1. Land wars in asia
2. Wits, siscilians, death.
3. A demonstration:
Another of Robert Reich's books
argues that Radcons (his term for radical (religious) conservatives) are worse than other more respectable political groups due to the Radcon position:"We are virtuous; they are venal"
He goes on to enumerate:
"We are heterosexual, married, and clean-living. They are gay or lesbian, sexually active outside marriage, and in favor of abortion.
We are hardowrking, white, and middle class. They are idle, poor, black, or Latino and Asian immigrants who don't speak English but benefit from our social services.
We are Americans. They are terrorists. They are also Muslims and Arabs. They are even French and Germans or anyone else who is not with us.
Unless our values prevail, they will triumph."
Lovely position. Indeed, it matches that of one of my favorite psychologists, Jonathan Haidt. From this essay:
"...people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally."
In other words...conservatives are bigger on ingroup/loyalty.
But...that matches neither my experience, nor that of the conservatives, nor that of those people I know who do not qualify as either conservative or liberal. Rather...a common position from the non-liberal side of the world is that the liberals are more intolerant of diversity of opinion than are the conservatives.
To counterpoint Dr. Reich.
- The chattering classes adoption of the term "teabagger" for conservative protester.
- Obama's declaration of Fox as not a news outlet.
- Standard liberal hysteria when sacred cows are touched: Anthropogenic Global Warming.
- The collective reaction of academia to Larry Summers simple statement that it MIGHT NOT be sexism that explains Harvard's almost all male Math/Physics departments.
#3. Mote, eye, beam.
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12 comments:
My INGROUP instincts VERY MUCH APPROVE of this post!!
(To onlookers: Yes, I really do mean this is a great post. Hopefully not ONLY because it agrees with stuff I emphasize.)
Shorter Robert Reich:
"The radical conservatives are worse than the rest of us because they think their political opponents are worse than themselves."
So concisely done. Thanks, DW. I like the phrasing. I'd have to spend a lot longer writing to write so concisely.
Ask any gay/black/whatever Republican. Conservatives are far more accepting of them being gay/black/whatever than liberal gays/blacks/whatever are of them being Conservative.
Liberals really are incredibly closed minded and intolerant these days.
And I say this as a bisexual pagan libertarian. (which I think makes me an evil uncle tom traitor of some kind or another)
this might need to be reworked:
>While the Republican/conservative us/them-ness is confined to the less educated side of the party,<
The Founders recognized that a civil society is sine qua non in the formation and continuation of a constitutional republic. The family and faith are sine qua non to civil society.
The Founders were not "less educated." The knew without faith and family, self-governance is impossible.
The Left knows that, too, which is why it's so eager to undermine and marginalize those foundational institutions.
I think Haidt's divisions hold as long as you have a more expansive view of 'ingroup/loyalty.' For example, one of the major philosophical innovations of America is that the 'ingroup' is defined not by blood, but by belief and support of the Constitution. So for American conservatives, if you honor the constitution, you're in the group, no matter what your color/ethnicity.
Furthermore, a major point of Haidt's thesis is that liberals simply don't understand conservatives. Someone who can thinks two-dimensionally will never understand someone who thinks five-dimensionally. So Robert Reich looks at conservatives and does not understand at all what they are about, which is why his attempts to describe conservative thought are so simplistic and false.
In my experience leftist are far more dishonest and far more tolerant of dishonesty and thug behavior and far more full of cant than are classical liberals / conservatives.
And the leftist mentality extols and sanctifies expediency -- and belittles tradition, principle and the rule of law.
Virtue and tradition and principle are forever de-legitimized by leftists, and unprincipled and viscious behavior by leftist anti-heroes is secretly or not so secretly esteemed by leftists, and almost never criticized.
A unified politically correct party line and a loyalty to the party line leadership comes before any other ethic -- the leftist agenda and the group are more important than any principle of individual just behavior.
Classical liberals / conservatives believe in the primacy of individual rules of just conduct and the individual virtues of upholding these virtues, honesty, sanctity anof property, the faith of oaths, etc.
Leftist believe all of that all such virtues are an ideological fraud -- mere hypocracy -- and violating property right or oaths or traditional moral rules for currently expedient ends is always justified by the politically correct leftist ends of the moment.
Classic liberals / conservatives would call this violating of property rights and oaths and traditional laws and moral venal behavior. But leftists don't recongized the legitimacy of such ascriptions -- venal behavior of this kind isn't recognized as venal by leftists. The only venal behavior recomized by leftists is opposition to the politically correct party line expediency of the moment.
Thank you for the (right on the money) observations.
"This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're [Democrats] the good." --Howard Dean, at Democratic fundraiser, quoted in Lawrence Journal-World, February 26, 2005. Curiously, this article does not come up in a search of their archives.
Reich is just picking up an easy advance. He mistakes a belief in classic virtues for pride and judgmentalism.
As for his term "Radcon," is there any conservative he doesn't consider radical? "Radical" means of or going to the root or origin as its primary meaning, so being radical is essentially a synonym for conservative. In its secondary meaning, radical means extreme or fanatical. It seems to me that statists like Reich overuse the term. They think in hyperbole and loaded terms.
One might say, like the word verification, that they mismorfy the language.
Yes of course. And the primary test for ingroup status? Where you stand on abortion.
So much so that a pro abortion part of the Health Demolition bill was taken out and that helped the bill to pass.
Read about it at the link.
Well if abortion is the most important thing to a number of voters then Nationalized Health Care here we come.
Socialists/lefties first and foremost are interested in the accumulation of/exercise of power. Because they have de-recognised Judeo-Christian concepts of honesty and fair-dealing, they pursue power through every means, devious and decietful. Until we recognise that and armour ourselves against the consequences of it, we will lose.
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