An interesting thought in this comment on a post at Don Surber’s blog.
As liberals see it, they are 100% responsible for every advance or progress made by either women or blacks. Therefore these two groups “owe” liberals, and if a woman or black person dares to be a conservative, they are savaged as somehow ungrateful and treasonous. As they see it, every woman in this article owes their career to Gloria Steinem, and therefore they have a moral obligation to agree with her on any point Steinem wishes.
I think the commenter might be on to something.
Leftists do savage any woman or minority who breaks political ranks. I have always assumed they did so because leftists always argue that any honest person immediately sees that their ideas are true. An entire group only holds the same idea if they believe the idea obviously valid. For example, everyone in the western world believes in Newtonian gravity and a heliocentric solar system. Creating the perception of uniformity of thought on the part of a protected class allows leftists to argue that those who disagree with them do so purely out of a bigoted refusal to adopt the perceptions of the protected class.
However, it could well be that many white leftists believe themselves as a group responsible for all good things that happen to members of a protected class, and that therefore all members of a protected class owe white leftists their political loyalty and allegiance. When leftists see an individual member of a protected class rejecting leftist ideas, they feel betrayed on an emotional level and view the individual as a traitor and an outcast no longer deserving of civility or any other consideration.
It is all about me. Without my benevolence you’d still be picking cotton or a housewife.
This how vile some of them are. I am convinced this is a character disorder and that this includes our highest office holder.Pitiful.
“… be picking cotton or a housewife.”
That is spitting in the face of millions of women over the centuries, by the way. The work they do caring for their families is not slavery. It is the foundation of our civilization.
This insanity is so complete, so thorough, so. . . so insane. . . that it is one of those things that is always somewhere simmering in my mind. My students seem to have been taught – whether by our inadequate school system, their aggreived mothers, television, Sunday School – I don’t know where all – that before the sexual revolution of the sixties, African Americans were enslaved, there were no homosexuals, and all women were forced to stay ar home by their patriarchal husbands who didn’t want them to work outside the home. The concept of “working outside the home” is such a blip in the time of marital relations that it makes little sense to talk about it. My ancestors came out and settled the plains, standing beside each other and looking across those horizons. My ancestors before that. . . oh, well. What’s the point I sometimes think. And when my husband’s friends can think that the only reason we think in terms of a narrative is because of the influence of telvision, I give up. From kindergarten to graduate school these kids are taught by people who have such a limited range of understanding, sympathy. . . again, I lose words in my emotional outburst. And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the anger of a woman at people who claim to represent me and choose a man who quite probably raped women over a man who pulled his life into shape because of the love of a good woman, of people who think Pelosi represents them and that it is okay to talk about hate sex with conservative women (and conservative children and. . . God only knows what they think).
I do still think that fear of pre-menopausal women is a big deal with some people and they probably need to be treated for it.
I’m reading “Postwar” about Europe following WWII. The Communists used the same method on anyone who dared criticize Stalin. After all, the Russians were the ones who defeated Hitler.
[Comment deleted for veering off topic — Shannon]
Pug
[Comment deleted for veering off topic — Shannon]
The mindset is pretty pervasive. I still get raised eyebrows when I mention that one of the reasons my father left the Democratic Party was because the Republicans were less racist.
Mr. Love’s intriguing post made me wonder if the persistence of Leftism despite repeated failures has something to do with ties Leftism has, or has developed, with some of our basic instincts, such as “owing” in this case.
My point is radical: Leftism may be persisting despite repeated failures because it is tied much more closely to our ‘default’ or evolved heritable thinking about society and moral agency.
If my woolly speculation has some validity, that means that anything better than Leftism is forever going to be inherently less culturally robust, and more painstaking to accomplish. There’s at least a bit of science behind that drastic thought. May I lay out the case briefly?
Some years ago I deployed evolutionary psychologist David Geary’s distinction between “biologically primary” and “biologically secondary” social and cognitive skills to speculate on “biologically secondary” moral agency. According to Dr. Geary, “Biologically secondary cognitive abilities reflect the co-optation of primary abilities for purposes other than the original evolution-based function and appear to develop only in specific cultural contexts.”
For instance, reading, unlike speaking, is a “biologically secondary” cognitive skill. Unlike speaking, reading is not culturally robust — it does not appear spontaneously in all cultures in the course of natural human interactions. Children learn to speak through almost effortless, and often fun, natural social interactions with others. The drive to do more of the activities that lead to speaking is built in to both babies and parents.
By contrast, reading usually has to be acquired through considerable deliberate painstaking effort. And so forth. Reading stands on the shoulders of, or ‘co-opts’, evolved heritable skills like visual tracking, memory, and speaking to produce something new.
(Dr. Geary is not in any way responsible for my extension of his ideas into moral agency). Undoubtedly, we all have “biologically primary” moral capacities that (with exceptions) develop naturally in the course of normal human interaction. But biologically secondary moral agency — if it exists — would be quite different. Unfortunately, to explain, I now have to quote myself:
“If it exists, biologically secondary moral agency would have predictable features in common with all biologically secondary skills.
