Jon Stewart is at his best when responding to Fox News attacks on him. His announcement that he was leaving the show sometime later this year led them to reflect on his influence and argue that he brought little to the national political conversation except lies, snarkiness, selective editing, and unfair characterization of them and the Republican party. It is clear that, as one of the major media figures who consistently outs their deceitful propaganda, he has got under their skin.
In responding, he gives an excellent analysis of what they stand for, why they are so successful at driving home their damaging message, and how we should respond.
(This clip aired on February 25, 2015. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
What really bothers Lefties is that they don’t have the monopoly on the major electronic news media they did in the “50’s,60’s,’70’s and large part of the ’80’s.
Come on ABC,CBS.NBC,CNN,PBS,and NPR are all leftist.
Thank God ( if there is one, or two or…) for Conservative talk radio and Fox !!
Oldoligarch, are you sure they’re leftist? I ask because Obama is clearly centre-right, but in the U.S., the parties are so far to the right. Relatively speaking, he is left of the tea-party, but he’s right of progressive/left politicians and some conservatives in other countries.
Admittedly Brian ,it’s a matter of perspective.
For me there isn’t a true conservative party in the U.S.
Politically I”m a Reactionary.
I think the past was better in most respects than the present, and the future that appears to be emerging.
Traditions are the wisdom of the ages.We ignore them at our peril.
But for the current crop of opinion makers in the West at least, they’re largely the product of silly superstitions, or sanctified means of dominance over and exploitation of some group(s) by another.
It is probably true that we know more about certain aspects of reality than earlier generations. or maybe we just have a different mythology.
But I believe we are more ignorant concerning ourselves.
So many modern Westerners believe humans can cease to be what we have always been, social,territorial,tribal mammals.
Just educate them,give them jobs and food and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Humans have a basic need to belong to some group, to feel loyalty to it ,to need and be needed.by it.
These groups be they racial,ethnic,religious,political or whatever need the “other” to define themselves against.
Americans need Russians,Indians need Pakistanis,Chinese, the Japanese,Leftist, the Right.
We humans are aggressive and altruistic.We cooperate and compete.We love and hate.
Who am I or any of us to question the wisdom of the nature that has made us, or the traditions that have tamed us,at least in part.
Let’s not let the Best ,become the enemy of the Good.
oldoligarch, what you are saying boils down to ‘never try to improve the world, let the flaws persist.’
No thanks.
#3,
When you say,
can you tell me an approximate year that you have in mind when things were better?
Mano
Duh!! Friday, October 21, 4004 BC of course 🙂
The US “doesn’t have a conservative party”? That’s only true if he means there’s a corporatist party (democrats) and a fascist party (republicans).
The rest of the world finds the US concept of “left and right” utterly laughable. Obama is further right than Angela Merkel of Germany, and she is a traditional conservative, in the original definition of the phrase.
richardelguru,
Of course! Or maybe one could quibble and say a few days later, when Adam and Eve are both present and just before they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Things pretty much started to go downhill after that.
According to good Bishop Ussher that was the Friday before the Big Bang. 🙂
I figure you can’t more past than that…
@6,@8,&@9 Gentlemen ,I am an agnostic,and an evolutionist,though not necessarily a darwinian,I don’t know how to distinguish the appearance of design from actual design.
But if there is a Grand Designer I don’t see much evidence it cares for us as a species much less as individuals.
@4Holms,part of the problem stems from we ( humans as a whole) can’t agree on what needs improving,or once some do, how to go about improving it.This nearly always leads to nightmare scenarios where disagreeing social utopian visionaries start warring against one another and against reactionaries and traditionalist who oppose them.Destroying the order and stability time has built
and causing tremendous suffering,only to end up with a new system and a new set of masters ,but the same old flaws.
(The Russian civil war is a prime example of this).These ‘flaws’ are the result of human nature,they are intrinsic to us.
@5, Obviously the time I would prefer would vary from one part of the world to another,but from a Euro-centric P.O.V.
Ancient pre- Macedonian Greece,the early Roman republic,or the contemporary tribal societies of Celtic,Germanic,and Slavic Europe or better than what we now have.
