In case you missed it, our friends at americanthinker.com had a fantastic column (which won’t load now due to internal server error, but is cached by Google, so I repeat it here) by Dr. Danusha V. Goska in 2014. She was a life-long leftist and wrote that she has abandoned that philosophy. Here, she gives her top ten reasons. It parallels many if the trials and tribulations climate skeptics suffer at the hands of [climate activists]. I highly recommend it, and I recommend sending it to every activist who calls you a “climate denier”. There may be hope yet for those who value spewing hate over rational debate. – Anthony
by Dr. Danusha V. Goska
How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. So far left that my Teamster mother used to tell anyone who would listen that she voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party chairman, for president. I wore a button saying “Eat the Rich.” To me it wasn’t a metaphor.
I voted Republican in the last presidential election.
Below are the top ten reasons I am no longer a leftist. This is not a rigorous comparison of theories. This list is idiosyncratic, impressionistic, and intuitive. It’s an accounting of the milestones on my herky-jerky journey.
10) Huffiness.
In the late 1990s I was reading Anatomy of the Spirit, a then recent bestseller by Caroline Myss.
Myss described having lunch with a woman named Mary. A man approached Mary and asked her if she were free to do a favor for him on June 8th. No, Mary replied, I absolutely cannot do anything on June 8th because June 8th is my incest survivors’ meeting and we never let each other down! They have suffered so much already! I would never betray incest survivors!
Myss was flabbergasted. Mary could have simply said “Yes” or “No.”
Reading this anecdote, I felt that I was confronting the signature essence of my social life among leftists. We rushed to cast everyone in one of three roles: victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed. We lived our lives in a constant state of outraged indignation. I did not want to live that way anymore. I wanted to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. I wanted to see others, not as victims or victimizers, but as potential friends, as loved creations of God. I wanted to understand the point of view of people with whom I disagreed without immediately demonizing them as enemy oppressors.
I recently attended a training session for professors on a college campus. The presenter was a new hire in a tenure-track position. He opened his talk by telling us that he had received an invitation to share a festive meal with the president of the university. I found this to be an enviable occurrence and I did not understand why he appeared dramatically aggrieved. The invitation had been addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. X.” Professor X was a bachelor. He felt slighted. Perhaps the person who had addressed his envelope had disrespected him because he is a member of a minority group.
Rolling his eyes, Prof. X went on to say that he was wary of accepting a position on this lowly commuter campus, with its working-class student body. The disconnect between leftists’ announced value of championing the poor and the leftist practice of expressing snobbery for them stung me. Already vulnerable students would be taught by a professor who regarded association with them as a burden, a failure, and a stigma.
Barack Obama is president. Kim and Kanye and Brad and Angelina are members of multiracial households. One might think that professors finally have cause to teach their students to be proud of America for overcoming racism. Not so fast, Professor X warned. His talk was on microaggression, defined as slights that prove that America is still racist, sexist, homophobic, and ableist, that is, discriminatory against handicapped people.
Professor X projected a series of photographs onto a large screen. In one, commuters in business suits, carrying briefcases, mounted a flight of stairs. This photo was an act of microaggression. After all, Professor X reminded us, handicapped people can’t climb stairs.
I appreciate Professor X’s desire to champion the downtrodden, but identifying a photograph of commuters on stairs as an act of microaggression and evidence that America is still an oppressive hegemon struck me as someone going out of his way to live his life in a state of high dudgeon. On the other hand, Prof. X could have chosen to speak of his own working-class students with more respect.
Yes, there is a time and a place when it is absolutely necessary for a person to cultivate awareness of his own pain, or of others’ pain. Doctors instruct patients to do this — “Locate the pain exactly; calculate where the pain falls on a scale of one to ten; assess whether the pain is sharp, dull, fleeting, or constant.” But doctors do this for a reason. They want the patient to heal, and to move beyond the pain. In the left, I found a desire to be in pain constantly, so as always to have something to protest, from one’s history of incest to the inability of handicapped people to mount flights of stairs.
9) Selective Outrage
I was a graduate student. Female genital mutilation came up in class. I stated, without ornamentation, that it is wrong.
A fellow graduate student, one who was fully funded and is now a comfortably tenured professor, sneered at me. “You are so intolerant. Clitoredectomy is just another culture’s rite of passage. You Catholics have confirmation.”
When Mitt Romney was the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, he mentioned that, as Massachusetts governor, he proactively sought out female candidates for top jobs. He had, he said, “binders full of women.” He meant, of course, that he stored resumes of promising female job candidates in three-ring binders.
Op-ed pieces, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon posts erupted in a feeding frenzy, savaging Romney and the Republican Party for their “war on women.”
I was an active leftist for decades. I never witnessed significant leftist outrage over clitoredectomy, child marriage, honor killing, sharia-inspired rape laws, stoning, or acid attacks. Nothing. Zip. Crickets. I’m not saying that that outrage does not exist. I’m saying I never saw it.
The left’s selective outrage convinced me that much canonical, left-wing feminism is not so much support for women, as it is a protest against Western, heterosexual men. It’s an “I hate” phenomenon, rather than an “I love” phenomenon.
8.) It’s the thought that counts
My favorite bumper sticker in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California: “Think Globally; Screw up Locally.” In other words, “Love Humanity but Hate People.”
It was past midnight, back in the 1980s, in Kathmandu, Nepal. A group of Peace Corps volunteers were drinking moonshine at the Momo Cave. A pretty girl with long blond hair took out her guitar and sang these lyrics, which I remember by heart from that night:
“If you want your dream to be,
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings greater ends.
Heartfelt work grows purely.”
I just googled these lyrics, thirty years later, and discovered that they are Donovan’s San Damiano song, inspired by the life of St. Francis.
Listening to this song that night in the Momo Cave, I thought, that’s what we leftists do wrong. That’s what we’ve got to get right.
We focused so hard on our good intentions. Before our deployment overseas, Peace Corps vetted us for our idealism and “tolerance,” not for our competence or accomplishments. We all wanted to save the world. What depressingly little we did accomplish was often erased with the next drought, landslide, or insurrection.
Peace Corps did not focus on the “small beginnings” necessary to accomplish its grandiose goals. Schools rarely ran, girls and low caste children did not attend, and widespread corruption guaranteed that all students received passing grades. Those students who did learn had no jobs where they could apply their skills, and if they rose above their station, the hereditary big men would sabotage them. Thanks to cultural relativism, we were forbidden to object to rampant sexism or the caste system. “Only intolerant oppressors judge others’ cultures.”
I volunteered with the Sisters of Charity. For them, I pumped cold water from a well and washed lice out of homeless people’s clothing. The sisters did not want to save the world. Someone already had. The sisters focused on the small things, as their founder, Mother Teresa, advised, “Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love.” Delousing homeless people’s clothing was one of my few concrete accomplishments.
Back in 1975, after Hillary Rodham had followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, she helped create the state’s first rape crisis hotline. She had her eye on the big picture. What was Hillary like in her one-on-one encounters?
Hillary served as the attorney to a 41-year-old, one of two men accused of raping a 12-year-old girl. The girl, a virgin before the assault, was in a coma for five days afterward. She was injured so badly she was told she’d never have children. In 2014, she is 52 years old, and she has never had children, nor has she married. She reports that she was afraid of men after the rape.
A taped interview with Clinton has recently emerged; on it Clinton makes clear that she thought her client was guilty, and she chuckles when reporting that she was able to set him free. In a recent interview, the victim said that Hillary Clinton “took me through Hell” and “lied like a dog.” “I think she wants to be a role model… but I don’t think she’s a role model at all,” the woman said. “If she had have been, she would have helped me at the time, being a 12-year-old girl who was raped by two guys.”
Hillary had her eye on the all-caps resume bullet point: FOUNDS RAPE HOTLINE.
Hillary’s chuckles when reminiscing about her legal victory suggest that, in her assessment, her contribution to the ruination of the life of a rape victim is of relatively negligible import.
7) Leftists hate my people.
I’m a working-class Bohunk. A hundred years ago, leftists loved us. We worked lousy jobs, company thugs shot us when we went on strike, and leftists saw our discontent as fuel for their fire.
Karl Marx promised the workers’ paradise through an inevitable revolution of the proletariat. The proletariat is an industrial working class — think blue-collar people working in mines, mills, and factories: exactly what immigrants like my parents were doing.
Polish-Americans participated significantly in a great victory, Flint, Michigan’s 1937 sit-down strike. Italian-Americans produced Sacco and Vanzetti. Gus Hall was a son of Finnish immigrants.
In the end, though, we didn’t show up for the Marxist happily ever after. We believed in God and we were often devout Catholics. Leftists wanted us to slough off our ethnic identities and join in the international proletarian brotherhood — “Workers of the world, unite!” But we clung to ethnic distinctiveness. Future generations lost their ancestral ties, but they didn’t adopt the IWW flag; they flew the stars and stripes. “Property is theft” is a communist motto, but no one is more house-proud than a first generation Pole who has escaped landless peasantry and secured his suburban nest.
Leftists felt that we jilted them at the altar. Leftists turned on us. This isn’t just ancient history. In 2004, What’s the Matter with Kansas? spent eighteen weeks on the bestseller lists. The premise of the book: working people are too stupid to know what’s good for them, and so they vote conservative when they should be voting left. In England, the book was titled, What’s the Matter with America?
We became the left’s boogeyman: Joe Six-pack, Joe Hardhat. Though we’d been in the U.S. for a few short decades when the demonization began, leftists, in the academy, in media, and in casual speech, blamed working-class ethnics for American crimes, including racism and the “imperialist” war in Vietnam. See films like The Deer Hunter. Watch Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.” Listen to a few of the Polack jokes that elitists pelted me with whenever I introduced myself at UC Berkeley.
Leftists freely label poor whites as “redneck,” “white trash,” “trailer trash,” and “hillbilly.” At the same time that leftists toss around these racist and classist slurs, they are so sanctimonious they forbid anyone to pronounce the N word when reading Mark Twain aloud. President Bill Clinton’s advisor James Carville succinctly summed up leftist contempt for poor whites in his memorable quote, “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”
The left’s visceral hatred of poor whites overflowed like a broken sewer when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. It would be impossible, and disturbing, to attempt to identify the single most offensive comment that leftists lobbed at Palin. One can report that attacks on Palin were so egregious that leftists themselves publicly begged that they cease; after all, they gave the left a bad name. The Reclusive Leftist blogged in 2009 that it was a “major shock” to discover “the extent to which so many self-described liberals actually despise working people.” The Reclusive Leftist focuses on Vanity Fair journalist Henry Rollins. Rollins recommends that leftists “hate-fuck conservative women” and denounces Palin as a “small town hickoid” who can be bought off with a coupon to a meal at a chain restaurant.
Smearing us is not enough. Liberal policies sabotage us. Affirmative action benefits recipients by color, not by income. Even this limited focus fails. In his 2004 Yale University Press study, Thomas Sowell insists that affirmative action helps only wealthier African Americans. Poor blacks do not benefit. In 2009, Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford demonstrated that poor, white Christians are underrepresented on elite college campuses. Leftists add insult to injury. A blue-collar white kid, who feels lost and friendless on the alien terrain of a university campus, a campus he has to leave immediately after class so he can get to his fulltime job at MacDonald’s, must accept that he is a recipient of “white privilege” – if he wants to get good grades in mandatory classes on racism.
The left is still looking for its proletariat. It supports mass immigration for this reason. Harvard’s George Borjas, himself a Cuban immigrant, has been called “America’s leading immigration economist.” Borjas points out that mass immigration from Latin America has sabotaged America’s working poor.
It’s more than a little bit weird that leftists, who describe themselves as the voice of the worker, select workers as their hated other of choice, and targets of their failed social engineering.
6) I believe in God.
Read Marx and discover a mythology that is irreconcilable with any other narrative, including the Bible. Hang out in leftist internet environments, and you will discover a toxic bath of irrational hatred for the Judeo-Christian tradition. You will discover an alternate vocabulary in which Jesus is a “dead Jew on a stick” or a “zombie” and any belief is an arbitrary sham, the equivalent of a recently invented “flying spaghetti monster.” You will discover historical revisionism that posits Nazism as a Christian denomination. You will discover a rejection of the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western Civilization and American concepts of individual rights and law. You will discover a nihilist void, the kind of vacuum of meaning that nature abhors and that, all too often, history fills with the worst totalitarian nightmares, the rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem.
5 & 4) Straw men and “In order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.”
It astounds me now to reflect on it, but never, in all my years of leftist activism, did I ever hear anyone articulate accurately the position of anyone to our right. In fact, I did not even know those positions when I was a leftist.
“Truth is that which serves the party.” The capital-R revolution was such a good, it could eliminate all that was bad, that manipulating facts was not even a venial sin; it was a good. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. One of those eggs was objective truth.
Ron Kuby is a left-wing radio talk show host on New York’s WABC. He plays the straw man card hourly. If someone phones in to question affirmative action – shouldn’t such programs benefit recipients by income, rather than by skin color? – Kuby opens the fire hydrant. He is shrill. He is bombastic. He accuses the caller of being a member of the KKK. He paints graphic word pictures of the horrors of lynching and the death of Emmett Till and asks, “And yousupport that?”
Well of course THE CALLER did not support that, but it is easier to orchestrate a mob in a familiar rendition of righteous rage against a sensationalized straw man than it is to produce a reasoned argument against a reasonable opponent.
On June 16, 2014, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank published a column alleging that a peaceful Muslim was nearly verbally lynched by violent Islamophobes at a Heritage Foundation-hosted panel. What Milbank described was despicable. Unfortunately for Milbank and the Washington Post‘s credibility, someone filmed the event and posted the film on YouTube. Panel discussants, including Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, made important points in a courteous manner. Saba Ahmed, the peaceful Muslim, is a “family friend” of a bombing plotter who expressed a specific desire to murder children. It soon became clear that Milbank was, as one blogger put it, “making stuff up.”
Milbank slanders anyone who might attempt analysis of jihad, a force that is currently cited in the murder of innocents — including Muslims — from Nigeria to the Philippines. The leftist strategy of slandering those who speak uncomfortable facts suppresses discourse and has a devastating impact on confrontations with truth in journalism and on college campuses.
2 & 3) It doesn’t work. Other approaches work better.
I went to hear David Horowitz speak in 2004. My intention was to heckle him. Horowitz said something that interrupted my flow of thought. He pointed out that Camden, Paterson, and Newark had decades of Democratic leadership.
I grew up among “Greatest Generation” Americans who had helped build these cities. One older woman told me, “As soon as I got my weekly paycheck, I rushed to Main Ave in Paterson, and my entire paycheck ended up on my back, in a new outfit.” In the 1950s and 60s, my parents and my friends’ parents fled deadly violence in Newark and Paterson.
Within a few short decades, Paterson, Camden, and Newark devolved into unlivable slums, with shooting deaths, drug deals, and garbage-strewn streets. The pain that New Jerseyans express about these failed cities is our state’s open wound.
I live in Paterson. I teach its young. My students are hogtied by ignorance. I find myself speaking to young people born in the U.S. in a truncated pidgin I would use with a train station chai wallah in Calcutta.
Many of my students lack awareness of a lot more than vocabulary. They don’t know about believing in themselves, or stick-to-itiveness. They don’t realize that the people who exercise power over them have faced and overcome obstacles. I know they don’t know these things because they tell me. One student confessed that when she realized that one of her teachers had overcome setbacks it changed her own life.
My students do know — because they have been taught this — that America is run by all-powerful racists who will never let them win. My students know — because they have been drilled in this — that the only way they can get ahead is to locate and cultivate those few white liberals who will pity them and scatter crumbs on their supplicant, bowed heads and into their outstretched palms. My students have learned to focus on the worst thing that ever happened to them, assume that it happened because America is unjust, and to recite that story, dirge-like, to whomever is in charge, from the welfare board to college professors, and to await receipt of largesse.
As Shelby Steele so brilliantly points out in his book White Guilt, the star of the sob story my students tell in exchange for favors is very much not the black aid recipient. The star of this story, still, just as before the Civil Rights Movement that was meant to change who got to take the lead in American productions, was the white man. The generous white liberal still gets top billing.
In Dominque La Pierre’s 1985 novel City of Joy, a young American doctor, Max Loeb, confesses that serving the poor in a slum has changed his mind forever about what might actually improve their lot. “In a slum an exploiter is better than a Santa Claus… An exploiter forces you to react, whereas a Santa Claus demobilizes you.”
That one stray comment from David Horowitz, a man I regarded as the enemy, sparked the slow but steady realization that my ideals, the ideals I had lived by all my life, were poisoning my students and Paterson, my city.
After I realized that our approaches don’t work, I started reading about other approaches. I had another Aha! moment while listening to a two minute twenty-three second YouTube video of Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue’s castigation of greed. The only rational response to Friedman is “My God, he’s right.”
1) Hate.
If hate were the only reason, I’d stop being a leftist for this reason alone.
Almost twenty years ago, when I could not conceive of ever being anything but a leftist, I joined a left-wing online discussion forum.
Before that I’d had twenty years of face-to-face participation in leftist politics: marching, organizing, socializing.
In this online forum, suddenly my only contact with others was the words those others typed onto a screen. That limited and focused means of contact revealed something.
If you took all the words typed into the forum every day and arranged them according to what part of speech they were, you’d quickly notice that nouns expressing the emotions of anger, aggression, and disgust, and verbs speaking of destruction, punishing, and wreaking vengeance, outnumbered any other class of words.
One topic thread was entitled “What do you view as disgusting about modern America?” The thread was begun in 2002. Almost eight thousand posts later, the thread was still going strong in June, 2014.
Those posting messages in this left-wing forumpublicly announced that they did what they did every day, from voting to attending a rally to planning a life, because they wanted to destroy something, and because they hated someone, rather than because they wanted to build something, or because they loved someone. You went to an anti-war rally because you hated Bush, not because you loved peace. Thus, when Obama bombed, you didn’t hold any anti-war rally, because you didn’t hate Obama.
I experienced powerful cognitive dissonance when I recognized the hate. The rightest of my right-wing acquaintances — I had no right-wing friends — expressed nothing like this. My right-wing acquaintances talked about loving: God, their family, their community. I’m not saying that the right-wingers I knew were better people; I don’t know that they were. I’m speaking here, merely, about language.
In 1995 I developed a crippling illness. I couldn’t work, lost my life savings, and traveled through three states, from surgery to surgery.
A left-wing friend, Pete, sent me emails raging against Republicans like George Bush, whom he referred to as “Bushitler.” The Republicans were to blame because they opposed socialized medicine. In fact it’s not at all certain that socialized medicine would have helped; the condition I had is not common and there was no guaranteed treatment.
I visited online discussion forums for others with the same affliction. One of my fellow sufferers, who identified himself as a successful corporate executive in New Jersey, publicly announced that the symptoms were so hideous, and his helpless slide into poverty was so much not what his wife had bargained for when she married him, that he planned to take his own life. He stopped posting after that announcement, though I responded to his post and requested a reply. It is possible that he committed suicide, exactly as he said he would — car exhaust in the garage. I suddenly realized that my “eat the rich” lapel button was a sin premised on a lie.
In any case, at the time I was diagnosed, Bush wasn’t president; Clinton was. And, as I pointed out to Pete, his unceasing and vehement expressions of hatred against Republicans did nothing for me.
I had a friend, a nun, Mary Montgomery, one of the Sisters of Providence, who took me out to lunch every six months or so, and gave me twenty-dollar Target gift cards on Christmas. Her gestures to support someone, rather than expressions of hate against someone — even though these gestures were miniscule and did nothing to restore me to health — meant a great deal to me.
Recently, I was trying to explain this aspect of why I stopped being a leftist to a left-wing friend, Julie. She replied, “No, I’m not an unpleasant person. I try to be nice to everybody.”
“Julie,” I said, “You are an active member of the Occupy Movement. You could spend your days teaching children to read, or visiting the elderly in nursing homes, or organizing cleanup crews in a garbage-strewn slum. You don’t. You spend your time protestingand trying to destroy something — capitalism.”
“Yes, but I’m very nice about it,” she insisted. “I always protest with a smile.”
Pete is now a Facebook friend and his feed overflows with the anger that I’m sure he assesses as righteous. He protests against homophobic Christians, American imperialists, and Monsanto. I don’t know if Pete ever donates to an organization he believes in, or a person suffering from a disease, or if he ever says comforting things to afflicted intimates. I know he hates.
I do have right-wing friends now and they do get angry and they do express that anger. But when I encounter unhinged, stratospheric vituperation, when I encounter detailed revenge fantasies in scatological and sadistic language, I know I’ve stumbled upon a left-wing website.
Given that the left prides itself on being the liberator of women, homosexuals, and on being “sex positive,” one of the weirder and most obvious aspects of left-wing hate is how often, and how virulently, it is expressed in terms that are misogynist, homophobic, and in the distinctive anti-sex voice of a sexually frustrated high-school misfit. Haters are aware enough of how uncool it would be to use a slur like “fag,” so they sprinkle their discourse with terms indicating anal rape like “butt hurt.” Leftists taunt right-wingers as “tea baggers.” The implication is that the target of their slur is either a woman or a gay man being orally penetrated by a man, and is, therefore, inferior, and despicable.
Misogynist speech has a long tradition on the left. In 1964, Stokely Carmichael said that the only position for women in the Civil Rights Movement was “prone.” Carmichael’s misogyny is all the more outrageous given the very real role of women like Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Fannie Lou Hamer.
In 2012 atheist bloggers Jennifer McCreight and Natalie Reed exposed the degree to which misogyny dominates the New Atheist movement. McCreight quoted a prominent atheist’s reply to a woman critic. “I will make you a rape victim if you don’t fuck off… I think we should give the guy who raped you a medal. I hope you fucking drown in rape semen, you ugly, mean-spirited cow… Is that kind of like the way that rapists dick went in your pussy? Or did he use your asshole… I’m going to rape you with my fist.”
A high-profile example of leftist invective was delivered by MSNBC’s Martin Bashir in late 2013. Bashir said, on air and in a rehearsed performance, not as part of a moment’s loss of control, something so vile about Sarah Palin that I won’t repeat it here. Extreme as it is, Bashir’s comment is fairly representative of a good percentage of what I read on left-wing websites.
