Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Liberals, Words, Misery, and Death

Some years ago, more than I care to recount, I served at the US Mission to the UN. Years later, again, more than I care to count or admit, I served at the US Mission to the OAS. Much of the work involved fighting over obscure resolutions and parsing words, trying to wring every possible definition and interpretation out of words. For some observers this exercise seemed silly, as obscure as some Talmudic scholars arguing over the meaning of a forgotten phrase in the Bible. It was certainly easy to ridicule; I, however, soon discovered that this was far from silly or "just academic" posturing. Words have meaning, and the left is very good at ever so subtly altering the meaning of words so that over time those words no longer mean what they meant. Words, of course, are the bullets of intellectual debate. If you allow your opponent to select your ammo for you, well, let's just say you are at a disadvantage.

I have thought a lot about this these last few days, as I watch our anti-war, Nobel Peace Prize President lead us into another bizarre adventure in not quite war, maybe "a pre-announced shot across the bow," I have no idea what we think we're doing in Syria (a post on that to follow). We apparently are going to put our people's lives and our nation's credibility (what's left of it) at risk for an unknown objective.

I also listened to some of the speeches at the recent event at the Lincoln Memorial allegedly commemorating Martin Luther King's awe-inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech--one of the great speeches in the English language. The words being used are bizarre with no appreciation for their original meaning. The degradation of the language, as Orwell rightly saw in 1984, is essential for regulating thought. That degradation is now on display. One example suffices: speaker after speaker at the Lincoln Memorial told us how racist America remains fifty years after MLK's speech and march. We learned that black lives are considered less valuable than white lives; that, in essence, there is little hope for black people in America, that the KKK, armed wing of the Democratic party, rides in the night as it did one hundred years ago. The event, of course, culminated in a speech by Barack Hussein Obama, black son of a Kenyan student, speaking to the crowd. Obama, of course, is the President of the United States. Would MLK ever in his wildest dreams have predicted that his children would see a black president of the United States? That alone gave the lie to all the words that preceded Obama's appearance. 

Anyhow, all this lead me to repost a little item I wrote several months ago on the disaster that is American liberalism. I am working on a couple of new pieces, at the same time that I deal with the growing demands of dog ownership.

April 30, 2013: "Poverty, Mass Murder, and Liberals: A Complete Package"

Words evolve. They take on new meaning over the years. Social and political movements appropriate certain words, redefine them, and then use them to shape the ideological battlefield. The classic example of that, of course, is "bolshevik" and "menshevik." The Bolsheviks were, in fact, the Mensheviks and vice-versa. The word bolshevik, derived from the word meaning "majority," was appropriated by the radicals who were in reality the minority of the old Social Democratic party. The minority labeled the majority the minority and got away with it. Clever. There are many other examples of this in history such as the insistence on calling nazis and fascists right-wing when they are clearly left-wing products.

In our once great, still beloved, but evermore daft United States, precisely those who are not liberal, as in broad minded and generous in their attitudes towards others, have appropriated "liberal" as theirs. The political philosophy of this "liberalism" is one which portrays life as a series of problems that needs addressing by the state--the state guided and run, mind you, by the "well-educated liberal elite" produced by our increasingly decrepit "liberal" universities and informed by "liberal" Hollywood and "liberal" Big Media. Modern U.S. liberals are a variant of European social democrats who believe in a big state and mistrust the individual; the big difference being that US liberals have much more power in the world than their European co-religionists ever could hope. They advocate the "positivist" attitude so aptly summed up in the motto emblazoned on the national flag of Brazil, "Ordem e Progresso," so long, of course, as they are in charge of imposing the order and defining the progress. They take positivism's emphasis on rational thought and logic, and its opposition to superstition and fantasy, and turn it on its head into a "science-based" fantasy that somehow just so happens to lead to more power for them and their state. Global climate change is one stirling example of how liberals have taken a legitimate scientific-based concern over pollution, and turned it into a monumental hoax, known as Manmade Climate Change. That hoax somehow, just somehow, ends up demanding more money and power for--guess who?--the liberals and their state. As we will discuss, this philosophy comprises followers who proclaim a great love for humanity while in practice exhibiting a great hatred for people.

Sorry for the long-winded intro, but it brings us to today's topic, for which I provide the following bumper sticker, "Liberals love humanity and hate people." Oh, and by the way, liberals will get you killed. Yes, killed. Modern liberalism kills people, and does so by the millions, all in the name of humanity, of course. It should have a warning label that asks you not to practice liberalism at home, or something along the lines of "I am a trained professional, do not attempt liberalism on your own."

Liberals hate all sorts of people but their special, most lethal hatred is reserved for the poor and the "uneducated." They kill the poor by the bushel, by the ton, by the hectare . . . they kill them at home and abroad. No poor person is safe from the lethal loving embrace of the liberals.

