March 20, 2007

In her own words

7 comments:

Mercurial Minnow said...

I saw that you visited our new blog (http://www.thedailyfish.org/index.html), and I wanted to return the favor. Though I haven't had a chance to respond to your comments, re. liberals being less logical than conservatives, you seem to have struck a nerve with some of our "anonymous" contributers. Though I don't agree with your premise, I do appreciate that you generated some feedback.

I think your idea that liberals operate on emotion alone may be somewhat of a stereotype...there are plenty of nut cases on both sides of the aisle. Any party that houses Pat Robertson has got to know how it feels to be equated with the most radical extremes of one's party.

Further, the religious and culturally conservative members of the republican party cannot be called logical when it comes to abortion, birth control, the war on drugs (as someone pointed out on DailyFish), stem-cell research, and their relentless need to demonize homosexuals. Reality, logic and history all tell us that people have and will continue to have sex outside of marriage, people have and will continue to use drugs, and science has and can continue to improve our quality of life.

Unrelated, I don't like Hillary either and honestly have not spoken with a democrat who really does. Who are these people they are polling that keep saying she is going to be our candidate?

Coem visit us again: we need some fuel to keep our anger flaming. Minnow

JasMars said...

Thanks for stopping by, MM. I wish I could have seen some of the anonymous comments on your blog that pertain to my comment, but as far as I can tell there is no direct response to my comment other than this comment of yours. You seem calm and reasonable enough to disprove the theory that all liberals are guided by emotion. The problem is that I never said all liberals are guided only by emotion. In the full version of this theory of mine, found here and elsewhere,
I make it clear that no one group holds a monopoly on either thinking logically or reacting emotionally. All people engage in both activities at some point or another. My point is however that it is primarily liberals, if you had to pick, that are generally guided by emotion over logic. You say:

"I think your idea that liberals operate on emotion alone may be somewhat of a stereotype...there are plenty of nut cases on both sides of the aisle."

Yes, there are nut cases on both sides, but that fact is not dispositive of my true argument, that is liberals tend to rely on and tend to be governed by emotion more than thier conservative counterparts who, generally tend to rely more on logic.

This argument of mine isn't exactly a new concept. There's a saying that if you are not a liberal at age 20 then you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative by age 40 then you have no brain.

So as you might be starting to see I am not the only one in the world who holds this theory of mine, that generally liberals are more emotional and conservatives more logical. This is a 51% proposition. So long as the majority, not the totality, of liberals could be classified in a certain way (as being guided primarily by emotion) then my theory would be correct.

Anyway, thanks again for stopping by. I hope Obama trounces Hillary in the Democratic primary. I'll be back at your blog at some point, and hopefully someone will have the courage to directly address my comment this time, rather than back-channeling complaints to you anonymously. Have a good spring, Go Red Sox.

Kent said...

Jaz Baby,

I have to tell you that I really like Minnow a lot. A reasonable Lefty is something this world badly needs.

Hey Minnow.

I don't care about this video. I don't think YouTube is going to elect our new President. I don't like Hillary Clinton but I don't much care for Barack Obama, either.

My comment here comes from something I read this morning in Daniel Heninger's Wall Street Journal column.

In the piece, 'Packet Politics,' he describes a guy named Phil de Vellis describing on the Huffington Post how 'he'd done the ad in a Sunday afternoon on his Mac with "some software."

Yeah, sure. A Mac and a couple hours time and voila! A television broadcast-quality spot. Doesn't work that way.

This video is a slick, highly produced piece of art. Phil must have a small army working for him.

Kent said...

I'm going to bounce an idea here.

I have this radical opinion that the monikers ascribed to our political parties, Conservative and Liberal, are misplaced.

Why? Because I think that what President Bush has done and is continuing to try to do -- establishing democracy in the Middle East -- in an entirely Liberal idea.

In that context, I believe that those of us who wholeheartedly support Bush's mission to remake Iraq are today's true Liberals and those who oppose it are today's true Conservatives.

I believe that those of us Republicans who might be persuaded to become more open-minded to issues like gay marriage and stem cell research are to be considered Liberals, too.

The word 'Liberal' as I read the definition, are those people who are tolerant, open-minded and respectful of the views of others.

