I
discussed Wacky Liberals before - along
with Wacky Conservatives. Both annoy the snot
out of me, and probably you as well. They are both classic weak
thinkers and emotional thinkers who posit that "if only"
their thinking being imposed on everyone else, the world would be a
paradise-on-earth. It is a form of fascism, really. Yes, both
Liberals and Conservatives can be fascists. The difference is, the
Liberals will just force you to drive a steam-powered electric car, while the
Conservatives will stuff you in an oven.
Again,
there is nothing wrong with being Liberal. There is everything
wrong with being Wacky Liberal.
I recently rant into
some examples of Wacky Liberalism that gave me pause. I mean, I thought
this sort of nonsense had been discredited by now! But it seems each
generation grows its own new Wacky Liberals. What is annoying and scary
and dangerous about Wacky Liberals, is that they believe certain things that
are just assumed as baseline truths that are never up for discussion
and thus you can't talk to them.
Yes, Wacky Conservatives are the same way - that is the subject for another
posting. But in any argument, you have to challenge the premise -
and often the premise is just plain wrong. And it is annoying when
you see some "talk show" like The Daily Show or Bill Maher make these
baseline assumptions, without really allowing for any discussion.
It is close-minded thinking.
Here are some of the examples of these baseline assumptions that Wacky Liberals
make - and refuse to even allow to be debated. If you challenge any
of these assumptions, you are just written-off as a cruel, heartless
conservative bastard. But sadly for the liberal movement, many
"middle of the road" Americans don't believe these assumptions either
- which does not bode well for the Democrats in 2016.
1. We can help the poor by giving them money. Poverty is
the absence of money, ergo, if you give poor people money, they no longer will
be poor! It is such a simple argument, and the refutation is complex, but
it does illustrate how simplistic thinking work. Since the response takes
paragraphs and the supposition can be said in a sentence, then there is no
point in examining the "hard" answer. I saw this mentioned on
one of Bill Maher's shows - and said as if it were an assumed background norm.
Everyone on the panel just nodded in agreement. Scary stuff.
The
symptom of poverty is lack of money. But the roots of poverty go
far deeper than that. It starts with lack of equal opportunities - to
jobs, education, housing. But what perpetuates it is poor
decision-making. In poor neighborhoods (black and white) education
is not valued. In fact, it is treated with suspicion. Them smart
fellers with there college degrees, they don't know nuthin! - you hear
this all the time in Georgia, from poor people.
And
drugs and alcohol are also part of the problem. Crack in the Ghetto,
Meth in the trailer park. Black or White, poor people chain themselves to
the heartbreak of drug use. And drug use leads to poverty, as it costs a
lot of money to maintain a drug habit, and having a drug habit causes people to
make poor financial decision and makes them unemployable.
This illustrates the corellary baseline assumption about poverty - that all
of the poor are nobler and better than us by dint of being poor. As
I noted before, Hollywood loves this angle, beatifying the poor and even
endowing them with mystical powers (as in the movie, The Green Mile).
Not being tied down with "materialism" the poor are more in
touch with things like supernatural powers, or God or whatever. Sadly,
this is not true - the poor are more likely to be sucked up into the
materialist consumer orgy that is the United States. Look at any trailer
home and see how many junked cars, four-wheelers, and snowmobiles are parked
outside. And chances are, they have a larger television that you do.
Poor
folks make poor decisions - about major life choices, and also minor
spending ones. Check-cashing stores and payday loan places (and thousands
of other raw deals) proliferate in the Ghetto - not because "people there
have no other choice" - but because they feel these are good choices to
make, or at the very least, have no clue why they are bad choices.
Time
and time again, lottery winners (and star athletes) have shown us that even
giving millions of dollars to the poor doesn't make them "rich" - as
they squander it all in short order.
In
order to stop this cycle of poverty, we have to change attitudes - not
merely give away free money. And yes, maybe it would be helpful to pass
laws outlawing payday loan places and other poor choices.