So many examples, it's hard to know where to begin. I don't pretend to provide an exhaustive account of liberal mayhem, just a glimpse at the tip of the iceberg. So, where do we start? How about with DDT? This extremely useful pesticide was virtually banned around the globe for decades because of the bogus writings of Rachel Carson, the lesbian biological mother of today's whacky environmental movement. The ban on DDT, ostensibly to save birds, puppies, and other wonderful warm things, resulted in the deaths of millions of poor persons around the globe from malaria and dengue, which came soaring back on the wings of now safe mosquitos. This tradition of sacrificing the poor on the altar of Gaia continues to this day. The insistence on the global warming hoax, long after the "science" has been shown to be false, perpetuates policies, e.g., ethanol in gasoline, opposition to domestic drilling and nuclear energy, that increases the cost of living, promotes food shortages, stifles employment, and, yes, leads to death. The opposition to cheap energy and food, the zoning restrictions in upperclass neighborhoods, all under the guise of protecting the environment, take direct aim at the lives and welfare of the poor. Liberals kill.

Liberal welfare policies create havoc throughout our society. What slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, and racial discrimination could not do, liberal polices have done, to wit, destroy the black family and turn millions of blacks into permanent wards of the state and of the liberal political machines that control most of our cities. Liberal immigration policies, beginning with the disastrous 1965 Kennedy-Johnson immigration law, insure a constant stream of poor third world immigrants, altering irrevocably the nature of our society and ensuring that the struggling black (and white) American poor cannot compete with the ultra-poor pouring in from Mexico, El Salvador, Bangladesh, and so on. Liberal minimum wage laws ensure the disappearance of the starter jobs, once a platform for the poor to spring out of poverty. All of these people, the old poor and the newly arriving poor, need, of course, social programs and more and more government help. The liberal political machine dispenses jobs and money, and the productive sectors face rising taxes, a labyrinth of regulations, and the constant presence of "helpful" government regulators and enforcers. Let the poverty and misery spread!

Liberal gun control policies also target the poor. The poor in our cities must live with the drug dealers, gang bangers, and other hoods in the hood. The comfortable liberals live in secure high-rises, and tony suburbs well protected by overpaid and over equipped police and fire departments and expensive security firms. The poor must put up with the inability to defend themselves; they must allow themselves to be murdered in the name of ridding America of gun violence.

Likewise liberal education policies deny the poor the right to choose the schools their children will attend. Instead an alliance of politicians and teacher unions keeps the poor trapped in failing and unsafe schools, while the wealthy liberals, well, you know what they do, and it isn't to send their own kids to those schools.

The examples are endless. From the liberal refusal to allow us to become energy independent, the liberal refusal to see what Islam does everywhere it takes root, and the liberals' seemingly endless assault on the family, everywhere we look we see the death and destruction that modern liberalism brings to our shores and promotes overseas.

To speak out on this is to risk being labeled a racist and hate-monger. To fail to speak out, however, means being complicit to some of the greatest crimes on the planet: the crimes of the liberals.

WLA

22 comments:

  1. Wonderful, magnificent, beautiful. Hear hear!

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  2. The Mensheviks and White Russians look positively heroic in comparison to today's Republicans.


    Pmc

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    1. The Republican Party as we have known it is dead. A rotting walking corpse showing signs of life, but to no purpose.

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  3. The primary symptom of liberalism is misplaced compassion. It sounds as though it could be relatively harmless, like a cold or indigestion. But liberalism is an extremely dangerous human condition. Misplaced compassion has actually killed legions. Liberalism can be cured, but prevention is more efficacious. Well articulated explanations of the problem, such as yours, are the best inoculant. Carry on, please.

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    1. I was just writing something about this, but got sidetracked. It was triggered by a question my son asked me many years ago and which I just remembered. He asked, "Why are so many people liberals?" I remember telling him, "Because it's easy. It's about emotion, not thinking." I am trying to write something. I don't know when it will be ready.

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  4. "Words have meaning, and the left is very good at ever so subtly altering the meaning of words so that over time those words no longer mean what they meant."

    Two points.
    Words have meanings assigned to them by speakers and listeners. They are not immutable, geologic forces where mathematical proofs discern their "ultimate truth."

    Secondly, I just cam from this year's meeting of "the Left" and we adopted the following "meaning changes"...

    except, of course, that's ridiculous. The Left is no more monolithic than the Right is

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    1. Timb,
      Well let's see:
      Journolist several times
      Media talking points
      Hate Speech
      War on Women
      Racism
      Shall I go on Timb with the hall of fame list, there are many more you know. I'm sure you can source all these back to the Right quite easily and it would be my pleasure to see the evidence.

