25 Liberal Faults
Feb 10, 2018 18:32:34 #
John Hawkins
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2010/11/23/the-25-best-quotes-about-liberals-n1241507
25) Whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings- on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe. A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes."), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above. -- Jonah Goldberg
24) There are no bad guys on the left. There are only people who’ve been driven to desperation by conservative evil. -- Allahpundit
23) Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago. -- Ann Coulter
22) Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling. -- David Horowitz
21) The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites. -- Ann Coulter
20) Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.
There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. -- Evan Sayet
19) It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism -- a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization -- became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent -- not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself -- became the highest virtue. -- Jonah Goldberg
18) But all liberals only have empathy for the exact same victims -- always the ones that are represented by powerful liberal interest groups. -- Ann Coulter
17) Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that America is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as a result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair -- because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work -- they never have. -- Rush Limbaugh
16) One of the overriding points of Liberal Fascism is that all of the totalitarian "isms" of the left commit the fallacy of the category error. They all want the state to be something it cannot be. They passionately believe the government can love you, that the state can be your God or your church or your tribe or your parent or your village or all of these things at once. Conservatives occasionally make this mistake, libertarians never do, liberals almost always do. -- Jonah Goldberg
15) Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion. -- Dennis Prager
14) When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” -- Greg Gutfeld
13) Stupidity is a luxury and you will find time and time and time and again that those who are overwhelmingly on the left are those who can afford to be. -- Evan Sayet
12) With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society. -- Ann Coulter
11) If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they--and we all--can be “liberated.” The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions--the vision--which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. -- Thomas Sowell
10) Liberals claim to love gays when it allows them to vent their spleen at Republicans. But disagree with liberals and their first response is to call you gay. Liberals are gays' biggest champions on issues most gays couldn't care less about, like gay marriage or taxpayer funding of photos of men with bullwhips up their derrieres. But who has done more to out, embarrass, and destroy the lives of gay men who prefer to keep their orientation private than Democrats? Who is more intolerant of gays in the Republican Party than gays in the Democratic Party? -- Ann Coulter
9) End results that work that don't involve government threaten liberals. -- Rush Limbaugh
8) In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. -- Thomas Sowell
7) That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" -- not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality. -- Dennis Prager
6) In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group. -- Thomas Sowell
5) Everyone moralizes. The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost every day, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion — you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other people’s children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise. -- Jonah Goldberg
4) If you can somehow force a liberal into a point- counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said -- unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. -- Ann Coulter
3) My analysis is that most faith based systems depend upon an absolute moral order. The declaration of things as absolutely evil or absolutely good, as sin or virtue, puts liberalism into a horrible position because it's founded on no judgment on anything. As a result, any faith that is seriously practiced or understood is a challenge to the politics that depend on constituencies that would rather not be told that their choices are bad and their lives are not virtuous. -- Hugh Hewitt
2) The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? -- Thomas Sowell
1) To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. -- Charles Krauthammer
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2010/11/23/the-25-best-quotes-about-liberals-n1241507
25) Whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings- on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe. A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes."), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above. -- Jonah Goldberg
24) There are no bad guys on the left. There are only people who’ve been driven to desperation by conservative evil. -- Allahpundit
23) Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago. -- Ann Coulter
22) Inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. They don't like to have another point of view in the room that they don't squash and the way they try to squash it is by character assassination and name calling. -- David Horowitz
21) The reason any conservative's failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It's an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being philanderers, draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites. -- Ann Coulter
20) Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.
There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. -- Evan Sayet
19) It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism -- a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization -- became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent -- not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself -- became the highest virtue. -- Jonah Goldberg
18) But all liberals only have empathy for the exact same victims -- always the ones that are represented by powerful liberal interest groups. -- Ann Coulter
17) Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that America is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as a result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair -- because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work -- they never have. -- Rush Limbaugh
16) One of the overriding points of Liberal Fascism is that all of the totalitarian "isms" of the left commit the fallacy of the category error. They all want the state to be something it cannot be. They passionately believe the government can love you, that the state can be your God or your church or your tribe or your parent or your village or all of these things at once. Conservatives occasionally make this mistake, libertarians never do, liberals almost always do. -- Jonah Goldberg
15) Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion. -- Dennis Prager
14) When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they're doing so for purely selfish reasons. It's the human equivalent of a puppy dog's face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” -- Greg Gutfeld
13) Stupidity is a luxury and you will find time and time and time and again that those who are overwhelmingly on the left are those who can afford to be. -- Evan Sayet
12) With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society. -- Ann Coulter
11) If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they--and we all--can be “liberated.” The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions--the vision--which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. -- Thomas Sowell
10) Liberals claim to love gays when it allows them to vent their spleen at Republicans. But disagree with liberals and their first response is to call you gay. Liberals are gays' biggest champions on issues most gays couldn't care less about, like gay marriage or taxpayer funding of photos of men with bullwhips up their derrieres. But who has done more to out, embarrass, and destroy the lives of gay men who prefer to keep their orientation private than Democrats? Who is more intolerant of gays in the Republican Party than gays in the Democratic Party? -- Ann Coulter
9) End results that work that don't involve government threaten liberals. -- Rush Limbaugh
8) In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong--surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. -- Thomas Sowell
7) That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" -- not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality. -- Dennis Prager
6) In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group. -- Thomas Sowell
5) Everyone moralizes. The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost every day, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion — you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other people’s children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise. -- Jonah Goldberg
4) If you can somehow force a liberal into a point- counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said -- unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. -- Ann Coulter
3) My analysis is that most faith based systems depend upon an absolute moral order. The declaration of things as absolutely evil or absolutely good, as sin or virtue, puts liberalism into a horrible position because it's founded on no judgment on anything. As a result, any faith that is seriously practiced or understood is a challenge to the politics that depend on constituencies that would rather not be told that their choices are bad and their lives are not virtuous. -- Hugh Hewitt
2) The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? -- Thomas Sowell
1) To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. -- Charles Krauthammer
Feb 10, 2018 18:50:32 #
Outstanding Man. Each one right on. My favorite was 12. Stay the Course.