Very few of today's modern Democrats possess those qualities. because they were abruptly replaced by the words intolerant, narrow-minded and vitriolic sometime during the 2000 presidential election.

The word 'Conservative' as I understand it means being averse to change, holding to traditional values and attitudes.

For the past seven years President Bush has advocated big, sweeping changes both abroad (the War on Terror) and at home (Social Security reform, Tort Reform, Health Savings Accounts), only to be blocked and opposed at every turn by the supposedly 'tolerant, open-minded' Democrats.

It goes further. Cutting taxes should be an entirely Liberal idea since it allows more people (especially those of us in the middle class, the very class the Democrats care to 'care about' so vigorously) to keep more of their hard earned money.

The opposition to abortion seems to me to be an incredibly Liberal idea as well. What is more precious than preserving life so that that life can then be lived in liberty and in the pursuit of happiness?

Could there be a bigger or better Liberal idea than school vouchers? I don't think so, considering that vouchers enable low or middle income families to choose where they send their kids to school. The supposedly 'Liberal' Democrats oppose this idea.

Today's Democrats, it seems to me, are entirely Conservative in their approach, continually advocating failed policy after failed policy.

I'm rambling...but you get the idea.

JasMars said...

Kent,

Interesting comments.

Never worry about rambling on my blog; your kind of rambling is exactly why I created this blog. I love discussing the philosophical nuts and bolts of politics, as well as, and in fact more than, the day-to-day scandals, horse race stats, and policy issues that comprise most political discussions.

You’ve mentioned this idea before, that the label of liberal is incorrectly ascribed to today’s modern leftie. If I haven’t said so before, I entirely agree. As you rightly point out, today’s Democrat is anything but tolerant and open-minded. The examples are legion. Certain precincts of the left remind of what it must be like to live under a Stalinist regime, which pretends to be of the people and for the people but in reality is silencing, physically attacking, or shouting down those that are not in lock step with their ideology. The credo of the modern far left surely is: Freedom of speech is fine, unless you disagree with us.

And because a Republican has been President for several years, the Dems do seem to be the more reactionary party, which one would think would be in line with a conservative philosophy, in the general sense.

The only problem I see is that these labels have been applied for so long, that it’s basically impossible to suddenly switch and call Rush Limbaugh a liberal, for example.

I have debated these matters of conservatism and what it means with Chris A.K.A. MJ at length. Chris insists that I have offered up various definitions of conservatism. The reason he says this has to do with my belief that Mitt Romney is a conservative. I have always considered Romney to be a conservative, but if he doesn’t fit the narrow Rush Limbaugh definition of conservatism, then so be it. In another discussion with Chris I said the following: To me, conservatism boils down to the belief that the government is usually the cause of problems rather than the nanny state answer to them. The bedrock of modern conservatism, as far as I know, is the notion that the government is involved in too many areas of private life and that more should be left to individuals, private companies, and private institutions.

Despite Chris’s claim that I have been inconsistent on this matter of what defines a conservative or conservatism, I stand by both the statement above and my belief that Romney is a conservative. And as I pointed out to Chris, and have yet to receive a response, I don’t think that is fair to tag Romney as a flip-flopping, recent convert to conservatism, and at the same time declare that he is not a conservative. It’s one or the other with Romney, either he flipped to become a conservative, or he is not a conservative. Making both arguments at the same time is the usual muddled thinking I come to expect from a standard leftie, but not Chris. I await his response on this page of his own blog.

If we could just do away with the labels of conservative and liberal, or switch monikers as you suggest, then it would certainly make the matter of Romney’s conservatism, or supposed lack thereof, a moot point. When talented and altruistic men like Romney suffer because the appropriate label has eluded them, then this matter of assigning labels has become a liability rather than a helpful classification.

Progressive Pinhead said...

To look at people and ideas through the lense of being conservative or liberal doesn't make much sense. Let the ideas stand for themselves and make desiscions based on the merit, not the label (i.e: liberal or conservative) of each side

I find it funny Jaz that you say the left operates largely on emotion and not logic but point to Stalin as an examlpe of a liberal. However, the USSR under Stalin operated on logic without regard for emotion.

JasMars said...

Stalin, who was ultimately a self serving despot, was about as logical as he was enlightened...not very. It's through the application of logic that we can now see how harmful and misguided he (and the communist philosophy) was.