1. All its features would have to be invented – each aspect would be something genuinely new, even unprecedented.
2. The invention of each aspect would normally occur only as the result of intense effort, many previous mis-steps and wild goose chases, and good luck.
3. Once a feature of it is invented, other and influential people would have to regard the new skill as precious – hardly a certainty.
4. The new skill would have to be painstakingly taught and learned by still others – also not a given.
5. Once a feature of it was invented, a society could always lose it, and it wouldn’t ‘grow back’ on its own.
6. Essentially none of it would be invented at will or at need.
7. Nobody will ever be able to predict what its features might look like before they are invented.
8. It won’t even ‘feel’ like ‘real’ moral agency, especially at first. Instead, its exercise will ‘feel’ ‘unnatural,’ ‘artificial’ – like reading does at first, like math does forever, to some.”
Please notice: there’s probably no such thing as “biologically secondary moral agency.” I made that up, by extending a scientific theory. And then I proposed, without evidence, that Leftism might be tied much more closely to our “biologically primary” moral sense. Leftism, I said out of thin air, appeals more strongly to our ‘default’ evolved inherited thinking about society and moral agency. Hence, it would ‘feel’ natural and easy to think along those lines.
And the final level of this house of cards is the proposal that hence, a social and economic way of life that is better than Leftism is going to rely more on “biologically secondary” moral agency.
Which is to say, just like reading compared to speaking, while such economic and social life will (and must of necessity) “stand on the shoulders” of our evolved moral and social instincts, that sort of life and society will forever be inherently less culturally robust, more painstaking to accomplish, and more in danger of collapse, than those built more or less directly on biologically primary concepts of social cognition such as “owing.”
Well, I didn’t understand any of the above, but as I’m a rather simple minded old fogey, I guess that’s ok.
But, since I’m spending some time babysitting my new 2 month grandson no. 1, I will add to the confusion a bit with my own observations.
The clear collectivist position that anyone who disagrees with any significant progressive political position cannot be a legitimate member of victimized racial or gender groups is a variation of the underlying maxim that people are products of their environment.
Whether expressed in older economic class terms, or in the newer mythology of race/gender group identity, it’s the same old horse dressed up in newer, fancier silks.
Much like the academic myth of diversity, accomplished by having a variety of racial and gender boxes filled in on the campus survey, even though they all mouth the same worn out collectivist talking points, whether the students and faculty actually believe them, or are just parroting for convenience and a passing grade, the implicit assumption is that if a person is x race, he will have x beliefs, and that those will be markedly different than the beliefs of y race, or someone of a different sexual persuasion.
It is imperative for the maintanence of the house of cards that identity politics necessarily is that no deviation from the “approved” ideas be allowed without swift and painful punishment.
The grotesque treatment of Justice Thomas is a perfect example, as was the storm that broke out when Bill Cosby said some things about responsibility that sounded too conservative and judgemental. The treatment of Gov. Palin and her family in the news these days is another case of any “victim group” member who wanders off the ideological reservation being fair game for even vile sexual humor displayed on a major tv show with barely a peep from all the usual suspects who scream with rage at the slightest perceived slight to one of the faithful.
I thought, by the way, that it was both amusing and revealing that the Supreme Court, if the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is approved, would consist of 8 judges from Yale or Harvard out of 9. In its own way, a perfect example of the farce of “diversity”—almost the entire court from the same Ivy league academic background, but supposedly diverse because the races and genders were variously represented.
In fact, it is the intellectual and philosophical diversity that collectivists most deplore, and they would happily run off anyone who disagrees with their positions from ever serving on any court in any capacity, all the while singing songs in praise of any superficial doiversity they could create by way of color or gender.
JohnK,
And then I proposed, without evidence, that Leftism might be tied much more closely to our “biologically primary” moral sense. Leftism, I said out of thin air, appeals more strongly to our ‘default’ evolved inherited thinking about society and moral agency. Hence, it would ‘feel’ natural and easy to think along those lines.
I’ve argued pretty much the same thing myself. The idea of a “eat the rich” economic equality reoccurs time and time again in every civilized culture. Marx himself noted that socialism has much in common with the values of hunter-gatherer cultures which he called “primitive communism” (although he never seems to have thought through the implications.)
I have argued that the desire for material equality comes from our ancestors behavior of sharing meat. I find it interesting that the justifications for forced redistribution keep changing but basic pattern remains unchanged across time and culture. I think this pretty much confirms a genetic underpinning.
VeryRetired,
The clear collectivist position that anyone who disagrees with any significant progressive political position cannot be a legitimate member of victimized racial or gender groups is a variation of the underlying maxim that people are products of their environment.
Good catch, I didn’t even think about the tyranny of the blank slate over leftist thought. Yes, they would assume that for everyone except white male leftists, culture=perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties