Leftism

A Fanatic

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Winston Churchill famously wrote that a fanatic

is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject

I thought that as I read about the terrible fires sweeping through Australia. In an area north of Melbourne, fires have killed 100 people, per this BBC article.

The death toll from fires in southern Australia has reached at least 108, the worst in the country’s history

There are many reasons for these fires, including the fact that Australia is a very dry continent and that they have had a serious drought. But here is the most proximate cause from that same article

Arsonists responsible for lighting the fires could be charged with murder, police have said… The BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney said police suspect that in at least one case fires have been restarted by arsonists after being extinguished by firefighters

Thus not only are at least some of the fires being started by arsonists, but they are even being RESTARTED by arsonists after being extinguished.

So what is the response of the greens, when faced with a significant humanitarian tragedy (100+ dead, and many more seriously burned, not to mention the destruction of entire towns that have been burned to the ground with the associated destruction and dislocation), KNOWING that drought and arson were significant contributing factors?

The leader of the Green party, Bob Brown said summer fires would get worse unless Australia and other nations showed more leadership on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change,” he said.

That is the definition of a fanatic, tone deaf to the sensitivities of the dead, the reality of the situation, and unable to change the topic.

More Leftist Dual Models

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This post and the subsequent  discussion  at Reason demonstrate the behavior that I discussed in my Tale of Two Poverties post, i.e., leftists often advance two  contradictory  models of the same behavior depending on the argument they need to sell at any particular moment.  

In this case we see two instances of the behavior in the Obama’s advocacy of increased tobacco taxes, as described in the  article,  and then in the comments we see reliably leftist commenter “Joe” calling payroll taxes a regressive “tax”.

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A Tale of Two Poverties

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In course of a single conversation, a leftist will tell you  two opposing stories about the life of the poor in America. One minute they will tell that for a poor, unskilled, person of color, America is a cruel and oppressive place with so many structural impediments to success that no ordinary person can hope to better themselves without significant help from the government. Literally, the next minute, America is a boundless land of opportunity in which such a disadvantaged person can work their way up the income ladder with no special help from the government.

Why this tale of two poverties? Why is it the best of times and worst of times to be poor in America? Simple, when the conversation is about native-born poor, America as a land of opportunity is a cruel hoax which frustrates people’s dreams no matter how hard they struggle. When the conversation is about illegal immigration, America is obviously the land of opportunity for anyone no matter how poor they start out. This contradiction not only highlights the intellectual incoherence of leftism but also reveals the selfish motives that  drive leftists to make such fallacious arguments in the first place.  

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The Necessity of Torture

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So Obama has decided to keep rendition and the torture it implies as part of U.S. covert operations. Surprise, Surprise. Turns out that instead of being a sign of pure personal evil, at least threatening to torture spies and illegal  combatants  is a necessary tool for even the most “enlightened” individuals.  

Of course, anyone who spent any time actually studying the matter instead of trying to score rhetorical points out of selfish political motives knew that something like this is needed and as always has been.  

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Quote of the Day

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From the avalanche of vehement and ignorant attacks on Bush v. Gore and the oft-made and oft-refuted allegation that the Bush administration lied about WMD in Iraq, to the remarkable lack of interest in Mr. Obama’s career in Illinois politics and the determined indifference to his wrongness about the surge, wide swaths of the media and the academy have concentrated on stoking passions rather than appealing to reason.
 
Some will speculate that the outbreak of hatred and euphoria in our politics is the result of the transformation of left-liberalism into a religion, its promulgation as dogma by our universities, and students’ absorption of their professors’ lesson of immoderation. This is unfair to religion.
 
At least it’s unfair to those forms of biblical faith that teach that God’s ways are hidden and mysterious, that all human beings are both deserving of respect and inherently flawed, and that it is idolatry to invest things of this world — certainly the goods that can be achieved through politics — with absolute value. Through these teachings, biblical faith encourages skepticism about grand claims to moral and political authority and an appreciation of the limits of one’s knowledge, both of which well serve liberal democracy.
 
In contrast, by assembling and maintaining faculties that think alike about politics and think alike that the university curriculum must instill correct political opinions, our universities cultivate intellectual conformity and discourage the exercise of reason in public life. It is not that our universities invest the fundamental principles of liberalism with religious meaning — after all the Declaration of Independence identifies a religious root of our freedom and equality. Rather, they infuse a certain progressive interpretation of our freedom and equality with sacred significance, zealously requiring not only outward obedience to its policy dictates but inner persuasion of the heart and mind. This transforms dissenters into apostates or heretics, and leaders into redeemers.

–Peter Berkowitz