try to treat alcoholism with psychotherapy alone. By far the most successful approach is the 12 step program, undoubtedly because it addresses the underlying soul pathology at the heart of addiction.
Perhaps we need a 12 step program for leftists, Apparatchiks Anonymous.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the intoxicating dreams of socialism, and that our lives and governments had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a power far greater than our own omnipotent little egoic fantasies of total control could restore us to the true classical liberalism of the Founders.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the Creator and Guarantor of our Liberty.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the well-intentioned failures and frank evils of socialism.
5. We admitted to the Creator of our Liberty, to ourselves, and in a live phone call to C-SPAN, the exact nature of socialism’s wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have the Creator of Our Liberty remove all these defects of ideology.
7. We humbly asked Him to cancel our subscription to the Times.
8. We made a list of all races, genders, and classes our government programs had harmed, and became willing to make amends by leaving them the fuck alone.
9. We made direct amends to such people by switching parties.
10. We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were again tempted to abuse ideology for the purposes of blotting out reality, promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer, meditation, and reading the Constitution, to improve our conscious contact with the Source of our Liberty, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Leftists, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
28 comments:
"Just take your favorite leftist friends, and tell them some obvious fact they don't want to hear. You can see it working right in front of your eyes: They just won't hear it...."
I'll never forget an episode during my Wall St. days when an otherwise buttoned-down executive whom I did not know to be a leftist reacted to my assertion that 9/11 had nothing to do with "poverty and victimization by American Empire" by literally clapping his hands over his ears and yelling at me "stooopppppp!"
Last time I tried having a sensible political conversation in Manhattan.
"Marxism is not human, but specifically demonic -- even, one might say, the quintessence of demonology, in that it is the the last word in fallen man’s promethean rejection of reality, whether it is economic reality, historical reality, psychic reality, or suprasensible reality."
It is anti-reality at it's root, and all the rest fall-oh!s from that.
"One of the most salient characteristics of the Left is that it is peculiarly incapable of learning."
And truly they can't, as Learning requires integration, not mere lining up or stacking facts, but integrating them together. Absent that, nothing has been learned, only collected.
"Apparatchiks Anonymous"
Lol, love that.
"7. Humbly asked Him to cancel our subscription to the Times."
To which may be heard to ring out once again "Cancel your own God Damn subscription!"
Why Isn’t the Whole Left Neoconservative? Because neoconservatism has revealed itself as a sick joke over the last eight years. Here's merely the latest example of its leading intellectual spokesman spouting complete self-contradictory nonsense. Oh but wait, you think Jonah Goldberg is a genius. Never mind.
This I see TRANSFORMED man, wished to be very in type, from which it keeps with me. They are not safe, because this one may not know the God existence. All these to lose in its Web page. Traditional capitalism always has, always had social factor the video that has way of the demands there that are the United States, my spheres of the steam one. I wait for the luminous task, not those, which of a little erroneous, because I do not do. Abdul
Reality denial… How much progressive taxation will be deemed enough by radical leftists? "To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.
Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.
We are definitely overdue for some honesty in the debate over the progressivity of the nation's tax burden before lawmakers enact any new taxes to pay for expanded health care."
More alternate reality from the left. Trees should have legal standing to sue. As per Obama's "science" "czar."
gulpinpotty said..."Why Isn’t the Whole Left Neoconservative? Because neoconservatism has revealed itself as a sick joke over the last eight years."
And... if so, all the more mystery, why aren't you lefties all Neocons?
>> . . this is not a psychopathology but a pneumapathology -- a disease of the soul. Since leftism is a faux religion, you really need something closer to cult deprogramming<<
I think you'd need a mass exorcism, conducted by all those who take prayer seriously.
I think Leftism might be considered a universal mind-parasite, a floating meme that gets its traction by way of glamorization - it's a shimmering illusion that promises a salvation that's always "one shot away", but that never materializes, never. It's literally a trance-inducing *spell* that corrupts genuine divine imagination into shabby fantasy. (which is what spells do)
Leftism glamorizes completely. It's a party-atmosphere with bubbles. It provides "meaning" to lives that are without such. It's "fun" in the syrupy way that crying jags and benders are fun. It provides excitement - it's always a hoot to think of yourself as fighting against the Man. It's righteousness on the cheap, which is to say, it's not righteousness at all, but a satanic lie.
Worse, Leftism offers NO FORGIVENESS.
There are indulgences, via Al Gore and his environmental carbon credits, but no FORGIVENESS!
Does it matter?
Yes it does. In the dark of the night, when you have only yourself to confront, it does matter.
wv: pasho
I had a German Shephern dog named Pasche.
Everything matters.
“As I've mentioned before, in many respects, my own "journey" to so-called conservatism hasn’t been a journey at all.”
This is why I say our chances are better if we lower the voting age to zero.
Socialism and capitalism cannot coexist in the same country… as we are constantly led to think it somehow can here – look at Canada, etc. , some say… But “here” just ain’t any ol’ “anywhere”.
