I abandoned religion at a very young age.
I grew up in a Tammany Hall Democratic family…at least on my paternal side.
I grew up in New York City and attended a half dozen colleges completing four degrees and so I went through as much fashionably Leftist indoctrination as anyone.
I am open to any and all arguments pro or con on any belief I hold. I’ve worked with theoretical mathematics for much of my life and have always “let the numbers take us where they will.”
I should be the perfect “liberal”/Leftist demographic, unfortunately, I’m resistant to indoctrination and I’ve always thought for myself.
As a result, I have always been and remain pro-freedom, and, of course, by “freedom” I mean individual liberty – which is NOT defined as “people doing what they want” (I decidedly DO NOT believe in that – “license”), but the grinding, ponderous burdens of full personal responsibility – that’s individual liberty, “as much freedom as you can bear…or pay for.” Therefore, for most of my life I’ve been pro-abortion (believing that an unwilling parent is at that moment also an “unfit” one as well), pro-economic freedom (free markets), pro-gun, pro-sexual liberation, etc., although I am open to any and all reasonable arguments against those positions.
With that rather wide spectrum of beliefs and given my background and locale (NYC is one of the most Leftist regions of the country), I’ve been in a position to hear people of both sides out and this is unfortunately what I’ve found; while any number of people Left and Right have challenged me on various issues, ONLY Conservatives (most Libertarians seem to be largely in agreement) have consistently made lucid, rational, fact-based arguments in their challenges and no matter how strongly we may disagree, they tend to remain civil and, are more likely to simply “agree to disagree.”
While it seems that the primary thing my fellow “liberals” (I call myself a “liberal” because I believe in freedom/liberty “across the board”) seem to take issue with are my economic views, many also have challenged my consistency on social issues and in that arena they’ve been even more vituperative.
I’ll dispense with the benighted Leftist economic arguments, suffice to say, there has never been a successful socialist/Command economy and generally the freer the economy the more prosperous as well (see Hong Kong). I’ve always chalked Leftist economic intransigence to their general and overall lack of mathematical ability. Indeed Leftists tend to be overwhelming (nearly exclusively) Liberal Arts and Humanities majors.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say, BUT I have to admit, I DO tend to look askance at people who, “Can’t do Diffy Q (Differential Equations).”
It’s the few social issues where I disagree with leftists that have been the most contentious and that has surprised me because I’d have at least thought they could make rational arguments in THAT realm!
While I can reasonable discuss whether “life begins at conception” trumps my own view that “an unwilling parent is also an unfit one,” that is rarely, if ever the case when discussing any social issue, say guns, for instance, with fellow “liberals.”
Here are the facts about gun violence – those cities with the strictest gun control also tend to have the highest rates of gun violence, while those places where concealed carry permits are relatively easy to ascertain tend to have much lower rates of gun violence. Washington, D.C.’s gun violence has risen in the face of a virtual gun ban. The same holds internationally, where England has seen a steep rise in gun violence along with its stricter gun control and Australia is considering scuttling many of its gun control laws due to failure.
As John Lott has so carefully documented, more GUNS (in the hands of more law-abiding citizens) are the antidote to gun violence, just as surely as MORE technology is ALWAYS the answer to the problems we face due to technology!.
Moreover, THANKFULLY, people with bad intentions, just as those with good ones, seem ALWAYS to “find a way,” as Julio Gonzalez proved, when he killed 87 people on March 25th, 1990, when he set fire to the Happy Land Social Club with less than a dollar’s worth of gasoline and a makeshift wick. I say “thankfully,” because such violence is an unfortunate cost of freedom, but certainly a cost worth paying.
Here, on these boards a fellow “liberal” brought up the Fort Hood shooting, apparently unaware that the troops on that base had their guns locked away and that the first police officer on the scene that day was a female, who critically hesitated to drop Hassan Nadal from behind, allowing him to turn around and squeeze off a number of shots, severely injuring her before she could effectively return fire.
But in that fellow’s mind, that was a “good argument” for gun control.
Maybe that’s the problem – most arts and humanities majors, like most liberal arts majors don’t really concern themselves with the facts, or what they like to call “the minutia,” they prefer the emotional appeal.
UNFORTUNATELY, the “appeal” part of that is a very thin veneer indeed. Right beneath the surface is a festering rage that wants to shout out, “WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE LIKE ME?! Who are YOU to think differently?!”
Perhaps the most glaring logical inconsistencies are found along the lines of what the Catholic Church calls “the reverence for life.”
Now I respect the Catholic Church’s and other major religious organization’s consistency on the issue – generally OPPOSING both abortion and capital punishment for the very SAME reason – that “reverence for all life.”