I could say as much about a truly frightening phenomenon, left-wing anti-Semitism, but I’ll leave the topic to others better qualified. I can say that when I first encountered it, at a PLO fundraising party in Marin County, I felt as if I had time-traveled to pre-war Berlin.
I needed to leave the left, I realized, when I decided that I wanted to spend time with people building, cultivating, and establishing, something that they loved.
Another related piece worth reading is by Dr. Tim Ball – A Climate Story That Must Be Told
Type / missing words between “hands of” and “I highly”
climate skeptics suffer at the hands of I highly recommend it,
That’s what getting a phone call in the middle of editing does…fixed thanks.
Hitler was Christian, and yes National Socialist Germany was a Christian nation.
Sorta. Hitler, as an Austrian, was raised Catholic, but was never observant as an adult. His party had elements that sponsored neo-pagan religion, and he personally put all German churches under the close control of his party apparatus. By some standards, Stalin was more of a Christian than Hitler, having studied (briefly) for the priesthood, and put the Orthodox under less control than the National Socialists.
From the Wiki;
“In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, Hitler used the words “God”, “the Creator”, “Providence” and “the Lord”.[18][19][20][21] He outlines a nihilistic vision, describing human history as a constant racial struggle for supremacy.[22] He criticized the churches for not knowing the “racial problem” and declares himself in favour of separation of church and state.[23][24] Officially, the Nazi party endorsed what it termed “Positive Christianity” which removed the religion of its Jewish origins, set up Hitler as a messiah, and did not require the belief in the divinity of Christ.[25][26][23][27] In practice, Hitler’s regime oppressed the churches, and worked to reduce the impact of Christianity on society.[28]
Hitler was hesitant to make public attacks on the Church for political reasons,[29] but generally permitted or encouraged his inner-circle of anti-church radicals such as Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann to carry out Nazi oppression of the churches.[30] His remarks to confidants, as described in the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer,[31] and transcripts of Hitler’s private conversations recorded by Martin Bormann in Hitler’s Table Talk, indicate anti-Christian beliefs …”
Hitler was no Christian, David. He set out to destroy the Church, which wasn’t very far down his priority list from the Jews. For more help with your ignorance about Hitler’s “Christianity,” see here: https://www.gotquestions.org/was-Hitler-a-Christian.html
Clearly no. Hitler and his follower had their own religion. But they deceived dumb Christians and used them. I can tell. I have heard enough from my conservative Christian ancestors – They considered him to be the Anti Christ.
Mods Please excuse my language but david you are a lying son of a bitch.
The story that Hitler was a Christian is a myth. It is true that Hitler was baptized. It is also true that he made overtures toward Christianity in order to appeal to Christians in Germany. However, his father was an atheist and he held atheist beliefs.
Almost as soon as he tossed out the Republic, he also tossed out his superficial deferment to Christian beliefs. Like Communists, he believe religion was a competitor to his own personality. One of his first acts was his “kirchenkampf” or church struggle. In this struggle, he took over much church property and arrested a number of church leaders. A clergy barracks was established at Dachau for these prisoners.
Amen, Climate Otter.
(Source: http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/churchhistory/godandhitler/ — edited slightly by me for readability)
Note: I could cite MANY historical records and eyewitness testimony, e.g., Dietrich Bonhoefferl’s Letters from Prison and Anna Hirschmann’s book, Hansi, the Girl Who Loved {later retitled “Left”} the Swast1ka about her indoctrination and membership in the H1t!er Youth, to prove the above. This is not the place to do that.
What David wrote is pure ev1l. How disgusting that he bears the name of Israel’s finest king, the “man after God’s own heart.”
Addendum to my comment refuting David (which is in moderation as of 5:41pm (I thought I dealt with every bad word! arrrrrgh))
For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus.
I. Timothy 2:5
There is a difference between the majority of citizens belonging to a religion and the government “being” that religion. While Europe is traditionally a Christian continent, its various governments (past and present) are not necessarily “Christian”. This is true of any place and religion. There are countries that are frequently referred to as “Muslim” nations that are ruled by governments that are fairly neutral when it comes to religion, and others that are ruled by governments that incorporate theology into their laws. (Not getting into various interpretations of theology and the like, simply making the point that majority religion is not synonymous with government.)
Most governments are influenced by the religion(s) of the founders and/or majority of citizens, but the majority are not actually BASED in/on the religion.
A few quotes to show that Hitler was anything but a Christian:
One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both.
— Adolf Hitler
Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another 100 years, 200 years perhaps. There is something very unhealthy about Christianity.
— Adolf Hitler
The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.
— Adolf Hitler
When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let’s be the only people who are immunized against the disease.
— Adolf Hitler
David, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian. Adolf Hitler was not. It is pretty easy to tell the difference.
Nazism didn’t have any roots in Christianity. Its origins lay in Germanic paganism and major non-religious German philosophers such as Hegel, Fichte, and Nietzsche. Their intellectual descendants brought the Nazis to power. From “Nietzsche and the Nazis”:
http://www.stephenhicks.org/nietzsche-and-the-nazis/
“These seven men [including Heidegger, Hauptmann, Schmitt, von den Bruke, and Spengler] are among the most intelligent and
powerful minds in Germany in the decade before the Nazis
came to power. They are leading figures in German intellectual
culture, spanning the arts, science, history, law, politics,
and philosophy. All of them, to one degree or another, supported
National Socialism.
I also want to suggest that the Nazi intellectuals and their followers thought of themselves as idealists and as crusaders for a noble cause. This may be even harder to accept. The National Socialists in the 1920s were passionate men and women who thought that the world was in a crisis and that a moral revolution was called for. They believed their ideas to be true, beautiful, noble, and the only hope for the world. Yes, Nazi ideology contained major elements of harshness, even brutality—but what if an important truth about the world is that it is harsh and brutal?
What if a culture’s brightest thinkers believe that democracy
is a historical blip? What if they come to believe that
the lesson of history is that what people need is structure and
strong leadership? What if they believe that history shows
that some cultures are obviously superior—superior in their
arts, their science and technology, and their religion? What if
they believe that history teaches that we live in a harsh world
of conflict and that in such a world strength and assertiveness
against one’s enemies are essential to survive? Or even more
strongly than that—that peace makes people soft and that it
is conflict and war that brings out the best in people, making
them tough, vigorous, and willing to fight for their ideals and if
necessary die for them?
I am suggesting that a set of ideals was primarily responsible
for the rise of Nazism. I think those ideals are extraordinarily
false and terribly destructive—but that is not how millions of
intelligent, educated, even in many cases well meaning
Germans saw them.”
Nazism was a rebellion AGAINST Christianity and roots of Western Civilization. History told the Nazis that democracy only lasted for a few centuries before failing in Greece and Rome (and now in the Weimar Republic). Martin Luther exposed the corruption in the Roman Catholic church and produced a century of religious warfare. Authoritarians from Charlemagne (aka Charles the Great) to the Kaisers had ruled the German people for a millennium.
David merely affirms the points of the author. I would call him a caricature if he was being sarcastic, instead of honest.
‘Hitler was Christian’
Somehow so typical left wing OT. Do you hate Christians? Leftism is about hate, not love.
david repeats an annoying historically illiterate bit of bigotry in repeating the falsehood Hitler was Christian.
According to those with no desire to understand.
Anyone who grew up in a nominally Christian country, is a Christian unless they publicly denounce Christianity.
Beyond that, any country that permits Christians to build churches is by definition a Christian country.
After reading that article, the first response comment is on grammar??!!! WTF?!
It’s called crowdsourcing – hopefully @Anthony appreciates those humble readers helping to remove small blemishes. I have done this before on other blogs and websites, privately through email if possible, if in the comments I’ll add “Feel free to remove this comment once corrected”.
Exactly, some people really can’t see the wood for the trees.
I found the article extremely moving and so much of it resonated with my own political coming of age.
Speaking of Calcutta,
I didn’t see any mention of the exploding cooking stoves that apparently routinely burn some Indian wives to death in the kitchen.
g
I thought the same thing! This was a well written, thoughtful article of importance and the comments are first about grammar and secondly another debate about Hitler.
i didn’t read this because it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with climate.. not all climate skeptics are on the ‘right’ i see at the end there she says something about the PLO.. Israel is a racist aphartheid state, palestinains are denied equal rights, citizenship, freedom of movement and or confined to bantustans that together comprise less than 10% of the overall territory israel/palestine.. so what if they are ‘terrorists’? if you were faced with that kind of oppresion youd be a ‘terrorist’ too .. meanwhile the us supports ‘moderate syrian rebels’ against the seculat assad regime.. why not support palestinians terrorists then? because the US is dominated by zionists.
sam … so, you didn’t bother to read it, but felt compelled to take the time to write a bigoted anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli screed, anyway! I think you would have greatly benefited from reading the article … several of the sections could be applied to yourself, especially #10.
sam,
You might want to try the read. I know it looks hard, but I know you can…
10 – Huffiness
7 – Leftists hate my [poor] people
5 – Straw men
4 – breaking eggs to make an omelet
“Truth is that which serves the party.” The capital-R revolution was such a good, it could eliminate all that was bad, that manipulating facts was not even a venial sin; it was a good. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. One of those eggs was objective truth.
3 – It doesn’t work
2 – Other approaches work better
and 1 – Hate
If you can’t see the connection between the explanation of this list and the whole liberal approach to “climate science”, you really may be beyond help. just my impression…
Sam, what a load of hate, prejudice, bigotry, and utter ignorance.
(Sorry Mods, had to be said after what he was allowed to say).
Correct, It doesn’t. But it has everything to do with climate science so called, which is the political manipulation of poor science into a tool to justify policy deployment.
The nature of the belief structures that enable the politics of climate change to flourish, are almost entirely of the Left.
Without the Left, AGW would be just another discounted discredited and refuted hypothesis.
>>Sam
>>Israel is a racist aphartheid state, palestinains are denied equal rights,
>>citizenship, freedom of movement.
Israeli Palestinians have the same rights as as Jws. They have full freedom of movement, full voting rights, Palestinian parties in the Knesset, full freedom of speech, and live under a police and legal system that if fair and equally to all. That is why they keep their heads low, and say nothing, because they know they are a part of the best governmental system in the entire Middle East.
You seem to confuse Israeli Palestinians with the Palestinian states. Since these enclaves are governed by Palestinians, they are un-democratic hell-holes of unemployment, poverty, brutality, arbitrary punishment, oppression, misogyny, and burning hatred. And instead of improving their lot, they foster a persecution complex, blame everyone else for their misfortunes, promote a deep hatred of their neighbours, and throw 2000 rockets a year into Israel.
The Palestinian states could be a New Hong Kong, full of vibrant production and wealth. They could be the New Lebanon, which was the Switzerland of the East until Palestinians and Hezbolah took control and destroyed the entire region. But no, they prefer to the Palestinian States to emulate the New Mogadishu, the New Khabul, or the New Yemen, because that is what their culture creates, wherever it goes – lethargy, hatred, poverty, oppression, and regression into a Dark Age. But it is never their fault…..
R
>>Sam.
Politicians like Angela Mekel have forgotten the lessons of the past.
Lebanon was the Switzerland of the East – the richest, most multicultural, most liberal, most vibrant nation in the Near East. When the Palestinians were displaced from fighting in the Israeli wars of self-defense, Lebanon, being a good Christian nation took in hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. Such a king gesture. But within 20 years thise same Palestinians had destroyed Lebanon in a civil war, and made it the poorest, most miserable region in the Middle East.
This is what Palestinians are good at doing. Think about it … what do they produce, bar poverty and misery? What do they export, bar terror and instability? What do you buy, with ‘made in Palestine’ on it? Under British rule the displaced Chinese of Hong Kong developed the richest region in the Chinas. Under self rule, the Palestinians have developed brutality and hatred into an artform.
The Israelies know the history of the region well, so is anyone suprised that they want to keep the Palestinians at arm’s length? Conversely, Angela Merkel is a typical lefty fantasist who knows nothing of history, and want to repeat the grave misfortunes of Lebanon in Germany. So I ask you – who has the right policy here, Israel or Germany…?
.
Incidentally, the Palestinians are not native to the region. The original Palestinians were the Peleset, and they came from Greece in the 13th century BC. They are cognate with the bibIical Philistines. Then the Arabs attacked and destroyed the region in the 7th century AD, and not only took the lands, but stole the name of the people too. So the Palestinains have the least claim to the region. The Dead Cities of Aleppo are a testament of the great wealth of the region, before the Arab ‘Palestinians’ destroyed the region – 800 towns and vilages around Aleppo all destroyed by the invading Arab armies if Muhummad.
And these majestic towns are still there today, you can still walk down their high streets and enter their magnificent churches some 1,200 years later – while the Arabs built their usual shanty towns in different locations for some reason. This is what Angela Merkel wants for Germany.
R
teapartygeezer and Leonard Lane:
It is disappointing to find your vile posts in a thread about hate.
You could have disputed the opinions from sam. These were
1.
2.
3.
Each of those opinions is capable of being disputed, but you did not dispute them. Instead, you accused him of being
and providing a
But sam gave no indication of any of those things.
sam supported the Palestinians: that is not – and cannot be – “anti-Semiticism” because the Palestinians are semites.
And it is not “anti-Israeli” to state facts about Israel. There are many racist states (e.g. Zimbabwe) but Israel has been the only Constitutionally racist state since the end of aphartheid South Africa.
It is not bigotry, and/or anti-Semiticism, and/or anti-Israeli and/or hate and/or utter ignorance to state undeniable facts.
In his introduction to the above article our host says i
It is sad that you two have chosen to spew hate instead providing rational debate.
Richard
ralfellis:
I congratulate you on your attempt to have a rational debate with sam. However, your arguments are not very rational. For example, you build an entire argument on your assertion that
Really? People who have lived there since “the 7th century AD” have less claim to the region than people who have flooded in since the 1940s?
I hope that by making this post I have encouraged sam to answer you, so I leave it to sam to address your other opinions.
Richard
>>Richardcourtney
>>Really? People who have lived there since “the 7th century AD”
>>have less claim to the region than people who have flooded in
>>since the 1940s?
If you knew anything about the region, Richard, you would know that Judaeo-Israel was the Israelite-Jwish homeland from around 1200 BC to AD 70, when they were all evicted by the Romans after the Jwsh revolt. And those who remained were evicted after the Bar Kochbar uprising against Rome in the 2nd century.
(Although I have some sympathy with the Romans, because the Jws refused to bow to Rome and were not good Romans. Now if you say the Romans had no right to take over Europe, then the Jwsh resistance should be praised. But if you think that greater Europe was much better off under enlightened Roman administration, then the Jws should be condemned. The absurdity of the Jwsh rebellion against Rome is perfectly summed up in the film ‘Life of Brian’.
.
And so the Jws became a stateless people who were kicked from pillar to post all around Europe for the next 1,800 years or so. Under the circumstsnces, it was only right and proper for them to be allowed to return to what was a barren and upopulated region at that time, in comparison to now.
The only bone of contention was a few displaced Palestinians. Bot none of the liberal media ever complain about the 500,000 Jws of who were brutaIIy kicked out of Iraaq at the same time, or the 300,000 Jws of North Africa who were similarly sIaughtered and displaced at the point of a gun. No, the media never complain about them, because Israel did the right thing and took in these communities. Conversely, the surrounding Muslim nations deliberately refused to take in any Palestinians, in the same way that Saudi Arabia is currently refusing to accept any displaced Syrians.
So the only people who will help displaced are Christian Europeans, while the Gulf States refuse to help their co-religionists. Why? Just as now, in the 1940s it was iin order to foster an international refugee situation in Israel, for political gain. In fact, Jordan bombed its 200,000 Palestinians back into the West Bank on Black September. Remember that? Where is the condemnation of Jordan, for ethnically cleansing all its Palestinians at the point of a gun and howitzer??
Our politicians and media need to brush up on their history, because without an understanding of the history of the region, every peace effort is doomed to failure.
Ralph
These are some of the Dead Cities of Aleppo, which were destroyed when the army of the warlord called King Muhammad invaded Syria (as he was known in Mesopotamia). They demonstrate the great wealth of the region, before the comming of the lethargy and mis-rule that is endemic within Islam.
And another affirmation of the author’s article. It appears the left is incapable of not acting out the very points she raised.
sam, if you would take the time to learn the truth, as the person the author wrote about did, you will find out that your hate filled rant has nothing to do with reality.
Sam
You are correct.
Ignore the rubbish below.
The key is simple- leftists hate human reason, that thing engrained in man alone as “the image of God”.
I am not sure that is true,John_Qpublic,since hate can exist without reason being involved at all.
I am the “black sheep” of my family who left the Democrat party around 1992,as I was seeing hate become a common theme in my family,always lurking just under the surface,that would erupt in the blink of an eye. My family HATED Reagan,because they say he is too old or is too dumb or whatever. It was just hate is what it was. Never mind that it was Regan who helped end the Soviet Union and change the poor economic to a much better one. He had inherited a mess from Jimmy Carter and the 100% Democratic majority,fight the negative press and hostility. He ended up being a better President,despite his flaws,than Carter,Clinton,and Obama.
Trying to have a simple debate with ANY of my leftist family members, quickly disintegrates when I try to show the BASE information,such as the FBI crime stats,the Founding fathers own words on the second amendment (the two men who sponsored the second amendment especially),or the NOAA,IPCC and other similar organizations that doesn’t agree with them.
I have a brother who REFUSES to read the FBI report Exonerating Officer Wilson,still insist that Brown had his hands up (The FBI,The state of Missouri,Forensic and the Democrat Prosecutor all said that was false).I can’t respect him when he is that irrational,doesn’t debate honestly or stick with the topic. The same brother who REFUSES to accept the obvious self defense claims by Zimmerman when he shot the man who was beating his head in. I tried to show him the dispatchers report and Martins own words making it clear he went after Zimmerman,far from his apartment to the area near Zimmerman’s car.
In the end I say very little anymore, as they are too far gone in their hate and ideology. They have no room for doubt or respect.
That’s pretty much why I stopped discussing politics with most anyone, especially online.
Anyone with that kind of irrational hate I refuse to be around, family or not.
And I don’t regret it one bit.
Martin Bashir is back at the BBC once more, reporting on religious affairs.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/26/martin-bashir-returns-to-bbc-to-cover-religious-affairs
I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush but it has been my experience that the more strident left wingers are very tolerant of other people views, provide they coincide with their own.
Tonyb
I have never understood how someone can say something so vile and still be employed, particularly in a highly visible position. Then again, he was targeting the “right” (no pun intended) victim: a woman who dared to be conservative.
The hate for Palin boggles my mind. If you disagree with her or do not like her, fine. But hate?
Fun fact: A relatively short time (within a year or two) before Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate, a prominent women’s magazine (leftist, natch) ran a small story about women in politics, and how they were showing how it should be done! One of the people profiled? Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Glowing terms. I think she might have even been listed first, though that could also be alphabetical order (state).
I was a bit surprised at the time that they were being so effusive about a Republican. They made up for it after the nomination with plenty of nastiness. One of many reasons I no longer read “women’s” magazines.
Very true. The left claims to be accepting and tolerant of others, but they reserve the right to hate the “haters.” The problem is, they label everyone they dislike or disagree with as “haters.” And that allows them to feel good about hating them. It also makes them no different than any hate group that has ever existed because even the most vile hate groups in history only hated the people they disliked or disagreed with.
….Also very tolerant if the new pet favorite is going to help shut down their enemies. Even if that new pet will ultimately eat the fool who thinks they own the pet.
@AllyKat, your memory is good regarding Gov Sarah Palin. I also recall some articles speaking of her as a model for feminists gaining power in government. There was, I believe, even a cover picture on some magazine with a caption that implied something like: Coldest State, Hottest Governor. How utterly sad and tragic that she was to be savagely assaulted by the same feminist groups when she was chosen to stand as VP candidate. The vomit inducing vitriol of Martin Bashir was indeed so vile that he ought never to be heard of again, except the leftists have again given him a place of honor at BBC.
Fabulous Post. Per Ms. Goska’s #3 and #1- Jesus Christ is the greatest Revolutionary ever. In the caste-ridden society of the Roman Empire he dared to teach that every human being, rich or poor, black or white, slave or free, was valuable and worthy of love and respect because they were created in “the image of God”. That revolutionary idea eventually turned much of the world upside down, and still does it today.
Jesus also elevated the individual, a potential member of God’s Kingdom, above the society the Roman Empire foisted on it’s subjects.
Obviously, such diametrically opposite views regarding individuals would cause extreme political conflict.
Beware of those, even today, who preach fondly of the collective rather than the individual.
correction: it’s to its
Sorry but the “hate of human reason” is not monopolized by the Left — quite the contrary: National Socialism, a paragon of the sorts of “conservative” values so popular with some Republicans at the moment, was founded upon the Irrational. The Irrational appeals, fundamentally, to Fear of Others (xenophobia, homophobia, etc.).
Climate Science(tm) likewise appeals to fear (thermophobia?), which again is a hallmark of bogus.
The United States, you may remember, was founded upon the principles of the Enlightenment. Our freedoms did not flow from monarchism, the “conservative” values then; our freedoms flowed from blood shed by treasonous, armed Liberals who posited a Radical interpretation of the rights of Man.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm
I would draw your attention to Items 11-18, 21 & 22. National Socialism is merely a different flavor of socialism, and clearly left wing. Stalin was the one that tried to claim it was right wing, because it was not INTERNATIONAL socialism.
I have been conservative since 1979. And politically active, volunteering in campaigns. I have *never* met one conservative who was in the least bit similar to what you casually accuse conservatives of supporting. You lefties are the history rewriting, corrupt, bigoted hate mongers. You are just another lefty reactionary twit.
Richie demonstrates the author’s point perfectly.
First off ignorance, in that he incorrectly lists Nazi’s as being creatures of the right.
Secondly he compounds ignorance by declaring that anyone who disagrees with him on the subject of illegal immigration is a racist.
If you disagree with him on gay rights, you are a homophobe and so on.
