You, Not Them

Laban suspects that the central insanity of liberaliam is its Rousseauesque belief that man is naturally good. When the inevitable head-on impact with reality occurs, liberal governments find themselves forced to become more and more authoritarian, in order to make a silk purse out of a philosophical sow's ear

It's a tempting thought, but with a couple of problems. There's the obvious flaw that the split is not really a left/right one. I can't see the Great Frank falling for all this garbage. On the other hand, man being prevented from achieving true greatness by the dead hand of society. Hmmmmm.... who does that sound like?

Personally, I think this ideology is best described as 'hipsterism' - a train wreck fusion of the worst aspects of liberalism and libertarianism. Think of them as people who break into your house, shoot your dog then claim the state made them do it.

The other, bigger problem is this: they might think you are a blank slate, but that just proves you need the guiding hand of supa-smart people, like what they is.

For proof of this consider their new baby seals. Large parts of the hipster movement have spent years explaining how Che or Blackbeard were really martyrs to true freedom, but even they can't think of anything positive to say about paedophiles. Nope, it's all about how the anti-paedophile movement is, like, kind of chavvy, and they're all a mobby mob, and most of them don't even own iPhones, and... blah, blah, blah.

There are no actual arguments there, we never find out why they believe what they claim to believe, even in the teeth of all the evidence. We're just supposed to take it on trust that the mark of true genius is to find the nuance in child rape - well, that and if you can't, you're a stoopidy-stoopid prole.

So it goes for huge swathes of modern culture. Crucifix in urine? Are you saying that's not art, Mr Moron T Moron? Trying to recover from an unsustainable credit binge by loosening up credit? Obviously the right thing to do. Then there's...

No, the Rosseau thing is purely tactical. They get to sneer at Dullsville conservatives with their dreary 'morals', objective standards and all the other things our new aristocracy lacks. Instead, we're supposed to take their sneering, eye-rolling contempt for everyone that isn't a member of their incestuous, self-referential cult as somehow proof of superior intelligence.

We're being governed by a high school clique writ large. And things are screwed up? Really? Who'd have thunk it?

Beat Him Again!

Never underestimate the ability of liberals to miss the point:

It is grossly unfair that your wealth dictates the standard of education you can give your children. Anyone who cannot afford to go private should not have to tolerate an under-funded state educational system that seemingly puts more emphasis on sex education and media studies than the sciences or history.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not schools are really under-funded after twelve years of labour spending like a Premiership footballer with a day to live, how come schools in the Third World manage to teach real subjects then? Just how much extra would it cost to teach kids about the Bill of Rights instead of making videos of each other?

Liberals: Also Rubbish At Science

Here's one for the philosophers: just how supa scientific can these liberal social theories be, when they're completely unfalsifiable? Whenever the wheels come off, it just proves we need even more liberalism

Liberal Makes Amazing Discovery

Ho hum. Democrats win the election, and suddenly the New York Times discovers that terrorism might not be all down to America, after all. Who says the left are cynical?

Heh

Actually, some of us have been saying for years that liberalism is at its heart an ideology for people who can't deal with the law of consequences.

Liberal Double-Dipping

See, that's the thing with cases like this. We keep getting told that we can't hold these people accountable because they're suffering from a terrible illness that makes them commit hideous crimes, but then we get told that we can't discriminate against someone just because they're kind of wacky.

Huh?

Which is it? Are these just regular guys with an embarassing illness, a kind of mental VD? Or are they victims of a hideous condition which drives them to extremes of homicidal rage? Well, actually both. The liberal position boils down to the belief that murderous insanity is no reason to deny someone their life's ambition to own their own chainsaw.

You can see why liberals prefer to call conservatives names, rather than discuss their actual ideology.

Liberals Are Losers

Looks like the left's narrative on Sarah Palin is taking shape. Apparently, the highly-accomplished executive of America's largest state might be a mother of five, but she's not a Real Woman.

Apparently, to qualify as a Real Woman she'd have to have a bag full of sexism atrocity stories, rather than being a happy and well-adjusted family woman. The equation is rarely stated as openly as that: losers only need apply.