I believe if “Progressives” actually realized their ideas in some society it would be far more similar to that portrayed in the 1970’s sci-fi movie “Logan’s Run” than the “Star Trek” like future they envision.
@oldoligarch, #10
So your Golden Age is, in my case, the tribal Germanic societies of roughly the second century CE. Better than what we have?
Well, my people lived in Central Germany, a piss-poor region even then. First of all, I’d be dead, not better off. I’m 65, had two major medical operations, and my eyesight’s never been too good. No chance I’d have survived any of those conditions. 4 of my seven children would not have survived their 5th year, and the rest of them died before they were 40. The girls in chilldbed, the boy in a misunderstanding with the devils from the Chatte tribe next door. Fortunately I’d have two grandchildren left. Bread was made from a mixture of bark and grain, malnutrition the rule, not the exception. I’d be a triple widower. Our chiefs would be belligerent, arrogant bullies who’d lead us from pointless war to pointless war… when they weren’t busy poisoning themselves. Short, brutal, and sick lives full of suffering.
“Better off” Your romanticism is icky.
#10,
When you talk about the good old days, you mean the good really old days! The less we know about a period, the easier it is to romanticize it.
steffp has pointed out some of the many negatives of that time. What exactly appeals to you about it?
@12: I guess I am ,like the late, great Joesph Sobran a “Reactionary Utopian”,and I have, no doubt, a tendency to romanticize
the past.
This is little different than romanticizing a future ideal society,as all shades of Leftist do, if only we can get all the necessary factors to come together, and it is considerably less dangerous.
It’s their attempting to get all the necessary factors to come together that causes so much suffering where the more extreme Leftist have attempted to realize their Ideals.
You see I realize, and I believe most reactionaries do,that any society is a unique product of a particular time and place,which can never be exactly duplicated, because we can’t create the exact circumstances which created those societies to begin with.
Change is inevitable.But,and herein lies the hope of both Leftist and Rightist,no PARTICULAR TYPE OF CHANGE is inevitable,assuming Determinism isn’t true.
We can to a large degree select what to change and what not to change.
As far as what I find appealing about those earlier times ,apart from the ravages on nature modernization has wrought,is their being more Gemeinschaft..
Relationships between individuals and between rulers and ruled were mediated by so much that they had in common.
Often they were related by ancestry or marriage, and this factor plus shared memories,personal, such as from growing up together, as well as historical the “memories” of the community,. a shared mythology, and a common “other”to contrast themselves with, bound the community together and ameliorated much of the power problems in those societies
Indeed these societies were far more democratic than any Western societies today.Ruler and ruled knew each other and were often related.They shared friends and family. And even if two people hated each other the effects of this were weakened by the web of connections between them.
The large States we have today are doomed to be oligarchies.
Leftist attempts to create the features of gemeinschaft communities in these gesellschaft societies , while at the same time trying to replace the most natural communities ,those based on kinship(family,race,ethnicity),with those based on class,political ideology or some abstract humanity is what is so ugly and dangerous about leftist ideology.
It is also what ensures their failure.
oldoligarch @3:
More disease.
More hunger.
Significantly reduced quality of life.
Worse homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, misogyny, and other social problems than we deal with (at least in USAmerica).
Higher child mortality rate.
Higher motherhood mortality rate.
Human rights? What are those?
And so much more (how were atheists, nonbelievers, and apostates treated hundreds of years ago I wonder…)
There are very few people that would be better off living in the past. Even the special snowflakes that think they’d be sitting at the top of the heap.
I also have to laugh at your comment about there not being a true conservative party in the US. Last I checked, the Republican Party/Tea Party want nothing more than to not only halt, but reverse social progress. They don’t care about making the lives of others better. All they care about is “I’ve got mine, f*ck everyone else”. They’re all about consolidating and conserving their power base. At the expense of all else.
You’ve a romanticized view of the past. Take off the rose-tinted glasses.
You’re thinking of yourself as one of the slaves in the Athenian silver mines, a Spartan helot, or a child prostitute in the brothels of Rome, no doubt. Happy days!
This is a question on which there is, in fact, abundant evidence, and it turns out that reality has a pronounced leftist bias. Greater economic equality turns out to be better for just about everyone.
