From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 10:35:42 MST
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 07:52:50PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Damien Sullivan (welcome back Damien!!) writes
Thanks! We'll see if I can keep it up. List volume is way too high, and I
keep getting embroiled in politics which burns me out after a few exchanges...
> > Do Reagan and the bushes acknowledge the legitimacy of liberal
> > views?
> Are you kidding? Of course not. They're politicians. To them,
> the opposition isn't to be hated; it's merely the total and
> conscious Opposition. They don't think anything like normal
> people at all.
I'm not sure I buy that politicians are a breed distinct from ordinary people.
Distinct from your better scientifically-minded types, and perhaps different
than the norm, but I see a continuum. And I don't think all politicians are
categorically at one end. Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch being personal friends
implies an acceptance of the Other which I think includes legitimacy of the
opposition. The Senate is often considered the seat of gentlemanly we'll get
along-ness, everyone having a voice, vs. House behavior of "we have a
majority! we'll crush you like a bug!"
> I'm trying to unearth psychological differences between normal
> left leaning people and normal right leaning people.
It feels like you're trying to do so to the disfavor of the left-leaning
people, whereas I would do so to the opposite. Perhaps that's just our own
biases showing.
> > Lenin is not part of the memetic history of most US liberals.
> > Really, he's not.
>
> Here is why I think Lenin is. Remember: unlike the far right,
> which was totally crushed in 1945, the far left was never totally
> repudiated. Observe who the sponsors and organizers of the world-
> wide recent peace protests are. At every turn you find old
> Communist organizations at the forefront, no matter how many
> non-Communist liberals are attracted to the marches.
1) Note I later distinguish between liberal and left. It's vague, but a first
distinction I'd suggest would be between quasi-social democrats -- so I'm not
weaseling by using the classical liberal sense of liberal, which wouldn't
match popular usage -- and those who really do harken to Communism. I don't
think labor unions and welfare advocates in the US have any necessary heritage
to Lenin; Marx was not the source of all socialist thought, let alone Lenin.
Never mind repudiation; Communism was never that popular in the US, Marxists
in the ivory tower notwithstanding.
2) I think the collapse of the Soviet Union was as repudiating as the
crushing of the far right in 1945. It wasn't total? Well, neither was the
crushing. Turn left and you see old Communist organizations. Turn right and
you see new fascist organizations -- Le Pen, Haider, various neo-Nazis.
Anti-Semitism isn't totally dead (even factoring out anti-Zionism, mistakenly
called anti-Semitism) and rabid nationalism springs eternal.
> It's not. In terms of memes, organization, strategy, and
> outlook, they're heirs of Lenin. You can follow the very
> clear evolution of all the memes, slogans, and phrases
> from "People's This" to "People's That", right down to
I grant you this keeps cropping up, like swastikas. But this discussion
started regarding the alleged liberal media bias. I don't think Dan Rather
has a useful mental pedigree going to Lenin, People's Republic of Berkeley
notwithstanding.
> "Concerned Citizens for This", "Concerned Citizens for That".
That's Leninish?
> The path leading from Vladimir Lenin to Noam Chomsky couldn't
Noam isn't Dan.
> > > Ever since, many on the left appear to believe that they possess
> > > a special dispensation from God or someone to have pre-eminence
> > > in political matters.
> > And the right doesn't have this?
> Not in quite the same way. I'm excluding the shrill voices
> you're liable to pick up on the airwaves these days, from the
> right, and I'm excluding the religious types who really do
> believe that God's on their side. I'm focusing on a large
!!!! You're excluding much of what I think of as the right! And much of what
seems to have influence (or at least be reflected) in the Republican Congress
and White House. "Let's compare everyone on the left, out to Noam Chomsky,
but leave off anyone on the right beyond Nelson Rockefeller because they're
too extreme." Not fair.
> note the asymmetry. There is no way that "young conservatives"
> or whatever could have ever evolved the "Political Correctness"
> viewpoint. Inconceivable.
Anti-patriotic? Un-American? Communist? Socialist? Conservatives
might not have evolved the "political correctness" label, but they have the
dogmatic suppression of dissent down pat, in my experience. Did you mean
something else?
> Yet the self-doubt of liberals is a reality. It comes from a
> number of sources. The fall of communism is the biggest one,
Whereas I'd say the self-doubt of liberals comes from the Enlightenment, from
scientific thinking. You're supposed to doubt yourself, or at least be open
to questions about your ideas. And you certainly can't be certain of your
ideas because you don't *get* certainty, unless you're doing math.
Take me, for example. I used to be pretty libertarian; I've been turning
leftwards economically, based on what I consider the evidence. Leftward
meaning social safety net, public funding of education and infrastructure and
research, the usual mixed economy stuff. The fall of the Soviet Union is
exactly irrelevant to my beliefs. But I had doubts as a libertarian, and I
have doubts now as a liberal, just because economic issues are so complex, and
my economist father taught me not to take economic theory too literally or
simplistically.
More generally, there's this value of tolerance (or "otherness" cf. Brin),
which I associate with liberalism, but I could grant to the better
conservatives too. It wasn't in the Soviet Union, and it's not in the
rabid religious right, and it's at best confused in the politically correct
crowd. But there's this idea that everyone counts, everyone should be
listened to, if briefly, no one should be condemned out of hand. And I think
is what I meant when I first brought up liberal self-doubt. Liberals as I see
them have trouble cohesively keeping out the Other, or accepting doing so.
There's some of it in practice -- "he's a gun nut from Texas", "she's
pro-life" -- but still, I see a moderation, absent from religious crusaders,
which leaves the left confused. "How do we talk to these people? Can they be
talked to? Maybe we should write them off. No, no, that's Wrong! But they
write us off as Wrong and Evil. What to do?"
I think that last paragraph wasn't ideally written, but it'll have to do.
For the record, I was raised by liberals, went libertarian for a long time,
and most of the people I know wander around the liberal-libertarian political
space. On the left I speak from experience. People from the right I don't
experience much, except in the media and politics, where they scare me.
-xx- Damien X-)
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