What Leftism Does to People

[The T]

Nothing has ever really got done in the country by being conservative.... In the true sense of the word.

Nah. The Founders only got it done. Nothing good came out of it.

 

[Foxfyre]

Was the protest in 1773 considerate of others property? My problem with the OP is the man ignores American history.

Okay let's refocus here just a tad.

Klaven's observation used the Occupy groups versus the Tea Party to illustrate the behavior of people who tilt left (the Occupy groups) versus those who tilt right (the Tea Party and similar groups.)

Those on the right obey the law, are civil, polite, and considerate of the rights and property of others.

Those on the left are lawless, uncivil, impolite, inconsiderate of the right of others and destructive of property of others.

So what makes the difference unless it is the difference in thinking and concepts of personal responsibility between the left and right?

If you have read any of Andrew Klaven's writings, you would know that he is no novice when it comes to American history.

The essay forming the OP, however, was not about American History or 1773 but rather is about realities of the here and now and what promotes a certain way of thinking and anti social behavior in certain people.

Along with Klaven's observation and other things, another phenomenon I have observed among many on the left is the inability to focus on a single concept or articulate a reasoned argument for why a concept is right or wrong.

Perhaps you could show me that you are an exception to that by focusing on what Klaven said rather than what he didn't say.

 

[Luissa]

Modern conservatives and liberals do have a lot in common. The problem is you guys get hung up on the social issues.

 

[BDBoop]

Those on the right obey the law, are civil, polite, and considerate of the rights and property of others.

Those on the left are lawless, uncivil, impolite, inconsiderate of the right of others and destructive of property of others.

Where on earth did you get this idiocy?

What sort of a moron would make such sweeping generalities?

Some of the most foul criminals I’ve encountered advocated conservative dogma; some of the most law-abiding liberal.

Your mind is so consumed by hate and ignorance you can’t think logically or objectively.

Apparently, you're quoting someone I have on ignore - what an idiot. I don't know how they can post and keep a straight face.

 

[The T]

Modern conservatives and liberals do have a lot in common. The problem is you guys get hung up on the social issues.

Liberty of the Individual under LAW is a problem? Really Gracie?

 

[Luissa]

I also stated very clearly I was referring to conservatives in the true sense of the word. Did I not say that? Or are you implying the OWS might be modern conservatives?

Stop trying to parse it. We get your meaning, and YOU continue to lie.

Are you going to add anything?
And I am the one Fox is directing complaints to about the way this thread is going. Ha!

 

[Luissa]

Modern conservatives and liberals do have a lot in common. The problem is you guys get hung up on the social issues.

Liberty of the Individual under LAW is a problem? Really Gracie?

It isn't even worth responding to you anymore.
Fox I give you props on a good idea for a thread. I tried to add my two cents in a polite manner, because we have been discussing this issue for a few days.
I have the flu and feel like crap, and really want to call The T a drunk right now. I do not want to ruin your thread, so I am going to take a nap and return when I am not cranky. Have a good day.

 

[Foxfyre]

Conservatives clearly are throwing stones while living in a glass house; they’re in no position to criticize liberals.

Yes they are. Virtually everyone is in a position to criticize liberals. No group has been more wrong about everything than liberals.

But in the same spirit in which I encourage our liberal friends here to articulate an argument with more substance than rightists/conservatives suck and American liberalism is wonderful. . . . .

. . . .We on the right are just whistling in the wind and bring nothing to the table if all we have is that leftists/liberals suck and conservatism is wonderful.

Klaven offers an illustration of how leftism and conservatism affects people with his comparison of the behavior of the Occupy groups versus behavior of the Tea Party groups. Which is more commendable? And why would conservatives behave differently in something they are as passionate about as the Occupy group is passionate about whatever they are protesting again?

Or if you take Klaven's thesis very literally:

Why are the conservatives/libertarians far more likely to engage in peaceful protest that is respectful of others than are leftists?

And do the leftist or American conservative ideologies have anything to do with that?

 

[The T]

Modern conservatives and liberals do have a lot in common. The problem is you guys get hung up on the social issues.

Liberty of the Individual under LAW is a problem? Really Gracie?

It isn't even worth responding to you anymore.
Fox I give you props on a good idea for a thread. I tried to add my two cents in a polite manner, because we have been discussing this issue for a few days.
I have the flu and feel like crap, and really want to call The T a drunk right now. I do not want to ruin your thread, so I am going to take a nap and return when I am not cranky. Have a good day.

Then don't. You will never get it. Continue to lop off your nose to spite your face.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Last Monday, Andrew Klaven offered a mini essay that is particularly pertinent at this time of history given the social upheavals witnessed across the country.

I fully expect the numbnuts, wingnuts, and dingbats to immediately condemn his thesis and probably some right wingnuts will immediately applaud it without thinking.