Well, you are clearly at best an ignorant idiot, so I’ll agree with you that far. But “nature” has no wisdom at all -- nor foolishness, because it is not an agent capable of having either, so the first clause of the quote is just dribble. As for “the traditions that have tamed us, at least in part”, among those traditions have been those of rational enquiry and reform. Who are you to reject that particular tradition, numpty?
@14:”More disease.
More hunger.
Significantly reduced quality of life.
More disease? yes. More hunger?debatable Significantly reduced quality of life?In some respects,yes, in other respects ,no.
There are always trade-offs.
@14:Worse homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, misogyny, and other social problems than we deal with (at least in USAmerica).
Ahh! The deadly sins of Leftism.
Definitions: from the Leftist Lexicon.
1) Homophobia:the belief that homosexuality is a psychosexual disorder..
It is.
2) Transphobia:the belief that those who are confused about their sexual identity have a medical problem(s)
They do.
3) Racism:A form of tribalism,based on shared physical/genetic traits and presumably shared recent ancestry and the feeling that ones own group is unique,worthy of preservation,and has a special claim on one’s loyalty
I see no problem with this Particularly when it only seems to be a sin when expressed by Europeans.
4 )Sexism:the belief that men and women have been ‘selected'( by nature) to play different but complementary roles in the social group.The rejection of the belief that they are undifferentiated and interchangeable.
Again ,I see no problem with this.It seems to be completely consistent with the longest running ‘experiment’ in the social”sciences”,human history.As well as what we can infer about humans from primatology.
5)Misogyny: see definition 4.
@14: Human rights? What are those?
Yeah, really what are those?
Do we find them listed as characteristics of humans in some encyclopedia of mammals?
You know like, “Human ,Homo sapien sapien: A species in the Order Primates, Family Hominidae, Genus Homo.
Distinguished from other apes,by bipedalism,less obvious body hair,possession of a larger brain and RIGHTS.
Aren’t “rights’ simply a useful fiction.Like human equality.
Come on, would you believe the following:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans have evolved to be equal, that they are endowed by natural selection with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-
Just doesn’t have the same ring to it as the original.
Tell me do you believe that?
@16) Nick, Have you read the criticisms of “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better”,the book I take it you’re referring too?You should..
The most equal places on earth are prisons.
Equality is not a natural condition of humans.As long as people are free natural inequalities will assert themselves.
In smaller ,more homogeneous societies the effects of inequality are mitigated by the social support network that emerges naturally from kinship ties.
My point about the ‘wisdom’ of nature is that the results of hundreds of millions of years of trial-and- error problem fixing,is more reliable than a few centuries of “reasoning”
Reasoning itself being one of the methods stumbled upon.
A reasonable person recognizes the limits of reason as well as the limits of humanities capacity to be reasonable.
oldoligarch@18,
Yes, I have read the criticisms. They’re dishonest crap, and have been fully answered. Moreover, quite apart from the fact that they bring together decades of work by many researchers, there are other studies, confirming what they show.
Don’t be so fucking stupid. Quite apart from the vast differences in power between governor, inmates and staff, there are frequently vast differences between prisoners.
[citation needed]
It’s typical of your puerile intellectual cowardice and dishonesty to put “reasoning” in scare-quotes without the slightest explanation or justification. The “wisdom” of nature led to a life expectancy estimated at around 25 and a maternal death rate of around 1.5% per birth. After a few centuries of reasoning, the comparable figures for the countries with the best heath systems are nearly 80, and less than 1 in 10,000. But I’m sure you eschew all modern medical care, just as you refuse to make use of the internet.
In smaller ,more homogeneous societies the effects of inequality are mitigated by the social support network that emerges naturally from kinship ties.
[citation needed]
It’s typical of your puerile intellectual cowardice and dishonesty to put “reasoning” in scare-quotes without the slightest explanation or justification. The “wisdom” of nature led to a life expectancy estimated at around 25 and a maternal death rate of around 1.5% per birth. After a few centuries of reasoning, the comparable figures for the countries with the best heath systems are nearly 80, and less than 1 in 10,000. But I’m sure you eschew all modern medical care, just as you refuse to make use of the internet.
Tsk -- apologies for the blockquote fail.