Giving away free money to the poor has three fundamental problems: First,
it doesn't un-poor the poor. Second, that money has to come from
somewhere and that means from someone else. Third, it trains
people to expect free handouts, which erodes our society. The bonus fourth
reason is this: Our "poor" are richer than about 95% of the
rest of the planet. You can't be "poor" and own a car, a
microwave, and a wall-screen television. Well, in America, you can.
But
the bottom line is this: There will always be people at the bottom of the
totem pole. There will always be someone willing to waste their life on
drug abuse or other forms of stupidity. Yes, a solution needs to be
found, and a safety net provided. But you can't cure poverty just
by handing out cash.
2. Money spend on anything is wasteful, as it could help feed the
homeless.
You see this all the time online. According to these
folks, all progress in science, art, literature, architecture, and even
humanity, should cease altogether, so long as even one person is homeless in
America. Any money "wasted" on things like art
museums, new factories, office buildings, a subway, a public park, or a
satellite landing on a comet should be spent on soup-and-blankets for the
poor. Anything less than this is criminal an inhuman.
If
mankind had followed this "logic" however, nothing of consequence
would ever have been accomplished in the history of man. The
Renaissance? A waste of resources which could have been better spent
feeding the poor! The moon landing? Think of how many homeless
shelters we could have built!
The
problem with homelessness is like with poverty, the solution isn't simply
throwing money at people. Give money to a homeless person, they
will still likely end up homeless. Rather than appeal to emotional
arguments ("children are starving in the streets!") you have to
look dispassionately at the real facts.
And
the real facts are, the majority of homeless have mental health issues, drug or
alcohol issues, or both. Very few homeless are just
"economically disadvantaged" and those few that are, are working to
get their way out of homelessness.
In
order to "fix" homelessness, you would have to intervene in the
lives of others and get them off drugs and into rehab, or make sure they
take their medications. If you just gave them money, they would
spend it on drugs. Give them soup and a blanket, and they just sleep in
the park. Build a homeless shelter, and well, you've created a
make-shift mental hospital that makes the horrors of Bedlam look like
patty-cake.
And
this is, in effect, what we have done - closed the mental hospitals, discharged
the patients, and then put them in homeless shelters, where anarchy reins.
So
if you really wanted to take an individual homeless person and get them out of
homelessness, you'd have to get them sober, on their "meds", cleaned
up (and get them to clean themselves daily), provide them with a bedroom and
three meals a day, and then train them for a job. We used to call this institutionalization
and we deemed it too expensive and inhumane.
And
guess what? The homeless don't want that level of intervention.
In fact, they don't want your busybody do-goody anything - just cash,
please. Many prefer the life-under-a-bridge and being
shitfaced or zonked out as much as possible. Since you can't force them
to get sober and take their meds, well, you can't really change their behavior.
And
we've all seen this firsthand. Someone has a sign that says, "I'm
hungry, please help!" and you offer them food or offer to buy them food,
and they refuse. "Just the money, thank you" they say.
Because they are not so much hungry as they are just beggars, making a makeshift
living off of your sympathy.
There
is no easy answer to this problem. But simplistic thinking of Wacky Liberals
says, "if only we spent all that money..." (meaning YOUR money)
on some bum, the world will be a better place.
Oh,
right, we can't call them bums, because they are "economically
disadvantaged" and have their "dignity". That is
part-and-parcel of Wacky Liberalism - the beatification of the Homeless, who
they do not view as dangerous, mentally ill, drug-addicted bums who will steal
from you and possibly assault you, but rather saintly harmless folks who are better
than you because as Hollywood has taught us, the poor are more spiritual
and often have magical powers (I kid you not, watch the Green Mile
sometime).
But
right, you can't say that, either. You see, debate on the
issue is just cut off - by Wacky Liberals. You are evil for "having
money" and a job and a house and a car, and the homeless deserve it
all. That is their starting point and end point. It kind of
makes me ill.