But if we could keep this reasonably civil, I think there are some people who will actually consider whether he is right. Or whether his thesis is flawed and why.

The emphasis is mine and I took some liberties with the paragraphing hoping to make the text more readable.

Leftism is bad for people. It makes them awful.

The unwashed, ill-mannered, anti-Semitic, entitled, and now violent mobs littering various parts of the nation under the banner “Occupy” believe their ideas will lead to a better society — but they actually are the society their ideas lead to. Their behavior when compared to the polite, law-abiding, non-racist demonstrations of so-called tea partiers tells you everything you need to know about the end results of statism on the one hand and constitutional liberty on the other.

This is not, of course, to say that every left-winger is a miscreant but rather that the natural, indeed inevitable, result of statism is to produce nations of miscreants. When the state is permitted to make the individual’s moral choices, the individual is forced to become either a slave or a criminal; when the state is permitted to redistribute wealth, it chains the citizen into a rigid, two-tiered hierarchy of power rather than freedom’s fluid, multi-layered rankings of merit and chance; when the people are taught to be dependent on entitlements, they are reduced to violence when, inevitably, the entitlement well runs dry; when belief in the state usurps every higher creed, the people become apathetic, hedonistic, and uncreative and their culture slouches into oblivion.

I need hardly expend the energy required to lift my finger and point to Europe where cities burn because the unemployable are unemployed or because the hard-working won’t fund the debts of the indolent; where violent and despicable Islamism eats away portions of municipalities like a cancer while the authorities do nothing; where nations that once produced history’s greatest achievements in science and the arts can now no longer produce even enough human beings to sustain themselves.
Klavan On The Culture » What Leftism Does to People

"The lessons of history … show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

These searing words about Depression-era welfare are from Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 State of the Union Address.


And, in practical terms, from Peter Ferrara, “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb,” chapter five.

1. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Such should be the epitaph of Liberalism.

2. ‘Welfare’ as a wholly owned subsidiary of the government, and its main result is the incentivizing of a disrespect for oneself, and for the entity that provides the welfare. As more folks in a poor neighborhood languish with little or no work, entire local culture begins to change: daily work is no longer the expected social norm. Extended periods of hanging around the neighborhood, neither working nor going to school becoming more and more socially acceptable.

a. Since productive activity not making any economic sense because of the work disincentives of the welfare plantation, other kinds of activities proliferate: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, recreational sex, illegitimacy, and family breakup are the new social norms, as does the culture of violence.

 

[Greenbeard]

Okay let's refocus here just a tad.

Klaven's observation used the Occupy groups versus the Tea Party to illustrate the behavior of people who tilt left (the Occupy groups) versus those who tilt right (the Tea Party and similar groups.)

Then perhaps the thread should be titled "what thirty years of stagnant real wages, declining social mobility, soaring inequality, assaults on working people, and increasing corporate influence over elections and government does to people." Turns out it makes them really pissed off.

The Occupy movement and the Tea Party aren't comparable so attempting to draw some trite conclusion(s) based on that premise is a waste of time.

 

[The T]

Last Monday, Andrew Klaven offered a mini essay that is particularly pertinent at this time of history given the social upheavals witnessed across the country.

I fully expect the numbnuts, wingnuts, and dingbats to immediately condemn his thesis and probably some right wingnuts will immediately applaud it without thinking.

But if we could keep this reasonably civil, I think there are some people who will actually consider whether he is right. Or whether his thesis is flawed and why.

The emphasis is mine and I took some liberties with the paragraphing hoping to make the text more readable.

Leftism is bad for people. It makes them awful.

The unwashed, ill-mannered, anti-Semitic, entitled, and now violent mobs littering various parts of the nation under the banner “Occupy” believe their ideas will lead to a better society — but they actually are the society their ideas lead to. Their behavior when compared to the polite, law-abiding, non-racist demonstrations of so-called tea partiers tells you everything you need to know about the end results of statism on the one hand and constitutional liberty on the other.

This is not, of course, to say that every left-winger is a miscreant but rather that the natural, indeed inevitable, result of statism is to produce nations of miscreants. When the state is permitted to make the individual’s moral choices, the individual is forced to become either a slave or a criminal; when the state is permitted to redistribute wealth, it chains the citizen into a rigid, two-tiered hierarchy of power rather than freedom’s fluid, multi-layered rankings of merit and chance; when the people are taught to be dependent on entitlements, they are reduced to violence when, inevitably, the entitlement well runs dry; when belief in the state usurps every higher creed, the people become apathetic, hedonistic, and uncreative and their culture slouches into oblivion.