All of these “definitions” are simply right-wing lies or distortions. You are welcome to believe that homosexuality is a “disorder” provided you do not treat those you believe to suffer from that “disorder” worse on account of it. It is precisely transphobes who attempt to block appropriate medical treatment for transgender people. Racism is defined by the majority of sociologists not simply as racial prejudice -- which of course, anyone of any race can harbour, but a systemic employment of such prejudice to produce a pattern of disadvantage for some racial groups. Of course, as a racist, you see nothing wrong with it. Similarly, sexism is not a belief in innate differences between the sexes, but the employment of that belief in order to disadvantage women.
The rest of this comment answers your #18. A version of my response including references is held in moderation, and will presumably appear later.
oldoligarch@18,
Yes, I have read the criticisms. They’re dishonest crap, and have been fully answered. Moreover, quite apart from the fact that they bring together decades of work by many researchers, there are other studies, confirming what they show.
Don’t be so fucking stupid. Quite apart from the vast differences in power between governor, inmates and staff, there are frequently vast differences between prisoners.
In smaller ,more homogeneous societies the effects of inequality are mitigated by the social support network that emerges naturally from kinship ties.
[citation needed]
It’s typical of your puerile intellectual cowardice and dishonesty to put “reasoning” in scare-quotes without the slightest explanation or justification. The “wisdom” of nature led to a life expectancy estimated at around 25 and a maternal death rate of around 1.5% per birth. After a few centuries of reasoning, the comparable figures for the countries with the best heath systems are nearly 80, and less than 1 in 10,000. But I’m sure you eschew all modern medical care, just as you refuse to make use of the internet.
@19)”Don’t be so fucking stupid. Quite apart from the vast differences in power between governor, inmates and staff, there are frequently vast differences between prisoners”
In.prisons all the inmates get fed the same food,access to the same medical care,recreational facilities,and housing.
Everything leftist desire in a society. It’s true that their are “…vast differences in power between governor, inmates and staff,…”
just as there are/were vast differences in power,access to resources etc. between the governors and governed in every society leftist utopians have attempted to create.The cadre of the ruling party always had it better than the common citizens.
As far as” …vast differences between prisoners”
These differences in power between groups (groups usually based on racial/ethnic identity) would exist in any society that was multicultural or multiracial.Even when basic economic needs are fully and fairly met.
Leftist can only expunge these human characteristics they find so “evil” by selective breeding of humans,eugenics.
Leftist will never socially engineer them out of us.
The failure to realize their ideals,ideals based on a faulty vision of human nature,always lead to frustration and then persecution of those seen as the cause of the failure;captailist,the religious,reactionaries.
If the U.S was their laboratory there victims would be,whites,christians ,and most hated, White Christian heterosexual males.
The most successful labs of leftism are the comparatively small,in both population and territory, and racially/ethnically homogenous nations of Scandinavia.This correllation isn’t accidental,the left just refuses to accept that.
Of course leftist policies have created other unintended problems for these societies, that ironically endanger the leftist program itself.
By the way the hostile attitude reflected in your language, is characteristic of those defending their faith.
@21)”All of these “definitions” are simply right-wing lies or distortions”
As opposed to the left- wing lies and distortions that permeate the lexicon of the psuedoscientist that you call sociologist.
You are welcome to believe that homosexuality is a “disorder” provided you do not treat those you believe to suffer from that “disorder” worse on account of it. It is precisely transphobes who attempt to block appropriate medical treatment for transgender people.
Just how is advocating psychological treatment for them blocking appropriate medical treatment.
“Racism is defined by the majority of sociologists not simply as racial prejudice – which of course, anyone of any race can harbour, but a systemic employment of such prejudice to produce a pattern of disadvantage for some racial groups. Of course, as a racist, you see nothing wrong with it. Similarly, sexism is not a belief in innate differences between the sexes, but the employment of that belief in order to disadvantage women”
Well you already know what I think about sociologist,but you don’t know why.
Sociologist have redefined terms to reflect their own (usually) leftist bias
The redefining of racism, for instance,is intended to implicate only whites creating guilt among some whites and promote leftist policies such as integration,affirmative action etc.
What they don’t realize,at least I hope it’s unintentional, is that they are creating the excuses some future party of leftist will use to justify discrimination against and even persecution of whites.