The left feel free to hate anyone who disagrees with them because in their minds they are perfect and hence entitled.
BTW, if you really want to get a leftist going, threaten their supply of OPM. (Other People’s Money)
“Conservative” simply means to conserve; it says nothing about what exactly is being conserved. A political conservative, in my opinion, is one that conserves the values of this nation, whichever is “this”. For the United States in particular in means comprehension of the Bill of Rights.
Kind of late to the party but OK.
Danuta Goska reminds me of several family members. One grandfather was a “red diaper baby”, whose father ran for mayor of Rock Springs, Wyoming on the Socialist Labor Party ticket. Some second cousins on the other side of the family were Birchers, so I have long familiarity with various flavors of radical politics.
In my experience, one must draw a distinction between the True Believers, and the casual adherents, who never get beyond the level of fashion. Most of the actual power of the True Believers comes from the people who think it is cool to be a whatever, though.
I’m speechless…
That’s a first! ;-))
Dr. Dave says, “I’m speechless….”
It really is so beautifully written that one can’t help but feel like a bumbling oaf for a few minutes after reading it.
I was really moved by this paragraph:
“Rolling his eyes, Prof. X went on to say that he was wary of accepting a position on this lowly commuter campus, with its working-class student body. The disconnect between leftists’ announced value of championing the poor and the leftist practice of expressing snobbery for them stung me. Already vulnerable students would be taught by a professor who regarded association with them as a burden, a failure, and a stigma.”
I think what she will find is that this “attitude” or outlook is so deeply woven into the history books, that even people who claim to be fairly egalitarian still are basically ignorant of the extraordinary contributions of ordinary people to all of the great branches of knowledge–to the point of being a majority.
And also the “Labour” parties are a misnomer. They are filled with slick globalists who want to import foreign work forces and hire foreign companies to handle vital local services.
Don’t underestimate John Q Public.
An excellent read, Thanks for this Anthony!!
Yes, a great article.! Actually a great journey.
My favorite bumper sticker I saw while attending Berkeley was:
MORE WHISKEY AND FRESH WHORES FOR THE MEN!
(… and this was in front of The Brick Hut — a lesbian cafe.)
what were you doing at a lesbian cafe?
har de har
It was close to my place, and had awesome, man-sized servings.
Funny side note: one morning the owner brought our breakfast came just minutes after we ordered. I was impressed, and suggested the place be called Lickity Split. She was not amused.
Was also known as the Dikey Diner by friends, associates and at least one ex-husband of the crew- accepted with varying measures of humor. Was a great eatery if one could handle the occasional blast of manhating. Thanks for the reminder of those days and times
Wow. Wow. The change for me started in 1991 with the global warming scam. Everything she says is true.
Thank heaven that I’ve never been attracted to the political left, even though many of my friends have.
ditto! I was also around plenty of them being that I grew up in San Francisco.
Thank you for sharing Dr. Goska’s story.
Nice diatribe on the issues of anger and closed mindedness in politics, something applicable to life in general, with no direct relevance to climate issues. Gun rights, abortion, any hot button issue suffers from lack of civility on both sides. We already know this.
So you’re happy to be part of the left wing genocidal hate-fest as described by Dr Goska?
War is coming because of this.
No direct relevance to climate issues? I’ve BEEN to realclimate. I’ve seen the anger and close mindedness there, in quantities high enough to keep me from going back. Calling this post a diatribe reveals your own closed mindedness.
@jorge, + many !
The division on climate IS political, Doug. Nothing. But. Political.
Think of that for a moment–if everybody applied the scientific principle correctly, alarmism wouldn’t exist and $Billions could be saved.
It would become science again.
The left hates for the sake of hating, and must have division to justify their hate. It’s that simple.
While there are definitely angry people on the right, the amount of vitriol you get from them is small compared to what the left considers standard fare.
My experience in a family with leftists and a church with leftists is a little different. They were outraged by female genital mutilation, the magazines that I saw some of them having mentioned female genital mutilation as among one of the things to be outraged about, and they believed in God.
Also, the leftists I was familiar with were outraged with Sharia and laws based on Sharia in countries where that was the law, due to oppression of women which included an attitude that allowed rape to be prevalent and punishing rape victims.
The most malevolent thought I ever had for dealing with Female Genital Mutilation in the US would be to sentence the practicioners to prison in the general population, and tell the other prisoners what they are in prison for.
outraged with Sharia
===============
This conflict with the narrative of acceptance and tolerance of people that are different than you, especially if that person is of another race or religion.
FGM is widely practiced in the Muslim world, though few people in the West realize this. Men would not consider marrying a woman otherwise. It goes right to the heart of the culture. It is difficult for westerners to grasp, because it is so foreign to our thinking. The women would otherwise be seen as “unclean”, sort of like marrying the town trollop.
The practice likely got started in harems, or in general where men are permitted multiple wives, as a means of controlling female sexual response. Soft of like Castilian Spanish, when the king speaks with a lisp, everyone speaks with a lisp. When the Sultan has his harem “fixed”, the general population have their wives “fixed”. Over the years everyone has forgotten how it got started, and is now practiced as a matter of custom.
FGM is not maintained by men. It is insisted on by elderly women for their grandsons and sons. The idea that men are in favour of this is maintained by men-hating western women, for the most part.
It is marketed as a ‘domination’ thing with the re-sewing of the woman, by herself, as providing a ‘new virgin experience’ to the husband each time they have sex. Nearly everywhere, FGM is demanded by, conducted by, and performed on females. It is upheld by the older women who refuse to allow their sons to marry girls who are not so ‘treated’. If you want to stop it, you have to talk to the women.
In many cultures the men are young when married and have no say about whom they are to wed or what her ‘condition’ will be.
It is said that after a religious group in Ethiopia were raised without it, ‘no one would marry them’. It the refusals came not from men, but from their grandmothers and mothers who dominate the choice.
Yet Male Genital Mutilation is widely practiced in the US, originally to stop young boys from masturbating (I can’t imagine why they thought that would work!)
C. in Waterloo: As for FGM being done by older women onto younger women: This gets done in places where women instead of men are blamed for rape, and where rape is common. I have seen a description of the FGM process in one of these places and it sounds to me like it is done in mean spirit, with older women not wanting younger women to have capability of experiencing sexual pleasure in ways unmutilated women can. And that men feared women who had such ability to experience sexual pleasure because they might be less loyal to their husbands. But that was in places where men were free to have sex with women other than their wives, even rape them and blame them for being victims of them.
So what is it, ,I wonder, that allows someone like Dr. Danusha V. Goska to “see the light” while so many others never do.
Here is another leftist, appalled at the election of Trump, blaming the left for his win, for reasons familiar to all here that have nothing at all to do with Trump. But he does it with such passion it is worth a look. It is especially worth sharing with any of your leftist friends and any on-line name callers you encounter. Avoid, however if offended by F-bombs.
Hope you realise that Jonathan Pye is satirical comedian whose routine is pretending to be an on-the-spot TV reporter pretending to engage in conversation via an ear-piece with his producer in the studio.
Thanks Tony. I didn’t realize that but it does explain why the camera man was there. In any case, he hits the nail so squarely on the head that if it was intended as satire, it was completely lost on me and those I’ve shared it with.
That was very good. Crude, but as true a you can get. The leftists made Trump win.
From reading various bits and pieces of clues I think the Donald read the winds just right. The Left and Foolery didn’t even visit the swing states, thank God. And every where Bilary went she had to haul celebrities along to drag in a relatively few people to campaign events. Like every good salesman Trump believed in what he was saying and knew it was what many people, outside of his ardent supporters, wanted. I think he figured out after the first Republican debate that he could win and went right on doing the right stuff to win.
Every time someone on the left opened their mouths they converted another vote for Trump.
These days those aren’t even F bombs anymore. The language that the left uses these days is more vile then ever before and a lot more threatening. Oh and for the guy’s sake I hope he didn’t have a heart attack but overall he hit it spot on.! Frankly I hope the left doesn’t listen I also wonder what he feels like 45 days after Trump got in because it sure looks like the left hasn’t listened to a word he said!
Why should they?
The Left (leaning heavily Marxist/Socialist Progressive these days) has no more intent on participating in the Constitutional Republic than do Middle Eastern nations bent on the total annihilation of Israel.
We have plenty of enemies to love.
“So what is it, ,I wonder, that allows someone like Dr. Danusha V. Goska to “see the light” while so many others never do.”
There’s three kinds of left: The elite (which IMO most leftists imagine themselves to be), the proletariat, and finally the occasional genuine article, someone who DOES charity not merely wish for it at government expense.
The most disruptive among the left is not the right, but the genuine article, the person who quietly makes the world a better place. It shames and makes guilty those who proclaim these virtues but do not possess them or practice them. Shame and guilt are powerful forces.
Ultimately it is all Malthusian anyway as she identifies. Competition for resources means that you must be deprecated in some way. As the internet is mostly just words (and YouTube videos) that becomes the weapon of choice. Since I cannot actually hurt you, or you me (sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me), what remains is to discourage you from trying. Thus bullying.
Well written.
Wow! Well said.
I would like a caveat. That is, not all on the left fit the far left paradigm so well described here.
Perhaps we need a new scale…a leftist/rightist pH. Logarithmic might be appropriate to describe how things get out of control so quickly by some.
My expectation is that 80% or so of all folks fall around the mean. Unfortunately we disproportionately are subjected to the invective/ignorance of the 10% on each end of the curve.
I am pleased that most here are in the reasoning/polite middle.
There is much pressure on the left to adhere to an entire ‘suite of beliefs’. Sort of like, ‘if you are pro-choice, then surely you are against climate change denial, the Second Amendment … ‘ You get the idea. My spouse once joined a city’s Status Of Women group, hoping to enjoy some conversation related to the status of women. Well ahem, that didn’t last long as the discussions were clearly around an entire ‘suite of beliefs’ …
One must step lightly, or better, not step at all, to avoid an accusation of ‘elitism’. Kiss Of Death. Worse than ‘denier’.
The Communists pose their views surreptitiously.
It is almost always hidden in ostracism, in embarrassment – the underlying message is: “Only the ignorant or malevolent believe that, so you should believe this.”
It is all about virtue and unvirtue. Good and bad. It is all simply a recreation of good and evil. It is all about copying God.
Now, after reading this essay, listen to any progressive message. It is all statements of belief from True Believers, or someone mimicking a statement from a True Believer.
This is why you cannot have a reasonable argument or intelligent discussion.
I believe there is a reasonable Democrat position / liberal position, but that has been hijacked.
I disagree to an extent. First you must define left and right
I would put for the left -communism, socialism, feudalism, autocracy (including religious autocracy as with Islam), and dictatorship.
On the right I would put- democracy,freedom, free speech, capital ownership and individual rights.
I would suggest that there is a bell curve in each wing with an overlap straddling the dividing line between the wings. That overlap is in the range 30-50% of the total. I suggest that the peak or mean of the two bell curves moves from time to time so that more or less fall within each wing.
With Obama, the EU, voting in Canada, Australia, central and south America and even in Africa there was been a majority in the left wing side with an increase in the extremes of the left wing. Switzerland is the most democratic of countries with their direct democracy political system. But even, there as a result of some referenda, and parliamentary acts there has been a move towards the left.
Brexit, and the election of Trump are signs of a move away from the left towards a more normal status but the far left are fighting with all their tricks to retain or regain their power. Unfortunately, if democracy is not upheld dictatorship will be the result. That is where the EU is/was headed. Election of Clinton would lead to autocracy.
Your alignment is sort of how it breaks out politically but identifying the fundamental is important and maybe not easy. I’ve been working on it for years.
I think ultimately it is simply whether you believe you are better off on your own or in a herd. If you believe yourself to be weak, you seek a herd to protect you. But the herd is dangerous at the edges so there is constant jockeying to push herd members to the edge to be eaten by predators. You can see this in blogs; leftists will turn on each other and attack each other with more vitriol than is the case when they routinely attack the right wing, or the most feared enemy of all, libertarians.
Power is life, power is security. So while seeking a herd, it is preferable to be the herdmaster, the shepherd, in charge of the herd and thus immune from this competition. You cannot be “voted out” if you own the herd. That is why so many People of the Left seek followers, on Twitter, Facebook or Huffington Post. More is better, more is safety and security. But people are not by nature docile herd animals and must be constantly prodded to remain in the herd. “Everything not compulsory is forbidden” (T.H. White in “Once and Future King”).
Libertarians ignore the herd except for the obvious nuisance of living too close to one. Since they don’t form groups, it is improper to treat them as a “group” other than for convenience of discussion. Some libertarians will become predators, others will become protectors, yet others become ice road truckers in Canada.
The right wing includes predators; lions and tigers and bears oh my! They form small alliances or none at all. This is why the language of the left is opposed to predators: Kings and Capitalists. And yet, how different is the elite of the left; the shepherds that subsist on the labors of the left? It is more honorable to be a proper Capitalist than a pretender; with the entrepreneur you know what you are getting and you know what you are giving. It’s a trade. With the pretender you have little idea what you are actually giving up, or getting, by being protected or having a noisy Social Justice Warrior complaining about Hugh Mungus in Seattle.
In the movie, “American Sniper”, the young Chris Kyle is taught the concept of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Sheepdogs are likely to be libertarian; self-guided, principled, found in the vicinity of sheep but themselves neither sheep nor wolf. The context is that a fight had broken out at school and Chris Kyle intervened against a bully, the only circumstance his father would allow physical violence was in the protection of someone else.
It’s a pity she did’t wise up sooner. All those wasted years.
Better late then never as the old saw goes.
Regret is a powerful word. Regret often initiates a change in a person and they end up achieving much more if not for the regret. This could be one of those moments where her regret may make her a voice for future reformed leftists and hence her years were not wasted, it may have created a greater person for it who will make a substantial dent on the future young and old.
I admire her for her courage and words, and putting it out there.
“It astounds me now to reflect on it, but never, in all my years of leftist activism, did I ever hear anyone articulate accurately the position of anyone to our right. In fact, I did not even know those positions when I was a leftist.”
I think this is very common for those on the Left. Why would you study your moral inferiors, they say.
She mentioned Archie Bunker. I remember the show. The writers would have him express a conservative viewpoint but then give him a stupid reason for holding it.
Yes, Archie was always depicted as the misanthrope, a man clinging to a past that no longer held validity in the new world.
Then the Hippie son-in-law “Meathead” would quote a liberal or socialist author and they hit the applause lights.
Edith and Gloria were both portrayed as “ditzy, but good-hearted” and thoroughly liberated, though unsure of their new status.
Weird that I used to side with the hippy perspective, my heart was bigger than my brain at that stage.
Looking back on it, I see All in the Family, and MASH, and similar shows, as very influential on my young mind. This was the intent. TV and movies have intentionally moved us very far to the Left, while trying to seem totally innocent, just acting as if they are merely reflecting reality.
Last Dem, MASH was essentially hijacked by the guy who played Hawkeye. It was funny up to a point, but when he took over it became a sad ‘moral lesson’ evey episode. I have the whole lot, and get annoyed every time i watch it through and come to that series.
I suspect this is true of many series, although not as blatant.
BTW, US series, especially comedy, are very often moralistic. In the UK, they were much less so. I’m not sure now as I haven’t had a TV for nearly 30 years.
I could barely endure to watch the show, but Archie was my favorite character, even though I was as naïve politically as possible and held some lefty positions at the time. Archie simply made more sense in his basic views than Meathead or the ladies.
One could argue that it was an extremely sexist show. Both main female characters were vaguely idiotic. Sweet, but generally written as stupid. How liberating. /sarc
“Looking back on it, I see All in the Family, and MASH, and similar shows, as very influential on my young mind. This was the intent. TV and movies have intentionally moved us very far to the Left, while trying to seem totally innocent, just acting as if they are merely reflecting reality.”
Yeah, I never could watch MASH because it was such blatant anti-war propaganda. It made me sick.
The Left has been putting out harmful leftwing propaganda through Hollywood and television for a very long time, and it takes its toll on people’s thought processes.
The Left has control of all the means of propaganda in the United States. In the last few years, conservatives are trying to slowly pry their grip off, and keep it off our future. It’s going to take a while, but things are looking up because we have a guy in the White House who can fight this fight, and is going to do so.
MASH turns out to be Obama’s favorite sitcom*; that tells you a lot about the message MASH delivers.
(* And once I found that out, I quit watching MASH.)
The book was written by one of the surgeons. And the early years were reflective of the works of the author. But the latter years are just stupid.
I’ve seen several survey’s where self described leftist and self described rightists were asked to describe the positions held by the other side.
In every survey the right had much more accurate views of what the left believed.
In one way it’s pretty simple, if you are a rightist, you still get your news from left wing news, you get your education from left wing universities, etc.
For the left, it’s trivial, if you so want, to spend your entire life never hearing or talking to a rightist. If you get all your information from your left wing echo chamber, it’s easy to understand why it’s so distorted.
The left is a “thing” to be, the right is simply whatever the left is not; hence, could be almost anything (other than groupthink, herd or hive). While I can describe the left well, and the author Dr. Goska does a marvelous job of it, I cannot describe the right. I can even describe libertarian to a certain extent; it isn’t a philosophy per se it is just that I choose for me and you choose for you. But WHAT I choose for me could be pretty much anything, same with you.
The most libertarian nation on Earth was Iceland when I was there; it is also socialistic. But they choose it and refresh that choosing regularly and tend to be very polite about it. In other words, socialist but not “LEFT”.
It shows again that you should be very afraid of peoble who wants to save the world. The high goal make them blind for all the misery they cause.
This article needs to be posted on the front page of every newspaper on the continent.
Yeah, I know how that will go.
An excellent article by Dr. Goska. I never really thought about the extent to which the left is motivated by hate, but it makes sense now. Anyway we all need to make sure we don’t become the haters.
A little over a month ago I wrote a comment in which I expressed 1) how much left and green thinking people actually are supporters of this site and 2) my concern at the amount af left-bashing and green-bashing that I encountered here. While things have improved – Thanks Andy – I am still reluctant to encourage any of them to use this site as it at times is alienating and counter-productive.
thanks to the author for a courageous expression of her own journey
Les
It seems to me that the site has become more vocal and right wing over the years and views are often expressed very forcefully. It has the effect of reducing interactions from those with different opinions a number of who, whether you agree with them or not, have something interesting to say
nick stokes is practically the only representative these days posting here with alternative views.
Mind you, opinions seem to be expressed much more forcefully these days on a number of climate web sites that support the warmist viewpoint and you would have to be a brave person to venture onto them
Are we witnessing the end of tolerance as people fire off rapid unconsidered responses on electronic media instead of thinking about them first?
Tonyb
This is a microcosm of the country in general, and even perhaps of the western world. There is little room left in the middle. And the politization of climate ‘science’ has caused it to spill over into discussions where politics shouldn’t have any play.
In discussions outside of climate sites, if I even ask a question about the subject, I am immediately branded a “D*****” and a right-wing shill, and all discussion is shut down.
This is our world today.
Climate reason
Great comment, but no we are not entering a period of reduced debate. The comments on this site are very narrow and embedded. Belief systems are designed to entrap the mind.
An example is the carbon cycle diagrams of the IPCC. No proof, just a hand drawn picture and numbers that balance. Along comes the 30 sequential oco2 images that destroy that belief, and apart from myself not one soul on the face of the planet has discussed them, except myself. So called scientists included.
That is just one example an entrenched belief
How does real debate progress. It does not.
This site has tolerated some very good discussions of Christianity, and of population “control.”
The readers and commenters hold both positions in these two topics, and I have felt that the discussions have gone well.
Many who believe scientism or naturalism reject my Christian views outright, and are sure I must have no grasp of logic or science if I believe the Bible. I would suggest that the outright rejection of my belief system is a mistake along the lines of what this posted columnist says about liberals not knowing their opponents’ views.
Tonyb, a slightly different take. This climate ‘war’ has been going on for much longer than WW2. Lets postulate it started around Climategate in 2009. Now in war, there are three outcomes: winners, losers (surrender) and ‘armistice’ (Korea, which is just politically disguised winners and losers). The results are inevitably polarizing, and the debate ‘combat’ fields always narrow over ‘war time’. I find it unsurprising that fewer warmunists venture here; they know they would usually lose. Which means skeptics are winning the ‘war’. And since Deplorables voted in President Trump, literally not just figuratively. Regards.
It used to be that, in order to enter one’s own views into the public debate, one wrote a letter–an actual, physical letter of paper and ink–and sent it to someone, or to a newspaper. One had to think long and hard before making the decision to send the letter. I think it was better that way. Most of my really incendiary letters never got sent, and even the moderate ones went through one or more closely-read revisions. I even had to consider my prospective audience, which can be a sobering experience. Nowadays, opinions get dashed off so quickly the writer has no chance to think. The tone of discourse suffers–not to mention the content.
“I find it unsurprising that fewer warmunists venture here; they know they would usually lose. Which means skeptics are winning the ‘war’.”
I think that’s it. If CAGW promoters come on this website they will be abused by a few, but if they have any kind of argument, others will engage in their argument. Usually, they don’t have much of an argument. That is probably why they don’t come on here, as Rud says.
“Anyway we all need to make sure we don’t become the haters.”
That’s right. Fortunately, most conservatives are reasonable people. They think with their heads, not with their emotions. The left thinks with their emotions, which is why they act so outrageously when it comes to politics.
This is a great essay; one that everyone in the US should read. I do appreciate our host doing a re-post of this so that I got the opportunity to read it.
It is sad that the woman took so very long to wake up, but I am glad that she did. I realized the vile hatred of the left and the fact they think the ends justifies any means whatsoever a half century ago at the ripe old age of 17.
What has amazed me over the course of my life is that there have been so very many examples of socialism failing and destroying civilization — and yet the left can never acknowledge the many failures of their dreams.
One observer was writing about the total failure of the leftist welfare state to help the blacks in the US and he called it the “bigotry of low expectations”. I can not remember exactly who wrote that, but it may have been Dr. Thomas Sowell. I do know that he has pointed out that 100 years of slavery could not break the back of the black family but welfare did.