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    2. Timb--Come on.

      First of all, welcome to The Diplomad, hope you stick around.

      On the topic. Leftist/"progressive" ideology and practitioners have a lock on academia, most the mainstream media, popular culture, and a very large chunk of the govt. bureaucracy and legal profession. Those are the arenas where, largely, words get defined and redefined, and words that are no longer acceptable,e.g., businessman, spokesman, chairman, Negro, get thrown out or re-defined--does the word "gay" mean the same thing today that it 60 years ago?

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    3. Ahhh. Words and meanings.
      I remember when pot was something you cooked in.
      Grass was something you mowed.
      Race issues meant arguing who ran the fastest.

      Remember, some liberals are conservatives who haven't been mugged yet
      V

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    4. Even the word "liberal" today means something entirely different from it's historical definition. In fact it's the exact opposite. That is precisely why today we call free market conservatism, "classical liberalism". We on the right are liberals in the classic sense. Another word hijacked & definition changed by the left.

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  5. ....Barack Hussein Obama, black son* of a Kenyan student, .....

    * What you meant to say was "purported to be the black son of a Kenyan student but in fact the biological son of Frank Marshall Davis, a U.S. citizen born in Chicago who was a card-carrying member of and employed (in Honolulu) by the American Communist Party (headquartered in Chicago)."

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    1. AMEN!
      I'd absolutely positively LOVE to see a DNA comparison of Obama to Obama Sr. and Frank Davis. Given that he took pictures of Obama's mother for various BDSM mags of the era, and the other less than circumstantial evidence, the overwhelming preponderence of evidence points to Mr. Davis as being the actual father and Obama Sr. being the guy who unknowingly got fingered for it. I don't know of anyone who has actually put Obama's mother in father in close and constant proximity (dates, dining, activities shared) for any period of time.

      Which, of course, would be one of many reasons to hide the birth certificate....

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  6. I'm impressed with the memorial to MLK. Imagine, BHO, as a scion of East African Islam, probably had kinfolk hunting and trading slaves well after white Americans stopped the practice. I don't think the Brits stamped it out in East Africa until the late 1890's or thereabout.

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  7. Kepha,

    What makes you think that it has been eradicated?

    The British reduced it to a very low level but it was never entirely stopped.

    Saudi Arabia "officially" passed laws making slavery illegal in the 1970's but as slavery is specifically permitted and encouraged under Islam and the Koran, it was more window dressing to fol the gullible western nations.

    Slavery, now that the British have been forced out of Africa and are no longer the worlds Policemen on the ocean, particularly in the Arabian peninsula and throughout the Muslim world is increasing and flourishing (albeit invisibly to the west).

    One of my friends bought a slave collar in Pakistan two years ago, newly manufactured and quite "fit for purpose" ... in short, it wasn't a novelty but meant to be used as intended.

    Phil B

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    1. To use language correctly and to remind people of unpleasant facts: slavery is slavery even when the government enslaves its subjects. Western EUrope (France, Netherlands, Belgium, West Germany,….) abolished slavery in 1945 when the National Socialist government was overthrown. Eastern EUrope (Latvia, Hungary, East Germany, Russia, …) abolished slavery in 1991 when International Socialist governments were overthrown.

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    2. Some people want and NEED to be slaves. Just look at the whole BDSM lifestyle. As to collars, well, I can buy a slave collar that is quite fit to be used for the intended purpose in many shops in virtually every US city - and in such progressive strongholds as California and NY city, I can even watch many people wearing them in public and their lifestyle status 'celebrated'.

      For many of them, it is not just a kink, but a chosen lifestyle.... :D

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  8. This phenomenon of the use of language not to convey an accurate picture of reality but rather to manipulate popular sentiment for purposes of political gain, unfortunately, is a old one, and is a symptom of corruption in a society, a corruption that asserts that power is more important than the truth. This is precisely the theme of philosopher Josef Pieper's essay "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (1974)" . Pieper examines how Plato addressed the mendacity of the Sophists and its effect on society, which he summed up in these two paragraphs:

    "And precisely this is one of the lessons recognized by Plato through his own experience with the sophists of his time, a lesson he sets before us as well. This lesson, in a nutshell, says: the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word, indeed, finds in it the fertile soil in which to hide and grow and get ready, so much so that the latent potential of the totalitarian poison can be ascertained, as it were, by observing the symptom of the public abuse of language. The degradation, too, of man through man, alarmingly evident in the acts of physical violence committed by all tyrannies has its beginning, certainly much less alarmingly, at that almost imperceptible moment when the word loses its dignity.