And take the way sociologist use the terms ‘minority/majority’ in sociology.They have nothing to do with numerically less/more and everything to do to facilitate leftist propaganda.
And once more,the term “right-wing authoritarianism”.
I mean is their such a thing as “left-wing authoritarianism.”
Presumably organizations like the Klan or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are composed of the “right-wing”authoritarian type.
But what about the Maoist Red Guard or the Khmer Rouge.
Seems to me these organizations were pretty authoritarian and left-wing,like the Anti-Fascist in Europe.
Why don’t the sociologist drop the qualifier and just speak of an “authoritarian type”.
Sociologist need to take a cue from cultural anthropologist and stop infusing their values into their discipline.
oldoligarch@22
Jesus wept, your ignorance evidently knows no bounds. Are you really unaware that there is, in most prisons -- certainly in the USA where they are run for profit -- an underground economy, dealing in tobacco, in alcohol and other illicit drugs, in food, in sex, in prisoners “employing” each other as muscle, in favours done for family members outside? In many prisons, this extends to corrupt relationships with staff; even where it does not, the equality of facilities you claim is far from being generally the case, as some prisoners are favoured and others disfavoured by staff, some categories of prisoners have to be segregated for their own protection, etc.
A barefaced lie. I know this because I’m a leftist, and I value personal freedom and autonomy, the pursuit of truth, equality before the law, creativity, tolerance, and many other things. That you can only make your case by barefaced lies should tell you something, but of course it won’t.
I’m hostile to you because you are selfish, callous, intellectually dishonest, and invincibly ignorant.
Because, unlike gender reassignment, with hormonal treatment and surgery if desired, where gender dysphoria is a settled condition, it doesn’t work. (The same is true in the case of attempts to “cure” homosexual orientation, of course.) Psychological treatment imposed against the subject’s will is also, except in the case of clear danger to the self or others, a form of medical abuse.
Evidence-free paranoia. Simultaneously contemptible, laughable, and pitiable.
Of course I do. There’s absolutely nothing you have said so far that I haven’t come across before. You are, apart from everything else, a bore, without, apparently, an original thought in your head.
You provide, of course, no evidence whatever for this claim, nor for any of the others you make. Whether you like the terms used or not, if you had a smidgen of honesty you would admit that racial prejudice does far more harm when exercised by members of a powerful group against members of a weak one than in the converse case. That distinction needs to be made, whatever the terms used to make it. Similarly, the plain fact is that claims* that men and women are fundamentally different have been and are used primarily to reinforce the existing imbalances of wealth and power between them. Of course as a racist and sexist you will object to these facts being brought into the open.
I take it you’re referring here to Altemeyer. I’m inclined to agree that his terminiology is not ideal, but (a) he does note that those he refers to as “right-wing authoritarians” may be politically left, and (b) he does talk about left-wing authoritatianism, applying the term to authoritarians who follow some revolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the existing system:
Since he is mainly concerned with north America, the “right-wing authoritarians” he is concerned with are right-wing politically.
Hilarious. That you think any school of social scientists can avoid doing this says more about you than about your stereotyped hate-group. Sociologists, of course, differ widely in their values -- take a look at members of the “rational choice” school such as Olson, Becker and Stark for some example right-wing sociologists. Objectivity in social science is best pursued not by the pretence of excluding values, but by awareness that one’s values are a source of bias, and by institutional systems that allow work to be criticised by those with different values.
Finally, I notice you have not actually produced any evidence against the studies of the advantages of equality I linked to.
*My own view is that there probably are some innate differences on average, but it is extremely difficult to tell, because society treats the genders differently from birth. What is absolutely clear is that there are vast differences in gender relationships between societies, so any innate differences that do exist do not dictate what these relationships should be.
@23)Jesus wept, your ignorance evidently knows no bounds. Are you really unaware that there is, in most prisons – certainly in the USA where they are run for profit – an underground economy, dealing in tobacco, in alcohol and other illicit drugs, in food, in sex, in prisoners “employing” each other as muscle, in favours done for family members outside?
Sure,I know about the underground economy in prisons.But it’s you leftist with the lesson to learn.