Manning345 wrote:
John Hawkins br http://townhall.com/columnists/joh... (show quote)
Feb 10, 2018 18:51:44 #
Feb 10, 2018 22:02:01 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Manning345 wrote:
John Hawkins br http://townhall.com/columnists/joh... (show quote)
Respectively, Manning345, I read this from a blogger on Quora, and I pretty much agree with what he wrote....
"The fundamental flaws in any ‘partisan’ thinking is the belief that the problems facing humanity on any level are going to find answers in any one ideology or philosophy. Conservative, liberal, progressive, classical, neo-liberal, alt-right, libertarian, it doesn’t matter - none of them actually have the solutions to the problems, regardless of how loudly or vociferously they may proclaim otherwise."
Any type of political ideology, IMO, should be flexible and open to different variants of it. "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it isn't open." [quote/SirThomasRobertDewar] However, one should also keep in mind the words of Arthur Hayes Sulzberger..."I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."
Feb 10, 2018 23:38:27 #
slatten49 wrote:
Respectively, Manning345, I read this from a blogg... (show quote)
It is one thing to be open to different ideas and solutions, and from differing ideologies too, yet once you have rejected most or all of each of those others for good and sufficient cause, you are left with what remains. Should an idea or two from a differing ideology be deemed viable and true, there is most certainly nothing wrong with incorporating it into what you believe is true. Synthesis is good.
Feb 10, 2018 23:54:43 #
Manning345 wrote:
It is one thing to be open to different ideas and solutions, and from differing ideologies too, yet once you have rejected most or all of each of those others for good and sufficient cause, you are left with what remains. Should an idea or two from a differing ideology be deemed viable and true, there is most certainly nothing wrong with incorporating it into what you believe is true. Synthesis is good.
Feb 11, 2018 07:20:36 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Manning345 wrote:
It is one thing to be open to different ideas and solutions, and from differing ideologies too, yet once you have rejected most or all of each of those others for good and sufficient cause, you are left with what remains. Should an idea or two from a differing ideology be deemed viable and true, there is most certainly nothing wrong with incorporating it into what you believe is true. Synthesis is good.
Excellent reply, and one I would have expected as you seem to be tempered and open to reason.
However, I think it is safe to say that often, ideological/partisan zealots will find or manufacture reasons to dismiss perspectives apart from their own, regardless of the strength in others arguments. But, the effort of being open to others thoughts is good, in and of itself. One is left with a self-imposed filtering process that allows or disallows input almost instinctively. Again, making that effort to ingest differing viewpoints is most important.
The truth is, both Dewar's and Sulzberger's words are to be taken at eaches own discretion. Feb 13, 2018 00:52:59 #
slatten49 wrote:
Excellent reply, and one I would have expected as ... (show quote)
I believe the idea that no one ideology has all the answers is fundamentally true. Something buzzes in my head at that statement... We do need to have some fundamental inclusive ideas as to what we want to be when we grow up, and we need to have some inclusive ideas of how we are going to exist with other people all around us. It also seems that seeking the perfect answer tends to exclude the operationally adequate, where no one gets his own way all the time, but we all can live free and easy. The Constitution is to me operationally adequate...and it can be changed, with great difficulty as was planned. On the religious side, Agape, the Ten Commandments, and the Golden Rule are also operationally adequate, and by me preferred.
Feb 13, 2018 07:19:46 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Manning345 wrote:
I believe the idea that no one ideology has all th... (show quote)
You'll get no arguments from me regarding this comment from you. It explains why you appear to be an exceptional individual.
However, in being ideologically partisan, your original thread post did not leave that impression. I would have been just as disappointed if another had posted '25 Conservative Faults,' however equally faulty. 
Feb 13, 2018 16:29:16 #
slatten49 wrote:
You'll get no arguments from me regarding this comment from you. It explains why you appear to be an exceptional individual. However, in being ideologically partisan, your original thread post did not leave that impression. I would have been just as disappointed if another had posted '25 Conservative Faults,' however equally faulty.
However, in being ideologically partisan, your original thread post did not leave that impression. I would have been just as disappointed if another had posted '25 Conservative Faults,' however equally faulty. Worthwhile self-criticism is perhaps the hardest thing to do. You are correct that one should strike a balance, such as Aristotle suggested, between alternatives. I am sure that I cannot list 25 Conservative(C) faults off the top of my head, but I know a few obvious ones that cause me heartache:
1) In many cases a C can be accused of wanting to live in the 20th century;
2) Some C's are hidebound and inflexible, and cannot stand the idea of significant changes.
3) Most C's are theist or Christian, I believe, and as such can be less tolerant than they are commanded to be;
4) Many C's are rather shaky in their Christian beliefs, and are still constant sinners;
5) Many C's want everyone to conform to the Christian faith, which is obviously wrongheaded.
That is all I can think of for starters.
Feb 14, 2018 07:01:48 #
slatten49
Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
Manning345 wrote:
Worthwhile self-criticism is perhaps the hardest t... (show quote)
In attempting continued growth, I find myself going through introspection all the time, It is not always a pleasant journey.
Each of us should understand, as human beings, we are all subject to human frailties. Thus, each of us should refrain, as much as possible, from casting the first stone(s) and, for the same reasons, refrain from possibly being too hard on ourselves.
Thank you for the dialogue.
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