All will fall to communism eventually if here goes away. These look-to countries aren’t communist yet because they benefit greatly (scratch that, critically) in so many indirect ways by the separate existence of a Truly progressive, freely creative nation centered around her capitalism, classical liberalism and her capitalist, classical liberals; somewhere they must be free or the rest fall. We can all still point to at least one such place, thank God.
Will said "...it's a shimmering illusion that promises a salvation that's always "one shot away", but that never materializes, never... "
And it is those seeking something for nothing that are particularly susceptible to the glamour con. As any three card monty huckster knows, 'something for nothing!' is the way to reel in the rubes, and as gulpinpotty so often proves, the one who is least willing to admit he's been had, is the rube that's been robbed... because it would require admitting that he thought he was robbing the one, who was actually robbing him, to ever fess up. Talk about the guilt of the victim card player.
The type of person who truly wants to accomplish something isn't look for something for nothing, quite the opposite, to create something to relieve a nothing. For them, being celebrated is something that may or may not follow from their accomplishment, and so they're not susceptible to being conned by the glamourizers.
But those who just want to be recognized, to be celebrated and glamorized, regardless of what they have or haven't done... in fact they'd just assume not having to work for it. They want something for nothing, and they will go right on trying to get that free lunch, no matter how much it costs, and the monty dealer go on flattering him until he not only has nothing, but is nothing.
"Worse, Leftism offers NO FORGIVENESS." So true! There is no rest/slack for one trapped in a works-centered ideology. I once heard a commentator say that liberals really just want to feel good about themselves. It's self-absolution (which equals bondage to sin).
I remember once talking to a friend about how Communism/Socialism and Fascism were pretty much the same thing, and he indignantly said, "I've never heard of that. Nobody says that." What I think was going on is that I was saying, "Hey look at this green (arbitrary color chosen for analogy) color over here" (ie US-style freedom.) And he was comparing two variations of blue and not even considering green. So to me, the two blues were ...blue, and I was comparing it to another hue completely. That's how stuck in the mold he was. He didn't even have a category for real freedom. He only had flavors of control. Very much like the mammon-seeking head smacking against-the-wall imprisonment mode versus the wall-less hierarchically-correct truth/freedom mode.
wv: swast (ica)
Freaky.
Ricky,
As a coon with a paw in both countries (I've lived about equally in US and Canada) I can tell you that currently Canada is considerably more business-friendly and economically stable than the US. My last significant company was in Massachusetts. I would be insane to locate the next one there. Calgary is a far better bet right now.
Susannah: wow, that is a shocking statistic! Unfortunately it is entirely meaningless because it does not take into account the distribution of wealth and income.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/03/29/business/20070329_TAX_GRAPHIC.html
Van said: As any three card monty huckster knows, 'something for nothing!' is the way to reel in the rubes, and as gulpinpotty so often proves, the one who is least willing to admit he's been had, is the rube that's been robbed... because it would require admitting that he thought he was robbing the one, who was actually robbing him, to ever fess up.
Have you considered trying to get a job as a speechwriter for Sarah Palin? You seem to share her inability to string ords together into coherent thoughts.
Cont. from my previous comment...
My friend was offended that I likened his two opposites he held so dear. If fascism wasn't right wing, then what WAS the opposite of leftism? If conservatives and "neo-cons" was something other than the only non-leftist option, fascism, then what is it? Mr. Truth comes walking in the room and he (my friend) runs for cover.
Sometimes wv is too much fun. He was "cribin". [In a crib.]
NB,
Either we’re agreeing with each other, or you attribute Canada’s and Calgary’s success to the fact that they are socialist … I say they’ve learned a good thing or two from us. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Let me put it this way, the weaker we become here (in general, as a whole, not pockets), the more nervous the average citizen anywhere around the world should become. So by “we” I mean the average citizen here. You say you are a business owner who goes where the going’s good. That’s what capitalists do – which is only half my point. If our property rights (businesses included) can be taken from us, here of all places, it’s steam roller time for anybody anywhere. Then where will you go? Down the list to the next less-socialist county?
This is why I say we are agreeing with each other.
Nice linking skills, G. I’ll get right over there..
What’s an ord?
Outstanding, Bob!
Heck, this entire post is quotable.
Next time someone asks me why leftists bitterly cling to their old, failed ideology/cult despite all the evidence of it's destructive results, I'll point them to this post.
HT Ace of Spades:
“That's the racist idiot Crowley, our Susan Boyle, helping Gates navigate the stairs, while President Wonderful preens for the camera.”
Bob, reminds of that photo of President Bush helping Senator Byrd.
Why...here it is..
I'm sure goddinpotty would say that Bush only helped Byrd because he was a Grand Dragon in the KKK, while Crowley only helped Gates because he's 57% white.
"He can kiss 2% of my ass!"
- Dr. Seinfeld
g said "string ords together"
g? no, g... tee-hee.
be left of right?
= bereft of light
The neocon is the leftist rat that abandoned the leftist ship, gnawed and rotting, and swam for safety to the rightwing ship, which is now rotting for the same reason.
Irving Kristol--
One can say that the historical task and political purpose of neo-conservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.
BTW,
The unnatural, that too is natural.
Goethe
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