Pew just did a fascinating poll about tolerance and the internet. And what they found will not shock you: liberals are intolerant of opposing views. Shocker, right?
According to Pew, 52% of liberals have discovered by going onto social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) that their friends have different beliefs than they thought. That’s right, more than half of all liberals were blind to the views of their friends. How did conservatives do? Only 34% of conservatives reported the same thing. And before you say those are roughly comparable, they aren’t. This means liberals are 150% more likely than conservatives to not grasp that their friends don’t share their views.
What would cause this? It’s a combination of two things. First, as anyone who has ever met a liberal knows, they live in bubbles. They believe that everyone thinks like they do, a view which gets confirmed by the MSM and Hollywood. Thus, they are essentially walking egoists without the power to empathize with anyone because they lack the ability to grasp that others are not like them. Hence it never occurs to them that their friends might disagree and they are incapable of seeing the signs that their blathering on about liberalism isn’t going over so well.
Secondly, they are intolerant. We know this because there is clearly something about these liberals which has stopped their friends from being honest with the liberals despite the fact they are apparently willing to otherwise share their views with the world on social networking sites. We also know this from something else Pew found. According to Pew, 28% of liberals have blocked people or unfriended people because they disagreed with something the user said. That's three in ten! Extrapolating that to the liberal population of the US means 34.7 million liberals have tried to silence people they know because they disagree with them. That’s the equivalent of TWICE the entire populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston combined.
But wait, aren’t conservatives just as bad? Hardly. Only 16% of conservatives reported doing the same. That means liberals are 175% more likely to try to shut people out because of their views. Imagine that.
Of course, none of this should surprise anyone. We’ve all seen the examples in our own lives where liberals assume that everyone in the room must be liberal because they simply can’t conceive of anyone thinking differently. And we’ve seen how shocked, how angry, and how vile they get when they hear that people have different views. And we’ve seen how they ignore all evidence which conflicts with their beliefs and how they dismissing any source which shakes up their world. We’ve seen it where they are incapable of good faith disagreement. We’ve seen it where they think nothing of using government force to impose their beliefs on others. We’ve seen it where they try to make words and thoughts into crimes and where they apply double standards based on their guess about your motives rather than looking objectively at your actions.
These numbers confirm that liberals are indeed what they appear to be: an intolerant group who are so self-centered they don’t understand that their friends don’t share their views and who are so intolerant that their friends are afraid to tell them the truth.
Liberalism is a sad way to live.
83 comments:
Aw, c'mon, Andrew. You know why they're that way. They know they're better than we are.
Lawhawk, Indeed they must be. Actually, what's funny about this is that it proves everything liberals believe about themselves wrong.
1. They are dumber.
2. They are insensitive.
3. They are out of touch.
4. They are intolerant.
Fascinating study! Getting my mind around the fact that 34 million liberals have tried to silence someone just because they don't share their beliefs is pretty shocking. Those are good little fascists right there.
But Doc, they are all advocates for freedom and free speech -- unlike us evil, intolerant conservatives.
As I spend quite a bit of time on Facebook and attend grad school, I can attest that many--though not all--liberals get very angry if you say something strongly opposed to their views. One refused to accept me as a friend online for a very long time because she said she couldn't stand to read what I would post.
And the intolerance is especially severe when they're in positions of power. One professor at the university--I heard about this at secondhand--chewed out another grad student in a Civil War class, because that student (who is from Georgia and a proud Southerner) had dared to mention that if he were living in 1864 and Sherman's troops had come marching through and pillaging and so on, he probably would have grabbed a gun and tried to resist them. Not a very shocking opinion, when you think about it; but the professor basically advised him to shut up, or so I heard. Liberal intolerance at its most extreme: Not only do you have to accept what they're doing, you're not even allowed to be unhappy about it.
I'll say. I have a sister who is a liberal. I wont talk to her about Obama and his stupidity. It isn't worth it. I don't know of any one who will talk to her about it.
T-Rav, I've had the same experiences all my life. Liberals are incredibly intolerant, even of their friends. You either toe the ideological line or else. And de-friending is the least of it. I've seen them make complaints about professors and other students, I've seen them discriminate against conservatives in hiring, I've even seen them break up with people once they found out they were conservatives. They really are "little fascists" as Doc says and they will not accept that there can be any good faith disagreement with them.
Yet... incredibly... they will tell you until they are blue in the face how tolerant they are and how open to new ideas and different opinions they are and how they think everyone else is evil. Psychologists call this "projection."
In terms of the professor, I've heard worse (and experienced worse). It's not at all uncommon for leftist professors to shout down conservative students, try to get them tossed out of their classes, encourage other students to harass them, and grade them down for their views. Been there... don't that. I've been banned from office hours, gotten zero participation points for a semester and various other things.
Joel, That's part of the bubble living. They are so intolerant that other people simply stop talking to them about these things. So she will now bounce through life thinking that most everyone agrees with her because no one tells her otherwise. When the truth is, everyone thinks she's an idiot, but it just isn't worth telling her she's wrong.
