The Leftist reliance on abuse

Posted by Svigor on April 22, 2005, 05:14 PM | #

Oh, as to the theme of the thread: it’s been proven in my personal experience over and over again.  Leftists have precious few real arguments, mostly they are just staid cautious middleweights dispensing received wisdom, ignoring facts, smearing their opponents and studiously ignoring (and working to destroy) any conceivable platform for free speech.

They’re status-quo conformists, and when denied their obfuscations, lies, ad hominem attacks and strawmen they’re as toothless as old hounds.

Posted by Svigor on April 22, 2005, 05:17 PM | #

Oh, Ames and Taibbi started the rag that gave us the War Nerd and Dolan’s magnum opus rant on Peter Jackson’s LotR flicks, so they can’t be all bad right? 

Posted by Andrew L on April 22, 2005, 05:41 PM | #

In days gone by, When a Leftoid mentioned the garbage they so speak now,they were laughed at, and call Idiots, so nothing has changed, they are still idiots, but the gene pool is bigger, More chlorene is needed, and not just the shallow end,
Is there a scientist capable of a creation similar to the collese virus that can help, these New Rabbits have run rampid, or the Farmers just have to cull them and eat Rabbit pie more often.( dont think to deep on the last bit, Irony)

Posted by Mark Richardson on April 22, 2005, 08:15 PM | #

I hope, though, that we don’t draw the wrong conclusions from this.

It’s true that left-liberals often rely on personal abuse, threats of violence or appeals to political correctness (labelling opponents as sexist or racist etc) rather than calm argument.

I don’t think you can conclude from this, though, that the left is a product of an evil psychology, unlike the right which follows political principles.

The left does follow its own political principles, namely a version of liberalism, and there’s no shortage of left-wing intellectuals who are able to argue intelligently on the basis of this philosphy.

(In Australia, Clive Hamilton is one such left-liberal who springs to mind.)

One of our tasks is to convince younger intellectuals of the deficiencies of the left-liberal philosophy - for instance, by pointing out its inconsistencies and its destructive consequences.

We can’t do this if dismiss leftism as being entirely a product of unprincipled greed, hatred, envy etc.

Posted by john rackell on April 22, 2005, 08:37 PM | #

The left and the right play the same game.

The Wall Street Journal and The Economist aren’t loathe to denounce anyone as racist who opposes open borders. On the left the Sierra Club denounces as racist any environmentalist who questions the wisdom of open borders. Not much difference, they are both on the take.

The Economist and their ilk defend their religion of free trade by calling any economist dissenter a racist.

Here’s an example of one Prof Green, a Japan Scholar formerly of the ‘Economist’, denouncing Eamonn Fingleton, an economist and Japan scholar as a racist.

Fingleton’s thesis in Prospect Magazine:
“I have shown that Japan and China have entered into an increasingly close alliance—an alliance moreover that looks forward to a time when China displaces the United States as the world’s principal superpower. “

Prof Green’s denunciation (Letter to Ed.):
“The claim that shared ‘Confucian values’ are a basis for an alliance against America, is, frankly, nonsensical. This sort of writing is “Yellow Peril” stuff at its worst and eerily reminiscent of racist 1930s novels and films such as Fu Manchu. Even Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations did not stoop so low to presume a cultural equivalence, let alone a global cultural conspiracy, between China and Japan. “

Here is Fingleton’s response:
“Now for the most disappointing aspect of the Green letter: its charge that my theme is racist. Transparently false charges of this sort have become standard in Japanology in recent decades (as such impeccably decent observers as James Fallows, Pat Choate, Ivan P. Hall, and Brian McVeigh, among others, can testify). My real crime is of a lesser order: it is merely that, in contrast with my critics, I have lived long enough in East Asia to see through the slanted and often manipulative nonsense printed daily in the local establishment press.

Green stoops pretty low: “eerily reminiscent ...of Fu Manchu”. I’ve read
Fingleton and seen Fu Manchu movies and to put them in the same sentence is vile yet whackily funny. That’s the level of debate among British academics I suppose.

