I've had the chance lately to get to know a seriously political young left-liberal. What have I learnt from the experience? Mostly that it's not easy holding together a left-liberal politics.
One of the cornerstones of his thinking is that there are no true group differences, not between nations or races or sexes. We are all of us interchangeable, whether we are men or women, or Swedes or Kenyans.
But to keep this line of thought going requires a whole series of other explanatory beliefs, most of which strain the limits of credibility. And this must be a crushing weight to have to carry around mentally.
In part, my left-liberal acquaintance argues that claims about group differences are merely stereotypes. He often argues too that they are the result of white racism. But he reaches further than this. He is so focused on the idea that group differences are false, that he lurches into all kinds of historical revisionism, e.g. the idea that whites stole technology from the Asians who in turn stole it from the Africans.
There's this whole edifice of claims (e.g. that race does not exist, that women are as physically strong as men etc) propping up the denial of difference. And sometimes he seems to tire of running with these arguments, and he will then relax into some more bluntly realistic assessment of things - he doesn't find it easy to maintain the pose.
It's a vulnerability of left-liberalism. The principle of group equality is so absolute, that it seems to be difficult for left-liberals to admit, for instance, that whites or Asians created a more developed level of civilisation. So there's a furious intellectual pedalling to explain away the "false appearance" of difference, which involves a whole series of claims about social constructs, racism, and history.
The end result is a theory that has to be over-developed and that must consume a fair bit of energy to hold together. It's not difficult to see the potential for it to come crashing down.
If you accept the reality that intelligence is determined in part by genetics and thus heritable, it makes sense that there are discernible differences in intelligence between different ancestral groups i.e. races due to their divergent genetic inheritance, and that these differences in intelligence are the main reason some groups (such as Europeans and East Asians) have been able to build more successful societies than others.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that left-liberals, such as the poor delusional character Mark refers to, do not accept reality.
More people who refuse to see things as they are and instead try to impose their own fictional reality onto the world. It's no wonder they get so riled when anyone pokes a hole in the façade, and why they resort to hideous personal attacks on anyone they deem a threat to their house of cards.
ReplyDeleteAny system built on lies and fantasies will eventually collapse. You cannot operate for long completely out of the design zone. Liberalism is the Ultimate Fantasy System; even Islam has more reality built into its core.
ReplyDelete[...] he lurches into all kinds of historical revisionism, e.g. the idea that whites stole technology from the Asians who in turn stole it from the Africans."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately,academia is rife with highly acclaimed liars, er, I mean, world historians who assert that the West has contributed nothing to the world; they argue that the West has borrowed or stolen all the good ideas and technologies from more advanced cultures like the Chinese, the Indians, and the Arabs. Pomeranz is a poster boy of this school of propaganda; his book, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy is frequently cited favourably by the press, although there are many other culprits of this ilk for whom career climbing trumps truth.
A partially useful corrective is Ricardo Duchesne's The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
One of the good things in Duchesne's book is that he lists some of the good (i.e., striving for accuracy and honesty) historians who are not deliberately engaged in denigrating the West. One needs help finding these writers because historians who do not climb aboard the despise-the-West bandwagon are usually relegated to obscurity while the China boosters et al are lauded loudly with many favourable reviews and awards in the dishonest mainstream.
Well....something that may help him...
ReplyDeleteI am very liberal...good example from today....I am disgusted that Qadaffi's photos were plastered all over....A civilized society as advanced as ours has trials and should not revel in such violence.
So in many ways, I'm VERY Liberal. I'm not one of these Americans who starts shrieking at the Nordic Welfare countries.
So maybe Your Friend is focused on 'The End Result Policies' and is convinced that in order to get there he has to have crazy beliefs.
I think that is something you can say to him to make him feel better and drop some of his stupidity....That the 'end result' of having a large middle class...having lots of environmentalism....having welfare for the elderly...These are not bad goals.
They can only be reached though in small, homogenous, ethnically/religioiusly united countries.
Under the occupation of social revolutionaries, you can't discuss a serious conservative apology without the Cultural Marxists operating language deconstruction upon you: exclaiming slogans ("racist", "Nazi", "bigot") afterward your career is dead on ground arrival.
ReplyDelete'Liberalism' is an evil twin of Marxism, please know that our real enemy is (Multi)Cultural Marxism / Globalism / Internationalists.
I can still remember when I snapped out of liberalism I was 17. I am 25 now. When I was that state of mind I can tell you there is no strain in thought you simply accept all liberal theories and brainwashing as is. I'm ashamed to say i wept often like a child (and im a male) over the plight of non-whites. If I heard "racism" or something contrary to liberal thought there was a consistant and on reflection shocking effect.
ReplyDeleteI felt physical pain almost. I felt a great amount of distress and uneasiness. It was like a huge amount of tension around the head almost like a headache and deeply unpleasent feeling.
I can say because of this that there is an element of brainwashing. I can see it in the face and reactions of people who are still liberal. That unpleasant feeling the pain of the cognitive dissonance. The naturally reaction is to shut down the discussion and get away from the person causing the pain.
Anything which Humanities academics dislike gets made into something soley socially constructed which needs to be "deconstructed".
ReplyDeleteAnything which contradicts the centuries old assumptions of the enlightenment is verboten.
The fact that Science has come a little way in the last 200 years towards explaining human biology seems not to compute with these folks.
Your left-liberal friend exhibits the extreme human universalism characteristic of his political faith. Human beings are seen as being the same in all times and places, and particular identities, whether national, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, or other are seen as purely epiphenomenal and of no more significance than a preference for ethnic food. Human beings are thus reduced to a kind of generic cypher.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, identities are constitutive of the individual - they are what makes him who he is. They are not casual lifestyle choices, but more like fates. Nobody ever casts off his identitities, even when he tries.
The interesting question is why this universalism has such a powerful hold on the left-liberal mind. Perhaps it is because it posits the moral equality of all, regardless of actions or beliefs. In such a world, there is no need to try to define the human good, a question which liberalism regards as systematically unsettleable. This fits well with liberal moral or normative individualism, in which personal autonomy is elevated above any notion of moral authority external to the individual.
The false philosophical anthropology which guides your left-liberal friend means that he will never really understand his fellow human beings. They are reduced to mere cardboard figures in a fictional narrative that serves psychological purposes for the believer. - Thucydides
I always had conservative thoughts from my upbringing. Though from my schooling I had PC self censoring subconsciously enforced via teachers and the resulting peer pressure. In fact I use to think that liberalism would make everyone equal, so I use to approve of it on a level.
ReplyDeleteEventually reality smacks you in the face and you become a grounded conservative.
Thank God, now I can inoculate my children as my Father and Grandfather did me. Fingers crossed.
I call these 'ideological epicycles', after the complex calculations needed to make the Ptolemaic system agree with the observable motions of the planets.
ReplyDeleteIf your basic mental model is fundamentally at odds with objective reality, you're going to have to expend huge amounts of time and effort explaining things away, or justifying how the map really does correspond to the territory (no, really, you just have to look at it this way).
Or, you can just get lost a lot.
Kelly, that's exactly it.
ReplyDelete