Which is another great thing about the US. There might be a certain percentile that goes in for this wallowing in victimhood, but Americans tend to be happy, optimistic and patriotic. They surely aren't attracted by a party that spends its time claiming - in the teeth of all the evidence - that living in America is the worst fate that could possibly befall anybody. That's the problem the Democrats have: their entire platform is designed to appeal to losers, and there just aren't enough out there for them.

Liberal Morality: Like Whatever

Stan makes an important point here: it can't hardly be a coincidence that our civilisational collapse has coincided with the hollowing out of public morality.

True, there may be no a priori reason why a society has to be based on Christian morality, but nothing so far has come close to replacing it, least of all the kind of slippery, situational ethics currently dominant. Consider, for example, the Cameroonatics' position: they support traditional values, except for the values they don't support. Who couldn't sign up to that ? Who would ever be inspired by such an obviously tactical position ?

Still, there's more to it than just the vacuums at the centre of our society. Law is supposed to be the codification of public morality, but our political elite has instead adopted the culturally Marxist position that the law is merely the means by which those with power impose their views on those without.

Once you accept the Marxist view of law, then all bets are off. Government is free to do whatever it wants. Consider this case. No one disputes that this money was obtained by deception, but they don't think they should pay the money back anyway. Apparently, fraud is OK, providing your pay cheque comes from Her Majesty.

Ditto, this case. Incidentally, in so far as senior officers can qualify for bonuses by reducing the crime figures, this surely would be fraud in almost any other context.

The trouble is that if the law is simply the means by which those in power impose their agenda on those without it, then absent that power the law has no force. Or, as Sir Robert Peel put it: 'Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.'

Of course, Peel assumed that the role of the law was to uphold the values of society, not to change them. Marxists seek to totally remake society and so the power they require must be total too. The law must be used a tool to impose the new order and if that pesky morality gets in the way, it'll just have to go.

He Should Try Living Here

Victor David Hansen on America's descent into quiverly paralysis:

The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn't. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile a less fussy, more confident world abroad drills, and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted.

In our present comfort, Americans don't seem to understand nature. We believe that our climate-controlled homes, comfortable offices and easy air and car travel are just like grass or trees; apparently they should sprout up on their own for our benefit.

It's not just ecolunacy. It seems to me that, above all else, liberalism requires an enormous sense of entitlement. Just as electricity just happens, so does social order and prosperity. There are never any sacrifices to be made, or trade-offs to be judged, well, not unless evil conservatives have ruined it for everybody else.

This is why liberal rhetoric is so overheated. It's an endless attempt to evade responsibility for the entirely predictable consequences of stupid ideas by blaming it all on an ever-expanding series of scapegoats.

Quote Of The Day

Many observers believe that Barack Obama secured the liberal base of the Democratic party because he was antiwar from the beginning. But I think it’s because he mastered the art of complaining and won over the Whine Caucus. Today the Democratic party is dominated by groups making claims of victim status — blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, unwed mothers, artists, pampered academics, environmental activists, the poor, the unemployed, animal rights activists, women, homosexuals. As Michael Crowley openly admits on Slate: “What does define and unify the [Democratic] party is a sense of victimhood.”

Read the whole thing to see just how deeply grievance has become the left's defining emotion.

This is why the Obama/Clinton standoff went on so long. It was no mere argument over policy, more the ultimate game of victimhood poker.

Quote Of The Day

Kathy gets to the heart of the matter:

In fact, those illusions -- that entire groups of people were simply colourful characters in my personal liberal drama, people I could oh-so-nobly "help" and who would always be oh-so-appreciative and enlightened and innocent and decent -- were more racist and counterproductive than any Broadway musical could ever be.

"I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

Old Left: That Neil Kinnock quote up top

New Left: Doctors not wanting to treat the old and unhealthy

Logical Next Step:

The revolution... is successful. But survival depends upon drastic measures. Your continued existence is a threat to the order we have restored; your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. I, therefore, have no alternative but to sentence you to death.