While I reject that “reverence for ALL life,” I too am logically consistent, in that I support both abortion AND capital punishment.
Most “liberals” and many Conservatives tend to be somewhat inconsistent on this matter. While most Conservatives tend to OPPOSE abortion and SUPPORT capital punishment, most “liberals” tend to SUPPORT abortion and OPPOSE capital punishment.
On that score, Conservatives seem much more able and therefore likely to make actual, reasonable and affirmative arguments for their position – “We believe in protecting the innocent (presumably unborn fetuses) and punishing the guilty.”
OK, there’s a logical thread that runs through there, but again, my primary argument on the former is, “Are we really “protecting” that unborn fetus by making sure it’ll be born into that unwilling, often chaotic and dysfunctional environment?”
Still, we can discuss such things amicably and even agree to disagree, BUT most “liberals” tend NOT to be able to defend exactly why they choose to support abortion for “convenience,” and NOT the death penalty for those who’ve committed even the most heinous crimes and been convicted on DNA evidence! There is no such logical thread for that runs along the track supporting abortion and opposing capital punishment and THAT is almost certainly why so few “liberals” even ever try to defend it reasonably. It’s very essence is a soft gooey overtly feminine and overly emotional argument.
I noticed this many years ago.
Milton Friedman flustered and befuddled opponents of free markets with unmatched wit and sparkling humor. NO one ever successfully challenged Friedman face to face.
Here, he devastates Phil Donahue, after Donahue thought he’d sandbagged him into defending “greed”;
Margaret Thatcher, like Ronald Reagan was able to articulate sound economic principles and make them plain for all to understand, like the time she excoriated a Labour Party House member with “You’d prefer to see the poor poorer, so long as the rich were less rich.”
Is it possible, perhaps, that Leftist arguments are so nuanced that very few (almost no one) can actually make those arguments?
That doesn’t make any sense at all.
Seriously, how come there’s never been a Left-of-Center Milton Friedman, or a Leftist Reagan or Thatcher?
I’ve come to believe it’s because few Leftists, if any, WANT to make such arguments. They take their own emotional arguments on “faith” and when confronted, react the same way many such faith-based believers do when challenged – rail against the challenger as a heretic, or as “ignorant” (for who wouldn’t take the same things they do on faith, if they weren’t ignorant?). Aren’t heretics and the woefully ignorant, especially those who revel in their ignorance “worthy of insult?”
Seriously, this is the ONLY thing that (at least to me) explains the Leftist penchant for insults over facts.
On that score, I have to note that I’ve witnessed many kind, “liberal” people jump in defend insulting Leftists like Lance & ETH here (and others elsewhere) from personal attack, while never once addressing the often much more vituperative personal attacks, virtually always initiated by those they’ve defended.
That’s merely an observation that’s remained consistent over a long period of time, one which has fortified my belief that, as I’ve often said (for decades now) that I’ve observed that, “The vast majority of the most angry and revolting people I’ve met have been fellow “liberals.” While I’ve rarely, if ever encountered derision or even direct proselytizing from Conservatives, even “Conservative Christians,” I’ve encountered anger and insults over relatively minor disagreements with fellow “liberals.”
As an example, of all the people here, DAdvocate (DaD) probably SHOULD find my own views more antithetical, probably more revolting than anyone else, and yet I’ve never had an insulting exchange with him. . .AND yet, the few relatively minor disagreements I’ve had with Leftists have nearly all resulted in virtual scorched earth wars. The ONLY possible explanation for that is that Leftist ideas are primarily “faith-based.”
Lance, who recently left this site, left ostensibly over the toll such personal attacks were having on HIM, when he himself initiated nearly every one! In fact, in his exchanges with DaD, it was Lance who reflexively resorted to personal attacks and DaD who sought to try and keep those to a minimum.
There are only two ways of dealing with that, (1) accepting that, like everyone else, these folks have a right to their own faith and simply refrain from engaging them, OR (2) continue to engage such people, whenever possible, hoping that eventually they’ll at least one day be willing to hear another viewpoint with a more open mind.
I, of course, hold to the latter view.
You’d think that the idea SHOULD BE to try and make our arguments as persuasive as possible to bring others to our side, but for whatever reasons, “liberals” always tend to do a much worse job of that than do Libertarians and Conservatives. WHY is that?
Whatever the reason, it’s got to be the primary reason why “liberals” have never been more than half the number of “Conservatives” (currently there are nearly 2.5X as many Conservatives as liberals in the USA, according to Gallup) and Conservatives should probably be jumping for joy over that!
I’ve said this for a very long time, “IF you believe your neighbors are “the enemy” because they have an Obama, or a Bush, or now a Romney bumper sticker, then you are part of what’s wrong with America.”