I don’t expect many to understand laissez faire or the fact that the free market gave us the industrial revolution, but surely even a leftist can see that governmental intervention always makes things worse. And brutal governmental intervention is the leftist’s goal.
Thanks for the post.
(Hope this don’t turn up twice, doncha just love Windows)
The cruel, heartless and unthinking ‘games’ of children. Parents know how children can be.
Lord of the Flies, tribes, my gang is better than your gang, I can get away with such-a-such because someone bigger and stronger is looking after me.
e.g Obama signing away millions $$$ in the weeks before Mr trump took over, Peter Gleick, Phil ‘something wrong’ Jones, Gavin on TV, 10-10, Clinton & McCarthy and how-many-more secret emails, every breath Mann takes, Green ‘we’re only kidding’ Peace right now, endless over-use of the Frack word etc etc etc.
Petulance, tantrums, dummy throwing, imaginations of cleverness.
Just general all-round childishness.
Trouble is, it gets really scary and dangerous when supposed adults do it.
Or is that too simple?
Thought so.
KISS KISS
philosophy. Here, she gives her top ten reasons. It parallels many [ if the trials ] -> of the trials and tribulations climate skeptics suffer.
It’s along list and it must have been quite a journey that the lady made. However, many of us have made that journey long time ago. In the place where I come from they say that if you’re 18 and not a socialist, then there’s something wrong with you, but if you’re 28 and still a socialist then there’s something even more wrong with you. For me the light came before I was 18 when Brezniev’s army boots trampled Dubcek’s reformers and the lefties’ apologetic reaction to it. I knew with total clarity that I did not want to have anything to do with ‘the left’ and held the whole ideology in utter contempt.
Good for you Ed. Many others followed the same path,.
Ed Zuiderwijk:-
I took this journey very early on while still a student and wrote this on Pointman’s website:
“Back in the mid 60s when I was in college we, the students, were given the task of a debate about the future direction of the UK. We were all on the same side – at least I thought we all were – slightly left-of-centre view. I was ‘volunteered’ to take an opposing view. How fortuitous that was.
Given 2 days to prepare I started talking to various people in the town to get their ideas. I soon realized that what makes sense now I had never even thought of. I listened politely and found my views slowly changing. These people lived in the real world, worked, paid taxes etc. and I did none of these things. I was privileged to be where I was and it was a sobering experience.
Come the debate all was well and all smiles until I began putting the other view. Within moments there was a baying mob in front of me trying to shout me down with one boy stabbing his forefinger at me like a gun. It was like a wall of hate. Shocking experience which cured me forever of leftish ideas.
I went on to read Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia. I am now an implacable enemy of Socialism.
I voted Brexit and would have voted Trump had I been American. Well done Americans!”
Humans reflect the image of God. His two prominent characteristics are justice and mercy. The leftists described here have let their God-given desire for justice, that is, the remediation and repair of the world’s ills, overrun any sense of mercy that may lurk in their souls. Mercy has apprehended the author of this piece and rescued her from the evil of a corrupted desire for justice. Welcome to the family, Danuska Goska.
Thanks for that. I just figured out what ‘The Quality of Mercy’ means.
I had another Aha! moment while listening to a two minute twenty-three second YouTube video of Milton Friedman responding to Phil Donahue’s castigation of greed. The only rational response to Friedman is “My God, he’s right.”
I like to say it this way: Liberals believe people are greedy because they are capitalists; conservatives believe capitalists are greedy because they are people.
The carrot is envy.
“You want what they have? Follow me.”
https://youtu.be/bUiF4_pnbDE
Yes, liberals (in the current sense) have elevated envy from a deadly sin to a virtue.
Can I just say, there is a difference between “Capitalism” and “Greed”. Think in terms of monopolistic or other predatory distortions of Capitalism.
Capitalism is the free and fair exchange of goods. Greed is manipulating Capitalism to your own benefit at the expense of society as a hole. For example, predatory pricing to drive out competition so that you can raise prices later or using government election donations to drive policies in favor of you over others.
We want to encourage free and fair competition — we want to discourage anti-competitive greed.
Predatory pricing can only work when you have a government backing you.
The same goes for monopoly in general.
These actions don’t always need a government backing you. A government can simply ignore the actions using a free market ideology of non-interference. However, most of the time, these actions are backed by judicious campaign contributions.
The left loves to castigate the “greed” of capitalists. As if wanting to keep what you have worked for is greed, but wanting to take what someone else has produced isn’t greed.
Its just jealousy.
Others have proclaimed that socialism promotes “freedom”. And that could be true. When you are supplied with resources that were produced by others, you no longer have to worry about where your next meal will come from and you are “free” to concentrate on whatever interests you.
On the other hand, the slaves who’s work is being appropriated for the benefit of others aren’t free.
And I know leftists who use the “Dead Jew on a Stick” metaphor.
…a particularly ugly metaphor it is. It propels the UN’s resolutions on Israel.
The left worships Jews too — just the wrong one(s). Mary, Marx and Einstein. Subconsciously, Freud. (:
I have no idea what you’re trying to say, Zeke. Maybe I don’t want to know.
Yes sir, jorgekafkazar. What I said is unclear and clumsy. Sorry.
1. It is a response to the rude remark in the above comment about the crucifixion. You can tell because it is indented.
2. Jesus is a Jewish man who celebrated all of the Jewish holidays, including Hanukkah. His followers worship him. >>> I am connecting that to the overawed reverence (or worship) in progressive circles of the following Jewish historical figures: Marx, Einstein and Freud. In fact, Freud had to leave his professorship in German-annexed Austria before the war. I am just ribbing them because they are worshiping the wrong Jews!
~~~~
Also notice the last remark in the article: “I could say as much about a truly frightening phenomenon, left-wing anti-Semitism, but I’ll leave the topic to others better qualified. I can say that when I first encountered it, at a PLO fundraising party in Marin County, I felt as if I had time-traveled to pre-war Berlin.” I find anti-Semitism, and the hatred of the state of Israel, to be irrational for Europeans and Americans because it is the only free and representative democracy in the whole area, and is a natural ally for us. Why does the left coincidentally share the trait of anti-Semitism with pre-war Berlin? Why is that?
Nothing unusual about the Left hating Israel, Zeke–they hate the free and representative democracy known as the United States of America just as much.
Consequently, they’re consistent.
The left have always hated Jews, because Jews have been able to prosper despite being oppressed.
The left has always hated anyone who didn’t need government to become wealthy.
Slightly off topic: Is the purpose of education to teach you read and write and add and subtract, or to teach you to organize a boycott of Driscoll’s? There is a nice story http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2017/0223/This-man-has-created-a-different-kind-of-urban-school-for-students-of-color. A mother of a student says: “At this age, I’m not so worried that he understands phonics or can add or subtract. He won’t get this real education anywhere else.”
Dear mother, it is better to learn phonics and add and subtract early. If not, your child will continue this real education in jail.
The Left does not educate, it indoctrinates. Clearly.
Sheri
Bad news time, so does the right and the center.
But not with political morality.
There is not such thing really as ‘The Right’ – not in the same way there is a Left.
The Right is largely a creation of the Left anyway. Its defined as ‘bad people who aren’t like us virtuous folk’
The left is a worldview based on conflict and hatred: I have nothing but admiration for the writer of this piece, not because she has suffered, but because she has not only understood, she has elucidated.
The Right is what the Left calls anyone whose worldview is NOT based on conflict and hatred.
Many years ago I was accused by an American Lefty of being a ‘Male Chauvinist Pig’
The next girlfriend but one was a rather intelligent – if someone damaged – friend. I asked her what she understood by the term….
“That’s what a woman calls a man when she isn’t getting her own way”.
Right is what you are when you dare disagree with the Left.
““He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.” Anselme Polycarpe Batbie (19th century academic jurist).” In this case, republicain (civic virtue and the common good) as distinct from Republican (economics and individualism).
With age and self awareness, broadening of one’s encounters and sources, one may achieve what Ms. Goska has achieved and shared. We are beneficiaries of her outspokenness and willingness to share the message of love, hopefully forgiveness, optimism, and see ourselves as contributing to the building of something better than what we had experienced.
The sun is shining. The wind is strong and a bit brisk. I think I’ll go for a walk now. I feel motivated.
I went and pruned some fruit trees ( with a smile on my face ) and it was snowing.!
Polycarpe was right! An adult liberal, then is just a thirty year old who never grew up. Sounds about right to me.
Danusha – brave name for a girl.
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&q=goddess+Danube&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0
A very illuminating tale. I think Dr Goska deserves enormous credit for her honesty and bravery particularly as she will, undoubtedly, be on the receiving end of a very vitriolic response from her former allies. That takes guts! It is easy to be churlish about her belated ‘Damascene conversion’, as some previous commenters have been, but her story is worthy of the widest circulation. If it helps turn only one person away from a very poisonous life narrative then she is to be commended. Thanks Anthony. And take care Dr Goska.
Here Here
Thank you Mack.
Hear Hear!
Unfortunately I was unable to read all this personal confessing, but I wonder: do we have to be right-wingers to understand science? Folks, the crucial point is scientific attitude, not where we belong politically.
You don’t have to be a right-winger, I am a small “l” libertarian–unless one defines anyone not leftist as “right wing”.
Unable to read it? How unfortunate indeed. Is it a comprehension problem?
I only ask because either you lack comprehension or your question and comment are based on rather odd, illogical assumptions.
The Liberal Marxist/Socialist Progressives don’t use science in their understanding of climate, Odd…. to them, climate is a political cause that has become a religion (Godless, of course).
A very acute question. I am more and more coming to the conclusion that in order to totally misunderstand it, one has to be of the Left.
Yesterday I wrote a long diatribe about Leftism. I concluded, along with this poster here, and with others like Roger Scruton, that Leftism is a surrogate religion . It is a faith based world-view that defines moral stricture and structures, and is vigorously proselytising. Religion for people who don’t believe in sky fairies, but do believe in humanity as a separate species from Nature.
Science destroyed religion. Because it worked better than magic spells so its precepts were mistakenly held to be more true.
Marx et al realised that if they could create a religion based on pseudo science, it might do well. It did.
And that is in the end perhaps the answer to your question. The world-view necessary to do real science is not the Marxist world-view. If you espouse the Marxist world view as just another (limited) world-view then you can do science, but if you espouse it as Truth – and that is where most of the Rank and file Left, position themselves, you cannot do science in the way its normally done. It must become a tool of political and social thought.
Leftism is about changing the world. That is its fundamental paradigm. Science that doesn’t change the world in the way Leftism says it needs to be changed is bad science.
So, no, you dont have to be on the right to do good science, but if you are really stuck on the Left, you cant do good science – not as we understand good science.
Good science that attempts to arrive at, if not the truth, at least a slightly better approximation, relies on data to test theories.
Leftism is about the fundamental concept that truth is relative to the individual and to his cultural and linguistic norms. Ergo there is no objective truth, there is only what we believe. And that is where Leftism begins and ends, with the superstitious belief in magic thought, that if we all together now stop believing in capitalism, sexism, racism and indeed climate change it will simply disappear. Of course by talking in those terms at all we empathise the very things we profess to want to rid ourselves of.
(An apocryphal tale. Nigel Farage, at an open meeting speaking on behalf of his party for European exit, is asked by a member of the audience ‘what he thinks about gay marriage. Sharp as whip he replies:”I get between 60 and 100 letters a week as a member of the European parliament and leader of UKIP, and not one to the best of my memory has ever raised the question, and so my answer to your question of ‘what do I think about homosexual marriage?’ is that actually I don’t. Think about it at all. Perhaps I should but my constituents are not it seems very concerned, and my job is to represent their views, isn’t it”).
Leftism is all about emphasising lots of things it professes to want to get rid of, this making them appear to be real, even when they are not. It is almost entirely negative.
Science is about dreaming up new relations, new concepts, but not to get rid of the thing identified, but to create a new relationship between things that not only informs, but ultimately has predictive power.
Leftism is about creating the need to solve problems, in order to justify political action. Science is about trying to create solutions. That’s useless in a political context. If the Left solved all the problems (and we have given them enough dreary tedious time to do it: As Cherie Blair, wife of Tony Blair, champion of the New Socialism, and the then leader of the Labour Party said when she unexpectedly became pregnant again ‘We had forgotten how tedious labour could be”. Quite.)
Leftism is an endless search to discover problems that it does not solve, in order to have a perpetual revolution that keeps perpetual revolutionaries in power forever.
That is antithetical to a science: Once science solves a problem we move on. There are always plenty more problems.
Perhaps that is the difference between science and the Left
For science there are always new problems – far too many – and its business is solving them (e.g. with climate change: solving it is really simple, even if you believe in AGW, Build nuclear power stations. They are predictable in cost and performance very very safe very low environmental impact and emit almost no CO2 at all. A build program similar to what de Gaulle did in France in the 70s would see massive reductions in CO2, and cheap electricity. Job done. Instead we have a leftist solution. Virtue signalling ‘renewable’ energy that is massively expensive, and neither reliably generates electricity nor actually results in any significant CO2 reduction).
For the left there are never enough problems, and the solving of them is not on the agenda. Only the endless virtue signalling attempts to solve them.
Science has destroyed religion?
Not true by any stretch of the imagination.
I know that a lot of atheists like to make this claim, but when pressed, it’s pretty obvious that the atheists in question have no idea what religion is.
It’s like leftists who proclaim that they understand what rightists believe and then proceed to demolish these self generated strawmen.
I don’t see where anyone has claimed that only right wingers can do science.
Was it not Winston Churchill who said something like “if you aren’t left wing when you are young then you don’t have a heart; if you are still left wing when you are old then you don’t have a brain”.
Sad that so many won’t see it who should.
You want a good look at the state of either left/right politics or climate views, go read through political and/or climate related posts over on Quora. At least there are some conservative voices balancing the liberal ones. Not so much the case on climate – it’s a one-note site.
I grew up as an indoctrinated ‘red diaper baby’ in the fifties; both my parents were card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA. Every dinner-time was an anti-capitalist, pro-communist brain-washing session. All social justice activities (civil rights, early feminism, union organizing) were ancillary and subject to the cynical litmus test of whether such activity would further the communist cause. I spent my high-school and college years protesting everything from the Cuban blockade to the Vietnam war (NB: the anti-Vietnam war movement was engineered by young communists such as myself in order to defeat the U.S.and expand communist rule from North to South Vietnam;nothing else ). After college, and at the prompting of my parents, I spent 6 months touring the Soviet Union and eastern Europe (or the “Eastern Democracies” as they were euphemistically called). I returned to the U.S. a capitalist-loving conservative and never spoke to my parents about politics again; that was 45 years ago.
MarcL – thanks – great story.
You and Emma Goldman both had an eye-opening tour. Her book, My Disillusionment in Russia,” is her story of touring Communist Russia in 1919 – wow! a snapshot of the fresh nation!
“Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.
Mama’s gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mama’s gonna put all her fears into you.
Mama’s gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama’s gonna keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooh baby, ooh baby, ooh baby,
Of course mama’s gonna help build the wall.”
(Pink Floyd, The Wall, “Mother”)
Maybe that last line should be:
“Of course, mama’s another liberal.”
Very interesting. I considered myself a leftie (not a leftist because I never marched for anything!). Over time, since I started reading alternative media instead of the mainstream media, I have stopped being so. I haven’t got time to go into detail, but it was a process of finding out how much I was being lied to, and how these lies were being used to manipulate me and control me. What strikes me is how nasty and aggressive the leftist protesters are while the right-wing Trump supporters look like the sort of people I would invite round for a barbie.
Thanks JMH
There is a political circle. The extreme left and extreme right act similarly. It should be expected that those on the extreme left would find Trump more acceptable than George W Bush.
The argument that makes most sense here is that the left hasn’t been entirely successful. But the places which vote left most often are the most challenged places in the first place. It’s not that simple. Here in the UK the NHS and the welfare state are not anti-poor.
The idea that being left-wing and Christian is impossible is obviously wrong. Many are, even the Pope.
The idea that being left-wing and Communist is impossible is arguably correct. But there’s left -wing and extremist.
The extremist right-wing groups are just as hate-filled as the extremist left. But they aren’t mainstream. They are hard to find. The writer of this piece was already in the other extreme.
An easy example to show that most aren’t crazy on either side is to go the Guardian website and look at the comments on a religion article. There will be atheists calling Jesus a zombie. And there will also be atheists telling the first lot to be more polite and stop embarrassing themselves. And that’s on the internet. No-one is accountable on the internet so no-one is on their best behaviour.
Finally, the implied argument that one political solution is moral and others are not is – again – a form of extremism.
It leads to fundamentalism instead of engagement.
I agree that the extreme Right is just as bad as the extreme left. The comment sections of right wing sites horrify me—these people threaten death and espouse hatred as much as any leftist. When one points it out, one is called a Leftist, called a liar if they say they voted Republican their whole lives, accused of living in Mom’s basement and then there’s the pelting with profanity if the first accusations don’t work. Extreme behavior is a result of the country having very poor education, very poor social skills, and a media that thrives on bad behavior and glorifies it. Bad behavior is the norm. Is the Left the cause of this? It seems to hold the most examples, especially since the Trump election, but the Right is by no means kind when you get to the extremes.
Some political solutions are more moral than others, unless you are saying Stalin and George Washington’s politics are equal. That would be the definition of insanity. However, I have long argued you cannot take a country like China and impose capitalism nor can you take America and impose socialism. It has to move in that direction slowly. Morally, unless one espouses that freedom is not a desirable trait, capitalism and democracy generally yield the most freedom. Socialism, unless voluntary and well orchastrated, has much less freedom. Socialism is most easily destroyed, as is seen in Europe today where invaders preyed on the “nicities” of the Europeans and the idea of “fairness”. Socialism lacks grounding in the reality that life is not fair and life can never be fair. All systems in the end fail at some point and people are forced into dictatorships or work their way out of dictatorships. Humans are simply incapable of following one form of government for more than a few centuries and even then, the form is constantly pushed around and moved in one direction or another.
Socialism is never voluntary. At least it isn’t for those who have to foot the bill for it.
Please elaborate,…
“The comment sections of right wing sites horrify me”
Which “right wing sites” are you speaking about?
thanks
JW
Iceland is an excellent example of eyes-open, libertarian choosing socialism. Citizen participation in government is very high. I consider it impossible to export that experience to the United States or any nation that is not culturally homogenous, but it is possible in geographically and culturally isolated places.
Didn’t you mean, “…left would not find Trump…”
The shenanigans going on here now by “extreme” left did not happen after GW won.
“There is a political circle. The extreme left and extreme right act similarly. It should be expected that those on the extreme left would find Trump more acceptable than George W Bush.”
Yes, yes. The Russian communists invented the notion of The Right (nazis) to try to dissociate their nice, humanitarian (ha-ha) brand of Socialism from the nasty National Socialist version. Left and right aren’t ends of a spectrum; they’re like beads on a bracelet–next door neighbors. The true spectrum is Big Government vs. Small Government.
Give the man a banana!
In my book its a slightly different shade of that, its about where te power and authority, and also where the accountability realise.
Somehow the Left has become the main purveyor of the Big State principle that says that the central government is and should be responsible for everything that affects anyone’s life. Fascism – true fascism says more or less that governments should be small, utterly authoritarian and responsible to no one but themselves.
Libertarianism is the other option, The government should do the minimum necessary, with full accountability, to solve a problem at the most local level possible.
If you and your town dont like long haired hippies and you like wearing six-guns and stetsons, that’s your right, and you elect a sherriff to make it so and pass local laws.
Conversely if you really want a town consisting almost entirely of homosexuals, well just copy San Francisco. Its your neighborhood and its your choice. And unless its a federal matter, its no one else’s damn business.
Its not so much small state, as small central state. Because central state can’t make one size fits all legislation for everywhere that works effectively. Laws about dogs fouling pavements or burning wood in an open hearth maybe be relevant in NY city, but in rural Montana?
People work more effectively in smaller groups. Government should follow that, not try and change it. Its not about small government so much as devolved government. More local authority, less federal.
That way your kids can beat up the mayors kids and he gets the message
“There is a political circle. The extreme left and extreme right act similarly.”
Just who do you consider to be the “extreme right”?
The Right I associate myself with believes in personal freedom, including free speech, free enterprise, having the smallest government possible that can get the job done, balanced budgets, and the rule of law.
Is there anything extreme in my positions? I think most of those on the Right have these very same postions.
People such as “alt-right” are despicable. However one thing I have noticed is that while those who call themselves “populists” have economic policies that are indistinguishable from the socialists. They want high taxes on the rich with the money to be spent on people like them. They want government to control just about everything so that nobody is permitted to do anything that they disagree with.
All they differ on is social policy.
“People such as “alt-right” are despicable.”
I think this “alt-right” tag is just a device the Left uses to try to tie extreme, violent groups such as anti-govenment militias and the Democrat-inspired KKK to the Republican Party. The Republican Party has nothing to do with such groups, but the Left calls them alt-right in order to associate them with Republicans.
It’s all more propaganda and distortions of reality.
TA
CPAC addressed the so-called alt-right: it is nothing but leftists who hate the Constitution and free markets, but who use the term alt-right to deceive the press.
https://youtu.be/j3ENl9K1OCg?t=1m44s
While many “challenged” places vote in left wing regimes, however one constant is that except for a brief surge while the wealth of the few is distributed to the masses, the end result is always a situation where the poor are worse off than before the revolution.
In other places where leftists have been voted into office, such as many cities, the decline is inevitable even if it isn’t as quick. The more Other People’s Money available, the longer socialism can last. But the end result is still always the same.
MCourtney – Yes.
The original article (and many commentators in here) hold an extreme binary view of the world.
It ain’t that simple, and the etremely righteous at either end of the scale are largely ignorant, stubborn and extremely indoctrinated. Some are violent. All are unreasonable.
And it is so obvious the real answer lies somewhere in between.
