Sounds like you’re saying that while leftism is broad, 2 defining features of leftist philosophy are a lack of internal consistency along with a required loyalty to the leftist movement overall. And that this is indeed shared by most left/liberals with a few notable exceptions such as Mickey Kaus (who you consider liberal, but not a leftist).

Shannon,

And it sounds like that the defining feature of leftism as you see it is an unwarranted hubris – a belief that since leftists have the answer, it is appropriate to use the coercive power of the state to foist their beliefs on the public at large through the political process.

Thanks for the detailed explanations – it’s helpful to get the context, otherwise it’s easy to misunderstand what you guys are saying.

Or do you mean all of them i.e. your analysis applies to anyone not on the political right?

Political behavior exist along spectrum. We’re talking about beliefs that grow stronger as you move towards the extremes.

Take the belief in the efficacy of political decision making. People just to the left of center believe that the political system makes better decisions a little more often than voluntary actors. Say, they believe that the politicians make better decisions 51% of the time and that voluntary associations produce better decisions 49% of the time. Someone on the center right would reverse those numbers.

As you move to the leftward, you the numbers pile up. So Obama, based on his voting record before he assumed the Presidency, would believe that politicians make the better decisions than voluntary associations 80% of the time. By the time you get to someone like Ayers, your talking about someone who believes that politicians make better decisions than voluntary associations 100% of the time.

What were talking about here in this thread is the cognitive reasons that people believe that decisions made by the real world political system and enforced by the violent power of the state are better than leaving people to sort things out without the ever present threat of violence.

The core reason that leftist do have so much faith in violence enforced political decision making is that they have so much faith in themselves as individuals. They believe that they understand all the vast complexity of the world to such a degree that they as individuals can morally direct the violent power of the state to enforce their will upon others.

So here in writing of The Watchmen we see a trivial expression of this intellectual hubris. When your absolutely correct you have the moral obligation use whatever power comes your way to impose your will on other people. In this case, having the loudspeaker of a 150 million dollar movie means the leftist has a moral obligation to wreck part of the original story just to inject some english majors view of energy policy into a work of art.

If you want to spot a leftists, look for intellectual hubris. The more a person believes that they have detailed predictive knowledge of how the economy, society, culture, technology etc all fit together, the more likely it is that the person is a leftist.

(In case your curious, libertarianism is based on the presumption of a lack of knowledge on the part of the individual and the political collective. It is a doctrine of humility.)

From what I’ve seen of Feingold, he has bought into it pretty far, as has Howard Dean. (The differece between Dean and a lot of other leftists is that Dean is very up-front about what he believes in.) Clearly Maxine Waters regards herself as one of its high priestesses. John Edwards is more of an a la carte leftist. Bill Ayers has bought into it so far that he came out on the nihlism side. In a way, that’s also true of Obama; although he obviously doesn’t share Ayers’ propensity for violence, I get the sense from watching him at work so far that he holds the cynical attitude towards the human race and existence in general that leftist-nihlism encourages. And I think that could explain a lot of what’s going on with his adminstration so far; there are a lot of places where Obama is just going through the motions, because he really doesn’t give a damn about most policy matters.

“leftist” has rather broad scope. When you say “leftist” or “leftism”, do you mean mainstream progressive or left-liberal i.e. someone in the center of the Democratic spectrum like Obama, or someone on the left, like Russ Feingold? Or someone on the activist left like Naomi Klein?

Or do you mean all of them i.e. your analysis applies to anyone not on the political right?

Of course, the biggest problem with this form of leftism is that it is merely the reverse side of the coin of nihlism. And I maintain that, using nihlism’s own logic, I can mount an irrefutable argument against nihlism thus: “Nihlism sucks!”

First of all, there was so much unnecessary blue penis in the movie…

In the book, Dr. Manhattan’s progressive shedding of clothing indicates his increasing alienation from humanity. He starts out in the 60’s with a full body leotard and then as the the years go by it shrinks to just a speedo and then nothing. By the time he’s walking around a military base with his dangly bits out he’s just really doesn’t give a damn anymore.

But I could not grasp the relevance (if there was any) to Nixon being President…

In the book, the Comedian kills Woodward and Bernstien and prevents Watergate. Dr. Manhatten wins the Vietnam War so Nixon is viewed as a successful President and he goes onto 5 terms. The movie very briefly mentions the killings but doesn’t expand on it. The book was largely about how the existence of superheroes altered history and society. The movie doesn’t really touch on that as much.

More importantly, I think Nixon was supposed to represents the western side of Moore’s squabbling children narrative, in which Viedt, as the super-leftist, uses his super intellect to trick the children i.e. the Western right and the Soviets, into getting along.

I liked the movie but then I really enjoy well done eye candy. I really don’t regard film as a serious medium because it is so hard to tell in depth stories in such a short time and with no means to see characters internal dialogs. Consequently, I have low expectations for all movies compared to what I expect for novels or, hell, even comic books.

First of all, there was so much unnecessary blue penis in the movie, I felt like I had been molested by a big Smurf. That aside, the movie seemed like it should have been interesting, but did not seem to have any (single) philosophy. What was I suppose to walk away with? –Nuclear war is bad? Really smart people are asinine and unbelievably conceited? The Blue Man Group can do anything with their super-powers? The Comedian is funny because he is not funny and he could be your daddy?