In prison you have all the economic needs of prisoners met equally by the State.But that’s not enough,so much for the economic determinism that is at the core of leftist thought.
It’s interesting that they tend to organize along perceived kinship lines to survive,something rightist, who tend to be realist, would expect.
@23) In many prisons, this extends to corrupt relationships with staff; even where it does not, the equality of facilities you claim is far from being generally the case, as some prisoners are favoured and others disfavoured by staff, some categories of prisoners have to be segregated for their own protection, etc.
And you somehow believe that we can avoid this mutually beneficial collusion between the government and certain sections of a population in the normal,everyday world?Where/When has that ever happened? Give me some historical examples not theoretical constructs.
Only in small, largely homogenous societies can collusion be minimized or it’s effects be ,when it occurs.
@23)A barefaced lie. I know this because I’m a leftist, and I value personal freedom and autonomy, the pursuit of truth, equality before the law, creativity, tolerance, and many other things. That you can only make your case by barefaced lies should tell you something, but of course it won’t.”
“I’m a leftist…,” You have my sympathy.
“I value personal freedom and autonomy, the pursuit of truth, equality before the law, creativity, tolerance, and many other things”
Do you believe leftist have a monopoly on valuing these things?
What you leftist fail to realize is that if you attempt to maximize anyone of these values you limit the others.
I suspect that one of the many differences between you and I, is that I value freedom and autonomy more than I value equality and tolerance.
That’s not to say equality and tolerance don’t matter at all,just not as much.
For instance you think I’m a Homophobe,but if some homosexuals wanted to found a commune some where in the world and organize that community according to there own beliefs,values and norms that’s cool by me.NOT A PROBLEM.GOOD-BYE AND GOOD LUCK.
How’s that for tolerance?
Now how about you?
What if some White Nationalist desired to found a communal society and organize that community according to there own beliefs,values and norms,would you be cool with that?Seriously would you?
I doubt it. Like the religious, you leftist so deplore, you believe there is an absolute moral law all humans must be subject to.
For you to allow “evil” to exist anywhere morally implicates you. So it must be stamped out.
To say there is one ‘right’ way and only one’right’ way to organize human societies, makes as much sense as saying their is only one ‘right’ way to organize baboon societies.
Hamadryas baboons have a different social structure than Olive baboons,in site of the fact the two types can interbreed.
Which of the two have realized the ‘right’ social organization?
@23) “I’m hostile to you because you are selfish, callous, intellectually dishonest, and invincibly ignorant”
First let’s be honest with ourselves (I realize since you’re a Leftist that might be a new experience)all we know about each other is the persona we’re projecting online.
Now ,as far as your charges are concerned:
1) “Selfish” to a degree yes,too much altruism and you don’t leave enough of your genes behind when your gone.So we all today are descended from the ape that insisted the ‘hottest” female was his or the dominant male was hers.Or the one who shared some meat with the female in exchange for a little action:)Know what I mean, Huh!!!!
(Now I know chimps at least aren’t monogamous and that to the extent our common ancestor was like them ,they weren’t either,but you get the drift.)
So yes I’m somewhat selfish I care more for me than you.My welfare than your welfare.
BUT,and here it comes; I care less for my own life and welfare than I do for those of some other people.
True story,I’m not bullshittin ya!
Charge 2) Callous: Oh have I hurt you’re feelings?BOO-HOO. Grow up!.
Okay so saying homosexuality is abnormal is callous,then isn’t calling necrophilia an abnormality just as callous?Aren’t we disregarding the feelings of Necrophiles?Are do they not make your list of ‘protected classes’ ?
Protected from having their feelings hurt.
When someone says something,on these blogs, calculated or not, to hurt the feelings of Christians,does that bother you?
I doubt it.
Charge 3&4) “intellectually dishonest, and invincibly ignorant”
Quite frankly I don’t see how I can be both of these at the same time on a given topic, or how you would know which of the two I was at any given moment.
After all being ‘dishonest’ means you know it isn’t truthful,but if you know it isn’t truthful, then you’re not ignorant.
So that was just more “Newsspeak” on the part of a Leftist.
@23)”Hilarious. That you think any school of social scientists can avoid doing this…” that is infusing there values into their discipline.