    The dignity of the word, to be sure consists in this: through the word is accomplished what no other means can accomplish, namely, communication based on reality. Once again it becomes evident that both areas, as has to be expected are connected: the relationship based on mere power, and thus the most miserable decay of human interaction, stands in direct proportion to the most devastating breakdown in orientation toward reality."

    -- Noah Nehm

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  9. When working on an USAID funded project in West Africa, I was shocked to learn that Malaria was frequently experienced in the middle class neighborhoods of Dakar - the capital of Senegal. The young children of my host recently being afflicted.

    At the same time it was well know that the application of small amounts of DDT around the outside foundations of a building reduced the risk - significantly.

    Malaria must be eradicated to give African economies (and children) the chance to grow and develop.

    Ask yourself the question - would you tolerate this situation should it present itself in Washington, New York, Boston or Houston!

    Clearly, the answer is No! To permit this situation to continue one day longer is a sin of omission, a form of negligence

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  10. I was all ready to declare shenanigans on this subject, claiming that the issue is being blown way out of proportion. But then I remembered the new scotus-approved method of lying to the public.
    It's a mandate, not a tax, so long as it hasn't yet been voted upon or deemed passed, until it needs to pass constitutional muster, because then it's a tax, so long as no one will ever have to vote on anything related to it.
    After passing constitutional muster it will again be a mandate, which is not a tax, but you'll still have to pay the IRS in a way that walk, swims, and quacks like a tax.
    If there's one episode of this administration where it makes clear to me what you're talking about here, it's the 'mandate' and it's hoodwinking of the entire populace.
    - reader #1482

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  11. Regarding the use of the language, I'd love to point out to you and all of your readers and Excellent piece called "Science And Sanity" and all of General Semantics as written by Alfred Korzybski, As he himself said, semantics should not be confused with General Semantics.

    The progressive movement's relabelling of words is a perfect example of General Semantics.

    As an aside, I think your blog is excellent. Several years ago, I applied and interviewed in DC for FSO. With decades of overseas experience, degrees in Engineering and Comp. Sci, and such, I was absolutely shocked at the methodologies and personalities I encountered in the process. I missed the cutoff by .1 - and I have to say that I now look at that as having been saved by a whisker. After all, I was only one of 3 native born Americans in the 'heat' of 30, and the only male native born American.
    What really stunned me was my 'exit' interview in which I was told repeatedly by my three women interviewers that I should try again - many needed up to 7 attempts to succeed! One was clearly Indian and had a pronounced accent, one was a feminazi who clearly was disgusted by a white male,and the third was a 50s something lady who was very polite and well mannered - and who clearly radiated displeasure at the other interviewers and a kind of pity/sorrow for my disuse. I suspect that my measured response may still be talked about. "I am not a dog that returns to my vomit. If I am not good enough for you now, how would I become better in a year or even seven? Will your standards deteriorate with time? Or will it merely be that I will become accustomed to your process and thus be able to game the results?"

    The reaction was predictable and I was happy to see the hidden smile and twinkle in the third interviewer's eyes as I left.

    Drachen in TX

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  12. Diplomad's son once asked, "Why are so many people liberals?" The answer is easy. Their solution's sound plausible, simple, and comforting, as in, "why, of course." But liberals are lazy, and they never apply metrics to any of their "solutions," they ignore any facts that oppose their ideas, and worse, when their solutions are add-ons to ideas that have already failed, they continue anyway. Let's take last week's Obama proposal to throw more student loan money and grants at higher education. Sound's great, right, wouldn't that allow more people in the lower income quartile to attend college? What could be the argument against that? Well facts are an argument. More people in the lowest quartile attended college in the l950's when there was little federal aid (12%) vs 7% today. More people have college degrees today (about 30%), yet only 20% of U.S. jobs require a college degree--leaving some wondering why they paid all that money to get one. And throwing more money at the higher ed system only expands incentives to raise prices to absorb all the new money--creating a vicious cycle. In l964, federal student loan aid was $231 million. Taxpayers now stand behind more than $1 trillion of student loan debt. One educator says that the federal government's policies toward education are parallel to its policy on housing. The same government policies that encouraged unqualified borrowers to buy a house are now encouraging students to attend college who are unqualified. Oh, and now Mr. Obama wants colleges to improve their graduation rates or face punishments. So if you thought grade inflation was bad now, just wait. But these are facts that point to a more complicated problem requiring a thoughtful solution. Liberals aren't up to that level of thinking...

    Remember when liberals told us that they could add 30 million people to the health care rolls and still "bend the cost curve downward"? They still want us to believe that even when the facts are proving otherwise--and in dramatic fashion. Liberals are intellectually lazy, prone to platitudes, and fundamentally math challenged. Yet facts are complicated and boring while platitudes can fit on a bumper sticker.

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