It's The Duct Tape Of Statecraft

Ho hum - Anthony Giddens claims central planning is the only answer to the enormously huge threat of the Earth turning into a ball of fire. I'd point out that this would sound a lot better if folks like him didn't advocate central planning for every other social ill too, but as the Rotty Pup points out, he's gone and done that himself too. Truly a Tourettes moment.

Lifestyle change and how to achieve it, it could be argued, are now the name of the game in key areas of politics. The range of issues involved is very wide. Climate change is the big daddy of them all, but others include the obesity epidemic, lifestyle related diseases - including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer - excessive drinking, drug dependence, antisocial behaviour and other areas besides. In many respects it is a new agenda, at least in terms of policy thinking.

Personally, I'm still waiting for the threat that liberals think doesn't require central planning. Hey, even if you buy into Gorebull Worming, isn't it possible to argue that only an innovative and vibrant society can come up with the right answers ? But no, liberalism's new policy thinking always turns out to be the same as the old one: central planning.

This is a fundamental difference between left and right. All the innovations are on one side of the spectrum. Say what you like about school vouchers, but they really are a new idea. Meanwhile, the left's busily trying to find new ways to rebrand the same old garbage. No wonder leftists are so obsessed with 'hate speech' and the like - it's not like their policy ideas can stand up to competition.

Liberals Heart Learco

Looks like the left are pulling out all the stops for their new pin up boy, Learco Chindamo. Six months ago we not only had the left lyingly claiming that EU citizens couldn't be deported (oops) but as a back up, they also conjured up an absurd legal doctrine that claimed we couldn't deport criminals from anywhere if doing so would impact on their personal life.

Now it turns out that even that wasn't enough for the left. Looks like this scumbag will also benefit from another of the legal doctrines that passed unnoticed until 1997. Not only will this murderous savage get a free house (probably not what William Beveridge meant), but also, in the latest example of the left's ongoing battle with personal accountability, he'll be given a new identity.

That's where liberalism is at today. Nothing short of one of these murderous sociopaths being caught actually standing over the body of his next victim will convince liberals that murderers might be prone to violence, but the public at large ? To liberals they're a group of slavering savages, ever ready to form a lynch mob. Never mind that the number of cases of murderers being killed by mobs of respectable businessmen is approximately zero, liberals claim it's only a matter of time.

Well, either that, or it's just another step in the nationalisation of morality. Liberals believe the state should be the sole judge of good and evil but - wouldcha'believe it ? - members of the public keep insisting on looking down on sadistic maniacs.

Needless to say, the left's position that killers set free by the parole board should be treated exactly the same as a law-abiding, non-insane citizen, is a legal and moral absurdity. Previous generations understand that shaming, shunning and the like had their own part to play in upholding the law. Criminals didn't just face the loss of liberty, they faced being ostracised by society, which had its own deterrent effect.

Only with the rise of the Nu Left have we been faced with the absurd idea that a felon who has 'paid his debt to society' (i.e. served a nominal period of imprisonment) not only deserves to be released, but also deserves to be treated exactly the same as non-criminally inclined citizens. Unless they're Jeffrey Archer.

Apparently, in the secular religion of liberalism, the criminal justice system plays the role of the confessional, with its own unique take on confidentiality and absolution.

But not only does this murderous low-life get a free house and a new ID, he also gets state of the art security and (potentially) security guards - unfortunately, to keep him safe, rather than keep him inside. The funny thing is that the only person in this case who's definitely, provably, been the target of actual hate is Frances Lawrence, widow of the victim.

Leftists have taken time out from complaining about people being rude about a murderous savage to instead attack an elderly widow. More to the point, it looks like some folks are going for the direct approach. Hmmmm..... maybe she could do with some help with security ?

Here's Clue Number Two about modern liberals: liberals would rather waste taxpayers money to protect a scumbag from a pretendey threat than an actual, worthwhile citizen from a real one. I guess we're not allowed to ask why members of the criminal community would feel so strongly about helping out a model citizen like Chindamo. Ditto, let's not speculate about the likely response of lefty commentators if a storm of right-wing criticism of an innocent citizen exercising her democratic rights was followed up shortly after by actual, violent intimidation, other than to say that leftists would be be producing reams of portentous drivel about the right 'creating atmospheres', using 'code words' and the like.