World Far Left Movements have three phases: 1) feudalism; 2) Capitalism and lastly 3) Communism. In order to achieve these goals, World Far Left Movement must: 1) decimate Religion; 2) disassemble education into one of “indoctrination: 3) Capitalism and Finances (from Ludwig von Mises into a modified John Maynard Keynes “one government for all,” ; 4) Governance – an exponentially “top-down, command-and-control” bloated Washington DC We The Elite People of Culture of Corruption laying out “book-line-and verse” of how an 1) individual (absent their GOD) lives their lives and 2) the sacred union of one man +one woman =siblings procreating and lastly: 3) community – the union of Families and Communities organized into one cohesive, viable unit. These are what World Far Left Movements have as their “bucket lists” of things to destroy. Pray. Amen. God Bless America and ALL Americans. Read a Bible. NKJV. “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” (Proverbs 29:11)
Thanks, JS! That saves me a lot of typing! Well said!
Very apposite, js.
In all human endeavours, there are things that work and there are things that don’t work.
Pursue what works and don’t pursue what doesn’t work. Experiment if you must to determine this, but once something has been proven to fail 100 times over, why pursue it further.
I’m sure you can find 100 examples of different things that this simple truth is demonstrated by. It covers the whole spectrum of human activities.
Interesting story. The writer’s conversion involved a major epiphany. I never had anything like that; yet, I still walked all the way from the left to the right, without so much as lifting a foot.
I grew up in West Germany. When I first became aware of politics in the early 70s, Willy Brandt and then Helmut Schmidt were chancellors. Both belonged to the Social Democrats, the more left-leaning of the two large democratic parties. Brandt and Schmidt were genuinely trying to improve the lot of the working class. New schools, universities, and hospitals went up everywhere; education was free, and students from working class families received generous subsidies — which at the time the country could well afford, since industry was humming and unemployment was low.
In the way of foreign policy, Brandt and Schmidt adopted a more open realistic approach to dealing with East Germany and the Russians, which resulted in easier travel across the border — it became possible for us to visit our relatives in East Germany easily and frequently. The EU was expanded at a moderate pace; the former military dictatorships Spain, Portugal, and Greece were admitted, which helped them on their way to democratic future. At the same time, Schmidt paid a lot of attention to defence; the Bundeswehr was modernized and turned into the strongest force this side of iron curtain — save the U.S. army, of course.
Real environmental concerns were addressed; air became fit to breathe, and rivers fit to swim in again.
I liked those policies then and still do; I would still vote for each of them today. However, if I wanted something comparable today, I would not find it in any of the established parties. Sensible environmental stewardship has given way to CAGW hysteria, to which all major parties subscribe. The EU has become a bloated monster, and the Euro currency distorts and strangles economic development across the continent. The German army is a war museum on wheels. Candidates for political office are selected by gender and ethnicity, not actual ability and qualification. Out of the secretaries in Merkel’s cabinet of horrors, at the most two or three would have made the cut under Schmidt.
This “culture” has taken hold not only among the Social Democrats but across the political spectrum; indeed, the ostensibly “conservative” Christian Democrats have governed for most of the time since Schmidt’s abdication.
Across Europe, the only parties that do not subscribe to this collective insanity are the “populist”, “extreme right wing” ones. It is a startling realization that, as a Social Democrat sympathizer at heart, I would now have to vote “extreme right” in order make a statement and maybe get some semblance of sanity restored to the political process. So, I traversed the political spectrum without walking a step, simply by staying put, while the ground shifted under my feet.
Excellent.
X2.
A perfect summation.
Very good summary of the state of things.
One thing I noticed was that the two major protest movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wallstreet, had participants that acted in totally different fashion. I know of no instances of looting, trash, attempted rape or attacks by the Tea Party members but all of these actions were said to occur during the Occupy Wallstreet protest. The most I heard of at a Tea Party rally was someone claimed to have been spit on. Well, actually I did hear of one black man being beaten. He was handing out Tea Party literature and was beaten up by SEIU(Service Employees International Union) thugs, a leftist trade union.
Another example is the Pipeline protest that left so much garbage and filth in their camp that it was an ecological disaster in the making. And this from leftists concerned about the environment.
The author, Thomas Frank, later wrote Listen Liberal in which he makes many of the same points made above by Danusha Goska. It outlines how the former party of the people has betrayed those very people. link
The people weren’t voting against their own interest when they voted Republican. Voting Democrat was no more in their interest. The Democrat party didn’t believe it could happen but the people were smart enough to realize that. At some point they became so disillusioned that they were willing to bring the whole system crashing down around their ears. link I see Donald Trump as our last good chance. If he blows it, we are in deep serious trouble.
The left has become seriously removed from reality. It is now mired somewhere between psychopathy and schizophrenia. Its denizens are literally not in their right minds. link
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Dr. Goska said in the above article.
While I agree that the left is seriously removed from reality, I don’t think rises to a mental illness. Human beings have a remarkable ability to ignore reality and always have. They believe the lie far faster than they believe the truth. Just how far one has to go to be considered mentally ill is a good question. I choose to go with those who have true delusions (see people not there, hear voices) and leave out the usual “I don’t want it to be that way so it isn’t” crowd.
People with right brain damage exhibit many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Our education system causes us to become over-reliant on left brain processes thus depriving ourselves of our built-in BS detector (our right brain).
Iain McGilchrist goes a long way to explaining how the problems John Ralston Saul described in Voltaire’s Bastards developed. Given the extent and severity, I think it’s pathological.
They love their theories way more than they respect reality. That’s crazy.
” I see Donald Trump as our last good chance. If he blows it, we are in deep serious trouble.”
I think you are right. And we barely got Trump in Office by a small margin. We are *very* lucky. Let’s not allow this opportunity to slip away, although I expect Trump’s margin in the election will be much larger next time, if he is successful, which he will be.
I don’t think Trump is going to blow anything. I think the Left is going to do everything they can to cause Trump to fail, but I don’t think they can steamroll Trump like they have done Republicans in the past. As long as Trump hasn’t done anything illegal, and it doesn’t look like he has, because if he had, that would already have been made public, then Trump will ultimately defeat all the propaganda from the Left and the MSM, and the Left and the MSM’s credibility will suffer accordingly.
Trump said the Obama administration was wiretapping him before the election took place. The Left and the MSM are trying to make it out like this is not true, even though the New York Times and the Washington Post have both done stories months ago which said exactly that, that the Obama administration was wiretapping Trump.
The MSM claims there is no proof Trump was wiretapped, but when asked about that this morning, Kellyane Conway, Trump’s advisor, said Trump had access to information that noone else has. Trump isn’t a fool, although you wouldn’t know that listening to the MSM, and if Trump says Obama was wiretapping him, then Obama was wiretapping him, Watch and see.
I’m so excited that this has sparked a Congressional investigation. There’s no telling where this will go. The entire Obama administration needs to be investigated, including the IRS and all the other agencies that tried to intimidate and strongarm conservatives over the course of the Obama administration’s eight years. The Obama administration was and is a criminal enterprise that needs to be exposed.
Leaks have always been the case in DC, but the level and viciousness of the leaks over the last month has reached unprecedented levels.
I have great respect for Obama, as I do for firearms, as I do for power tools, and as I do for snakes. Neither he nor anyone else in the White House will have had to directly order the wire tapping. There will be plausible deniability. LOL
According to Judge Napolitano, a Fox News legal expert, the FISA law specifically exempts the president from having to get a court order to wiretap someone.
In other words, the president can order anyone in the world wiretapped without asking anyone’s permission, including the FISA Court.
I don’t know if records of such presidential wiretap requests are kept or required. The judge didn’t address that issue.
Here’s a little followup from Judge Napolitano:
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Judge-Napolitano-Presidents-Wiretap-Americans/2017/03/07/id/777309/
Judge Napolitano: Any President Can Wiretap Any American
“If he had wanted to, former President Barack Obama could have ordered a wiretap on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump — or on any American he wanted to, Judge Andrew Napolitano said Tuesday.
“If [President] Donald Trump wanted to, he could surveil anybody,” the Fox News senior judicial analyst told “Fox & Friends.”
“That’s directly in the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) statute, which after laying out a lot of detailed procedures about what the NSA (National Security Agency) is supposed to do says literally, notwithstanding all of the above, the president of the United States may on his own, conduct surveillance or order surveillance of any person in the United States upon the filing of a certification with the attorney general, who of course works for the president.”
There have been many people commenting that it would have been illegal for Obama to listen to Trump’s phone calls from Trump Tower, and to the eventual president’s in-person conversations, but that’s not true, said Napolitano.
“In my view, it’s immoral and profoundly unconstitutional and utterly wrong but it’s lawful because Congress has said it is lawful,” said Napolitano. “This was power given to every president from Jimmy Carter up to and including Donald Trump.”
end excerpt
“As long as Trump hasn’t done anything illegal”. That is going to be a sticky point. Trump is a sharp businessman, used to getting things done. If you dig hard enough, there will bound to be times when he would be found to have strayed over the line of legality.
In 2008, I stated that Romney was our last chance, and even he wasn’t a good one.
I fear that the left is too entrenched in the bureaucracy and that there are too many people who consider it their right to get a check from the government every month.
Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein were far ahead of their time and were taking a not insignificant risk when, in 1949, the wrote “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” for their musical South Pacific. The lyrics which are still applicable today follow:
“You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!”
I disagree completely. Never did I have to tell a toddler to hate or fear, but only to be nice and not be afraid. Left to their own devices, humans are brutal. You may have to be taught to hate the relatives, but hatred and fear are what one starts out with. Love and courage have to be taught.
I disagree with you on this. I’ve raised 6 toddlers, and taught hundreds of others, and you cannot label a child that young with the same emotions of hatred and fear as adults have. Toddlers (age 12-36 months) can appear to be “kind” and loving one moment and “afraid” or “mean” the next simply as a reaction to stimuli, because they are tired, or hungry, or self centered by default. They aren’t really emotionally mature enough to self actualize.
In other words, they can “share” candy out of mimicry, or compulsion, or trained response, or just because. We might see it and interpret it as a “kind” or “loving” act, but we have no idea if that child is FEELING love or a desire to BE kind or not. A toddler might hide behind their mothers skirt when a stranger is present out of shyness, curiosity, simple unfamiliarity, or because “Mommy” is the prefered individual of the moment. We cannot know that they are truly fearful or “hate” the stranger.
I have known open, friendly, well socialized toddlers, and clingy, whiney, not well socialized Toddlers. How they “act” in any given moment is not an indication of the type of person they are, or even will be later.
Aphan,
WRT: “I have known open, friendly, well socialized toddlers, and clingy, whiney, not well socialized Toddlers. How they “act” in any given moment is not an indication of the type of person they are, or even will be later.”
Compare the behavior of a group of first graders in the famous “Marshmallow Test” to their near-identical behavior as grown ups in “The Mature Marshmallow Test”:
“A toddler might hide behind their mothers skirt when a stranger is present out of shyness, curiosity, simple unfamiliarity, or because “Mommy” is the prefered individual of the moment. We cannot know that they are truly fearful or “hate” the stranger.”
I saw a video one time claiming that very young children were naturally suspicious of strangers.
They had a mother stand in an empty room, holding a baby about three months old, and then a stranger to the child would enter the room and walk over and stand next to the mother without saying a word, and they all just stood there silently. And you could see the baby slowly leaning away from the stranger, and this was repeated with several other babies.
I think this reaction is probably an instictive survival mechanism of humans. We are born to fear something that is not familiar. It is probably at the root of racism.
Astounding tale…and summary…hat’s off to you, Dr.Goska.
“In 1995 I developed a crippling illness. I couldn’t work, lost my life savings, and traveled through three states, from surgery to surgery.”
So you never paid into unemployment insurance, workplace accident insurance, working disability insurance.
Never before contributed to the society of the unemployed, the workplace injured or the working disabilitated.
You have never ACTED ‘left’.
Of course that doesn’t pay.
It’s easy to be righteous Johann. I’m sure you are a well balanced individual with, I hope not, chips on both shoulders, but give her a break. It may, in your view, have taken her a long time to ‘see the light’ and she may not have contributed to the ‘system’ as you would have liked, but credit where it is due. She got there in the end! I thought that one of the things that set us apart on this side of the debate is honesty, decency, respect for opposing opinions (with a healthy dose of irony and humour), albeit we may believe them to be wrong, and a bit of humility. Snidey, hard hearted and sanctimonious comments do us no favours in the grand scheme of things.
Beautiful!
Well said. Getting there is always good, no matter how long it takes.
Mack, you surpass me.
I am just an average worker who wants to reside the next day.
Johann,
Unemployment only lasts so long, and only pays a percentage of your former income. It also carries the requirement that you actively pursue employment. Someone with a crippling illness cannot do that. Someone recovering from surgery cannot do that.
If she wasn’t “injured” on a job site, doing her job, then she doesn’t qualify for workman’s comp. And even great insurance doesn’t cover everything.
So what is your point?
Aphan, when not living ‘left’ – why asking from others.
Aphan, my point is obviously not seen here.
Cheers – Hans
Hans: I respectfully agree! 🙂
Jorgekafkazar,
Good…so it’s not just me then? 🙂
Johann Wundersamer March 5, 2017 at 1:10 pm
“So you never paid into unemployment insurance, workplace accident insurance, working disability insurance.”
Johann, don’t be so sure.
Because of the HIV epidemic we learned a lot about our worker insurance system.
Yes you have insurance until you are sick. If you can no longer work, you no longer have a job, then no more insurance.
It happens all the time. In the place I worked a young women went in for carpel-tunnel surgery, something went wrong, they operated on the wrong arm and caused a bad infection. She was going to be out of work for a few months. A bean counting manager eliminated her job and renamed it a “temp” position. Cost savings, to help keep the companies health costs down. So suddenly she was without heath insurance which she had paid into like the rest of us.
To the companies credit that manager was retired.
When I had my medical (heart) problem, they kept me on and gave me make work until I could ease myself out. I was lucky, many learn the hard way.
Oh and yes the author of the above article worked and contributed, She mentioned that she lost her “savings”. Duh.
michael
Mike, because of working with a fork lifter I’ve already developed a ‘carpal tunnel syndrome.’
When I went to the doctor she made an electric Flux measurement to both arms/hands. And told me ‘carpal tunnel syndrome’ relates 4 fingers of the hand – not the 5.th little one outside the respective hand.
So I knew it was my behavior in work / at home regarding arms / hands; change that ways and it’s going better.
Cheers – Hans
Johann Wundersamer March 5, 2017 at 11:52 pm
“Mike, because of working with a fork lifter”
Me I was a Toolmaker / Machinist.
Came out with all body parts.
Never had the problem myself.
The person I referred to was was an assembler. Of gas pistons.
Differs from person to person.
But then you skipped the whole issue. On how the poor women was dealt with.
This was personal to me. Some years earlier I was chair or the company Safety Committee. The first worker bee to hold it.
Repetitive motion is the single most destructive condition to afflict workers.
Glade yours was caught early.
My Heart issue was not work related.
Miss machining. Metal has a magic.
michael
“Yes you have insurance until you are sick. If you can no longer work, you no longer have a job, then no more insurance. ”
Let’s hope the Republicans fix this in the new health insurance law.
TA, the solution is to allow health insurance to be fully deductible for individuals. At present a company can deduct the cost while you can’t. This makes it rational to let your employer buy your insurance for you.
Unfortunately this also means that your insurance is attached to your job and not to you.
Perhaps what the author and many in here are all are missing is the point that the system which limits health benefits to the injured worker is a product of right wing “big business, let the market sort it out” thinking.
Hardly the fault of the ‘left’.
Introducing the free market to the health care industry is the only way it is going to be salvaged. There are far too many monoplistic activities and unfair business practices, at least from the consumer’s point of view, such as different hospitals charging different prices for the same operation, or the same hospital charging different customers different prices for the same operation. Or the drug companies who are able to charge outrageous prices because they are not required to compete. And on and on.
Fortunately, this time, we are going to get a full, public airing of all these healthcare issues. Let’s hope we can all settle on a good plan when it is all over.
Politically Correct Progressivism was her religion. The term “left” has no meaning.
She finally realized what her belief system was based on–hatred. Hatred of Normal-America.
The PC-Progressive Party (which uses the cover title “Democrat Party”) has an iron-clad list of beliefs. In order to be a member, one must subscribe to this belief system. One hundred percent. At least in public. Toe the Party line. Politically Correct–that’s what it means.
Here is a short list of the required elements of the PC-Prog (Democrat) belief system:
1. Normal-America is irredeemably racist. Blacks and other minorities live a life of constant harassment and hopeless repression by Normal-Americans.
2. Normal-America is virulently sexist. Women live lives of desperate hopelessness. They are forced by the patriarchy to accept social and professional roles that demean and diminish them. Normal-Americans aggressively try to restrict women’s rights to kill fetuses.
3. Normal-America is homophobic. Christian haters thump Bibles in their quest to locate, persecute, prosecute and lynch fun-loving homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals, and bi-sexuals.
4. Normal-America is stunningly xenophobic. Normal-Americans loathe foreigners. Normal-American society rejects all foreigners and views them as vile, dirty, stinking beasts with unintelligible accents.
5. Normal-America is graspingly imperialist. Normal-Americans seek to conquer, destroy and subjugate peace-loving native cultures in Africa, the Middle East, South America and Asia. America is built on a legacy of imperialist destruction of Native American and Hispanic cultures.
6. Normal-America is greedily capitalist. The American economy destroys poor people with angry demands that they must work. The economy is systematically manipulated by the 1% in order to
subjugate the 99%. Capitalism rewards only the lucky few, while the masses suffer.
The American economy is boiling Gaia’s atmosphere–causing horrible things to happen.
These tenets are the core of the PC-Prog politics. The beliefs are nearly religious. To be a member, one must never contradict these tenets (in public, or in privately recorded conversations.)
The corollary to the tenets of PC-Progressivism is the “Action Requirement.”
It is simple: Normal-America must be changed.
This is it. That is the entire belief system, and the action plan of our political opponents.
Without understanding what it is that their system believes and requires, we have no hope of counter-acting their destruction of our country. Now you know. What will you do about it?
http://intelctweekly.blogspot.com/2014/07/politically-correct-progressive-belief.html
Kent,
YOU don’t get to determine which words have meaning to HER. You don’t get to tell her, or anyone else, what name or title or description they fall under simply because you said so. I know many Democrats that DO NOT believe many, or even all, of the things on your list and yet there they are…belonging to that party. No iron clad list in site.
It’s just as irrational, illogical, false, and biased to paint everyone in the Democratic party, or who labels themselves as “left” as identical, mindless robots as it is for people to paint all skeptics that way. Your “iron clad list” is your OPINION, not an established FACT.
She began her article distinguishing “how FAR left” she was for a reason. Because there are DEGREES of difference as well as individual differences. I will bust your chops even when you make broad sweeping generalizations about people I don’t agree with, just as much as I will people who do the same thing to me or those I agree with.
It’s just cognitive bias either way.
Kent is correct.
I can have a differing opinion on any of these, and ruin Thanksgiving in my Democrat family.
They cannot tolerate an opposing view. Outside of their own circles, they are boors – they start throwing their self-righteous views around, and believe they are merely engaging in civic dialog.
Everyone else shuts up and changes the topic because they are, well, boors, and cannot see it. They might as well have terrible body odor, stinking up the place. but this is how democrats are, nowadays.
Aphan,
I am still a registered democrat, and the description Kent gave is fairly accurate as to how the current Democrat Party come across to me and others. Sorry if you don’t see it but I am dismayed that the party has gone so far left and do not seem to represent the average worker anymore. The election of Trump clearly indicates so. I would like to see two viable parties to keep things on the best track for the country. The Democratic party needs to move to the center and abandon those concepts Kent mentioned.
The last Democrat,
Kent says:
“The PC-Progressive Party (which uses the cover title “Democrat Party”) has an iron-clad list of beliefs. In order to be a member, one must subscribe to this belief system. One hundred percent. At least in public. Toe the Party line. Politically Correct–that’s what it means.”
In order to be a Democrat, one merely registers as one. There is no test. No one comes out with a clipboard and reads Kent’s list of beliefs and demands allegiance to the Iron Clad Beliefs. He’s using hyperbole and rhetoric to reach conclusions, not logic or facts.
I’m NOT saying I don’t see this behavior. I’m NOT saying that there are not progressives, or socialists or batcrap crazy, extreme leftists IN the Democratic party. I’m saying that unless you can offer proof that ALL DEMOCRATS DO indeed embrace all of those tenets, you are engaging in cognitive bias to declare it as if it was established fact.
Your family and his, and 200 or even 2,000 other Democrat families you might have personal experience with may indeed be exactly as he described. But I personally know many Democrats that are MUCH closer to the political middle than his descriptions.
It’s like painting ALL Tea Party members as Nazis, or white supremacists=illogical and false. Or all skeptics as “science deniers” or “flat earthers”. Anyone who has traveled and met different people, and who is logical and reasonable as a person, KNOWS such blanket classifications are either incorrect/without foundation, or designed to manipulate the weak minded for one reason or another.
Count the number of times he appeals to spite, appeals to ridicule, association fallacy etc. All are illogical.
Aphan,
Thanks for your guidance. I’m sure it’s worth what I paid for it.
I’m not telling her anything. I’m providing the results of extensive research and analysis of the American political environment.
The hackneyed “left vs. right” political spectrum has literally no meaning in the USA today. What do you think “left” means? What do you think “right” means?
Was Obama “left”? Was Bush “right?” Give examples that support your contention.
The only political spectrum with any meaning today has Politically Correct Progressivism at one end, and Normal-American at the other.
This spectrum is operative now due to the introduction of the anti-Normal belief system, and concommitant holier-than-thou attitude, into the transmission belts of American culture around 1920.
In the last 90 years, the PC-Prog, anti-Normal-America belief system spread and grew, mostly underground. Around 1980, it emerged above-ground, and has spread even faster since then.
The lady in this article spells our clearly the belief system–America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, capitalist hellhole, and it must be changed.
The forces pushing for destruction of America’s capitalist economy because of their imaginary global warming are simply following directly the dictates of PC-Progs’ anti-capitalist tenent.
This cannot be termed Right vs Left.
It is the greatest country in the history of the world vs the destroyers.
Aphan,
Sure, there may be registered Democrats who fail the PC-Prog belief test. There are Southerners today who are Democrats only because Lincoln was a Republican. But they are dying out fast.