What’s hilarious is you believe they can do this and still be considered sciences
Perhaps the term Social Studies (as distinct from Social Philosophy) would be a better, and more honest, name.
But as far as peer reviewing goes, I’m all for it.
Does it cause you any cognitive dissonance to realize
1)that Leftist are the only people in the history of the world that had to build walls around their societies to KEEP PEOPLE IN?
2)Or, that all the communes in 19th century America based on Leftist principals failed?You know communes like the,North American Phalanx?These were composed of like minded people,and they still failed.
You Lefties want to bring this experiment to us all. NO THANKS!
It must be odd and discomfiting to a leftist to realize that all of all the new communities that came into existence in an almost unprecedented century of social experimenting in North America,only the Mormons (a religious,definitely non-leftist group are still around, and growing!!!
oldoligarch@24,
First, do learn to blockquote. It’s not difficult, and it does make your babblings much more readable -- but then, perhaps you realise that would be to your disadvantage.
If you know about the underground economy in prisons, why did you pretend it was a place of economic equality? The fact that there is such an economy makes it a hopeless example even from your point of view.
Your caricature of “leftist thought” is utterly ridiculous. Either you are too stupid to be able to distinguish between -for example -- Leninists, anarcho-communists, democratic socialists and proponents of welfare capitalism (“liberals” in American terminology); or you are too dishonest to do so. Which is it?
Yes, career criminals do tend to exhibit typical right-wing thought and behaviour.
Yes, I get the drift: you’re a sleazebag. But what’s interesting here is your absurd caricature of evolutionary biology -- which explains why we have the capacities for cooperation, altruism and a sense of equity as well as for selfishness; and your thought-free adoption of the naturalistic fallacy in its ignorant pop-evo form: that evolutionary theory tells us, in any way, how we should live. The cultural anthropology you were citing as superior to sociology tells us that cultures vary very widely in their values and instituttions, so the extent to which we are constrained by our evolved nature is limited -- and since cultural novelty continues to appear, we do not know where those limits lie. You are very fond of declaring -- without evidence or argument -- that such-and-such will never be achieved. A few centuries ago, your counterparts could have declared that a largely literate society, a society in which most people could expect to live beyond 70, a society in which those at the head of the state could be dismissed by the ruled and accept their dismissal, a society in which women and men had more or less equal legal rights -- were all impossible.
No, you haven’t. You’re a vile little turd, and I have complete contempt for you, but that’s rather different.
Okay so saying homosexuality is abnormal is callous,then isn’t calling necrophilia an abnormality just as callous?
What a lackwit you are. Why did you suppose I was referring to your reference to homosexuality as abnormal when I called you callous? It was, more than anything, your valorisation of societies in which most people lived a life of drudgery and oppression at the mercy of the elite of which -- of course -- you imagined you would be a member; but practically every sentence you come out with demonstrates that, if not actually a psychopath, lacking all empathy for others, you can give a very good impression of one.
Where did I say I was referring to a single topic? Admittedly, the two are not in general easy to distinguish, but my guess is that the sneer about prisons was intellectual dishonesty -- since you have subsequently claimed you did know about the underground economy -- while your lumping together of all leftists as indistinguishable, and all sociologists as leftists, are ignorance -- invincible ignorance, since information that would correct these absurd errors is readily available.
Apart form the fact that this is not true, unless you take “walls” in the most literal sense -- a slave in your favourite societies was liable to be killed for attempting to leave, as was a feudal serf, and women in many societies have been effectively confined to the home -- it causes me no cognitive dissonance whatever, since I am not and never have been a supporter of any one-party state, nor for that matter, a Marxist of any kind. Your babbling is just further evidence of your stupidity and ignorance in being unable to distinguish between “leftists”. It’s as if I were unable to distinguish between moderate conservatives, the religious right, libertarians, fascists, and pop-evo reactionaries like you (actually the last two categories are the least distinguishable -- it wouldn’t surprise me to find that you are a Stormfront fan).
No, very few on the left want anything of the kind. Again, just more evidence of your ignorance.
Finally, I note once more that you have not dealt at all with the abundant evidence I produced of the advantages of societies with greater economic equality. It now seems fair to deduce that that’s because you can’t.
