Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

The Frame Game

Leftists play the Frame Game. For example, they frame the gun issue as if if they want gun control and conservatives don't. This is a piece of utter mendacity and they must know it. Everyone apart from criminals wants gun control. The issue is not whether, but how much and of what kinds.

Another example is the framing of the abortion question as merely a reproductive rights or women's rights or women's health issue. That too is a piece of utter mendacity of the extreme sort that one would expect from Hillary herself.

More later. Think about this 'frame game' business and find more examples.

As You Know . . .

. . . there seem to be no limits of logic or sanity on what a 'liberal' will maintain. The latest lunacy is the politically correct prohibition of the phrase 'as you know.'  You must not say this because it might make a snowflake feel inadequate.

Permit me to explain why some of us use the phrase in question.

We use it out of civility and because we understand human nature.  People don't like to be told things. If I tell you that the first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution are called the Bill of Rights, you might think I am talking down to you or lecturing you or suggesting that you are ignorant.  The prefatory 'as you know' gives you the benefit of the doubt. You either know or you don't know. If you know, he you may respond, "Of course." If you don't know, you may admit that you were ignorant of the point or you may remain silent.

'As you know' is a phrase that contributes to civil discourse. But civility is a conservative virtue and it is perhaps too much to expect a leftist to understand it or its value.

Civility demonstrated. Comity enhanced.

To feel slightly inadequate for not knowing something is not bad but good. But persuading people of this in this Age of Feeling may prove difficult.  The purpose of life is not to feel good about oneself. The purpose of education is not to inculcate in students self-esteem but to teach them something so that they will have legitimate grounds for self-esteem.

The Left is destructive in many ways and on many fronts. We of the Coalition of the Sane must oppose them in many ways and on many fronts. 

On the language front we must never bow to their foolish innovations but must proudly speak and write standard English.  

If they take offense, then point out to them that their offense is inappropriately taken.  If a black person objects to 'black hole' or 'niggardly,' then explain their meanings and how any offense taken is wrongly taken.

Say this to leftists: "You are free to speak and write in any silly way you like, but only so long as you allow us to speak and write standard English."

But leftists are a hostile and vicious bunch, unteachable and impervious to reason.  So keep in mind my 2010 aphorism:

It is not reasonable to be reasonable with everyone.  Some need to be met with the hard fist of unreason.  The reasonable know that reason's sphere of application is not limitless.

Herein the germs of yet another argument for Second Amendment rights. Those rights are the concrete back-up to all the others. 

How Far Will the Left Go?

Trump delivers and the Left loses its mind.  Victor Davis Hanson:

The economy is growing at rates that we have not seen in over a decade. Unemployment, especially minority joblessness, is at a historic low. Even The stock market is at record highs. The United States is now the world’s largest producer of oil, natural gas, and coal. Consumer and business confidence is at a near all-time high.

NATO is re-calibrating its military contributions to increase defense spending. North Korea has stopped talking about nuking our West Coast. The Iranian theocracy is panicking after the end of the Iran Deal. There have not been any incidents this year of Iranian hazing of U.S. ships. China is scrambling to find ways to readjust its lopsided trade surpluses induced by commercial cheating and dumping. Never has a Republican president appointed and had confirmed more conservative and stellar judges. The National Security team of Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis, and Haley is perhaps the most skilled since World War II.

Why then the hate, the furor, the sheer mania?

Hanson's answer.

If Trump Were a Nazi . . .

. . . the Raging Bull of the HollyWeird Left, Robert De Niro, would be in a concentration camp along with Sleazy Rider Peter Fonda and the sick comedienne Kathy Griffith.

And if Trump were a Nazi, would he be tight with the NRA, defender of Second Amendment rights?

But of course for the Left the smear is everything and it doesn't matter whether one is actually talking sense.

Related:

The Contribution of Hollywood Cultural Polluters to Violence 

Gun Control in the Third Reich

‘Progressive’ Hate, ‘Progressive’ Projection

The Bad Hate the Good: The Southern Poverty Law Center vs. Prager University:

The SPLC smears individuals and groups it differs with by labeling them as some form of "hater": "racist," "white supremacist," "extremist" and the like. That it is cited and even relied upon by The New York Times, Facebook, Amazon, Google, CNN and others, and that Apple gave the organization a million dollars, is testimony to the moral state of mainstream media and corporate culture in America today.

[. . .]

Any organization that labels Ayaan Hirsi Ali — the extraordinary Somali-American woman who devotes her life to fighting for oppressed women, especially in the Islamic world — an "extremist," as the SPLC has done, is not a moral organization. No wonder it just agreed to pay Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz $3.4 million and issued a retraction for smearing him as an "anti-Muslim extremist."

This kind of behavior should surprise no one. Since Stalin labeled Trotsky, the ideological leader of Soviet communism, a "fascist," the left (not liberals, to whom the left is as opposed as it is conservatives) has libeled its opponents. Without lying about its opponents, there would be no left.

