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Home Front: WoT
Why the Left Lost It
2011-01-13
By Daniel Henninger

The accusation that the tea parties were linked to the Tucson murders is the product of calculation and genuine belief.
Posted by:tipper

#6  The narrative has escaped the control of the left and they are having a meltdown. This deft pinning smear campaign has certainly proved to be a uniquely clarifying moment in current American politics. And several conservative voices have really stepped up to the plate this time. This piece and the Krauthammer and Taranto articles here on the Opinion page today are all brilliant. I think that all three might merit consideration on a list of the best political essays of 2011.
Posted by: ryuge   2011-01-13 22:29  

#5  To put the ideas of the left into practice generally requires huge amounts of money and indebtedness. This requires more in taxes from citizens. I'd agree, generally their ideas suck.
Posted by: JohnQC   2011-01-13 17:21  

#4  Excellent comments I thought worth sharing taken from the following Krauthammer piece at WaPo:

Teleologicus wrote:

mot2win wrote:
You're a nasty man stuck in a wheelchair who never has anything positive to add.
-------------

This sort of thing is precisely what Leftists and others claim to deplore: nasty, ugly, abusive, demonizing, insulting 'hate speech.'

We know that Leftists routinely deplore what they say they deplore in the very terms they claim to deplore. This would seem to be strange - and would be strange, unless we understood the Leftist mindset.

Leftists are always right. Whatever a Leftist believes about politics is necessarily, indeed almost by definition, correct. There are no rational or moral alternatives, nor any rational or moral arguments to the contrary.

This is how Leftists are able to maintain their self-image as rational, tolerant, and, yes, even as defenders(!) of free speech - even as they consistently behave in a manner that seems to observers to indicate the very opposite.

The Leftist is willing to listen to and learn from any opposing speech and to consider any opposing views, so long as they are rational, moral, and sane. There is absolutely no question of this. And the Leftist is prepared to be tolerant of diversity, difference, alternative beliefs, whatever they may, so long as they are worthy of such tolerance.

It turns out, of course, that since the Leftist is always right and never wrong, and since there are no rational, moral, or sensible alternatives to what he/she believes, nor any arguments worth considering to suggest such. that to disagree with a Leftist is to manifest irrefragable error. The only question is, what is the actual source of such error?

The Leftist dogmatic fanatic considers that there are two possible explanations for why anyone would not agree with them about politics and also other things: (1) error, and (2) wickedness. The category of error is subdivided into vincible(culpable) and invincible(non-culpable) error. The cause of invincible error is commonly though to be manipulation by outside interests and forces, e.g. capitalists, demagogues, opportunists, etc. People who disagree with Leftists are held to be too stupid or ignorant to resist propaganda and influence by others - or they are thought to be mentally deranged and liable to undue influence. This closely parallels the class Marxist explanation for the troublesome fact that the actual workers tend not to agree with the Marxist intellectuals who have gratuitously appointed themselves their spokespersons and benefactors. The reason the workers do not see things the way Marxists do is that they are the victims of Proletarian False Consciousness, which leads them to think, behave, even to vote in ways that are contrary to their genuine interests, interests which the Marxist intellectuals know and are trying to help the workers, not always with the desired degree of cooperation, to achieve.

The poster above is able to write the most appalling, dreadful, abusive things because he/she believes they are on the side of the angels - if there are any angels. People who think the way the poster seems to think feel fully justified in such malicious personal abuse because they think the people they disagree with, or who disagree with them, deserve it. Indeed, in many cases they think they deserve MORE, e.g. to be arrested, put into prison, tortured, even killed. And why? Because they do not agree with them.

The fanaticism of the Left and its assault upon free speech derive from the single, simple, unstated and examined premise that Leftists are always right and that there is no valid reason for anyone to differ with them about politics. Such difference is defined as irrational, perverse, heretical, or willfully ignorant.

This is why Leftists are so personally nasty when one contradicts them. This is why they are enemies of free speech who wish to silence opinions with which they differ and even, indeed often, to criminalize and punish those who take exception to their political beliefs. They are always right - and thus there is simply no ethical, moral, rational basis for anybody not to agree with them.
Posted by: eltoroverde   2011-01-13 12:43  

#3  The question that interests me more is "Why the Right isn't pointing out that: (i) a federal judge who just produced anti-Obama ruling is one of the victims; and (ii) Obama's hurry to insist that the judge was there by unpredictable happenstance is muy suspicious."?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2011-01-13 11:22  

#2  Personally, I think the left will always lose it, because at a fundamental level, their ideas suck. This means that even with temporary success, defeat follows, because when they put their ideas into practice, they fall flat.

One such reason is that they demand not just perfection, but what is both simple, easy to understand, and perfect.

To achieve this, they take the complex, like people and economics, and try to reduce them to idiotically stupid levels, solely so they can be made to fit simple patterns.

The end result is much like a herd of sheep. The simple solution for lightning and thunder is for the herd to run away from it. Then, when the herd runs off a cliff, they blame it on anything but the stupid simplicity of their ideas.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-01-13 10:40  

#1  There is no reasoning with a closed mind.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu
Posted by: Procopius2k   2011-01-13 09:16  

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