Fingleton, author of ‘In Praise of Hard Industry’, has committed the crime of criticising the prevailing trade orthodoxy.

There is a corruption in our elites (mixed in with massive amounts of incompetence).

Anyone who challenges orthodoxies on the left or the right is isolated and attacked for no reason than stating an opinion. Neither side allows dissent.

The English used to have the saying “Let’s give the devil his due”, that spirit doesn’t exist anymore. The fish rots from the head first.

http://www.unsustainable.org/view_art_un.php?AID=310

Posted by Andrew L on April 22, 2005, 10:56 PM | #

THe Left and the supposid right, We would be labeled right, but the definition is some what bewildering. To have a logical sequencing and a lust for Intellectual freedom, and Private property rights, does not put anyone in any catagory, so the definition ought be , Idiots, and Brains that are capable to think, I have not in a long time heard any argument from the Idiots that make any relevant sense, contry it is always the opposit of the status Quo, but there are now 3rd and 4th players in the Idiot catogory, and they are increasing in numbers, It is the manipulative style of Idiots , brainless clowns, that make up an argument on the premis of the non existance, then substantuate it, Sounds a lot like Marxism on a Heroin trip than reality, but that ought not suprise anyone, Like trying to create wealth by farting in a space suit, smelly and uncomfortable, and that is where the left has gone, Off the planet, It needs to be dealt with now, and a deoderiser is not enough. we have to deal with the root cause of (Civilization terrorists)Leftism, and it has nothing to do with Poverty, (Sound familiar.)

Posted by dissidentman on April 22, 2005, 11:07 PM | #

Anyone who challenges orthodoxies on the left or the right is isolated and attacked for no reason than stating an opinion. Neither side allows dissent.

It may be a semantic game I’m playing but I consider that what presently presents itself as “the right” is thoroughly fraudulent. The struggle between right and left is just the eternal struggle between good and bad. The latin transliteration of “left” is some word awfully close to “sinister” (latin scholars can help out), and that pretty much approximates my own view of leftism. I do consider myself to be on the true right. Maybe i’m not perfect personally but I do nominally stand for things that are good, like truth (not politically correct fables), justice (that each sentient being get its due is *not* “social” justice) and related things. Note that when I say “justice” I don’t mean to imply that I see myself as some kind of holy dealer of justice appointed by some god to right every wrong. My opinion is actually that people’s actions (including my own) ought to conform with justice and the law ought to be designed with justice in mind, and not the selfish interests of any faction.

Posted by Guessedworker on April 23, 2005, 07:13 AM | #

“The left does follow its own political principles, namely a version of liberalism, and there’s no shortage of left-wing intellectuals who are able to argue intelligently on the basis of this philosphy.”

Mark Richardson

Unfortunately, the right follows the same political principles, namely a version of liberalism.  True, there’s no shortage of right-wing thinkers who are able to appeal to elements of actual Conservatism.  But they are not Conservatives.

Modern left liberalism, incidentally, is a pathology.  It flows from the needs of perfectly intelligent people (who are, for the most part, screwed up by their childhoods) to self-heal.  This process is invitingly comfortable if undertaken through the politics of the left.  One can cast all one’s self-hatred and guilt upon a foil and walk ito a brave new world where the mighty and cruel are reduced and the weak and vulnerable can be free.

Of course liberalism is nuts.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t all-powerful and unchallenged.  Our job is to challenge it and make people think about what re-Conservativising political life really means.

Posted by John S Bolton on April 23, 2005, 01:48 PM | #

As soon as the leftist starts in with his attempted smearing of his betters, one might ask whether socialism is not mass murder as an end in itself. This is the one question they don’t want to be asked in any setting, but especially not on a college campus, and it paralyzes them. They had hoped to floor you with ad hominem smears pulled out of the air; but you have preempted them from that. They don’t want political ideals to come up for criticism from the right; basic premisses of the left are to regarded as beyond possibility of being debated. Their false ideals have been smashed by history, such as Cambodian history; now you come and rub their snouts in it. They hoped to pitch you into the mud; but you take and smash before them their false ideals.