Youch
Senior Member
- Aug 10, 2014
- 670
- 121
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I hope I am posting this in the right forum.
This guy nails it. The "kill shot" from the link:
“Conservatives believe what they see; liberals see what they believe.”
Pretty well covers the difference between the two groups.
The Top 3 Reasons Why Liberals Hate Conservatives Western Free Press
Are you a conservative, a libertarian, or a Republican? Have you ever been verbally assaulted by someone on the political left with a ferocity you didn’t quite understand? Have you seen it happen to friends and colleagues, or watched in horror as the media establishment does it to a public figure?
Of course you have. At some point or other, nearly everyone on the political right has witnessed or been the victim of an attack designed not to elucidate facts, but rather to paint him or her as a villain.
My attention was recently drawn to a typical such calumny from a Facebook exchange:
Republicans hate anything that isn’t white, wealthy, and christian at least in appearance. They hate the poor, women, and minorities. They hate science and don’t believe that the global warming we clearly are experiencing is man made. They hate any government programs that help the poor and minorities, and the particularly despise immigrants, particularly the illegal kind. They love programs that line the pockets of oil companies, mining companies, and are willing to export jobs with wild abandon.
They hate public education, and they despise public schools and the public school teachers and public university professors. And since the do not respect the market place of ideas, they hate tenure (that gives teachers academic freedom) because it prevents them from firing teachers who are Democrats and who might infect some student with their liberal ideas. They want insurance companies to make a maximum of profit, and are perfectly willing for the health insurance companies to kill people by refusing service to anyone that might cost them a buck more than the median expense. They don’t care about clean food because it might cost the food corporation a little money, and they don’t care about clean water because cleaning up the waste will cost their precious corporate persons a little money.
This is not a recitation of facts; it is a series of smears. It is the construction of a giant cartoonish super-villain, made of straw and woven together with calumny. The giant straw villain is then publicly burned, in a narcissistic orgy of self-adulation. Of course, the torches of the “best” people burn the brightest.
Another way of looking at it is this: It is the modern-day version of a witch trial. The charges are utterly farcical and cartoonish. “I saw her dancing with demons in the pale moonlight.” “She looked at me and I sneezed, and the next day, I had a terrible cold.” “She turned me into a newt.” But they are stated with great conviction and repeated incessantly, and they establish the unassailable collective will of which the accused has run afoul. The witch is made into the auslander, and the good people of the community show how “good” they are by shouting their accusations the loudest.
Either way, whether the wicker man or the witch, the effigy goes up in flames and the community is purged—for the moment—of its evil. Moral annulment now achieved, the villagers walk away feeling good about themselves. Feeling superior.
Facts are also unimportant in this perverse passion play. Like the slavering, semi-psychotic Facebook rant above, most such assaults aren’t a series of accusations backed up by facts, they are a series of character assassinations, most of which are contradicted by the facts.
The most salient example today is the charge that people of the right (conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, tea partiers) oppose Obama out of pure racism—simply because he is black. Though this charge is easily refuted—by common sense, widespread evidence, and actual studies—it is repeated incessantly by the media, the left’s foot-soldiers . . . even the president himself.
When actual studies are done (as opposed to just restating what the leftist imagines to be so as if it were actual fact), we learn that real racism is distributed fairly evenly among the population without regard to political affiliation. In 2008, a survey was done that showed similar numbers of Republicans (5.7) and Democrats (6.8) would not vote for a black presidential candidate. Such a question gives us one of the clearest possible tests of raw racism. A loaded question like, “Do you feel blacks receive too much welfare?” might confuse attitudes about race with attitudes about government welfare programs. But this gives us apples to apples: All things being equal, would you refuse to vote for someone solely because of race?
In the 2008 survey, Democrats were slightly (1.1%) more likely to show racist thinking than Republicans, though this is well within the margin of error. A similar study on senatorial candidates was far more damning to Democrats. Bottom line: there is little evidence that Republicans oppose Obama or any candidate on the basis of race to any greater degree than Democrats.
But this should be obvious based on other facts and indicators as well. Take Mia Love. If you are on the political left, you may not have heard of her, but she is a rising star on the right. She quotes Bastiat, she believes in core principles such as subsidiarity—she is dynamic, successful, and hits all the right notes. She is a black woman, and I have not met or heard of a single conservative, Republican, or tea partier who wouldn’t be delighted to support her. (Deep down, many of the left know this, which is why they have been so vicious to her.) I have worked alongside or come in contact with hundreds of activists and partisans on the political right over the last 15 years, and I cannot think of a single one who would not exult at a Mia Love victory. If she were elected president, I myself would do the happy dance on top of the tallest mountain in my area every November!
The reason is obvious: we agree ideologically. Race is unimportant. Barack Obama is, it can be fairly argued, further to the political left than any previous president. And people on the right oppose him so virulently for that very reason—not because of his race, but because of the huge ideological gulf that lies between. Imagine that.
The other painfully incessant canard is the notion that people on the right “hate the poor.” In fact, the evidence shows the opposite. Conservatives are more charitable than liberals by fairly significant margins, even when you adjust for a variety of factors. Rich, middle-class, and poor conservatives are all more charitable than their liberal counterparts. It’s not that conservatives are wealthier overall, either—liberal households are 6% wealthier on average. (I bet you never heard that little fact on MSNBC.) It is also not that conservatives are more religious: new data indicate that secular conservatives give more than secular liberals. These conservatives are voluntarily helping the poor with their own money, in greater numbers than their liberal counterparts in every cohort. Conservatism is a greater predictor of charity.
Leftists (they hardly deserve the term “liberal”), by contrast, are more “charitable” with other people’s money. Leftist A votes for Politician B to take money (by force) from Taxpayer C to give it to Recipient D. A and D give more support and power to B, who continues to take more and more from C, in a perverse and ever-increasing form of economic bondage. Then, A, B, and D get together and say that C hates the poor. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But we are getting dragged into the weeds here. We could go on and on refuting fact after fact, but the facts are unimportant. The leftist is creating a narrative. As a marketing guru will tell you, Facts tell, but stories sell. It’s a lesson the leftist has learned well.
Even more disturbing, in recent years, this method of “argumentation” has increasingly become the first tool pulled out of the toolbox. No longer does the leftist feel as compelled to make real arguments. All he needs to do now is shout “Racist!” or “War on Women!” and his job is done. He walks away feeling smugly satisfied of his own politically correct superiority, and the untrained observer is left addled at best, and possibly even swayed by the narrative.
So why they are so vicious? Why do people who self-describe as “compassionate” direct such vitriolic hate and assaults at their ideological opponents? How they can justify painting you as such a monster?
Simple: To them, you are a monster. You must be.
Rest at link.
Mark
Exactly, and not a single member of this forum can put up a cogent argument to the contrary.
Please try.....
