Yesterday, I noted James Ceasar’s Weekly Standard essay The Stupid Party. Briefly, Ceasar’s argument is that the contemporary left is lacks intellectual heft is bereft of any real thought or ideas. Consequently, they substitute vitriol and sophistry for real substantive debate. Despite their paens to free speech, they do not care one wit about substantive debate over policy and philosophical matters. They know they will lose in the market place of ideas. What the left does is superficially equate “reason”, “science” “progress”, or “justice” with their preferred policy goals. Therefore, anyone who opposes them is “anti-reason,” “anti-science,” “anti-progress,” “anti-justice,” or downright evil meanies, in order to shut down any real debate. Cesar’s quotation of Lionel Trilling summed up the current state of the left, “They do not ‘express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.’”
I have made this same argument here, here, and here. However, it appears that I no longer need to make the argument myself. Indeed, why should I when progressives will prove my argument for me (bless you Isaac). Continuing the SCHIP “debate”, (not that there ever was one) as per the script, Isaac Smith cites Think Progress’ “analysis” of the “predictable” conservative reaction to the Frosts and the left’s new human shield the Wilkerson’s. Think Progress’ modus operandi fits Trilling’s description, “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas,” to a tee. Using Orwell’s analysis from Politics and the English Language, Think Progress really should be called, Shriek Inanity, but I digress. In any case Think Progress’ “analysis” of conservative commentary was all wrong and riddled with errors a sixth grader wouldn’t make.
The point at hand is that Isaac Smith and Think Progress still have not engaged in any substantive debate. Then again, you knew there really wasn’t going to be one in the first place when the Democrats drafted Graeme Frost as political human shield. So what happens after the Democrat charade of Manipulated Child Syndrome is revealed? They go out and find another child to hide behind. Then, surprise, surprise, the nutroots emerge, hurling the same charges of “smear campaigns,” and “harassment.”
Thanks again for making my point for me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
My main objection to SCHIP (though there are many others) is that it is a way of lessening what it means to be a family. By it, the government takes over some of the role of family. In the case of the really poor, it may be the lesser of two evils. But those who don't really need it ought to be treating it the same way they treat strangers who offer candy to children, or the nice young man I knew who liked children so much (and killed himself when it was found out he had done time for it. He said he wasn't going back to jail).
SCHIP makes family members less dependent on each other. It replaces the communitarian, family relationships with a set of extremely individualistic one-to-one, person-to-government relationships.
But if so many families are willing to exploit their kids for politics, maybe it already doesn't mean much for them to be family. I hope I'm wrong about that, though, and it's just a matter of them not thinking the matter through carefully.
Post a Comment