But all of the above isn't even the most obnoxious part of it all. Say what you like about leftists, but they do a bang-up job excusing homicidal insanity, from 'agrarian reformer' Mao Tse-Tung to 'Saudi militant' Osama Bin Laden, the left can excuse almost anything. Yet, still, years after the fact liberals still haven't dreamed up any kind of bogus mitigation for Chindamo. His crimes are literally inexcusable even for folks who've dedicated their lives to obscuring evil.

Nope, liberals aren't defending Chindamo because they think he's the next Che, or even the next Tookie Williams. Liberals are defending a homicidal savage simply because he is a homicidal savage. That's all you need to make it as a liberal pin-up these days.

Liberals: Still A Bunch Of Faggots

See, this is what's mystifying me: we're supposed to be living through the Golden Age of liberalism, with just a few isolated like wingnuts like me still refusing to bolt down the kool aid. So how come every time liberals are exposed to public scrutiny they fold like a tent ?

I make it less than 24 hours between the revelation that the BBC was censoring 'Fairytale of New York' and the humiliating climbdown. Even Cameron does better than that.

Our impartial state broadcaster has been exposed as completely out of touch with public opinion. Again. Hey, if the BBC was merely retarded, rather than say, a cesspit full of deranged moonbats, shouldn't they tilt too far to the right every now and again ? Nope, it's always the same mistake again and again.

Also exposed: Peter Tatchell. Really, I could never understand why some folks on the right gave this guy any credit in the first place. His spat with Mugabe was driven by his own desire to push an agenda rather than any more general moral viewpoint. Just as long as Mugabe was merely murdering people, that was fine. It was only when Mugabe came out - as it were - against the gay agenda that Tatchell found a set of morals.

Now we know that the gay rights movement are a bunch of fascistic creeps after all - you know, kind of like some of us always said they were. For the record, it was undeniably brave of Dirk Bogarde to star in 'Victim' at a time when homosexuality was illegal, but at least no one wanted to jail him merely for raising the issue.

Liberal Morality: Standing Up For What's Right As Soon As It's Moot

It's great that the BBC is prepared to expose a former hero of the left as a brutal Stalinist thug, but who was hiding that from the left ? Some of us pointed that out at the time. Meanwhile, the BBC was busy calling us fascists.

It's not as if we have to wait for secret files to be opened - there was the odd one or two clues out there[1]. Nope - let's not have any leftists telling us that this is some kind of bolt from the blue. If leftists really want to convince us that Scargill doesn't speak for them, how about insisting on proper action against those people implicated in destroying documents to hobble the investigation into this murder ?

[1] Also note that the killers got off - the 1980s weren't quite the Golden Age of conservatism that they're often depicted as.

New Evidence For 'Liberalism = Disaster' Hypothesis

Don't be shocked, but it looks like anyone who can get free of the state education system is doing so.

Yes, I was shocked too. Here's a profession where liberalism runs rampant and yet somehow it's collapsed into chaos. Say, is anyone else seeing a pattern here ?

On the plus side, there are signs that some folks in the industry are finally geting to grips with their problems.

No, just kidding!

John Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, said Mr Blair had "failed in his objective".

"What we need to do now is set firm targets to achieve the equivalent funding for private and state schools."

Yes, clearly, more funding is the answer:

Total education spending in England was £29bn in 1997 and is £60bn this year. Of the £74.4bn total promised for 2010, £10.2bn is capital spending.

Spending per pupil, which was £2,500 in 1997, would from now to 2010 rise by a further 10% in real terms to £6,600, Mr Brown said.

Hence why standards have improved so much over the last ten years.

Then there's this:

Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "We have to consider what parents are buying when they opt for the independent sector.

"They are buying smaller class sizes and quite often enhanced resources. Some parents are buying the fact that their children are not going to be quite as pressured by the tables, targets and tests regime in the state sector.

Yes, they've fled the high-achieving culture of the public sector for the chilled-out vibe of the private sector. Also, you can run a car on water, providing you boil it first.