I need hardly expend the energy required to lift my finger and point to Europe where cities burn because the unemployable are unemployed or because the hard-working won’t fund the debts of the indolent; where violent and despicable Islamism eats away portions of municipalities like a cancer while the authorities do nothing; where nations that once produced history’s greatest achievements in science and the arts can now no longer produce even enough human beings to sustain themselves.
Klavan On The Culture » What Leftism Does to People

"The lessons of history … show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."

These searing words about Depression-era welfare are from Franklin Roosevelt's 1935 State of the Union Address.


And, in practical terms, from Peter Ferrara, “America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb,” chapter five.

1. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Such should be the epitaph of Liberalism.

2. ‘Welfare’ as a wholly owned subsidiary of the government, and its main result is the incentivizing of a disrespect for oneself, and for the entity that provides the welfare. As more folks in a poor neighborhood languish with little or no work, entire local culture begins to change: daily work is no longer the expected social norm. Extended periods of hanging around the neighborhood, neither working nor going to school becoming more and more socially acceptable.

a. Since productive activity not making any economic sense because of the work disincentives of the welfare plantation, other kinds of activities proliferate: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, recreational sex, illegitimacy, and family breakup are the new social norms, as does the culture of violence.

All of which are on parade across the nation in the form of 'Occupy' protests.

 

[Foxfyre]

Those who have been on these boards for awhile know there is absolutely no love lost between Luissa and me, but I will also give her props for not violating her own leftist roots and leftist way of seeing things, but nevertheless keeping this reasonably civil. I again ask others to please follow that example. And also send some healing vibes Luissa's way because these early 'winter' bugs going around are really annoying and downers.

But again calling for some focus here.

Is it a conservative mindset that produces a neat, civil, orderly, and neighborly Tea Party rally? The Tea Party in a nutshell is calling for a fiscally restrained government that secures our rights and then leaves us alone to govern ourselves. A secured freedom as the Founders defined it.

Is it leftism that produces the disorderly, trashy, uncivil, and destructive activities that we are seeing in the Occupy groups? The Occupy groups seem to be very unfocused on what it is they actually want anybody to do for them, but they are definitely wanting others to give them what they think they don't have.

Which group do you identify with? Feel more emulates the American ideal?

 

[The T]

Conservatives clearly are throwing stones while living in a glass house; they’re in no position to criticize liberals.

Yes they are. Virtually everyone is in a position to criticize liberals. No group has been more wrong about everything than liberals.

But in the same spirit in which I encourage our liberal friends here to articulate an argument with more substance than rightists/conservatives suck and American liberalism is wonderful. . . . .

. . . .We on the right are just whistling in the wind and bring nothing to the table if all we have is that leftists/liberals suck and conservatism is wonderful.

Klaven offers an illustration of how leftism and conservatism affects people with his comparison of the behavior of the Occupy groups versus behavior of the Tea Party groups. Which is more commendable? And why would conservatives behave differently in something they are as passionate about as the Occupy group is passionate about whatever they are protesting again?

Or if you take Klaven's thesis very literally:

Why are the conservatives/libertarians far more likely to engage in peaceful protest that is respectful of others than are leftists?

And do the leftist or American conservative ideologies have anything to do with that?

Law and order every time.

 

[Foxfyre]

Okay let's refocus here just a tad.

Klaven's observation used the Occupy groups versus the Tea Party to illustrate the behavior of people who tilt left (the Occupy groups) versus those who tilt right (the Tea Party and similar groups.)

Then perhaps the thread should be titled "what thirty years of stagnant real wages, declining social mobility, soaring inequality, assaults on working people, and increasing corporate influence over elections and government does to people." Turns out it makes them really pissed off.

The Occupy movement and the Tea Party aren't comparable so attempting to draw some trite conclusion(s) based on that premise is a waste of time.

The thread focuses on Klaven's observation that leftism promotes some of the worst in humanity. He was observing the behavior between the two groups and the general thrust of what they protest against.

Can you honestly say that the Tea Partiers are any less conscious of the things you mentioned than are the Occupy groups? But they chose a different way of fixing it? That is, having government secure our rights and then getting government out of it as much as possible? They behave in a way that, in Klaven's view, conservatism promotes.

While the Occupy groups don't seem to know what they want but are demanding that somebody give them what they don't have and are being destructive while demanding it? They behave in a way that, in Klaven's view, leftism promotes.

 

[Greenbeard]

The thread focuses on Klaven's observation that leftism promotes some of the worst in humanity.

Nothing to discuss there, as this is a tautological point built into the wingnut definition of "leftism."

He was observing the behavior between the two groups and the general thrust of what they protest against.

Can you honestly say that the Tea Partiers are any less conscious of the things you mentioned than are the Occupy groups?