That “team sports” mentality doesn’t fit politics and ideology well at all. If you can be made to hate a nazi, you can just as easily be made to hate the little old lady next to you in the supermarket aisle. WHY? Because you’re basing your hate on something you’ve read or watched on TV…your opinions have been molded by someone else with an agenda unknown to you.
It’s important that we don’t fall into demonizing our neighbors over minor issues like religion, gay rights, gun rights, etc. especially when there are so many other issues (economic, for instance) that SHOULD unite us.
Ummm, saying “those cities with the strictest gun control also tend to have the highest rates of gun violence, while those places where concealed carry permits are relatively easy to ascertain tend to have much lower rates of gun violence” isn’t much different from saying “people who regularly ingest insulin have diabetes; people who never use insulin never have diabetes.” I’m not absolutely sure about the factual accuracy of either statement, but it doesn’t matter, because (a) correlation is not causality, and (b) in some cases, correlation may indicate a reverse of causality. We cannot conclude from the above statements either that gun control causes gun violence or that insulin causes diabetes. We can reasonably conclude that places with a lot of gun violence NEED stricter gun control, and that people with diabetes NEED insulin.
Here’s the problem with gun bans WS, they not only fail to reduce even gun violence, but gun violence actually increases under such bans. John Lott’s works (“More Guns, Less Crime”) remain unrefuted and amazingly unassailed (NO ONE has challenged ANY of Lott’s assertions) to date.
I can make guns. I have a machine shop in my basement.
I can also make explosives, many very effective explosives can be made from basic household items, like sugar, aluminum shavings, etc. All you really need is a fuel and an oxidizer. When I was younger I “dabbled” in weaponizing various substances – like snake venom. ALL it takes to weaponize a substance is to grind it down to between 6 to 8 microns (the size at which particles can be deeply breathed into the lungs) and aerosolized by using an “aerosolizing agent” like silica.
I haven’t made explosives, nor weaponized any substances in eons, BUT I believe it’s a good skill to have and I believe that information SHOULD be readily and freely available to all.
I know quite a number of people who can make various weaponry, given that, you can easily see why gun bans CANNOT work, UNLESS we can all be made to suddenly forget how to make such things.
Moreover, the Happy Land Social Club mass murder proves that a determined killer with “bad intentions” will not be deterred.
Julio Gonzalez DIDN’T use a gun at all, he used less than a gallon of gasoline and a makeshift wick to murder 87 people that night, right in the heart of New York City!
While I’m really glad I wasn’t a patron at the Happy Land that night, I do find myself smiling at Gonzalez’s determination….LIFE will NOT be easily deterred, if deterred at all. That’s the message, and it’s a hopeful message, despite coming from such a horrific tragedy. What Gonzalez said that day was simply, “Just because you don’t want me to express my rage, I will NOT suppress it. I will express whatever seems righteous to me.” Ultimately, as terrible of an expression of freedom as that was, it was bottom-line, an expression of human freedom.
So long as naive legislators continue to blame inanimate objects for the carnage brought about by highly determined people with malice in their hearts, the violence will escalate.
That solution is too simplistic and the problem far too complex.
“Now I respect the Catholic Church’s and other major religious organization’s consistency on the issue – generally OPPOSING both abortion and capital punishment for the very SAME reason – that “reverence for all life.””
I would respect them a lot more if they were willing to unleash as much institutional and persuasive power against capital punishment as they do against abortion.
I haven’t seen them unleash ANY “persuasive power” on either.
BOTH are (happily) from my view, quite legal.
Here’s the problem that makes it seem (from your perspective that they push harder on one than the other), polls reliably show around 75% to 80% of Americans support Capital punishment. On the abortion issue it’s somewhat dicier; while 2/3s support abortion on demand up through the first trimester, the SAME 2/3s oppose late term or so-called “partial birth” abortion.
The public is very vocal in its views on both and those views are NOT very much influenced by the Roman Church.
“Most “liberals” and many Conservatives tend to be somewhat inconsistent on this matter. While most Conservatives tend to OPPOSE abortion and SUPPORT capital punishment, most “liberals” tend to SUPPORT abortion and OPPOSE capital punishment.”
There is nothing inconsistent about the liberal position if it rests on the premise that the fetus is not a human being (in the same way an acorn is not an oak and an egg is not a chicken–ask for an omelet at Chik-Fil-A and see what you get!) while the convicted criminal, is (even if he is a really lousy specimen of humanity.)
“There is nothing inconsistent about the liberal position if it rests on the premise that the fetus is not a human being…” (WS)
.
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Well, that would only appear to cover the first couple trimesters, or perhaps the first 20 weeks.