Besides, it turns out that if you're reluctant to have Junior sitting next to the keynoter speaker of Crackfest 2020, you're a Nazi:

In parts of inner London the figures are even more stark, fuelling fears of an emerging educational "apartheid" in the biggest cities.

As frequently where liberals are involved, the clue is in their own charge. When exactly did it become illegitimate for people not to want their kids to be forced to rub shoulders with the deranged or the depraved ? But no: liberals think education should be like the draft, and the middle classes are trying to cheat the system to get their kids a staff job instead of sending them to the Somme like they're supposed to. The best rebuttal to that lunacy comes from the Telegraph article's comment thread:

I agree with David Welch:

"It`s high time those attending private schools paid for the damage that the creaming-off does to the state system. And the subsequent social divisions."

He's absolutely right to remind us that there's only a certain amount of good education to go round and the private schools are hogging it all. It's time this good-education pie (of eternally fixed size) was shared out more evenly.

I remember when I was a teacher that if another teacher said they'd done a really good lesson we had to make sure this was compensated for by a poor lesson given by someone else in case the pie was put under undue strain and we were all covered in half-digested erudition.
Posted by novelPhenomena on November 10, 2007 12:57 PM

It's Just Their Our Culture

Of all the liberal excuses for bad behaviour, probably the stupidest is the idea schools shouldn't discipline black kids because, hey, acting like a thug is a sign of black authenticity. That's why it's always great to compare garbage like this with stories like this. Apparently, they need more 'more black involvement in the running of schools' in Africa too.

Good Catch

A commentator over at ATW makes a good point about this story. Apparently, a woman's 'right to choose' is a very flexible concept.

A Really Inconvenient Truth

I've been out of the loop for a while - someone remind me, are we supposed to submit to the superior knowledge of scientists or not ? I mean we've keep getting liberals in lab coats telling us that they've scientifically proven that we need to nationalise the means of production or the polar bears will drown, but then again, I'm thinking I've found one guy who won't qualify for the left's scientists-as-unimpeachable-oracles program.

Apparently, there's science and there's science. Conservatives who refuse to sell up and move into a teepee 'hate science' but I don't think anyone on this side of the Sanity Divide is trying to jail Glotal Wormers. Plus, unlike Gonadal Worming, where groupthink is enforced by the scientific equivalent of Legbreakers & Co, all the pressure is the other way on IQ research, but this time libs are claiming consensus is no big thing (and, what's more, Mars isn't full of hyper-intelligent black dudes who roll their eyes every time Trevor Phillips is mentioned).

It turns out that libs will wax lyrical about scientists, but only when they can be trusted to support the left. Hmmmm.... why does that sound familiar ? I'd take liberal objections to people questioning black's intelligence more seriously if they hadn's spent so much time and effort denouncing a former Provost of Stanford University as a complete maroon.

That's point two, of course. In so far as IQ research postulates that a putative average white guy will outscore an average black guy, it's about as much use as discussing who'd win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman. In so far as the whole concept of IQ averaged over a whole population is fairly useless, you'd hope liberals might finally see the problem with their collectivist idiocies (and, by the way, has anyone ever checked the IQ of the average lib) ?

Of course, the left thinks the concept of IQ is ludicrous anyway. Their supa-intelligence is too broad-ranging ever to be caught in such a shallow, quantitative way. IQ tests are completely useless, except when they're not (hey, that Thomas Sowell writes well - he must be white).

In other words, the left is enraged because the science shows that when two entirely theoretical constructs are compared, one scores higher than the other on a measure they hate anyway. This is like conservatives being enraged by scientists showing that the average rightist has less ESP than a liberal.

Not that actual facts are ever important to the left. PC was never about specifics, it was about the right of liberal thugs to impose their world view on everyone else. That's why Fat Al has got his Nobel Prize for his sci-fi movie, while James Watson has been the victim of a media drive-by. Not because of the science, but because one serves the needs of leftism and one doesn't. That's all it is, that's all the left's supposedly deep thoughts ever amount to: get with the program, or they'll send the boys round.