Please point to one Democrat politician who fails even one point of the PC-Prog 6 point belief system test.
The “Blue Dog Democrats?” Long gone. They were all hounded out of the PC-Prog party decades ago. “Conservative Democrats?” Huh? There is no such thing.
Democrats are the PC-Prog Party of Hate-America-First. Their goal is to destroy American exceptionalism, and everything that made our country great.
PC-Progs are Hillary, Obama, Holder, Lynch, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Kerry, Sharpton, Pelosi, Schumer, Black-Lives-Matter, etc. etc. Look at the Democrat convention–pure hatred of Normal-America.
Wishing it weren’t so doesn’t make it go away.
“It’s like painting ALL Tea Party members as Nazis”
More properly it should be: “It’s like painting ANY Tea Party members as Nazis”
Certainly political correctness had gone off the rails.
But, as Kent himself says… there IS a spectrum in all of this.
And, some of this deserves a little rewording and an examination of the true situation.
The economy is systematically manipulated by the 1% in order to
..profit obscenely at the expense of the ….. the 99%. …. there’s probably a 50% in there who profit quite reasonably …..
Capitalism rewards a wide spectrum of society, …. but there is an underclass which… suffers.
… and this could be easily resolved by putting in measures to stop the big getting gigantic, and the gigantic becoming monsters…
“Was Obama “left”?”
No, Obama is far-left. A radical.
And then the “Liberal” Left Fascists wonder why so many people voted for Trump, and in the UK for Brexit.
You can’t fix stupid.
True that. What happened was the Deplorables finally spoke up.
Many years ago, when I was a young engineer in Britain, and Britain was effectively a socialist state, I took a second job in the evenings selling insurance. I must admit I was not a very good salesman and didn’t make much money at it, but I did get to go into a lot of largely blue-collar homes and give my spiel. One of the reasons I rarely made a sale was that, time after time, I heard the response “What do we need insurance for? Government’s promised to look after us from the cradle to the grave.”
After I while I got to thinking, what sort of creatures can reasonably expect to be looked after in such manner? The only answer I could come up with was cattle and slaves. If you are looked after from the cradle to the grave, you have no responsibility for your own life, you are totally dependent on others for all the important decisions in your life, and you are no more than cattle or slaves (the difference between the two is that slaves are aware of their position, cattle aren’t).
The true Leftie welcomes this situation – not for themselves, but for others. In their fetid dreams, they are the ones making the decisions that the proletariat is incapable of making for themselves, they are the cattle drovers and slave drivers. The right-wing person (I hesitate to use the term Rightie), in contrast, instinctively rejects this point of view on the basis that responsibility for one’s self is one of the core right-wing values, if not indeed the only core value.
I recommend Friedrich Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom’ for further reading on this subject.
From my first working day I paid into unemployment insurance, workplace accident insurance, working disability insurance.
I’ll never be rich, getting along.
Great post with this one, and timely for me. I have someone whom I want to share this story with
Is that the nice Martin Bashir who has gone back to working for the so-called BBC as religious affairs correspondent? He’ll fit in well with all the other nasry lefties that the so-called BBC employs.
She saw the light but it took a long time.
It’s a long journey, one measured more in light-years than inches.
It’s quite obvious why she is no longer part of the left, she has an open, objective mind capable of critical thought… something not found in the gene pool of the left.
Like other highly specialised creatures that fill very small niches the ‘Lefie’ is a product of abundance, the type of abundance that the left cannot produce.
And I pay into a legal protection insurance , which costs some 10-20 € annually-averaged, never needed – when I say ‘I have a legal protection insurance’ the conversation is finished.
I have a form of violence protection service. Works the same way.
Politics doesn’t control climate science just as it doesn’t control physics, astronomy or mathematics.
This is a diversion from the fact that the terminal sceptics haven’t produced any evidence that will stand scrutiny.
Perhaps you need to take a closer look at reality. It seems your window is cloudy and you’re getting the wrong picture of what is inside.
@WTF
Tragically, neither have climate alarmists.
WTF March 5, 2017 at 1:53 pm
“This is a diversion from the fact that the terminal [CO2-Climate Change] sceptics haven’t produced any evidence that will stand scrutiny.”
Right, because the real world’s Empirical Data itself has disproven the hypotheses involved with CO2-Climate Change’s “Science”: that is, none of its critical CO2-dependent Predictions have eventuated. So it’s quite a long way for CO2-Climate Change’s “Science” to go to get anywhere near the success rate it needs to be considered viable – and thus funded any longer by the Tax Payers – when compared to Science’s real world of Empirical Data.
“This is a diversion from the fact that the terminal sceptics haven’t produced any evidence that will stand scrutiny.”
It’s not a skeptic’s job to provide evidence, that is the job of whoever is promoting a scientific theory. The skeptic’s job is to poke holes in scientific theories. Skeptics have to be convinced there are no more holes in a theory before accepting that theory as fact.
1) It’s not up to us to provide the evidence. We aren’t the ones making the claim. It’s sufficient to disprove your “evidence”, which we have done.
2) It’s not true that we have provided no evidence. Just because you close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and shout nyaa, nyaa, nyaa, reality doesn’t change.
I had a very similar experience to Ms Goska. A good friend of mine was an extreme climate sceptic, but one day, after reviewing masses of data and information, he realised he was mistaken. And now he is no longer a Conservative, he has rejected far right politics and makes decisions based on evidence.
He no longer hates anyone who does not think like him and believes that communities are essential to the wellbeing of the individual. His family tell me he has changed from a depressed and angry man, to someone who inspires and spreads light everywhere he goes.
These tales are just so wonderful! !
Joking aside I rather like her writing. But read all of it, there is much to upset Conservatives as well as lefties.
Here is her view of Clinton hating Trump worshiping fanatics.
“If the Trump supporters posting misogynist hate-Hillary memes and inflammatory conspiracy theories have a moment of awareness, I want to be there when it happens”.
Oh dear, ‘no such thing as society’ again. This is what she said and you chose to misinterpret (and misquote usually) those five words. Please tell us what you object to in the following.
M Thatcher, Woman’s Own, 23.9.87
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate ” It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it” . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people:”All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say:”But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say: “Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!
I love it when socialists have to lie in order to make a point.
It’s proof that even they know that their delusions can’t be supported.
What Dr. Goska described isn’t the “left” per se, but rather totalitarianism. Totalitarianism can be of the left, it can be of the right, it can be of the middle or it can be divinely inspired. One of the things that distinguishes it is unreasonableness and intolerance. Whenever someone tells you that 97% agree with something and you don’t, you are experiencing totalitarianism. As I said before, this is more a struggle between sanity and insanity, than it is with classical liberalism or classical conservatism. Reasonable people of different persuasions can debate without invective, name-calling, insults or other rude behavior. It is evident on this site all the time. When reasonable people of different persuasions debate, often a better solution or remedy is achieved than when one is imposed by force through what is effectively a form of totalitarianism.
@Phil,
very well illustrated. Thank you.
Phil, a good summary. The only real difference between left and right is the color of the tie. That way they can differentiate.
The last time the USA was great. Was when they stole from other countries, assainating 30 democratically elected leaders in those countries to put in their own selected leaders.
And still they do it, look at Obama’s Arab Spring and the loss of life along the way.
Oooh, did I say that out loud. Amazing what a Christian country will do. Wasn’t it GW Bush that said they were doing God’s work?
PS
The correct term for a non believer is Bright.
ozone, it really is sad when you on the left start to believe the lies you tell each other.
MarkW
I would suggest that you try reading instead of trying to be a prophet of wisdom.
You ignorance is unbelievable.
MarkW
PS, I am not of the left. Just because you type words, it does not make them either accurate of factual. You classify and ridicule people for sport.
What does make you. A jerk.
No, Phil, that’s not good enough.
Your protest is similar to all those communist apologists during the cold war who repeated the refrain “but Russia / China isn’t real communism”.
The left that Dr Goska may not be the left that you or other well-meaning armchair progressives envision, but it is the one that exists in today’s social and political landscape. It’s the one that has achieved total dictatorial control of all American universities. It’s the one of which the media have become the blindly obeisant mouthpiece. It’s the one that has led to the reactive vote for Trump.
War is coming because of this.
So much hate cannot lead anywhere else.
Thanks Ptolemy2,,
If the armchair left would speak out against the totalitarianism and intolerance of the left element one might be sympathetic, but clearly many are enablers and cheering the Hollywood crowd, the radical demonstrators, the MSM, and the elected officials like Pelosi and Schumer for their horrible anti Trump rhetoric.
Need I bring up the unethical treatment of any Scientist who questions climate change or extreme global warming.
Thanks for the good article and anyone on the left who disagrees should do some thoughtful sole searching rather than just dismiss it.
War is here. It’s being fought on Fæcebook, Twitter, and the Internet, generally, as well as here on WUWT. The enemy’s numbers are small, but they compensate by greater activity. I recently attended a live presentation on AGW. At one point, a poll was taken of how many believe that humans cause dangerous warming. The pro vote was no more than 10%. The internet thread announcing the event showed roughly equal numbers of pro and con posts. Pop that bubble!
@Phil Salmon:
I must protest. You use the words: “dictatorial control,” “blindly obeisant mouthpiece,” “so much hate.” That is exactly what I am referring to, when I used the term “totalitarianism.” I don’t think we are in disagreement. I further must protest your assumption that I was a Cold War “apologist” or “armchair progressive.” Far from it. I have my own experiences dealing with totalitarian leftists. We need more people to go through the awakening that Dr. Goska went through. We are more likely to achieve that by welcoming any who are willing to engage in reasonable debate. It is remarkable what happens when the totalitarian binders are removed.
“It’s the one that has achieved total dictatorial control of all American universities. ”
It’s blanket statements like this that turn logical, rational people OFF to your entire post. I live in America where there are two private owned, Christian universities and several states ones run by conservatives. So I KNOW that sentence is vividly false.
Total. Dictatorial. Control. All. Hyperbole (rhetoric) is easily identified and discounted.
Those Universities are having a lot of difficulty with regulators. For instance in bathroom signage, hiring, and insurance coverage. One College is being told to report on what is being done to mitigate the “25% rape” rate on campus, which they don’t have..
“What Dr. Goska described isn’t the “left” per se, but rather totalitarianism. Totalitarianism can be of the left, it can be of the right, it can be of the middle or it can be divinely inspired.”
I would call it “Man inspired”. Lots of people presume to speak for God. A loving God wouldn’t instruct his followers to murder innocent people just because they were not following some ritual.
I stand corrected. I meant “presumed to be divinely inspired.”
Name a single right wing totalitarian.
Trump
LOL! I love it! He is living rent free in all those liberal heads.
Trump is no totalitarian.
Only the dystopian fantasies of the left are capable of painting him as one.
PS, Trump is only right wing when compared to you communists.
Very well thought out and written article. I used to work with a guy who was ultra right wing, and that’s saying something in an office environment that was almost all conservative people. I agreed with the vast majority of what he said, but he was angered so easily by liberal viewpoints it made me do some self reflecting about my own tolerance. It was entertaining to see him go on his rants, his teeth clenching, veins in his neck popping out as he spoke, but when I tried to get him to admit he wasn’t very tolerant he said he thought he was a very tolerant person. That made me wonder if I was kidding myself about who I was and how tolerant I was.
I’m an atheist and centre right. Got no time for that hate #### from other people and as those left leaning liberals continue to play identity, hate and cultural politics, the general population will continue to swing in behind those who stand for Christian-Judeo values.
I have had encounters with acquaintances & some family who fall in the “far left” category. It is remarkable how many of the points in the post applied directly to them. They are addicted to hate & hating. They are very difficult to be around. And if any conversation can be steered to victimizing & hate, it will be turned there. I simply stop talking. Not worth the brain damage to convince them otherwise. Very sad to go through life like that. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“They are addicted to hate & hating.”
No lie. More precisely, they are literally addicted to adrenaline. (I’ve seen skeptics that seem a bit that way, but far fewer.) Progressives will steer the argument away from logic and towards maximum, spittle-spewing dissent, using strawmen, ad homs, appeals to authority, and so on, ad nauseam. The same substance addiction that drives rageaholics and wife-beaters is behind a range of issues and CAGW.
I’m sure we can name a dozen pushers. The important thing is not evidence or logic, it’s the fix, the evocation of anxiety or aggravation. Ultimately, the pushers need no data, no evidence, not even words. The need only show a picture of some famous skeptic to get the audience to react, perhaps with Orwellian cries of “HATE! HATE! HATE…!”
“I have had encounters with acquaintances & some family who fall in the “far left” category. It is remarkable how many of the points in the post applied directly to them. They are addicted to hate & hating.”
Sadly, I find this, too. Some of my lefty friends just get so emotional about some subjects that you cannot have a rational conversation with them about it. So we dont discuss poltics. 🙂
The left, by nature of their inborn jealousy, demands the world is ruled by minorities.
exit
And just a cursory scan of Western societies will confirm that. Brexit and Trump victories, with the incredibly vitriolic backlash of threats to overturn two entirely democratic decisions, is evidence alone.
The left demand vengeance, they demand power, they demand victory, and will, in their eyes, achieve it by fair means or foul. In those two cases, they are determined to achieve success by foul means, irrespective of the cost to them, society or national sovereignty, simply because they are determined to be right.
Few leftist will accept democracy because the rights of the few multiply into the rights of the many. In other words, everyone has a defining feature that divides them, somehow, into a sub-category; colour, race, gender, sub-gender, ability, disability, marital status, mental condition, physical condition, illness, genetic inheritance…..the list goes on.
Their objective has been to identify those sub-categories, convince us all that somehow or other we are all victims of oppression, then unite those minority pressure groups to support one another.
Their source of success is in the guilt, and/or victimisation, no matter how inconsequential, we all retain for our own survival, despite our own inadequacies. They create the guilt complex then encourage us all to seek out our own victim complex, and then engage in marches, demonstrations and subversion based on negative emotions.
Brexit expressed a positive desire to do something. Few of us in the UK are quite sure how Brexit will be positive, but I take heart in that it is better to make a decision than not to make one. Remainers decided not to make a decision.
The Trump victory was in the same way, a decision to change what everyone in the Western world has been demanding for generations; a change to a lazy, corrupt, inept Western governmental system that simply follows the piper. And make no mistake, those in the vanguard of that clarion call were the people at the far left of society. But when changes came, and it didn’t suit them, they are the ones taking to the streets.
I live on the outskirts of London, England. I note that the objections to diesel cars and their emissions are largely from city dwellers, and I expect action will be taken on that subject (our budget is to be announced on Wednesday and it’s expected that the demonisation of diesel cars will begin then).
However, I also note that much of the suburban and rural community, who value clean air far more than the London elite, survive on the benefits of diesel transport that is some 25% more efficient than petrol. Much of America is similarly inclined.
So once again, nationwide social and political decisions are being enacted on behalf of the minority, over the majority.
I rest my case m’lud.
And I have no idea where the word “exit” came from following the first paragraph……..please ignore, fat digits probably.
‘Tis a Brexit whisker?
Danusha is a proud name –
https://youtu.be/02QUmKVsyFY
“…usha” is just the Russian diminutive/affectionate suffix of some name starting with “Dan..”
Dr Goska has exposed the truth that today’s left is virulently fasc1st.
War is coming because of this.
this is crap propaganda. Don’t be a leftist, don’t be a right-winger either, and don’t swing from one side of delusion to the other and then paint your new enemies with the same propaganda bs as you once did your new friends. People are just naive.
It is pure horse droppings. Kind of illuminates where Anthony’s head is at … not good.
The language you choose validates everything that Dr Goska said.
That’s the funny thing about everything that the left is doing in reaction to Trump. It is reinforcing all the reasons that Trump was elected. The left have lost the ability to understand that people mean votes, regardless of the label you give them. The next election is going to return a Trump second term with a humiliating landslide.
War is coming because of this.
This post isn’t about America, right or left of center, it’s a tale about extreme fringe … but those of a certain bubble seem to have a misconception of this story as representing more than it does. While interesting, there’s nothing, in a broad sense, “fantastic” about it. I don’t view getting uber-excited about this as particularly a good thing … more like propaganda for those deeply engrossed in tribalism.
“it’s a tale about extreme fringe …”
Unfortunately it’s a pretty broad fringe, even broader in certain European states such as Germany and Sweden, unfortunately!
If you haven’t seen it, you really do need to get out more.
@ catweazle666
I get out plenty. You sound persecuted in search of something to blame. For you to mention Sweden is all I need to know about the tight cocoon in which you reside. I’d suggest you are the one needing a little fresh air.
Would you care to show that the people she is talking about are in fact just an extreme fringe.
In my experience they are pretty mainstream for leftists.
For example, you have demonstrated by your reaction how much hatred you have for those who disagree with you.
Agree 100%. Putting this whole discussion about climate in a left/right “thing” is even worst. It’s science, not politics. The problem is that the world turned this into a politics question and that’s just dumb. If climate, one day, return to be mainly a science matter and politics will be conditioned by it (not the opposite as today), maybe I will not need to be classified as a “denier” anymore. When people tend to think that alarmist is a “left” thing, it’s the same error as thinking that being a “denier” is a “right” thing. Both are stupid ideas. I am a scientist (english is not my mother language), I consider myself a very moderate leftist and I align myself with Ideas from Lindzen, Curry and similar ones. By the same reason, I do not want to be mistaken with the ideas (or lack of them), from Donald Trump. Probably Trump will do most arm to “Climate Realism” that most alarmists ever did…
A bit of clarification for any English-not-first-language readers:
Anthony did NOT cite this article as proof that AGW is largely a leftist endeavor (the evidence is overwhelming that it is, imo, but that is beside the point, here). The article is cited as a PARALLEL only.
Note: the following two assertions,
1) AGW is largely a leftist endeavor;
and
2) some science realists are self-described leftists;
are NOT mutually exclusive.
In my experience, those who claim to adhere to neither side only care about one thing. Lining their own pockets. They support whatever government program they believe will pass the most free stuff to themselves.
They will support any politician, left, right or center that promises them the most free stuff.
MarkW
You need more experience
The most hated thing for a leftist is themselves. The thing they just cannot comprehend is that some of us have actually worked out our place in the Universe, something they have not been able to do.
I chuckled several times as I read Dr. Goska’s background. She and I had a very similar upbringing. My father ran for office alongside Bernie Sanders in the 1970s. He had communist party meetings in our living room etc. I feel fortunate that I did not go into the peace corps or academia because I might still be aligned with that kind of thinking. I, almost accidentally, ended up managing a small business and learned very quickly how government taxation and regulation was crushing and harmful rather than being a boon to mankind.
Several years ago I read a wonderful book by Professor Gosca, “Save Send Delete”. As I read this commentary many of her comments/life mirrored that of the “fictional” character in the book. If you enjoyed this essay, read the book.
https://www.amazon.com/Save-Send-Delete-Danusha-Goska-ebook/dp/B007Y5BFEY/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488755553&sr=1-1&keywords=save+send+delete
Dr. Goska sums up nice why I had learned to hate the political left so thoroughly by the time I left graduate school in 1980. And for those who are trying to sell the potion that she describes only the most disagreeable 10% of leftists, don’t kid yourselves.
…nicely…
you got the wrong message from all this then, which is, “don’t hate” period.
Ha ha. That yogi may not be so broken!
“Hate is a poison we take, hoping someone else will die.”
“Thanks to cultural relativism, we were forbidden to object to rampant sexism or the caste system. “Only intolerant oppressors judge others’ cultures.””
This is an extraordinary admission.
Many people are willing to say that the recent mass immigration in Europe has not been very fun to live through. Some are even going so far as to say, “Well perhaps multi-culturalism has failed.”
But the term “cultural relativism” is the most honest name for the desire to make all cultures equal, and pretend that all outcomes are good. To favor one culture and one outcome over another is to be a rac1st or a nationalist, or both.
In my experience, this is not an attitude that is relinquished easily. Is there a difference between whether there are little wooden churches or whether there are mos8ues on every third block? I think there are a lot of people who are still not willing to commit to an answer. And if so, could not tell you why, because the academic/globalist virtue of cultural relativism has still so flattened their thinking.
Remember, nationalism in the Renaissance sense just means having your own history, literature, folk sayings, celebrations, and law codes in your own written language. Before that, writing was done in a dead prestige language (Latin), likely by foreigners.
Zeke March 5, 2017 at 3:38 pm
But the term “cultural relativism” is the most honest name for the desire to make all cultures equal, and pretend that all outcomes are good.
Amen. But the basic problem is that the term “equal” doesn’t make any sense without “unequal” also being a possibility. The two terms “are parasitic upon each other.” In other words, Cultural Relativism is misusing a term in order to try to dictate reality. I used to wonder what all those Poly-Sci Majors were doing in their classes.
Leftists use “equal” to mean “same”.
Thanks for posting this, I know it’s not the standard WUWT fare. Many of the author’s points I’ve noticed as well.
For a PhD she sure is slow on the uptake. Education is what you get, wisdom is what you retain.
A PhD is not a measure of how bright you are, or even intelligence (not the same thing). I know a lot of PhD’s who are as dumb as a sack of rocks about most of life beyond their specialty.
someone mentions the pope as being Christian??
he is not christian he is a leftwing sack of turds
Well, that added a lot to the debate, then…
Where I come from, we call this “hate speech”. In case you missed the message of this article — it is a good thing for people to have different perspectives. It is not a good thing to fail to listen to multiple perspectives. In other words, don’t condemn the Pope for his viewpoint. Listen to it as one of many, diverse viewpoints.
The current pope is a Manchurian candidate
Worse.
The current Pope is an Argentinian Communist – a particularly egregious variety, the Artgentinian one.
Stop, just stop attacking the Pope. Disagree with positions, if you are so inclined, but stop attacking the person.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
The posted column is wonderful.
Another similar story that is great to read is “Commies,” by Ronald Radosh.
those that employ the real scientific method cant be on any particular side other than the actual observations or TRUTH…….that isnt a left or right concept that stuff is politics…….and consensus has ZERO to do with scientific method.
Just what I think Bill!
