Friday, October 12, 2007

The common mistake most conservatives make when talking to Liberals is assuming they are communicating with another Adult. This is fundamentally the reason most debates with Liberals not only fail, but fail utterly.

Liberals are people who are stuck on age 13. Like most teenagers they are convinced they know everything, and are obsessed with being perceived as being part of the “in” crowd. Like teenagers, they have the expectation that some parental authority will be in control of their entire environment, protect them from their own stupidity, and tell them what to do, while simultaneously believing they have the right to rebel against that authority when it suits them. Like teenagers, they are prone to make every issue a huge emotional drama, and fly in a rage with name calling and tears at the “unfairness” of the various events that occur in their lives. In short, they believe its all about them.

All of this must be kept in mind when talking to a liberal. When a Liberal asserts that they believe in “helping people”, that they “care”, or that they support ABC program, or oppose XYZ program, they are NOT looking for any sort of intellectual discussion of the subject. What they ARE looking for is validation they are accepted and perceived as “good person.” Just as a teenager looking for acceptance will wear the “right” clothes, say they like the “right” music, and will use the “right” slang, a liberal will have the “right” political opinions. To a liberal the word “right” means that they are Fabulous, it has nothing to do with the accuracy of their facts or logic. Liberals spend as little time pondering the reality behind their beliefs as a teenager does pondering why a certain brand of shoes happens to be popular at the moment.

Liberal beliefs are integrated into their egos: They believe that are good people because they believe the “right” things, just as teenagers seek to be popular by liking the “right” things. Consequently, Liberals respond to contrary opinions as teenagers respond to the geek who shows up at school with the “wrong” clothes: with contempt and name-calling. They will either attempt to make the individual conform to their system of belief, or ostracize the non-fabulous individual from their midst for reminding them that there are those who do not value the things that they value. (I swear Liberals were the inspiration for the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

Fundamentally, it comes down to a difference in values and needs. A Child values security and craves acceptance and love. As we grow and experience, we gradually learn that the world and nature are a harsh and uncontrolled place, and learn to accept that there are some things we can control and some things we cannot. We learn that some decisions lead to disastrous consequences, while others lead to prosperity. We learn what activities we like and what we dislike. We learn to value independence and freedom, and learn that those benefits come at a price of accepting personal responsibility. As teenagers, we are trying to let go of the values of our childhood and trying to embrace those of a responsible adult. However, when that process is arrested you get a rather inconsistent combination of values as is demonstrated in the following table:

Liberal Value

Conservative Value

Freedom: the relinquishment of personal accountability for “communal” responsibility (If we are not all quiet, no one is going to recess)

Freedom: allowing individuals to take risks, make their own decisions, and pay the consequences or reap the rewards of those actions.

Responsibility: Protecting the people from Risk and bad decisions as a parent would

Responsibility: Allowing individuals to make their own decisions, take their own risks and pay/reap the consequences

Equality: ensuring everyone has the same end result (I hope you brought enough for everyone)

Equality: ensuring that laws apply to everyone equally

Human Rights: providing benefits to one group at the expense of another group.

Human Rights : personal freedoms that must be protected from government encroachment.

Diversity: The use of government force to ensure the others have, exhibit and practice the sorts of attitudes and beliefs that are “politically correct”

Diversity: allowing people to choose their own attitudes and beliefs

Freedom of Speech : The ability to use one’s own voice to drown out the free expression of another’s

Freedom of Speech : The ability to use ones own voice to express one’s own opinion, while being respectful of others right to speak.

Empathy: “Feeling For others” by substituting personal beliefs, values and perceptions about a situation for those of another person.

Empathy: Trying to understand the personal beliefs, values and perceptions about a situation of another person while setting aside your own.

Compassion: Using funds seized by force to pay for charitable causes

Compassion: Individual, voluntary act of personal sacrifice for another

Opportunity: Providing benefits and special rights to one group at the expense of another group

Opportunity: Allowing individuals to make their own benefits through education, hard work and perseverance.

Fairness: Taking things from those who act with personal responsibility and giving them to those who do not.

Fairness: Letting each individual reap what they sow.

Merit: Deserving of a benefit or opportunity because of your race, gender, or income.

Merit: Deserving of a benefit because of personal qualities such as intelligence, character, or work-ethic.

It should be obvious that Liberal Values and Ideas of government revolve around the sort of rules one would find in Grade school.

1) Listen Carefully & Follow Directions

2) Always Share

3) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

4) Work and Play Safely

These are all fine rules… for a grade school class of developing children. Children in grade school rely on adults to ensure that the rules are followed, that they are kept safe, that they learn to get along, that their needs are met. Fair treatment in a grade school class means that everyone should get a cupcake and everyone should get a chance to play with the classroom toys, largely because the children are as yet unable to deal with their emotions and disappointments as an adult would.

Normally those Kids eventually learn self reliance, self sufficiency, and personal responsibility and grow into useful members of society. A liberal, however, remains stunted in their emotional and intellectual growth, such that they expect the grade-school rules to apply long after they have grown up. They look around them and see some people with toys they don’t have, and cupcakes they are not sharing, and look for some surrogate “teacher” to make things “fair”, make sure people don’t run with the scissors, and make sure that everyone “gets along.”

Liberals simply can’t accept a way of life in which everyone makes their own decisions about how to get by in a world without guarantees. They want a safe haven, rules that prevent the taking of risks, and their share of the pie (without the requirement of actually having to participate in Making the pie.. obviously its there for the taking). Liberals can be identified early as they are the children who do not understand the Kindergarten stories of “the Little Red Hen” or “the Ant and the Grasshopper.” Liberals fundamentally believe that those who do little or no work and take few risks should derive the same benefits as the people who do, because that would be “fair”. And it is… in the Kindergarten sense of the word where you have to deal with children too emotionally underdeveloped to deal with the harsh realites and unfairness of real life.

In REAL LIFE people are born with different abilities, to parents of different abilities, practicing different cultures with different values and goals. The Founding Fathers knew (Federalist 10) that Freedom and Fate would lead to differences in income and lifestyle, desires and needs. They knew different individuals, with different abilities, different desires, and different amounts of luck, would make different choices and take different risks, and consequently end up with different results. LIFE isn’t fair. It never has been and it never will be. But a liberal will tell you that they have the supreme knowledge to sit in judgment on each individual and decide what that person deserves. They do this either by assuming every other person in the world is just like them, and/or by looking at characteristics that a Kindergartner would be aware of – like skin color or gender. Thus, if they see a White man with a Cup Cake and a Black Man without a Cupcake, it must be because the White man didn’t share his cupcake with the black man. (It goes without saying that EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD WANTS A CUPCAKE) Thus the surfer dude that chooses to surf 12 hours a day and work a minimum wage job to get by is deserving of some of the benefits derived by a person who attended 12 years of college and works 80 hours a week. The things liberals value (like cupcakes) become the yardsticks of “fairness”, and the things they don’t value (like hard work) are not integrated into the equation. IN real life, Not everybody has the same goals, and not everybody likes cupcakes. Real Life is simply far too complex for any Societal organization to weigh the millions of needs and wants of every individual and derive something that is “fair” for all of them. This is why Communism fails. This is why liberals are often communist.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home