Read it all.

For the Left, the Issue is Never the Issue

David Horowitz (2013):

Here is another statement from [Saul Alinsky's] Rules for Radicals: “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition, of conservatives and Republicans. If they are perceived as immoral and indecent, their policies and arguments can be dismissed, and even those constituencies that are non-political or “low-information” can be mobilized to do battle against an evil party.

In 1996 Senator Bob Dole — a moderate Republican and deal-maker — ran for president against the incumbent, Bill Clinton. At the time, Dick Morris was Clinton’s political adviser. As they were heading into the election campaign, Clinton — a centrist Democrat — told Morris, “You have to understand, Dick, Bob Dole is evil.” That is how even centrist Democrats view the political battle.

Because Democrats and progressives regard politics as a battle of good versus evil, their focus is not on policies that work and ideas that make sense, but on what will make their party win. Demonizing the opposition is one answer; unity is another. If we are divided, we will fail, and that means evil will triumph. (emphasis added)

A good recent example of how, for the Left, the issue is never the issue is the furor over the separation of the children of illegal immigrants from their parents.  Why are 'liberals' apoplectically concerned about the separation of the children of criminals from their parents? Because the issue is not the issue. That is, the issue is merely a means to the end of more power. They have no objection to the use of State power in separating children from criminal parents when the ones affected are citizens.

Separation

This meme bears the title 'Hypocrisy.' But it is worse than hypocrisy. And it is not correctly called a double standard. Leftists, liberals, progressives — whatever you want to call them — don't share our values and standards. They use them against us in the approved Alinskyite manner.  

Wolff on Anti-Natalism: A Glimpse into the Mind of a Leftist Activist

In an entry bearing the charming title WTF? Robert Paul Wolff expresses astonishment at his commenters' discussion of anti-natalism:

I have to confess that blogging is weird.  It has its pleasures, but from time to time the conversation here takes a genuinely strange turn.  Anti-natalism?  Seriously?  With all the challenges that face us, with the disaster that is American politics, with the signs, at long last, of a grassroots progressive surge, we are talking about anti-natalism?

Look, far be it from me to stifle discussion.  When you are done, I will go on talking about the world.

From this outburst one can see that for the leftist activist, the political is everything.  One is not talking about the world if one is talking about the value of life and the morality of procreation. For the Stoned Philosopher, questions about life and death, meaning and value, God and the soul, pale into insignificance in comparison to the political squabbles of the day.

Our sane, conservative appreciation that the political is a limited sphere leaves us at a political disadvantage over against leftists for whom the political is the only sphere. 

I call this The Conservative Disadvantage.

Leftists as Politically Retromingent

A retromingent is an animal that urinates backwards.

Posturing as 'progressive,' the leftist pisses on the past, seeking to erase its memory by destroying monuments and redacting the historical record.  There is no piety in the leftist, no reverence. Try using those words at a Manhattan or Georgetown cocktail party and see what happens.

This political retromingency helps explain the leftists' lack of respect for language.

Related: On Reverence 

No Day Without Cultural Appropriation

Andrew Klavan:

Cultural appropriation is not a glitch of American life. It's a feature. It's part of what makes the country great. We take your culture, we get rid of the oppression, the mass murder, the slavery, the intransigent poverty and the endless internecine wars. We keep the pasta and the funny hats, and occasionally we dress up as you on Halloween. It's a good deal for everyone.

I think I'll make me a curry tonight, thereby paying tribute to Indian cuisine. I love Indian food. Americans who find it too hot are culinary pussies. They need to get out of their gastronomical ghettos and celebrate diversity. My curry might not turn out as good as a gen-u-ine Indian curry, but then again it might turn out better.

Klavan is being combative above, but it is well-justified punch-back against willful and vicious stupidity of the sort that leftist lunkheads specialize in dishing out.   Cultural appropriation is good: blacks on the bottom could improve their lot by 'acting white,' by appropriating those bourgeois values that Amy Wax was recently waxing enthusiastic over, and rightly so.  

I engage in cultural appropriation every day. Why just this morning I read a bit from the Old Testament. Am I a Jew?  And then I  prayed the Ave Maria in Latin with special emphasis on the beautiful Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Am I a Roman?

Is English your native tongue? No? Then by what right do you speak OUR language?  You are engaging in cultural theft!

An Italian told me that there is no dish in Italy called pollo alla marsala. But there ought to be as you will readily agree after you've tasted mine. 

Klavan is right: it's a feature, not a bug. 

David Rubin: Why I Left the Left

David Rubin, who describes himself as gay, pro-choice, and classically liberal, explains why 'progressives' are in fact regressive. (A point I have made many times.) A Prager U video under five minutes in length.  

Trigger Warning! The video contains vicious, racist, incendiary content sure to melt snowflakes. Richly deserving of being 'demonetized' by Google if it hasn't been already. [Irony off]

Rubin, like so many others including Tucker Carlson, makes the standard mistake of conflating race with skin color.