Sunday, June 18, 2006

Worth some thought, from Maggie's Farm

Our bred-in-the-bone Repub Mrs. Chairman feels that it is always a tactical imperative of the Left to disparage the US, because they have an agenda of social change. Thus anything that smells of nationalism, patriotism, pride, or which focuses on external rather than internal evils, delays the movement towards their quasi-socialist agenda, which can only be based on the "What's wrong with America?" question. For the country that everyone in the world wants to come to, and to be like, it is a bit odd.


Discuss.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know if it has to even be about America...the left seeks to right wrongs, therefore they must seem wrongs somewhere.

Luther said...

I have to say, it really drives me crazy at times.

What I mean is;

In this country, for the past couple of hundred and a half years, we have attempted to deal with day to day life and reality based on a few key precepts. Life, Liberty and, too me, perhaps the most important, Pursuit of Happiness.

I mean, what a word to place in such an important document. What a concept. That an individuals happiness was an essential leg in the triad of ideals for a nascent government to be successful. Mind blowing, really.

I am not, obviously, a scholar of marxist or socialist thought. But, in the reading I have done of those political systems and utopian ideals, never have I come across the concept of individual happiness.

I sometimes think that that concept of happiness is what distinguishes this country from the rest of the world. I also think it is a large driver of the "guilt" that is being proffered as a part of our American heritage.

That we don't deserve to be happy. We don't deserve to be satisfied with our three squares and a cot. We have to bear the guilt of three thousand years of western civilization, in rising above paganistic and tribal duties.

Much of the entire world, and certainly our leftist friends in this country, just wish to drag us down to the level of the everyman. No differences, no distinctions, any head rising above the level playing field, will be immediately chopped off, literally or not. Does that explain an affinity?

Rick Ballard said...

StY,

I'm a bit lost as to what to discuss. Advanced necrosis as a sign of potential problems in the Democratic Party? How the Democratic Party closely resembles the Norwegian Blue Parrot?

The left wing has successfully gutted the center of the Democratic Party. They've "won". Along the way toward "winning", they forgot to reproduce and the number of people willing to convert to nihilism remains insufficient to fill the departure (by one means or another) of the centrists who provided the majorities necessary to retain or ever regain power.

Unfortunately, unlike the Norweigian Blue, they have retained the ability to make noise as they pine for the fjords. The noise they make as nature has its inexorable way with them is unpleasant but not intolerable.

The Chairman (at Maggie's) knows all this - or at least most of it - which makes the post a lament without hope. The Yellow Dogs will not rise from their rest in aid of the center regaining its dominance - except in Chicago, New Jersey and perhaps New Orleans.

Anonymous said...

David Thomson:

America can often be a humiliating place for elites.

A few years back, I had a surreal conversation with a school pyschologist friend of my wife. She was lamenting the fact that a school initiative in our state was going to be rejected by the taxpayers and that professionals like her weren't being listened to by the politicians.

Her complaint - verbatim - was "where are the checks and balances?"

Unknown said...

luther:

I agree, guilt pays a large part.

But I also think that some people see the injustice in the world and they convince themselves that if the US did not make it happen, then the US let it happen. We are the super power and like the ominipotent parent we control the universe.

Yesterday I was talking with a young women who has a job at a major university. She is alumni herself. Her office is in between two sorority houses and often times the little princesses who live within steal her parking place.

It is not unusual for her to show up for work and some brat in a hummer or a BMW has stolen the parking place she paid $200 a year for. Obviously there are spoiled brats everywhere but I got the impression that this young woman feels there is something really out of balance in a society where her Dad can not afford life insurance but some sorority brat drives a $60,000 car, magnify that by a few million.

Some people internalize these things in a different way. Of course their answer might be to live in a world where no one but the party elites own a BMW,but that is a whole different thing.

Syl said...

Even the rational liberals in this country seem to be missing the point. I read something Peter Beinart said in a debate with an anti-war liberal. (The basic question was, I think--didn't read the whole thing--can a liberal who supported Iraq have legitimacy in the internal debate.)

Anyway, Peter was speaking of the reason for international institutions and supporting them. That the natural impulse is for imperialism, that America is not perfect, and that we should understand that these institutions keep our baser motives in check.

I think 9/11 changed the equation, though. America is the prime target and focus for hatred (Israel is merely an excuse) and thus we have the right, indeed imperative, to defend ourselves. The Gulliver ropes constraining us were tolerable in a different era where American power was simply used to advantage us.

The stakes are higher now.

I think the liberals believe that because the stakes are so very very high right now, it's even more important to constrain America. Which is back-*sswards.





ifbro

Syl said...

Well, the authoritarian streak runs strong on both sides. The left, however, controls academia from whence come so many of the pseudo-research sociology papers and political correctness rules.

I've said all along that 9/11 stopped them dead. They just haven't accepted it yet. And this is what's behind BDS.

I don't know how long until a tipping point is reached--until more Americans hit the stifle butto n on PC and the movement behind it. But I do know that I'm not unique. If I did a 180 because of 9/11 I know I'm not the only one.

Unfortunately, as the left's power wanes, the right's authoritarian influence becomes stronger. So let me change my '180' to '90' as far as social issues go. And there, I'm probably not unique either. I suspect a lot of regular Americans are simply saying HANDS OFF. Period.