Re: 8 ) It’s Hillary’s casual lying cruelty to her inherited Travel Office employees whose testimony I saw on C-SPAN one day — totally unreported in that night’s news — that made me an activist libertarian .
Ferdinand Kürnberger, tired of America-no uniforms needs the more uniforms :
! We are a people of sovereigns. What we need to know from each other is: how we are politically minded; Therefore we carry the badges of our party. But what we need not to know, and what in good company no one asks about the other, is what he lives from; So we do not wear any badges of our trade – the conductor as little as the President. So it is, sir, it was a pity, if it were otherwise, that is a fact. Travel through the whole Union and you will not find a single officer in any industry that has a badge. It is not by the sign that you recognize him, but of the thing itself, simply by serving and courteously serving you. Besides, he’s a gentleman like you. In truth, my lord, all that is akin to the livery in the hundredth part, we hate with that salutary instinct of equality, which is the indestructible foundation of the republic. A free and enlightened citizen of the Union does not tolerate any badge on his body. All men are equal! We are a nation of Sovereigns. I would be sorry if it were not so. – Does not that sound splendid? Too bad that the beauty has so short a moment! For scarcely had we driven a mile further, than at the next station, a conductor made his patrol through the carriage, and demanded the ticket to Philadelphia. We were amazed. The man did not wear a badge, but his legitimacy, which we asked him, was all right, and so there was nothing left but to pull the exchange a second time
By the way, what’s up with
our friend americanthinker.com
Seems to be okay.
Another wonderful testament is David Horowitz’s “Radical Son” Amazing story. David was a communist originally, with his parents. He edited “Ramparts” — which I remember subscribing to and reading in 1970 at Stanford!
Would Anthony Watts and the “science” debate skeptics just come out and admit the AGW movement was always driven from a global leftist agenda?
I mean as the dominant force in the 40+ year event.
Sorry, I’ve trolled on the point for close to 10 years on Dr. Curry, no capitulation there. The ridiculous “journey” narrative.
Many skeptics remain delusional of the moving parts of the climate debate. There for the great opportunity of the Trump moment may well be lost.
Anthony doesn’t endorse the Lindzen/Delingpole narrative either.
If anyone here believes the effects of “Liberal” Left inspired Multiculturalism and Cultural Relativism, their practitioners and ramifications are bad in the USA, they should go and see what the results have been in some of the European states, in particular France, Germany and Sweden.
On the subject of Islamic immigration, President Trump has the exactly the right idea, just pray that he can take sufficient action before it is too late.
Ending all immigration immediately would be sufficient.
Which parts of Sweden did you visit Catweazle? or France and Germany? I have visited all three extensively over the last 12 months and seem to have missed the issues you are referring to.
“Which parts of Sweden did you visit Catweazle? or France and Germany? I have visited all three extensively over the last 12 months and seem to have missed the issues you are referring to.”
Here you go, Gareth.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/03/04/fake-news-swedens-integration-minister-admits-lying-bbc-rape-stats/
FAKE NEWS: Sweden’s Integration Minister Admits Lying to BBC About Rape Stats
A Breibart news exclusive of course… If you watch only Breibart News and Fox News you won’t realize how dumb this administration is looking to most of the world about these “Sweden horror fakets” made by both those honorable and completely unbiased media. Come on, wake up. This is not the “right” we want. This is a shame that will make Pyongyang look good.
“A Breibart news exclusive of course… If you watch only Breibart News and Fox News you won’t realize how dumb this administration is looking to most of the world”
It appears to me that people from around the world are starting to get onboard the Trump Train. One has to tune out the Leftwing MSM to get the real picture.
To step into what is becoming a flame war, I think it is useful to read as many sides of an issue as possible. The New York Times or WaPo is useful for Democratic mainstream spin, Daily Kos for Democratic fringe spin, Fox for Republican spin, etc
TA says: ” One has to tune out the Leftwing MSM to get the real picture.” No, tuning either side out warps your view of reality. You have to pay attention to BOTH the leftwing MSM, and the rightwing echo chamber to figure out what is real.
“You have to pay attention to BOTH the leftwing MSM, and the rightwing echo chamber to figure out what is real.”
What of value are you expecting to glean from the leftwing MSM?
I find it interesting how politically polarized the US appears to be (and I believe is). I don’t find this so elsewhere in the world, and I am well-traveled.
I stated out with socialist ideals, although not strong ones. I shifted toward the right as I grew older, wealthier, and my responsibilities increased. I think this is fairly normal.
My big change was during working in a government department. The waste was shocking, as was the sense of entitlement to my tax dollars. Because of how governments run things, I think government departments run at about 10% efficiency, as opposed to about 40% in the private sector large organizations (that may be generous, but I worked in some very good ones). I shifted so far right, I astounded even myself.
Having said that, I still have firm socialist beliefs, and I have no problem mixing them with my strong beliefs in capitalism (an economic model really, not political) and as small a government as is possible.
What I find strange about Americans is the lack of people who are able to hold views of different parts of the political spectrum. To my mind, if the US carries on this way, it will likely tear itself apart into two wildly opposing and increasingly extreme factions.
Ease up, and talk to each other instead of flinging vitriol!
Having said all of that, I think the world is being dragged down the same path, and possibly with similar results as I predict for the US. I have no love for the extreme right, but I can see a very strong socialist, or even communist, movement being disguised as globalism. It’s almost as if all the communists fled the Soviet block and moved into the UN and conservation charities. I hope that’s just paranoia.
“I shifted so far right, I astounded even myself. ”
It’s called “being practical”. 🙂
“What I find strange about Americans is the lack of people who are able to hold views of different parts of the political spectrum. To my mind, if the US carries on this way, it will likely tear itself apart into two wildly opposing and increasingly extreme factions.”
Sorry, but I have to disagree. There is only ONE extreme faction, the one on the Left. They are tearing themselves apart, with their delusional thinking, but the Right is right on track to get the nation back heading in the proper direction. The Loony Left is not deterring Trump from carrying out his agenda. They may be slowing it down a little by holding up his appointees, but even so Trump is carrying on, and this slow walking of his appointees will end soon.
The Right is winning the argument, and if that continues, the radical Left will be seen as the empty suit they are and will lose even more influence which is a very big plus for the United States and the world.
The Left is immersed in delusional thinking, and we don’t want deluded people running our lives. We are on top of this situation now, and we need to stay on top.
There’s nothing wrong with socialism, so long as you are using your own money.
However once you proclaim the right to spend other people’s money to fund your moral instincts you have taken the first step down the totalitarian path.
I strongly belive in free education and healthcare, and protection for the disadvantaged. These are socialist ideals, but do not threaten freedom.
All paths lead toward extremes, all you need to do is recognize that and make sure you don’t go too far. It’s not a reason to block the path entirely.
I wonder if she’ll be able to convince any of her former associates. Probably not, she ‘s more likely to castigated and ostracized. Hopefully in not too painful a manner.
This article mirrors a lot of my experience with liberals. I have found them to be the most judgmental and narrow-minded people that I have ever met. They simply can’t seem to tolerate alternative viewpoints, let alone shades of gray.
… yet “bigot” is their favorite word …
Most recently, I tried to explain why I thought “Black Lives Matter” was divisive because it doesn’t really matter what the color of the person who is killed. More importantly, making it “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t help lead to solutions such as better training or the implementation of non-lethal means of force. Instead it creates an “us” vs. “them” mentality which is all about blame rather than solutions.
The answer that I heard the most often “You just don’t understand because you’re not black.” I thought that was a silly response. What does my color have to do with police violence?
Now the election is past, nothing was done, and nobody cares.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that most of the time, the person claiming “You just don’t understand because you’re not black.”, isn’t black either.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that most of the time, the person claiming “You just don’t understand because you’re not black.”, isn’t black either. Such as my college age daughter who screamed at me rather than listen to my perspective — even as I tried to explain that the divisive nature of the discourse and blame mentality will prohibit solutions rather than achieve solutions.
If you’re rich it’s your fault. If you’re poor it’s society’s fault.
If you’re Saint Andreas it’s California’s fault.
I’m speechless.
Here is a rather fascinating angle about liberal women …
The Ugly Truth About The Women’s March
Very well done. Pretty much sums up my opinions of the American left that started developing in the late 1960’s.
There is nothing in this world more extreme than a recovering anything…alcoholic, smoker, liberal…
This comment says it all.
“In the left, I found a desire to be in pain constantly, so as always to have something to protest”
An important post. Dr. Goska is a rarity, exceptionally perceptive and flexible.
My best friend is quite left-wing (in a Guardian way) and we have a lot of friendly disagreements and discussions. I accuse him of not seeking out alternative opinions and he says exactly the same about me. I don’t recognize him as one of the extreme examples illustrated above. It is too easy to assume the worst examples represent something other than a minority (albeit loud) voice. Ultimately we all need this adversarial system in order not to dip into left or right wing totalitarianism. The problem is that nowadays too many journalists are turning from normal debate into puerile name-calling.
However I remember exactly the same attitude from chicken-hawk right-wingers when the left told them the Iraq war would cause far more trouble than it solved. The right-wing then used just the same bag of self-delusions and lies described above. To them being anti-war was to be a Saddam supporter. In reality the ant-war camp simply wanted to know just how many innocent people we detached Westerners would tolerate in order to satisfy the fake news-peddlers, loony neo-cons and oil industry shills. There is no such thing as ideological truth! We all need to check our own biases don’t blur that truth.
“However I remember exactly the same attitude from chicken-hawk right-wingers when the left told them the Iraq war would cause far more trouble than it solved.” JasG
Now remember that Pres DJTrump was opposed to the Iraq war, and has since made an even stronger case that we have spent $7trillion in the ME and it a disaster; meanwhile our own borders and infrastructure are unprotected and in need of repair. So there was some give and take with his nomination.
Besides, the Republicans were going to try to nominate Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush! This election was a huge rejection of the Establishment Republicans by the electorate as well. They had facilitated our enormous debt for the Democrats, and were also fast tracking TTP and TTIP. Those globalist treaties were a shared concern for the left as well as the right.
And the first thing he did in office was withdraw from the TTP. It did not even take him several years! I felt I had more in common with my leftist relatives this time, which was a surprise. Remember, some of them also hate the printing of fiat money.
Agreed. Presumably the reference to Jeb Bush is because he was a co-signatory on the infamous neo-con Project for a New American Century document (along with Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz) that the Iraq war was based on. Libertarians were pretty much the only group who predicted the financial crisis.
“However I remember exactly the same attitude from chicken-hawk right-wingers when the left told them the Iraq war would cause far more trouble than it solved.”
Well, we can argue about the costs or the reasons for going into Iraq, but the facts are that Iraq was in good shape at the end of Bush 43’s term, with a bright future ahead, and then Barack Obama took over and turned Iraq and the entire Middle East and Europe into a horror story with his neglecting to protect the peace that had been won.
Instead, Obama turns his back on Iraq and allows the Islamic Terror Army to spring forth without resistance, and we see where that has led.
Now Trump has to go in and try and clean up this mess created by the Left and Obama.
Never listen to the Left when it comes to defense matters, they are completely unfit to make these judgements. They have no clue. They are the kids who give their lunch money up to the bullies on the playground. They are not to be depended on to keep us safe.
You seem to be implying that the US military should have been stationed there ad infinitum as an occupying power whether the Iraqis wanted it or not. The fact is that someone had to pull them out even if just on the basis of cost. It just happened to fall to Obama to do that. Many argue that IS arose due to the Saudis exporting of its Wahhabi & Sufi versions of Islam and the West has been supporting Saudis all this time. It is not a simple Left versus Right issue. My main point was the false facts, credulous media and insults-replacing-debate that occurred then is remarkably similar to now but the shoe was on the other foot then.
We were in both Japan and Germany for 20 or 30 years.
Only the lunatic left was claiming that we needed to be there forever.
We are still in Germany.
“You seem to be implying that the US military should have been stationed there ad infinitum as an occupying power whether the Iraqis wanted it or not.”
No, the U.S. troops just had to stay there until the situation stabilized. We didn’t have to keep a large presence there. The mere fact that U.S. combat troops were there, ready, willing and able, would serve to discourage our enemies and encourage our friends.
As MarkW pointed out, we have been in Japan, Germany, and South Korea for decades and we do so because it is in the interests of the United States. It is also in the interests of the United States to have a friendly ally like Iraq in the Middle East.
Obama’s neglect of Iraq and Afghanistan has definitely harmed U.S. credibility with the Iraqis and others in the area, but they will come around if we treat them fairly, and we should. We need them as allies and friends and to demonstrate that being friends with the U.S. is a benefit, not a burden.
Trump has a big job on his hands fixing all these problems Obama has left for him. But if anyone can fix them, I think Trump can fix them because he has some of the best military planners in the business and they are going to get the job done.
We shouldn’t stay in a country any longer than necessary, but we definitely shouldn’t leave too early. Iraq today is the perfect example of why we should not do that.
We shouldn’t enter into a war if we haven’t planned for the aftermath and the rebuilding, which is just as important, if not more so, as the planning of the war itself. Unless our goal is the utter destruction of our opponent and their entire population. Since we don’t practice genocide, we should plan for the aftermath of our wars.
You can’t strip the leadership away from a country and not expect to have anarchy rein if there isn’t a substitute authority present. In that case, such as in Libya, the society descends into tribal warfare because the tribe or the group is where the authority is found.
George W. Bush gave a State of the Union speech in 2007 that described what would happen in Iraq if the U.S. pulled their troops out too early. Bush’s descriptions of the chaos that would ensue were a perfect description of what actually happened. He foretold it all. Obama and the Democrats were completely oblivious to it, and ignored it, and nearly ruined Iraq, the Middle East and Europe as a consequence of their failure to heed Bush’s warnings. Look up Bush’s speech and read it for yourself. See if he didn’t nail it.
Sometimes wars are the lesser of two evils and must be prosecuted. But we must always remember that most of the people involved are innocent civilians who just want to live their lives in peace, so we cannot ignore them in the war planning and its aftermath.
The problems in Iraq were caused by pulling out to soon. Not by the war itself.
On the other hand, your use of “chicken hawk” does wonders to demonstrate how unbalanced your own opinion is going to be.
Biases can blur truth but it presumes you had some truth to start with. I was in the Navy for Bush 1 and the liberation of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein was a “bad man” in Simple Speak. His murder of large numbers of Kurds to test his chemical weapons seems to be well enough documented. That he intended to wipe out Israel is also well documented. For many years he lacked the technology to actually accomplish it but the diversion of high technology equipment is reasonably well documented.
I went down that way in 1991 if I remember right and was very afraid that nuclear war was imminent. I remember a Defcon 3 in the 7 day war between Egypt and Israel.
When you have people in power that look forward with eager anticipation to their own martyrdom, and have weapons of many destruction if not mass destruction, it is a scary, irrational time for all. I’ve seen the photos, a reservist that I know personally was on the team that entered Saddam Hussein’s house on that fateful day when he was captured. He showed photographs of warehouses filled with various munitions, chemical weapons mostly was his specialty, and they were corroding and falling apart making a potential huge environmental disaster.
I don’t doubt that President Bush went into Iraq with integrity; I also saw intelligence reports, and if they were not honest well there’s not much anyone can do about that I think, you go with what you’ve got. But mostly Bush’s war was humanitarian in nature, the very ideal of what the left sometimes proclaims.
“I don’t doubt that President Bush went into Iraq with integrity; I also saw intelligence reports, and if they were not honest well there’s not much anyone can do about that I think, you go with what you’ve got.”
Well, just about every intelligence agency on Earth thought Saddam was producing WMD. Possibly because that’s what Saddam wanted them to believe, since Saddam kept putting that story out. Many of Saddam’s own generals thought Saddam had WMD (during questioning after the war).
There’s also the argument about enforcing UN Security Council resolutions, of which Saddam had 17 lodged against him. If you don’t enforce a UN Security Council resolution, then what good is having one? Saddam defied the international community for years before his fall, which was long overdue. Bush 41 should have taken Saddam out when he had the chance during the First Gulf War. He could have saved us all a lot of trouble.
One benefit of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions is right after Bush 43 invaded Iraq, Kaddafy of Libya decided it was time to come clean on his WMD programs which included plans for nuclear weapons (the actual weapons plans were written in Chinese), and he contacted American officials and gave them up.
The dictator Kaddafy saw the dictator Saddam Insane go down, and the dictator Kaddafy decided he didn’t want to end up like that (he didn’t figure on Hillary Clinton’s stupidity a few years later).
It was a good thing to remove Saddam. The way Obama handled the aftermath after Saddam was removed is just a trajedy of monumental proportions.
TA, I have to disagree on what every intelligence agency knew. All I can tell you is that Bush senior, who had been CIA chief, stopped the tanks before rolling into Baghdad during the 1st Gulf war. Many people find fault with that, I didn’t. I became a traitor in my own family for saying Sadam didn’t have WMD. I felt really bad for Colin Powell. And outing an agent in the field for political purposes, are/were they out of their minds. I suppose they never read ” The Art of War” and how you treat spies. As if anybody is going to work for the US after that. And anybody associated with that agent, what do you think happened to them ? Unbelievable, they dismantled the government in a state that was more tribal than anything. Never, ever, ever should have went in the 2nd time. The mistakes made in governing after we’re even worse. Total and absolute incompetence. Failure by design.
We only had one war, that was in Afghanistan. No agent in their right mind wanted us there either. Poppy plants grow really well there, golden triangle mean anything. It’s the other place on the Himalayan Mtns., Vietnam . Maybe there is a bigger picture here that I don’t see other than enriching Haliburton, who incidently moved their headquarters to Dui Bai.
Saddam kept up the facade of WMDs not because he wanted to tweak the US (although at the time it seemed that way), but because he was a lot more afraid of Iran than of the US. After the defeat in 91, he did not have the capacity to either wage war or defend against an attack from Iran, so he wanted them to think he would use them if attacked.
Wow. What a great piece of writing. And not only because I agree with the sentiments expressed. Being an immigrant to America at a young age from a public housing project in Europe inoculated me from the self loathing on the Left. Spent the mid to late Sixties around young men in olive drab flying back and forth to Vietnam. One of them was my new Dad.
As he said ” Our family doesn’t protest the country’s wars. We fight them” I followed that course and my children have as well. If you couldn’t see the difference between communism and the West everything else you said was BS. No mattet how well eloquently you expressed it. Despite that I do not hate
those in the other side. I hold them in either
contempt or pity. Evil or plain stupid doesn’t really matter to the result. You’re just as compelled to stop them from mucking things up.
I’ve never been a leftist. I haven’t occupied things that don’t own. I think climate change is exaggerated. This article by someone who has, in my opinion, been wrong about everything in the past is hardly a recommendation to take her seriously now when she seems to have taken an opposite tact on everything she used to believe. Being skeptical about climate matters does not equate to a rigid philosophy about any other issue. One can suggest an aversion to overbaked climate theories without embracing a rigid ideology on one side of the political spectrum.
Pretty impressive you leftist concept… I’ve ever been a leftist, I am an anthropogenic climate change skeptic and I’ve never occupied things that I don’t own either. How impressive isn’t it? You should not be rigid about your political issues too (taken from your own words).
Anthony,
Thank You for posting this most poignant personal journey by Dr. Danusha V. Goska!
It represents your site well…and vice versa.
Welcome Dr Vodka.
I have always wondered why people are left or right.
My main interest here is climate change or the lack of it. NOAA records have been adjusted to show a warming of just 0.8 degrees C since 1880 which is mild and understandable since we are coming out of an ice age. More reliable satellite and balloon records show no change for 18 years. Yet this is cause to destroy our cheap reliable power forcing industry to move to China and other more polluted regions.
There seems no logic in Government!!
As someone of Polish ancestry myself, I can say with some certainty that vodka was Poland’s #1 contribution to the downfall of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe – of course, Pope JP Il (the Great), Lech Walesa and Reagan were well up there too, but not as important as vodka. So – good post.
Sorry Dr Goska. Spell check changed your name to Vodka. Ouch. Or can a mod fix it please?
Wow–Thanks so much for this post–I know it’s not about weather or climate–maybe “whether their crazy” or “climate of hate”, but I have written copious notes from her examples and can’t wait to research them. The parallels we can draw with leftist climate activists techniques, of which were very familiar here, is mind-blowing.
I have a beautiful picture of the Great Falls on my wall. And on that clear summer day the stars and stripes flying to the right. I’ve seen the Roman pool under the Patterson hotel. I’ve been in the tunnels that run through Garrett Mtn. and under the Passaic River. In Newark, I’ve sat in the park behind the Ballentine Museum with huge trees that were planted from the Orient. The wonderful library there in marble. I saw in that library photographs and accounts of the devasting floods in 1910 to 1914.
I was working at a library in Patterson, when a Hispanic man approached me and pointed my attention to a wall across the street. Written in Spanish ” communism is the only solution “. He asked what I thought about that. I said, maybe so, once a month they’ll have a parade and I’ll be one of the working class heroes. The rest of you guys, youeesguzs, will have to show up for work to do something other than hang out all day. If you don’t show up, they’ll come find you. Continued absence will send you to some remote spot in Alaska at a work camp with 75 coats to every 100 guys.
The next day the slogan was black out. He knew that is communism. They don’t kid around when they are in power and there isn’t anybody to complain to.
In the Hindu religion is a builder and destroyer. I think I’m on the builder side. It was wonderful to live in that state. It was the best. I hope I make a difference.
Leftist hate my people. I was born and raised on an actual plantation. Have a doctorate now. But we are as far apart as a slave to master. And now I hate them who would be masters.
Who are your people Pat? Do you hate my people because English is not our first language? Do you really hate us just because we are a small nation? Do you really hate me because I was born in a small mining village ?
Thank you Anthony, for bringing this to our attention.
‘On the road to Damascus’ moments are rarely blinding lights of utterly compelling insight. More often they are incremental shifts of growing realization until they coalesce to become a moment of crystalline self-actualization.