This:
should have been blockquoted@25. But really, blockquoting isn’t hard!
Prisons are places were the “default setting” is one of economic equality. With all basic needs met equally for all ‘citizens” by the State.Just as Leftist desire.This doesn’t bring peace and harmony to prisons and it want to societies.Your pointing out the underground economies and collusion between some inmates and the ‘governors’ just underscores the fact that inequalities will always exist.There will always be some who are more privileged than others because of their “connections” (whether racial/ethnic ,ideological,occupational or even accidental) with certain people.
My point is that economic and social equality does not guarantee an end to social conflict,and quite possibly can’t even be realized.
After all if they can’t be actualized in a “controlled”environment how can we hope to realize them in society?
Let me cut to the chase.
Attempts to realize the ideal society of Leftist, which I take to be roughly identical for all them,necessarily leads to a benevolent(?) totalitarianism.
This is because in order to insure a certain outcome we (as individuals,businesses ,or governments) need knowledge of and control over all the factors that affect that outcome.The problem is that the among the factors that affect outcomes are human behavior.Indeed for gov’t.s it is THE primary factor.
When we ask governments to do “A”,we often find they have to do “B”,”C”. and “D”,in order to insure the outcome of “A”.
At each step human behavior is controlled,limited in some way. So public policies have very far reaching effects.Often far beyond what was intended.
At each step human behavior is controlled,limited in some way.
The control of human behavior that would be necessary to realize Leftist Utopias staggers the imagination.
Control over births and eventually deaths,over movement within and out of the society, education,occupations,employment, communication, speech.and if possible, thought, would eventually be necessary to arrest;poverty,racism,over- or under- population,unemployment,homophobia,pollution and the other social problems.
Many of these problems could be minimized, with less threat to freedom, if we moved to a less Rousseauian emphasis on the State or political community.
To a more Althusiusian emphasis on the power of the groups into which we are born,raised and find our identities.
An emphasis in harmony with human nature.
Oh, oldoligarch, thank you for the performance.
I’ll keep to only three lines of the spiderweb of your argument.
“Prison economy”. There is none, oldoligarch. Prisons don’t produce things, they don’t sell to markets or whatever distribution mechanisms, they are just places where people are kept in more or less dire circumstances. Those may vary -- Swedish and Texan prisons are worlds apart. But they are not economies. So your example is void, and only shows your ignorance of basic economics. Besides -- and that may lie at the basis of your argument -- the times you feel so romantic about, when peasants were bondsmen, had exactly those restrictions of basic freedoms as you may find in a contemporary prison. Get yourself educated about reproduction rules for serfs and even “free” servants, and weep.
It’s strange, there seem to be tens of thousands of reactionaries who think that back in their favorite time they’d have been the one and only Alexander. But as the saying goes, “There can only be one”.
“Kinship vs. humanity”. You declare a priori that anything above kinship bonds does not, can not work. Pre-tribal bloodline myths, really. At the same time you refer to the Scandinavian peoples as “homogenious”, with little cultural diversity. Which is totally racist bogus. Norway, Sweden and Finland have substantial ethnic minorities with pretty strong cultural differences -- see the Sami (Lappe) minorities in Finland and Sweden, the Swedish minorities in Finland, and the 12% of foreign origin in Norway. It may have been easy to lie about a few countries an ocean away in your romanticized past, but not today. The difference to the US is mainly that ethnicism and racism are looked upon as stupid lies outside the Overton window. Which led to a pretty good integration of minorities, so that they are no longer perceived as such.
Lastly, your slant argument about the freedom to erect a fascist society. Well, Olli, it’s been done at incredible cost of resources, lives, and suffering. The most advanced fascist society had to be stopped from ingesting whole continents and genociding whole ethnic groups. An idiot, by popular definition, is someone who tries the impossible for the umpteenth time.
This will not happen again. And now go back to your medieval role-playing or whatever it is you do for fun.
By the way -- thanks for the reference to Johannes Althusius, (1563-1638). His pre-constitutional ideas about organic “corporate” hierarchical state organization -- unaffected by pesky individual rights below the level of upper gentry -- were a solid basis for Dollfuss’ Austro-fascism. Spoiler alert: He did not do very well in the 20th century.