I liked the idea of an alternate America, where people turn against heroes (and some heroes have perhaps abused their loyalty to being virtuous–but of course, wouldn’t that make them villains? I digress…). But I could not grasp the relevance (if there was any) to Nixon being President, to the year being specifically 1985 but all the music being classic rock tunes from the seventies, and the imagery/technology being some weird amalgamation of Dragnet meets Buck Rogers.

Why was Nixon so grotesque, too? The real Nixon was not much to look at, to be sure, but the guy portrayed in Watchmen (the movie, anyway) could never have held that office. He was a caricature, and not even one of the real Nixon, but rather a caricature of the way one might caricature the real Nixon.

And maybe I am too critical of my stories, but the gratuitous and pointless use of nudity was on both gender sides. I do not take issue with a love scene or sex being portrayed in a movie, but I feel it must be relevant to the story. If the story can be told without showing me some woman’s boobs, then you are doing nothing more than insulting my intellect. (And yes, I like boobs as much as the next guy; I just want them to be there for a reason other than the assumption of male stereotype).

In a nutshell, aside from visual eye-candy, I saw nothing of relevance or importance in the movie. I saw stuff that looked like it was going to be important or insightful, but then…nothing. Here’s some blue penis.

After 22 bucks for the tickets and 21 bucks for the snacks, on the way out, my wife said, “If we had blown 43 bucks on sushi, we would have been home an hour earlier and felt much more satisfied.”

I had to agree.

Yes, they added in their inane leftist bullshit, but that’s to be expected….*especially* from an Alan Moore project. But, that being said….Rorschach was really presented as the main character in full…and even they presented his screeds against liberals and “liberal sensibilities” in the movie and didn’t present him as a pathetic character by association of his world view. That combined with him still being presented as the one and only completely principled and non-compromising person in the entire movie was a positive in my opinion.

What I really find hilarious from liberals who have read the original book and saw the movie is their take on the whole Rorschach world view…his reading of the New Frontiersman…his political outlook…his definately anti liberal view…they found that very distasteful and viewed Rorschach as a cautionary tale…a warning, if you will. I find it ironic that they take issue that an openly conservative news paper, the New Frontiersman, is presented where they openly and clearly state their views but they completely gloss over or miss the fact that it was the liberal outlook which directly lead to the Viedt plan/disasters coming to fruition. It was the blind acceptance of the Dr. Manhattan cancer story, which Veidt was relying on in order to drive Manhattan away that contributed to Veidt’s plan. The fact that a story which was manufactured and fed to the press was digested whole heartedly with no critical examination, because it would damage the US and US power via our “ultimate weapon”, Dr. Manhattan. The very fact that Moore could rely on a device like this in his story, says plenty about the way he viewed the left leaning press. Veidt knew he could rely on that sort of thing, because Moore knew he could…

My big problem with the film was the ending and how it changed from the book. They should have left the “alien” plot line in the film and here’s why the Dr. Manhattan variation was ridiculous. There are fuckwits all over the world, including right here in our own country that still think that the US government perpetrated 9/11. So now the film makers want us to believe that if the US Government said that Dr. Manhattan…who has been the US super weapon for the past 20 years…perpetrated those attacks…that people all over the world are going to say “oh, ok..Dr. Manhattan did it…on his own…and left….ok, no problem” and everyone is just going to unite and work for peace with the US? Give me a break…

The rest of the movie didn’t bother me. Perhaps because it was so, so much less political than “V for Vendetta.” That movie scrapped all but the vague outline of the comic in order to fit in 90 minutes of “I’m talking about Nazis and I’m talking about Bush. GET IT? BUSH IS A NAZI! I’M BEING SUBTLE OVER HERE!”

The longing to be good is ineradicable and not ignoble, whether in St. Francis or Don Quixote. But art and thought come from more supple types – Shakespeare, Cervantes, St. Augustine, Nietzche.

Agree with Shannon, but in addition I offer that leftism is so disconnected from life’s realities and “human nature” that when it is interjected it is as a conscious act and it is jarring and just feels artificial and wrong. Conservative sensibilities tends to be more congruent with human nature as it has been understood for many centuries, and it doesn’t have to be injected, it is just part of the story and characters, and if anything increases their believability.

thanks, david foster, I do like those. Interestingly, a lot of artists are using images of cells and things like that in their work, I think it’s a kind of trendy scientification of art that’s going on in the humanities.

Actually, the lack of anything resembling representative content in his later spatterwork is why my personal rule#2 doesn’t really apply to him. usually. For that matter – truly abstract art that relies on shapes and colors to be pleasing, disturbing, etc. and evoke visceral emotions can be downright COOL. (The hirschorn is one of my favorite galleries..) I’ve also seen deceptively simple-looking hardcore craft (in all honesty, even in some of Pollocks later work).

That said, having literally seen 10-year-olds do ‘art in the style of” and not be able to tell the diff between theirs (after an hour or two of geting the hang of things) and most of the “real artists” who were doing “in the style of…” *shrug*

Hmmm, I often write silly things like that. I sort of like that.

I just like the look of things sometimes, it doesn’t have to make ’sense’, it just has to be pleasing, and that’s subjective, although, I roll my eyes at a lot of contemporary conceptual art. The concepts are so often blindingly simple and presented as jaw-droppingly innovative. That does irritate me, but still, I go to museums. Something in me is attracted to art, even if it’s not very good.

I took an art class at the Museum School in Boston under the very assumption that I, too, could do something like Pollack because how hard could it be? Actually, it was pretty hard. Nothing I made looked remotely decent, and it was a collage class! I mean, come on….