Here's
the real truth about homelessness: It will always be with us (Jesus even
said this). We don't have the money or the willpower to reopen
mental hospitals and commit the more crazy of the homeless people to
them. Ain't gonna happen. We don't have the money for
all the rehab centers in the world, and rehab, by and large doesn't work
- even though it costs a lot of dough.
I
think all you can do is offer people who really want to change the
opportunity to change, and let it go at that. You can't forcibly make
people change, and in the case of homelessness, people have to want to change.
But
alas, the Wacky Liberal thinks that "just regular folks" somehow end
up homeless by dint of losing their homes (lost the keys, what?) and it
"just happened" to them, and they have no way out. This
might happen to a small minority of people who become homeless. Those
folks don't remain homeless for long. (But it begs the
question: How do you screw up your life to the point where you have
nothing to fall back on and no place to live? And whose fault is
that when it happens?).
So the question becomes this: Is the purpose of our civilization to work
and strive so that mentally ill people and drug abusers should have a really
nice place to live? Do we just put off or abandon all plans for anything
in this world in favor of creating free apartments, free meals, and free
clothing for drug addicts and the mentally ill? There are some
among us who would say "YES" and that such a plan would be the
highest achievement of mankind.
Others, including myself, don't think that our civilization will be judged by
how we treat our bums. I am all for getting the homeless off the
street and into institutions where they belong. Drug addicts and
crazy people need help - and by living on the street they have demonstrated
they are not capable of taking care of themselves. In the past, a compassionate
society would have intervened and had such people institutionalized
involuntarily - for their own good. In today's "free society"
we can no longer do that, so we create this cruel system of homeless
shelters, revolving-door outpatient clinics, and soup-kitchens.
The homeless "problem" today is one largely caused by Wacky
Liberals. We all saw "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
and decided that de-institutionalization was a wonderful thing. Now we
reap what we have sown, and the same Wacky Liberals want to blame everyone else
for the problem they caused!
3. Minorities are Always Disadvantaged and Need Special Treatment.
This is another baseline assumption that is a bit of paternalism.
The great white man will help all those little people who don't know any better
and need a leg up in society.
Again, what galls me is not whether this creed is true or false but that
discussion is not even allowed.
Yes, in the past, many racial minorities were subject to discrimination, and
beatings, and hangings, and worse. Our nation's history of the treatment
of minorities is nothing to be proud of. Then again, it is not too
different from how minorities are treated anywhere in the world (be it
religious, racial, sexual, or whatever - look around you) today or
historically. This is not making an excuse, just pointing out that
the United States of America doesn't have a monopoly in horrifically bad
deeds. Minorities are being slaughtered in the middle-east
and Africa as we speak, and yet our real outrage in America is over far more
trivial things.
The issue with regard to discrimination and racial quotas and other things
designed to "fix" past abuses, is that there has to be a legitimate
discussion as to when such quotas and fixes should end. And there
are two scenarios where such things as "affirmative action" should be
examined and evaluated and possibly retired.
The first is where they are no longer needed. I am not
saying this is today, or even tomorrow. But eventually, if these
programs work as intended then there should come a time when they are no
longer needed - by definition. This is not an emotional
argument, or a racial argument, but just a logical one. In 10
years, 100 years, or 1000 years, eventually there should be racial equality by
dint of races perhaps disappearing due to interbreeding. At such a
time, racial preferences shouldn't be required, right?
But to even ask this question is to be called a racist - mostly by white
liberals, ironically, who tend to think emotionally and thus think they are
being egalitarian by castigating anyone they think isn't politically
correct. But there has to be an end game to affirmative action or other
racial quotas, and it is a perfectly legitimate thing to argue when this
should happen as opposed to just saying that one is not allow to even
discuss it.
And speaking of which, we are not even allowed to discuss whether affirmative
action does equate to racial quotas. Wacky Liberals shout
"these are not quotas!" but then don't provide a logical, cogent
argument as to why setting aside a certain number of seats isn't a quota.