After 20 weeks preemies have lived outside the womb! Those are certainly not acorns or mere “fetuses” any more.
In fact, that exact logic is why I myself support complete and unfettered abortion through the 1st 20 weeks or so, and oppose it after that child is mature enough to be able to live outside the womb.
I mean, IF we’re going to acknowledge that that life is, at that point, fully formed, and STILL allow one person to make a unilateral decision to end that fully formed life, how does that not also justify extending that period just a bit to include retroactive abortions up to (whatever age). I’m morally flexible, so I believe support for 3rd trimester abortions does amount to support for retroactive abortions, at least in some limited sense.
And re: the relatives numbers of self-reported liberals and conservatives in the US, as usual, self-reported data proves very little (Kinsey, anyone?), especially given the enormous effort conservative organizations and media notables have made to provoke a Pavlovian response to “liberalism” among people who mostly don’t even know what the word means. See http://wiredsisters.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/the-broccoli-reflex/ for further consideration of this issue.
I can’t agree with that.
The overwhelming number of journalists and media people are die-hard liberal Democrats, something like 82%.
I’ve often said that I believe that’s almost certainly because such people tend to be liberal arts and humanities majors with little of any background in math and poorer logical skills.
I’m on record as generally opposing “diversity for diversity sake,” QUALITY over QUANTITY (which is the mantra of Merit Matters I always say, BUT, I would institute an ideological diversity policy for ALL media and it would mandate that all such arenas mirror the Gallup breakdown along the conservative/liberal split in the country. The media should reflect the populace, NOT look to lead or change it.
We have a corporatist media (highlighted by MSNBC) that feeds the people the corporatist line over and over and commercializes pablum and emotional thinking. That’s absolutely tragic. What’s worse is that so many people actually think Corporatist MSNBC is a “for the people” anti-corporatist outlet when its been a mouthpiece for GE and now Comcast.
I also agree with David Brock of Media Matters who has said numerous times that the media SHOULD BE a LOT more Conservative to more accurately reflect the views of the American people.
http://www.journalism.org/node/2304
A 2006 survey of journalists as to their political preference. Basically, it shows 40 percent left, 33 percent “middle of the road”, and 25 percent right. This apparently reflected a gradual move to the right that began in about 1992. Journalism.org is a Pew Research Association organization.
Stop it Ed!
You quote an opinion piece on Journalism.org as proof of “non-bias?”
“The percentage of “middle of the roaders” moved up slightly to 33% in 2002 from 30% in 1992. And the number of journalists identifying themselves leaning toward the political right also inched up to 25% from 22% a decade earlier (20% “a little to the right” and 5% “pretty far to the right”).”
In regards to that, Stalin, Mao and Hitler ALL defined themselves as “middle of the road” (yes, each used those words and Hitler had the gall to use those words after having said he supported “redistribution of the wealth” using those exact words).
Here are some common views of those in the media; 82 percent of reporters and editors favored allowing women to have abortions; 81 percent backed affirmative action; and 78 percent wanted stricter gun control.
An astounding Two-thirds (67%) of journalists opposed prayer in public schools, while three-fourths of the general public (74%) supported prayer in public schools.
In one of the more honest admissions of the obvious, Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei has admitted that the majority of the journalists that he’s known in his career at a variety of publications “vote Democratic.”
“If I had to guess, if you put all of the reporters that I’ve ever worked with on truth serum, most of them vote Democratic,” VandeHei said during the March 13th edition of C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” program.
SEE: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/04/23/politico-co-founder-most-journalists-hes-known-are-democrats
In that interview, VandeHei did also say;
“Conservatives are convinced the vast majority of reporters at mainstream news organizations are liberals who hover expectantly for each new issue of The Nation. It’s just not true. The majority of political writers we know might more accurately be accused of centrist bias. That is, they believe broadly in government activism but are instinctually skeptical of anything that smacks of ideological zealotry and are quick to see the public interest as being distorted by excessive partisanship. Governance, in the Washington media’s ideal, should be a tidier and more rational process than it is.
“Assuming he hasn’t come to a different opinion and that the infamously liberal Harris didn’t write the above paragraphs, it appears VandeHei believes the media are biased in favor of centrist Democrats.
SEE: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/04/23/politico-co-founder-most-journalists-hes-known-are-democrats#ixzz23YOZivik
Not sure I fully agree with that either, BUT it does seem like a more honest assessment than the self-serving “journalist’s poll” of their own views. In such polls, the vast majority ANYWHERE can always be counted on to see themselves as “middle of the road.”
I almost forgot about the recent Journo-List scandal!
Here’s an excellent article that chronicles that despicable conspiracy and dereliction of so many “journalist’s” basic responsibilities;
http://www.akdart.com/med61.html