“It parallels many if the trials and tribulations climate skeptics suffer at the hands of [climate activists].” I think you meant “many of the trials” not “if”.
please don’t let me be misunderstood.
https://youtu.be/-hwiCkU73NA
This is great! I still consider myself a libertarian democratic socialist – I haven’t left the left. But there is so much here that I recognise from first-hand experience and abhor. I realise that what it’s about is principles, evidence and a proper (Popper) scientific approach. Strangely, I find that, currently, principles that I had associated with the left are actually being promoted by the so-called right, including Pres. Trump, especially in his opposition to islamism, and of course his questioning of EPA dogma, while many on the left are immersed in obscurantism about climate science, and fellow-travellers of a primitive, supremacist, anti-democracy and anti-freedom ideology, islam. Does that sound strange, “libertarian democratic socialist”? I recommend a book that probably many Americans haven’t read: E.P. Thompson, “The making of the English working class”, Penguin, London, 1963. One of my heroes: a libertarian, democratic socialist who fought in a tank regiment in WWII, a great historian, a Marxist who opposed Stalinism and neo-Stalinism (in the work of Althusser, Poulantzas and their ilk – see his “The poverty of theory”), and was generally a great guy. Get hold of the book and give yourself a real delight reading it. Thompson was also nearly unique amongst Marxists in recognising the immense value of the rule of law (so-called “bourgeois law” amongst most Marxists) for workers / ordinary people (read “Whigs and hunters”). So yes, I’m a libertarian democratic socialist, and I have no home. I can’t even vote Labour in Britain because the leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is a rabid anti-semite and pro-hamas jihad. The small h for hamas is not a mistake.
Now this is a surprise, a well thought out political post which I entirely agree with ! I like the point about the far left promoting far right ideas, exactly my own perspective.
Let me phrase a statement to agree or disagree with
The New left is not ultimately interested in achieving solutions to any of the problems it so trumpets.
It exists to parade itself in opposition to the forces it claims try to destroy it.
If those forces do not exist, it will invent them
You would likely be at home in Iceland where many libertarian democratic socialists exist and it works pretty well. The citizens gripe somewhat about high taxes but are delighted with social medicine and education.
Other than that, liberty exceeds that in the United States on almost all vectors, realms and theaters. It is extremely rare to see a “bannad” (banned, forbidden, no trespassing) or “lokad” (locked, closed) and in such cases it is because what is on the other side is *dangerous* as in instantly fatal. Merely burning your face off is permitted if you wanted to look down the borehole of the geyser, Strokkur.
But all of that liberty is cultural and ultimately related to life itself. In a land that until recently had essentially no roads and no fences, people and animals traveled pretty much unrestrained by such things; guided across featureless tundra by stone cairns built every so often.
It was a garden of eden; and like the original, soon enough came a serpent called private banking and the forbidden fruit of easy money. Google “IceSave debacle” for the rest of the story.
Thanks for the contribution Danusha.
I know you’re not a Slovakian gypsy – would not change anything.
Best greetings – Hans
If not Marx, then god.
I am sick and tired of it.
Can anybody think on their own? Hello out there?
Yep, but I’m thinking of leaving the solar system…:-)
In the UK, the penny bazaar, was the saviour of the working class
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/Archive_Cardiff_pre1901-9037.jpg
Later it was supposed to be central socialist government or as I call them, Marx and Spenders.
Leo, I guess like many on the right you have great difficulty discerning between democratic socialism and Stalinist dictatorships. Don’t worry , you are not alone in that blind spot.
“I guess like many on the right you have great difficulty discerning between democratic socialism and Stalinist dictatorships.”
“Democratic Socialism” is an oxymoron.
Socialism cannot be imposed only by force and by the elimination of all individuals who wish for liberty to follow their own path.
Socialism is a theology that has replaced “God(s)” by “the State”, and in fifty years of the Twentieth Century Socialist regimes were responsible for murdering more of their own citizens than all the God-based theologies in all of recorded history.
Its worshippers invariably have humungous chips on their shoulders and wish to drag everyone else down to their pathetic level, or they are evil exploiters of the credulous.
Oh, and just so there can be no doubt, I don’t hate Socialists – that would be a waste of a very powerful emotion.
I despise them.
The difference exists mainly in the minds of those who are trying to confuse fact and fiction.
https://youtu.be/8VceW6F9ZsM
The
.Very good article , that’s for giving it some airtime.
What ? How on Earth does she get there?
I would have thought that the ‘teabagger’ mockery is simply to ridicule as being something small and insignificant, not a reference to being “orally penetrated by a man”.
Either I’m not using my teabags correctly or I’m a little out of touch with politically correct logic.
Teabagging is the act of a man placing his scrotum into the mouth or onto the face or forehead of another person, usually while standing or kneeling over that person. (Think dipping a tea bag into a mug and you’ve got the visual.)
Yes. You are a little ‘out of touch’ with modern leftist slurs and defamation of those who oppose socialism.
obama used the term often enough (to insult the ‘tea party’ groups)- and you may be very sure he knows what it means.
obama was totally respectful of the orifice of the president.
The crews be picking on your flesh and you got no control of the
____ Situation.
Terminus el dorado.
did you know Ted is running for Senate in Michigan?
Dr. Goska’s experience echoes that of a prominent UK political journalist, the American born Janet Daley
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/
Her comments on the left are all the more cogent because she was in it.
The same goes for writers like George Orwell.
I think history will judge socialism and the rise and fall of Marxism in the 20th century much as it now views the rise and fall of witch trials in the 17th – as an inevitable stage through which we had to pass, given the conditions and beliefs of the time.
Ayn Rand had binocular vision too, having been born in Russia in 1905 and moved to the US in 1926.
All about carpal tunnel syndrome
https://www.google.at/search?q=Tunnel+syndrome&oq=Tunnel+syndrome&aqs=chrome.
if nothings to see here – move along
It’s interesting that a critical moment is being reached in the climate debate and public is more broadly exposed as the policy list is mainstreamed. In every past moment such as the cap and trade proposal period, Kyoto frame work etc
the climate debate becomes brutally political as the base numbers of debaters increases. In times of stagnation and smaller more academic settings the focus is layered in technical disputes, rationalizations and politics is derided. The cycle repeats again and again.
The climate advocates (green establishment) saw the short term value of being perceived as the “science” authority. From that the “consensus” was born and enforced.
It’s the failure of the technical skeptic to acknowledge the core political agenda of the climate advocacy political motives from inception (Circa 1960’s green/left counter culture) that formed the weakness to create a global UN climate authority and design.
Acknowledging the political primacy of the climate war both currently and historically is the only road to disbanding climate central planning ambitions and restoring critical thinking to “science” and academics itself. This only seems to happen at policy peaks and reverts to smaller debates in between. The pattern is repeated on this site as well.
Skeptics can’t resolve their political contradictions to the core of the climate agenda. It’s larger then any science fact to debate. If you can’t see and admit the agenda of the CO2 claim you remain on the losers road.
Articles like this are a positive but on average middle of the road acceptance of Curryism is more a problem then solution here. It’s like General McClellan on the Potomac, prepared but unwilling to accept the basic frame that climate was always a political movement first and science an abstract second. Climate is a leftist, globalist grasp at state centered authority and little else. The rest of the details are tactics and self delusion.
Lindzen and Delingpole are the face of the resistance in logic.
“After all, Professor X reminded us, handicapped people can’t climb stairs.”
The Leftist point of view is an example of mass psychosis.
Having read the article and then started to read the comments, the authors points are made by the leftist commentators. And they probably do not even realize it. They are so consumed by their hate, that it is their natural state. They cannot even think outside their box.
I read Dr Ball’s article as well. Both of these are good reading to understand the sole motivation of the left. They live to hate.
I have a right/ liibertarian political outlook, and agree with Dr. Danusha V. Goska’s “after” views, but I
am cynical regarding any coverts after their 20s; that includes both religious converts, like St. Paul converting from Judaism to Christianity , and political converts, like Dr Goska and Whittaker Chambers. Religious and Political views are established over a lifetime. Being converted after age 30 is a sign of mental instability. I wouldn’t trust such people.
“Religious and Political views are established over a lifetime. Being converted after age 30 is a sign of mental instability.”
What is more intelligent, moving away from error, or persisting in it?
We each have the power to change our own minds by directing our own thoughts in new ways. Also, goal directed thoughts and actions are the essence of human rationality and freedom. The author has not only changed her own mind, but has taken the time to explain and elucidate her reasons and goals in the process. This is like showing the steps when finding a mathematical solution. No one here has pointed out any problem with the actual errors she is concerned with solving.
Her end result is the following: “I wanted to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. I wanted to see others, not as victims or victimizers, but as potential friends, as loved creations of God. I wanted to understand the point of view of people with whom I disagreed without immediately demonizing them as enemy oppressors.” I would say she has truly accomplished that. This is also something I aim for. Appreciation, admiration and respect for others is close to heaven, contempt and revenge are close to hell.
Alan,
“Being converted after age 30 is a sign of mental instability.”
Have you considered the possibility that you’re insane, sir? . . I just did ; )
eric hoffer made mention of the phenomenon where a true believer easily swaps flags or fetishes.
one religion is not much different than another – the hallmark is mysticism.
“Being converted after age 30 is a sign of mental instability. I wouldn’t trust such people.”
In one way I can see why you would say that; suggesting a person cannot make up his mind. But in the case of Dr. Goska, she never was like the other leftists. She did not “convert”, rather, she recognized that her character type was not accurately or adequately represented on the left. She has already, or will soon discover that it also isn’t represented on the right. She may become “libertarian”, choosing for herself and letting others choose for themselves, perhaps with some persuasion and education to make good choices.
People that “convert” to my religion don’t really change, it isn’t a conversion as much as it is embracing a religion that conforms to a character type each already possesses; perhaps with some refinements here and there to be in better alignment for the benefits thereof.
Today’s leftists are not the hippie, make-love-not-war Berkeley types of the 1960’s.
Once upon a time leftists had a thing they believed in called socialism, or communism. A proposed society they believed would set everyone free from oppression. The ‘kingdom of heaven here on earth’. In a real sense, proposing an alternative (you believe in) gives legitimacy to your criticisms. You criticize the here and now from the point of view of a better future.
If not earlier, leftists generally gave up believing in communism over 26 years ago just after the Berlin Wall collapsed and all the communists became capitalists, or workers. Since then the auguries for socialism got worse (North Korea, Venezuela, …). The left, pretty much, gave up talking about socialist economics. The only left economics available today is Keynesian redistribution, which is capitalist.
What do you do after your dream dies? I think Danusha explains it well. You classify the world as perp, victim, or SJW. The only way to avoid the fate of victim or victimizer is to fight against it: to be a SJW. The SJW criticizes from a future perspective too – a world without victims. Except – who exactly are those victims in SJW parlance? Not actual victims but imaginary ones. Examples of SJW victims are:
* Trans-people who want to use unisex washrooms. So all washrooms must become unisex.
* Polar bears dying because the ice melted (but in reality prospering as never before)
* Larvae and fish eggs potentially harmed by desalination plants
* The projected millions dying of carbon pollution in an imaginary future (the SJW’s nightmare world)
No actual human victims are saved here. No human lives improved; if anything the opposite. Our lives are made materially and spiritually worse. SJWs psychologically victimize ordinary people: promoting a generalized ‘guilt trip’ for merely being alive. A hatred of oneself, and of humanity. Anyone not suffering from such a guilt trip is deemed Republican, or rightwing, racist, Nazi, or all four.
It’s an actual moral hazard being a left SJW today.
In plain speak, Dr. Goska decided that being part of the perpetually aggrieved crowd was no longer healthy or fulfilling.
She stepped out of the dark and into the light. Welcome Dr. Goska…welcome.
There seems to a lot of left wing people about, protesting about all sorts of things and pushing their various agendas. I am very interested in what motivates them and I’ve been trying to understand them.
This article is fascinating as well as disturbing. Is what it describes extreme or normal or what?
“We rushed to cast everyone in one of three roles: victim, victimizer, or champion of the oppressed. We lived our lives in a constant state of outraged indignation.” This particular phrase seems to articulate what I often observe. What influences people to end up in this state?
The Adam Smith Institute has published a report which claims that about 80% of UK academics are left wing. These people are educating the next generation. No wonder that many of today’s students are politically correct to the point of lunacy.
That study can’t possibly be right. You might want to examine it to see how they arrived at that figure. I find it very hard to believe that the level of leftist educators in any country could be as low as 80%.
I have friends who are liberal history professors. They won’t stand for the pledge of allegiance, because it is “fascist” Whatever. They spend enormous amounts of time attending marches and political speeches, but not a second doing any sort of actual charity work. I asked them once about it, and they explained “We are trying to save the world, we don’t have time to help just one person.” I never forgot that. Then I realized the ugly truth – they were only interested in things that aggrandized themselves. Helping one person, helping dozens, was not enough for them. It didn’t make them feel good our powerful enough.
It was all about them, not the people they were supposed to be helping.
Beyond that, attending rallies and such doesn’t cost them anything.
Trying to actually help people requires money. Your own money.
Leftists want to save the world, but they always want someone else to pick up the check.
Perhaps, being history professors, they are thinking back to when this was the Pledge of Allegiance?
Reading this, I am reminded of the Ronald Reagan remark that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him.
This story reads like propaganda. Disappointing on this blog.
In other words, you can’t refute it but are desperate to say something disparaging, and that was all you could come up with.
It really is fascinating how self-blind leftists can be.
It is a true tale of one persons journey to enlightenment. How is it you see that as ‘propaganda’?
I read it as a profound and deeply moving ‘windows view’ into one woman’s soul. I find this to be excellent literature, worthy of wide distribution and acclaim!
Awesome!
To all who have commented my humble note, some reflectively, some with foolishness, I repeat: The attitude towards and understanding of science is the one and only decisive matter.
Most of my liberal friends did not have a similar background to Dr. Danusha V. Goska.
1. They had nothing to do with ultra-liberal Berkeley.
2. They were not communist sympathizers.
3. They didn’t attend a lot of protests.
4. They were not in the Peace Corps.
5. They did hate Bush, Reagan, etc., but never outright said so.
6. They act like normal people (capitalists) until you get into politics (and global warming). They are probably more like capitalists than me as I am a “starving artist”.
JPP
And a lot of them do volunteer work to help people – food drives, etc.
One is an ultra liberal, but his favorite speech is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Go figure…
She really does nail it.
But it wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time there roamed the fruited plains in great numbers a now nearly-extinct creature called the “bleeding-heart liberal.”
But these days liberalism is the ideology of hatred.
I remember “bleeding-heart liberals,” but that was a long, long time ago. These days, liberalism is characterized by selfishness and viciousness. Liberals’ heroes are people like like abortionist LeRoy Carhart and gay activist Dan Savage. (If someone reading this is unfamiliar with them, just ask google; e.g., http://bfy.tw/5YX )
These days, liberals are “caring” only about themselves. Bleeding-heart liberalism, which cared about OTHER people, is long obsolete. Liberals celebrate ruining the lives of anyone, like Melissa & Aaron Klein, or Elaine Huguenin, who dares to have a contrary opinion. (If you don’t know those names [really??], then ask google; e.g., http://bfy.tw/5Yu )
These days, people on the Left are often so full of hatred, rage & selfishness that they want those with whom they disagree to die and go to hell (except that most of them would say that don’t believe in heaven or hell). Remember leftist Phil Jones telling his leftist friend, Michael Mann, the “cheering news” that conservative John Daly had unexpectedly died?
Once upon a time there were a lot of good-hearted, gentle, “bleeding-heart liberals.” Even when they were wrong, they weren’t Bad. They were people who a conservative Christian could like and respect, even when we disagreed.
But that was long ago. Those nice liberals are mostly extinct, now. Since killing inconvenient unborn babies has become a sacrament for liberals, most people on the Left have hearts of stone.
Abortion has become one of the core Sacraments of liberalism, which all liberals must support, just as Christians are expected to participate in the Christian sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. If you oppose abortion you can’t really call yourself a liberal, just as if you oppose the Christian sacraments you can’t really call yourself a Christian.
Support for killing innocent, unborn babies is an essential Tenet Of The Faith of modern liberalism. If your heart aches at the thought of an innocent unborn child being dismembered in the womb, you aren’t a liberal.
But liberalism is not characterized solely by hard-heartedness. It is also characterized by aversion to reality. Evidence is no obstacle to liberal opinion. “Abortion does not kill babies,” say liberals, as if unborn babies either are not human, or not alive. “My body, my choice,” say liberals, as if unborn children were indistinguishable from their mothers’ bodies.
They might as well deny the law of gravity as to deny that an unborn child is a distinct, living, human baby. At some level, they surely know it’s untrue. It’s just that truth has lost its consistent relevance to them. It becomes dependent on context, or convenience.
The next time an expectant friend — even a liberal — shows you the ultrasound of her unborn son, you try telling her that her child is not a baby. Or if she tells you her baby just kicked, try telling her that’s just an “embryo or fetus, not a baby.” See how that works out.
Or if she comes to you, red-eyed from crying, and tells you that she lost her baby, will you correct her, and tell her that her miscarriage was just the termination of an embryo or fetus? (Even most liberals have more sense than that!)
But if she decides to have an abortion, because a baby would be too disruptive to the lifestyle she wants for herself, then, in THAT context, liberals insist that this is not really a baby:
About 18 days after conception, the baby’s heart starts beating.
43 days after conception the baby’s brainwaves are detectable.
By the 8th week the brain and all body systems are present, and the baby will wake and sleep, make a fist, suck his thumb, and get hiccups.
By the 9th week he has his own unique finger prints.
By the 11th week he is sensitive to heat, touch, light and noise. All body systems are working.
People who have hardened their hearts so much that they have no regard for whether such a child lives or dies are called liberals.
Some of them even go so far as to applaud the abortion of an innocent child, for its supposed environmental benefit of curbing overpopulation. That sentiment sounds a lot like a famous literary character, who said, “If [the poor and destitute] would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“daveburton March 6, 2017 at 9:22 pm”
Hummm…the rudiments of the spine/backbone and anus form first according to the biology texts I read. I didn’t fare well with biology, so could be wrong.
daveburton:
It is sad to find such a vile, hate filled rant as your post in a thread that is about opposition to expressions of hatred.
Richard
I was restrained, Richard. Instead of an image of an unborn baby sucking his thumb I could have shown a photo of one of the victims: a baby whose thumb and arm are no longer attached to his body. That would have been a clearer illustration of the character of modern liberalism.
Your reaction is familiar. I see it sometimes, here in North Carolina.
There are still a few Southern admirers of the Confederacy left around here, who call the American Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression,” and think Gen. Wm. T. Sherman was armed with a pitchfork. Your reaction to my description of the true nature of the most horrible of the horrors of liberalism reminds me of the angry reaction typical of those Southerners, when they’re shown the true nature of the character of the Confederacy, as revealed, for example, in photos of its victims:
http://www.burtonsys.com/Andersonvillesurvivor_11pct_for_FB.jpg
Most people would guess that photograph was of a man liberated from a German concentration camp, in 1945. But it wasn’t. That man was liberated from a Confederate POW camp 100 miles south of Atlanta, GA, and the photo predates Auschwitz by 3/4 century.
Communism should be classified as a disease. Killed at least 120 million, and caused unnecessary misery for millions more. And it desperately tried to spread to even more. And is still trying. This discussion wouldn’t be on here if it weren’t.
Well written and a mirror of my own ideological transition. Oh, and btw – apparently Chico, CA is the 7th most miserable city in America.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/happiest-most-miserable-cities-america-060032254.html
I can deal with someone of a different point of view, or even ideology, if they are honest.
Progressivism has eroded honesty from the Left, because they have moved into the next stage of militancy. They are now cause-based, rather than freedom-based, which totally corrupts the original ideals of what I once thought was ‘liberal’. Their doctrines are absolute, close-minded, totalitarian, and their methods of dealing with opposition are vicious.
Live and let live, is dependent upon the ‘let live’ clause.
THAT’s why I turned away from the Left.
Totalitarian versus libertarian is a more meaningful comparison in my opinion. As others here have noticed, far-right and far-left tend to meet on the far side of the circle. Left or right is simply the path one takes to Totalitarian.
Order versus Chaos is another axis; but is unrelated to totalitarian and libertarian. Iceland is libertarian and well-ordered because its citizens choose it and have 1100 years of cultural evolution to guide them.
Haiti has chaos and cannot escape chaos by democratic means. Their path will have to be through a right or left totalitarian state; only eventually perhaps becoming libertarian.
have re-posted this on Google plus, and on one of my Word Press blogs.Thank you for having the fortitude to come out and proclaim these things.This conservative Bible-believing Protestant hears and agrees! Seems like the leftist agenda is selfishness on giga-steroids!
“My students do know — because they have been taught this — that America is run by all-powerful racists who will never let them win. My students know — because they have been drilled in this — that the only way they can get ahead is to locate and cultivate those few white liberals who will pity them and scatter crumbs on their supplicant, bowed heads and into their outstretched palms…. The star of this story… was the white man. The generous white liberal still gets top billing.”
Unfortunately true. Every identity group is encouraged to find some government largess and patronage as a means of overcoming inequality and bettering their lives.
In the end hard work and possibility of success or failure is much less of a scourge than powerful patrons. The Founders figured that out.
“most obvious aspects of left-wing hate is how often, and how virulently”
Interesting, made me think of the response I got from my very left wing daughter who loves “The book of Mormon” upon hearing I had saw the play and wanted to know if I liked it(one of her all time favorites), me basically saying it had its moments, but I felt it was very disrespectful of Mormons…and the look on her face..
I define the beliefs as a statism scale ranging from ‘small government’ to ‘big government’. ***
Both Republicans and Democrats tend to be big government people.
Trump is a certainly big government guy based on the pre-election promises.
*** defined as government spending as a percentage of GDP
under 20% = small government
over 40% = big government
In the US total government spending at all levels is about 35% of GDP, and likely to go higher as baby boomers retire and collect their “entitlements”.
Late-night legend David Letterman’s ugly personality no laughing matter, former colleagues say
“He was never truly comfortable unless he was seething with unhappiness at something,” one longtime writer told author Jason Zinoman in “Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/david-letterman-ugly-personality-no-laughing-matter-colleagues-article-1.2995387