Again, even trying to discuss the issue is to be called a racist
- and that is not constructive.
The second scenario where racial preferences, quotas, or affirmative action
might be abolished, is if they are shown not to work. Again,
this is an issue to discuss not a conclusion. One could make
valid arguments that affirmative action has worked to improve equal access in
our country. And those may be valid arguments - go ahead and make
them. However, the opposing side is not allowed to even raise
the issue without being shouted down as racist. This is not
intellectual thinking, it is dogmatic ideology.
We should have a healthy discussion as to whether things like affirmative
action are working - and whether other things should be tried, or modified or
whatever. Maybe something else would work better. For
example, here's an idea - instead of cramming standardized tests down
everyone's throat, why not provide a more level playing field for primary
education, and encourage education among minorities? It seems to me that
the real problem isn't setting aside a number of seats at Harvard for
minorities, but rather getting enough qualified people to fill them. For
some reason, we want to do set-asides at the college or job level, while not
leveling the playing field at grade 7.
And if someone wants to embrace a "culture" that denigrates education, whose fault is that?
Frankly, that is the thing that really has to change in America, if
minorities are to advance.
And it is funny, once you become one of these "minority" groups, you
can appreciate how the paternalistic thing works. Suddenly, you are
viewed as "disadvantaged" or "damaged goods" and it is
tempting to sign up for your quota of free swag. As a government
contractor, I can list myself as a "disadvantaged minority business"
or some such nonsense. I choose not to.
It is also funny when people come up to you and, trying to be supportive, say
things like, "Well, I support gay marriage!" and then get
upset when you tell them you don't. You can
appreciate how black conservatives feel when White Liberals call them
"Uncle Toms" - they are not allowed to think for themselves, and if
they disagree with Wacky Liberalism, then obviously they are just toadies for
the man.
And you see this all the time, too, with these racially charged incidents,
whether it is Ferguson or Treyon Martin - events with ambiguous evidence and
murky circumstances, and no one party being clearly 100% innocent or
guilty. Yet Wacky Liberals always immediately assume that the black
person was right and the white person was wrong - there are literally no shades
of grey here (and that is no pun!). It is like with the homeless - they
are all saints and we are all sinners. End of discussion.
And this is extended to even less important matters. Someone says a wrong
word or does a wrong deed, and if they stepped on a cultural landmine, well they are toast.
Forgiveness and rehabilitation are out - and once again, these things are
not even up for discussion.
And that's what irks me - that people just want to shut down discussion, rather
than raise a cogent argument.
The common denominator of these three issues is that they are social
hot-buttons. Just by making this post, I am sure some whack-job
will flame me calling me a heartless racist bastard - likely without actually
reading all that I have written. They will scan a few lines and
go "hrump! He isn't following the party line here! Someone
needs to be taken to task!"
So
what's the danger of Wacky Liberalism? Well, Wacky Liberals will
derail real Liberalism in two ways. First, since nothing any regular
Democrat does is "liberal enough' for them, they will shout down any
candidate or elected official and refuse to vote or provide financial
support. Wacky Liberals abandoned Bill Clinton and Barack Obama because
they thought they were too conservative. I guess they think
Mitt Romney or Ted Cruz are more to the left?
Because
those are your choices - the Democrat or the Republican. But Wacky
Liberals - like Wacky Conservatives, love to support "spoiler" third
party candidates, like Ralph Nader (who got Bush elected) and Ross Perot (who
got Clinton elected).
This does not bode well for Hillary Clinton, who is actually quite conservative. This is
what scares me - that the Wacky Liberals are getting louder and louder, and
shouting down moderate Democrats just as the tea parties shouted down moderate
Republicans (which nearly destroyed the party). During the primaries next
year, the candidates will pander to the far left, and the election could go to
the GOP.
THIS is what the Wacky Liberals have wrought!