Odd that these sentences are next to each other. Since, as you point out, the Republican base (sorry, "Tea Party") wasn't protesting the things that have triggered the Occupy movement, presumably they either are less conscious of them or they don't consider them to be problems. I don't know that it matters which is the case.

 

[California Girl]

Funny thing is I don't think you understand the difference between libertarians and conservatives. There is a huge difference just a clue. And modern conservatives really don't want that much change. They just want more change and government for the people who do not think they way they do. Big hint Ron Paul and the original members of the tea party were not modern conservatives.

So Luissa admits the Occupy groups are leftist/liberal in their ideology because otherwise there would be no change at all. This only illustrates a very poor understanding of what Modern American Conservatism is all about--a conservatism that is universally pushed by the Tea Party and similar groups. Anybody want to suggest any of the Tea Party or similar groups are promoting the status quo or that they haven't proposed any change in what is going on now?

And yet they have been good citizens, good stewards and guests on the property where they held their rallies, they didn't destroy property or terrorize anybody, and they cleaned up after themselves when they left. Folks just about anybody would be happy to have around. The Tea Partiers are not demanding that the government GIVE them anything whatsoever, but rather are demanding that government be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar and treat it with the respect that the taxpayer does--in other words follow its Constitutional responsibilities.

Some of the Occupy groups haven't been all that violent or destructive, but many have been, have hurt businesses in the area, have destroyed, damaged, defaced property, left filth behind, and the few that can formulate a coherent sentence when asked all WANT somebody else to give them something that they want.

So how can anybody possibly say that Klaven's observations about that are in any way incorrect? And if his observations are therefore correct, is it leftism that produces groups like OWS and similar 'Occupy' groups? And do you condone that?

ATTENTION: Racism, GWB or any previous administration, abortion, sexism, gay rights, military action, etc. etc. etc. all make wonderful topics, but in this thread please focus on Klaven's thesis in the OP. And if all you are here for is to bash somebody or make insulting remarks please mark the fourth poll option and advise us that you did so that we can save ourselves time by scrolling over your posts.

I know the difference. Do you? The Modern American Conservative is the epitome of the Classical Liberalism of the Founders that we think of as a more conservative libertarianism. The Left often tries to redefine that but they are always wrong or blatantly dishonest when they do so. It is a principle of a government that secures our rights and then leaves us alone to live our lives however we choose to do that.

The Modern American Liberal wants a strong central government that provides a safety net for ALL who need or ask for that and that requires people to live their lives as the liberal thinks is the most constructive and beneficial to all.

Now if you have better definitions let's have them. Otherwise, could we move on and look at Klaven's thesis in something more substantive than the right sucks and liberals are wonderful?

You are bang on by describing modern American Conservatives as the Classical Liberals of old.

I would have much more respect for the left if they came out and called themselves Socialist. That is what they are. So why pretend?

 

[Foxfyre]

The thread focuses on Klaven's observation that leftism promotes some of the worst in humanity.

Nothing to discuss there, as this is a tautological point built into the wingnut definition of "leftism."

He was observing the behavior between the two groups and the general thrust of what they protest against.

Can you honestly say that the Tea Partiers are any less conscious of the things you mentioned than are the Occupy groups?

Odd that these sentences are next to each other. Since, as you point out, the Republican base (sorry, "Tea Party") wasn't protesting the things that have triggered the Occupy movement, presumably they either are less conscious of them or they don't consider them to be problems. I don't know that it matters which is the case.

We are discussing Klaven's thesis. So since you don't see anything to discuss in that, could you please read over Option #4 in the poll and do the right thing and mark it?

 

[Sky Dancer]

There is no such thing as "leftism". There are people whose political positions on certain issues lean to the left or certain others, who claim the middle, or those who lean right.

Everything else is stereotype. The idea that people whose politics lean left are inferior human beings to people whose politics lean right is ridiculous. All we are talking about are political views and problem solving approaches.

Why does it not surprise me that the OP starts with anti-liberal flame bait? What does the OP prefer? A country with NO liberal citizens at all? Just RWNJ's?

I remember reallly good political discussions with people on all sides. I don't see it on this forum, but I remember it in my lifetime.

The lessons of history are that civilization has progressed with help from liberal and conservative philosophy's of government.

None of the civil rights movements in our country came from the right.

We've got a bossy OP trying to tell posters who can and cannot comment on this topic.

 

[Greenbeard]

We are discussing Klaven's thesis. So since you don't see anything to discuss in that, could you please read over Option #4 in the poll and do the right thing and mark it?

Well, I don't know if you're a troll and/or numbnut who has nothing constructive to add to the discussion or not. But if you're wondering if the labels you've defined for others meet your preconceived notions of them, I'll save you the suspense: they do. If you're just looking for a tautological circle jerk, I'm sure you'll find many here willing to indulge you.