tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post1011305988304971304..comments2024-03-29T01:07:30.224-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: What Became of American Liberalism?Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-9709735167404963012017-03-07T05:50:33.630-08:002017-03-07T05:50:33.630-08:00Liberalism started on the path to Progressivism wh...Liberalism started on the path to Progressivism when it tried to redefine Liberalism. Academe in its desire to be the mainstream of political thought moved all definitions to the right so if you were a Liberal you became a neocon. Nothing about your ideas changed, but now how you were now defined had changed. It is why we have the irony of true fascists, et al calling others fascists, et al. When academe constantly redefines the meanings of words to meet their political wants and needs then confusion is bound to be rampant. I suspect that is why many protesters eschew any form of dialogue because down deep they have that "feeling" that they are not on solid ground as it pertains to ideas and free speech. Much better to shout down that to risk learning that one is wrong.<br />An interesting experiment that did not turn out the way Leftists thought was going to happen. Seems like that gender meme did not hold up well. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html<br />Just finding out that money does NOT buy elections, Hillary, has to be disconcerting and now ideas about gender are not what they appear. It is tough to be a thinking liberal/Leftist these days.Dennishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14962996070458991675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-40012296160306801102017-03-06T17:26:42.952-08:002017-03-06T17:26:42.952-08:00The establishment of the Pro-Choice Church charact...The establishment of the Pro-Choice Church characterized by a selective, opportunistic, and unprincipled quasi-religious/moral philosophy was a first-order cause of catastrophic anthropogenic ideological change. Reform, really. Positive progress.n.nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04252447117532342957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-38568976944640396192017-03-06T17:19:41.011-08:002017-03-06T17:19:41.011-08:00Liberalism is a divergent ideology that with progr...Liberalism is a divergent ideology that with progress (i.e. monotonic change) realizes a dysfunctional convergence.<br /><br />That said, principles matter.n.nhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04252447117532342957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-86506780793274673022017-03-06T13:57:14.257-08:002017-03-06T13:57:14.257-08:00Seems to me that over the course of time, Liberali...Seems to me that over the course of time, Liberalism turned on itself like a Mobius strip and became its opposite. It's also my recollection that while the Dems started the Vietnam War and Johnson paid a price, that it wasn't till Nixon that the war started getting really bad press (which may or may not reflect on the nature of the press).It may, though, be an oversimplification to say that Nixon de-escalated it; rather (again my recollection ) he escalated it for a time as a strategy aimed at a quicker end and it was that escalation--the page one shots of the napalmed children--that brought down the house. As for the rest, I can hope, but not swear, that the thuggery now parading as Progressivism gets burned in its own furious fire.Waltnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-47023018629391636412017-03-06T11:41:10.590-08:002017-03-06T11:41:10.590-08:00Liberalism may or may not be failing, but it is cl...Liberalism may or may not be failing, but it is clear that white liberals are becoming extinct because of their failure to mate and breed. What the future holds is a politics that will become much more ugly and much more racially-based: "liberal" = non-white, "conservative" = white. As quoted, Shelby Steele correctly identifies an "exhaustion with the idea of white guilt", hence, WI, MI, PA, OH, and even NC and FL. Hence Bernie Sanders' press aide Symone Sanders (obviously no relation) asserting that there's no room for white leadership in the Democratic party and a chairman race between black and Hispanic men. Hence the Democrats' efforts to disown their past, including, but not limited to abandoning Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinners (the former being the founder of the damn thing, for God's sake!), trashing of their presidents Wilson and even the sainted FDR for racism (correctly in my opinion), and replacement of Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman (who was by all accounts a Republican). sestamibihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03713681322114049960noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-91302751693337103022017-03-06T08:49:00.521-08:002017-03-06T08:49:00.521-08:00It is always pleasurable to point out the hypocris...It is always pleasurable to point out the hypocrisy of others, and it distract from the excesses of your own home team. So here we are on the illiberal left, while probably not many lefties are reading the WSJ or this blog, but you never know. Noam Chomsky did suggest the WSJ is a good source of facts, even if its also full of opinion analysis like this one.<br /><br />So problem of course is no one wants to listen to the moral lecturing of rivals on what your problems are. So we clearly need disloyal members of the home team to defect at least to the middle, to see what bridges exist to sanity and reason.<br /><br />So Jonathan Haidt, a once standard Liberal, and still liberal in sympathy, has tried to do his best to identify the illiberal left in hopes that the movement can correct itself. I don't know how many liberals are listening, but probably most old-time liberals are still living in their 1960s glory days and can't quite wrap their heads about what's going on in the campuses of late.<br /><br />And Canadian Psych professor Jordan Peterson is doing his part, trying to call out the illiberal left, including this presention posted on Peterson's Youtube by Dr. Norman Doidge on "Freedom of speech or Political Correctness" from January 22, 2017<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxslBI3hNFQ<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Doidge<br /><br />And it does seem that there are psychological issues going on, and that need the attentino of psychologists, and of course psychologist who are not trapped within a "Social justice" ideology that attempts to divide the world between winners and losers, and defines winners as only oppressors and losers as only the oppressed.<br /><br />I remember when the OWS movement in 2011 was going on with local protests in Minneapolis, and one old-timer tried to come in and join the moment and tried to teach nonviolent techniques of the olden days, and probably even did suggest that "protesters wear their Sunday best" rather than the tattoo and piercing-infestation that inhabit many of the modern counter-culture young. OH, right, I forgot it was the MLK crowd that tried for the "sunday best" approach in the early 60s while it was the longhaired hippy counter culture that followed in the later 60s and 70s, so I guess youthful rebellion is always more about "virtue or vice signalling" than not.<br /><br />And my 60-something friend didn't get very far with his Occupy workshops. The youth were too interested in self-righteous rebellion and imagining themselves feeding the world for free as the way the world ought to work. Myself, I did take a bowl of good soup, and dropped $20 in their donation box. My friend was also concerned that someone with some accounting skills was dealing with the funds raised and to make sure no one was helping themselves to the pot to buy some pot, or whatever. I think there was some progress there, but overall rebellious youth are simply too trusting of other rebels. And the police tried to help clarify their naivity by dumping drug users on the street by the protests. And I heard in NYC they also had problem of lawlessness, sexual assaults, so that seemed appropriate for young people to learn what happens when you judge sorry looking people as trustworthy.<br /><br />I don't see any sign that liberalism is failing, even if the Democrats as the party of the successful boomer shifting into retirement seems doomed. An strangely Trump's own populism contains his own strains of it, and originally Democrats and Republicans were not ideologically pure, and in fact they reversed in the 1960s, thanks to President Johnson, so the Democrats may fail on different grounds than liberalism. <br /><br />Its hard to guess where things are going or what team anyone should be on. Maybe that's good? Maybe that's how we find out way back home?<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-49774722047171575102017-03-06T08:28:33.213-08:002017-03-06T08:28:33.213-08:00"The dirty secret about Vietnam is that it wa..."The dirty secret about Vietnam is that it was initiated and conducted by liberals. The Kennedy-Johnson administration escalated it. The Nixon administration de-escalated it. Most left-thinking young people at the time did everything in their power to avoid the fight." Then the Democrats in Congress shut down the support to South VN so that North VN Army could overwhelm the South VN Army.<br /><br />Liberals ruined that label, so they renamed themselves Progressives. For me, Progressive signifies Cancer. And they are a cancer in the body politic.<br /><br />Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.com