His title - and thrust - is a question: "Do Leftists Believe What They Say?"
He says there are two main reasons why leftists lie. One is that they believe their goals for society are of such paramount importance that truth must take a back seat. The other is that they place a far higher priority on feelings than facts.
We knew that, but it's important to review from time to time.
What I like are his examples of how this plays out. There's this:
For example, every honest economist knows women do not earn 20 percent less money than men for the same work done for the same amount of hours under the same conditions. Yet leftists repeat the lie that women earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn. Why any employers would hire men when they could hire women and get the same amount of work done at the same level of excellence for the same number of hours while saving 20 cents on the dollar is a question only God or the sphinx could answer.And these:
Do leftists believe global warming will destroy the world as we know it in 12 years, as recently suggested by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? I don't know. They seem to talk themselves into believing their hysterias. But they don't act on them. Here's a simple proof that the left is lying about the imminent threat of global warming to civilization: Leftists don't support nuclear power. It is simply not possible to believe fossil fuel emissions will destroy the world and, at the same time, oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean and safe. Sweden, a model country for leftists, meets 40 percent of its energy needs with nuclear power. If you were certain you were terminally ill yet decline a medicine that is guaranteed to cure you, the rest of us would have every reason to assume you didn't really believe you were terminally ill.
Here's more evidence the left doesn't believe its global warming hysteria: How many leftists with beachfront property anywhere in the world have sold it? If leftists really believe global warming will cause the oceans to rise and soon inundate the world's coastal areas, why would any leftist not sell his beachfront home while he could not only make all his money back but make a profit as well?
Another example of left-wing rhetoric leftists don't act on: The left tells us that colleges are permeated by a "rape culture," yet virtually all left-wing parents send their daughters to college. If you were to believe any place has a culture of rape, where 1 in 4 or 5 women is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, would you send your 18-year-old daughter there? Of course not. So how do any left-wing mothers or fathers send their daughters to college? The answer would seem to be they know it's a lie -- but that doesn't matter, since the left views telling the truth as incomparably less significant than combating sexism, sexual assault, misogyny, toxic masculinity and patriarchy.
I think an even deeper dig reveals something along these lines: A leftist places higher priority on fairness than on freedom. (Conversely, a conservative understands that life is not fair, but that people must have maximum freedom so as to apply their own agency to pursuing a good life within the parameters of that unfairness.) In fact, a leftist is so consumed with some abstract notion of fairness that he or she will ignore the basic architecture of this universe - the conditions that are givens, that are immutable. (Think two genders.)
And anyone not signing on to the leftist's notion of fairness must be silenced, taken out of commission. The Great Leveling is not up for discussion. It must occur, and no one can stand in its way.
An example from my own quiver of polemical arrows I like to trot out whenever the topic of conversation leads to a leftist asserting that health care is a right is asking, "How did people in the year 1300 exercise their right to a triple bypass?"
Excellence.
ReplyDeleteBrain-dead.
DeleteLet's trip way back to the time of the Torah here to answer your question about rights to health care. It's not so much a right as it is an obligation for the peoples you so staunchly defend even unto worldwide conflagration, despite their denial of the divinity of Christ. So you should certainly perk up them ears and give this a listen:
ReplyDelete"The Torah can be invoked as a spiritual map to the health-care debate, according to seminary dean Daniel Nevins. Scripture emphasizes the need to preserve and protect individual health so the strain on the welfare system won’t be so great. “We should think about the ways in which health care is about our spiritual life,” Nevins said. “How we seek healing for ourselves should also be supportive of our own sense of the value of life.”
"From a Jewish perspective, the ethical implications of mandatory health insurance are paramount. The Biblical contention that human beings are in some way symbiotic with the divine means that an injured human life ultimately diminishes God. It therefore is incumbent on society to take care of those who are too poor to afford health care. “From every Jewish source,” said David Kraemer, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the seminary, “there is no doubt that Judaism has been in favor of the redistribution of wealth toward what it considers to be justice, which in Jewish systems includes the saving of lives.”
"Although Judaism ultimately comes out in favor of universal health care, there is “an incommensurability between the discussion of economists and policy experts and the discussion of those who try to represent the moral sources of Jewish tradition,” said Alan Mittleman, professor of modern Jewish thought and director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute. Mittleman also suggested that Jews have a unique perspective on the notion of communal care and a higher sense of responsibility to society at large. This places them at distinct odds with those who consider the new act’s enforcement of buying health insurance an infringement of civil liberty."
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/04/a-jewish-perspective-on-healthcare
Well, of course, there's an obligation to care for other's health. Christianity would concur.
ReplyDeleteBut the bright, bright line between a right and an obligation must be kept front and center. There is by definition no such thing as a right to the effort of one's fellow human being.
Government - at least in its crowning form, the government envisioned by our Founders - can be about guaranteeing rights, but it steps on dangerous ground when it gets involved in the area of moral obligation. You do not want the entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force making you do what you're morally obligated to do at gunpoint.
This is why Mittleman is dead wrong. "Enforcement" of something that can be argued that we ought to do is bad for two main reasons: One, the element of coercion, and two, the removal of individual volition. Caring for someone's health because government is making you removes all charity and grace from the act.
This "redistribution" of which Kraemer speaks is only going to work if everyone is on the same page faith-wise - if everyone is acting out of the same sense of divine commandment.
It is only insurance, i.e., spreading the risk. Why does it have to become a game with winners and losers? Was humanity at its apex when a portion of our society sacrificed worldly gain to care for the sick? Now that there are not as many virtual volunteers in this effort must we be worse off or can we figure out the most efficient means for fulfilling the duty of caring for the sick? Or is the thrill of victory over perceived limited resources vs. our less fortunate neighbors trump everything? Lazy lard asses just carping about their rights? Easy to be disgusted about that, but is it the truth? What makes people like you want to argue about rights vs privilege? Does it soothe and console you?
ReplyDelete