Friday, March 30, 2012

The Limits of Leftism: Death, Tyranny, and Grown-ups

Just a brief thoughtlet, more worthy of a tweet, whatever that is.

The Supremes obviously want to know what the "limiting principle" is behind Obamacare, but they're about 75 years too late, since they will search in vain for any such principle in leftism.

To put it another way, leftism is the principle of unlimited government, so it has no intrinsic limitation. It is omnipotent, omniscient, and utopian, hence "offended" by your petty -- and probably evil -- objections. You can't get too much of Never Enough. And there are no moral or rational limits to a Limitless Science.

The Party of NO! just spoils the Party of Hearty. But the latter can never be independent, dammit, because they require all that cash from productive adults in order to keep the party rolling.

Get Out of My Life, Rethuglicans! But First Could I Borrow About Ten Trillon?

The left does, however, have an extrinsic limiting principle. It's called "conservatism." Conservatism is the only limit on unlimited government, the adult "no" to the infantile "more!"

Which goes back to the bobservation cited by the hysterical Kosbag in yesterday's post, because the situation is indeed very much analogous to the parent/child dialectic, in which children need parents to set limits and boundaries. A child without boundaries soon enough becomes a monster in some form or fascism.

If one fails to internalize these boundaries, then a whole range of pathology results, both personal and, more problematically, sociological. It wouldn't bother me so much if boundaryless people only destroyed themselves. Sad, maybe, but Darwin is a cruel master, and the least fit among us are often permitted just one big mistake.

If one cannot behave like a civilized human being, one is much more likely to encounter a limit in the form of a jail cell, a dreadful disease, a bullet to the chest, etc. ***cough***trayvon***cough cough AKA "No Limit Nigga." What a dramatic way to discover one's limit. D'oh!

Fatherless children often find a rigid and punitive father later in life, in the form of cold iron bars or hot lead projectiles.

What is the limit of homosexual acting out, of having thousands of anonymous sexual encounters, like Patient Zero? In his case, the limit was the free-swinging scythe of AIDS. Once that condition is controlled, you'll see a recrudescence of the same sort of behavior that caused the virus to flourish.

Indeed, what is the limit of male heterosexual acting out? It used to be something called "female discrimination," also known as "taste," "standards," or "a future." Eliminate these, and manhood soon enough devolves to Andy Warhol's definition of art: what you can get away with.

Actually, there is another limiting principle of leftism: reality. But if reality isn't respected, it exacts a terrible vengeance, so it is more than just a limit.

It's very much like science, in that we obey nature in order to control nature. Disobey nature -- including human nature -- and the account will be balanced, one way or another, sooner or later, by God or by Darwin -- and sometimes by God through Darwin.

16 comments:

Paul Griffin said...

That is to say, freedom does not merely consist of doing whatever you want, it consists of wanting to do the Right things. George MacDonald taught about practically nothing else.

Bob, you've been eerily adept at hitting my wavelength lately. You frequently seem to be organizing my thoughts into a cohesive statement on my behalf.

So, you know, thanks!

mushroom said...

Reality is subjective -- so said a commenter over on Van's blog a few days ago.

To which Van replied that, No, Reality IS, and, "...Reality always has the last laugh."

But the left does seem to think that the only reason their grandiose plans never work out is because people like me are ag'n 'em.

If the people in Spain and Portugal and Greece would just think happy thoughts, it would be all right. If the Germans would just stop all this negativity about paying for everything, the Greeks could keep all their useless government jobs and extravagant retirement benefits.

All those hard-working Germans are just greedy.

Gagdad Bob said...

Yes, they always blame the messengers of reality, never reality.

mushroom said...

Paul, you are right about MacDonald. His heroes inevitably find perfect liberty in perfect righteousness. I just finished re-reading At the Back of the North Wind. MacDonald not only believed that cooperating with God is liberating, but that God really does everything He can to make that cooperation possible, even probable.

The way of the transgressor is hard.

julie said...

"A child without boundaries soon enough becomes a monster in some form or fascism."

Heh - Cracked had a list up the other day about Progressive parenting fads, almost all of which involve a complete lack of boundaries, one way or another (pole dancing for toddlers, extreme breast-feeding, etc.; the breast-feeding one was especially disturbing, so no link). Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that the results of such practices can only be negative, but it seems that more than a few people either never developed half a brain, or they burned it out some time before they started having kids...

julie said...

Tony Robbins at Iowahawk. Haven't seen it yet, but just the fact that it happened strikes me as hilarious...

julie said...

Okay, having said that, it's not funny, since he just restates Iowahawk's post without any of the humor; and you could save an awful lot of time by just reading Iowahawk's original post that he references. Like, roughly 15 minutes. Plus you wouldn't be subjected to the sight of those big scary teeth...

pst314 said...

Important addendum, Bob: "The latter can never leave us alone, because they must exert ever more control over our lives in order to find meaning and purpose."

mushroom said...

Robbins relating an Iowahawk post is like Thomas Kincaid repainting the Sistine Chapel.

Van Harvey said...

" To put it another way, leftism is the principle of unlimited government, so it has no intrinsic limitation. It is omnipotent, omniscient, and utopian, hence "offended" by your petty -- and probably evil -- objections. You can't get too much of Never Enough. And there are no moral or rational limits to a Limitless Science."

Like the misosophy of pragmatism which resusitated it into the modern world, the left finds itself rejecting principle,ON principle, which is the path to unlimited desire...aka: hell on earth.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Indeed, what is the limit of male heterosexual acting out? It used to be something called "female discrimination," also known as "taste," "standards," or "a future." Eliminate these, and manhood soon enough devolves to Andy Warhol's definition of art: what you can get away with."

Of course, as we know, you can't actually get away with it even if it might seem so from a very shortsighted perspective.

Eventually the reapo man will show up and take what you owe even if you ain't got it.

One can claim to have no limits all one wants, but once that bullet hits, it's game over man.

If you manage to avoid the bullet you got disease and/or prison chains to look forward to.

And I'm not just talking about the physical ones either.

In fact, if it's just physical disease and/or prison then it's best to count your blessings.

If it's more than that, say your mind and your spirit that gets AIDS n' chains (due to a severe learnin' dissability or bitterness and envy, etc., from ignoring reality and truth), well...we all know there are worse things than death.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

To put it another way, leftism is the principle of unlimited government, so it has no intrinsic limitation."

I do believe that's the most concise description I have read thus far. Well said, Bob!

Gagdad Bob said...

Neither of which involves the federal government.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Because ultrasounds are so much more invasive and destructive than abortions.

As for creationism being taught in TN, I'm against it (then again I'm against most of the crap the public uneducation system teaches in every state). But that's the choice of the voters in TN.

Keep clinging to your polls William.
Obama is bound to win in a landslide.
Folks won't care about rising gas prices, rising home energy bills, high unemployment and inflation as we go into the summer of recovery part 4.
Just ask Carter.

Oh, and don't worry. I'm sure that SCOTUS will leave Obamascare intact.
Too bad for lefties there ain't a "just trust us" clause in the Constitution, LOL.

Gagdad Bob said...

There's no end of federal and state-mandated nonsense I wouldn't want my kid exposed to in school, including both creationism and its mirror image, evolutionism (creation and evolution in the metaphysical sense is another thing entirely, and which we enthusiastically endorse). Which is why I send him to a private religious school. Somehow the kids there do much better in science than kids from nearby public schools. Ironic if one is a liberal, obvious if one is a conservative.

julie said...

Creationism and ultrasounds! Three minutes to Wapner!

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