Andrew, Projection was the word I was thinking about. They call everyone else fascists and Nazis, but they are the real fascists and Nazis. This is the kind of study which shows how deep that goes too, because this says that not only do they demand group think in public, but they demand it of their friends too.
Doc, Yep. One thing I've discovered with liberals over the years is that if you want to know how liberals will behave, look at what they are accusing other people of doing because that's exactly what they are doing themselves.
poor libbies. they think everyone (but them) is RACIST!, so why even try.
Patti, That is definitely a liberal trait. I can't tell you the number of liberals I know who tell racist jokes or make racist statements, but then claim that they aren't really racists while everyone else is.
Patti, I know a lot of racist liberal too and they will be the most racist people you ever met on one day and then turn right around and claim they're discussed with conservatives because "conservatives are all racists." It's bullshit!
this is an interesting poll. I have always had trouble trying to ascribe certain tendencies to a particular group, but there are times when circumstances makes one wonder.
"Where you sit is where you stand." Typically, it is necessary to define the group one is discussing. Where does "moderate" democrat end and "liberal" begin. We certainly have discussed that very topic any number of times, but I have no doubt a person we might see as a liberal views themselves quite differently. I do think we tend to assign the worst traits of the fringe members of either side to be "typical" traits of all members of the opposition. The only thing I have noticed is that almost all of the political links I see on Facebook come from liberals. It is too small a sample to claim it as much other than "interesting."
For myself, I try not to get caught up too much in this kind of discussion. The pollis fascinating, but at the end of the day, I'm going to take each person on an individual basis, and try to not assign characteristics to them until they prove them to be true.
Doc, I've had similar experiences.
Jed, In general, I agree that you can't ascribe group traits to individuals. BUT there are exceptions. And one exception comes when a person self-identifies their ideology, because ideology brings with it certain mental states. For example, liberalism by its nature is about using the power of government to suppress the rights of some to grant new rights to others. Thus, anyone who subscribes to liberalism is by definition demonstrating a mindset which says that they are willing to impose their views through force on the unwilling. How strongly they believe this is another question, but the fact is that they do share that kind of belief system.
In terms of the line between moderate and non-moderate, I didn't go into this, but the poll actually asked people to identify themselves as strongly conservative/liberal, or just conservative/liberal and even moderate.
With conservatives, what you find makes perfect sense. "Strongly conservative" is as blind a liberals. The reason there is that the intensity of the beliefs brings with it the bubble living and intolerance. And we've all seen evidence of that -- look at Santorum for example, who proudly proclaims that he only wants people who think like him in his cabinet... a pro-bubble declaration.
With liberals, however, the 52% is across the board, meaning all liberals have the same problem in this case. That to me, is truly telling because it means that all liberals have the same power of self-delusion and lack of tolerance as their fringe, whereas with conservatives, it's just the fringe.
And then, as I note, this is confirmed with their voting records, the policies they suggest, the things they do like imposing speech codes and trying to control what others can say, etc. etc. I think this all goes a long way to explaining a fundamental problem with the liberal mind.
Before I became a parent, I was heavily involved in community theater. You can bet that the scene is crawling with oblivious liberals. If I had a nickel for every time I've been subjected to some liberal rant that steps all over my toes about how could anyone in good conscious vote any way besides Democrat and how we are so much smarter and better than those hateful conservatives and don't you agree?
I was one of a small cadre of "known" conservatives who were tolerated for our talent, but we all knew to keep out tongues between our teeth and suffer the slings and arrows lest we get passed over for the next production.
I tried to stay active past parenthood, but eventually the cattiness and infighting typical of self-centered snobs became too much.
Every figure in the linked article is quite revealing, but THIS ONE (which is representative of the set) very starkly illustrates a position I've held for some time now: that conservatism is more akin to moderate/centrist views than is liberalism.
tryanmax, I've seen the same thing over and over and over throughout the years. Liberals automatically assume that everyone in the room is a liberal unless told otherwise. And they happily spit out their crap, which is always very insulting and phrased along the lines of "how could any decent human being disagree with me?"
And even after they learn you are a conservative, they don't stop. They keep spitting out the liberalism, AND they expect you not to fight back. Well, I do. And that has upset many of them, which has led to all kinds of "don't invite him" and "why are you friends with him" campaigns. Fortunately, I pick my friends well and they laugh these idiots off.
What's even funnier is that they simply refuse to believe the things I say, even if I give them a liberal source because "well, you're a conservative, of course you would say that." Which translates into: "I know I would I lie, so I will assume you lie too so I can keep living in my delusion."
The liberal bubble is very real and it gets reenforced by Hollywood, by schools and by the MSM.
tryanmax, true. In poll after poll, you will find that genuine moderates and "conservatives" have very, very similar responses. The Democrats are the far outliers. And the only reason moderates don't understand this is because the fringe conservatives are very good at claiming to speak for all of conservatives.
By the way, if you want to see total proof of what you say, check out this graph I put together a long time ago. Notice how the conservative and moderate lines are almost identical and the Democratic line is way, way, way out of kilter. (LINK).
Liberals are the outliers.
Interesting poll and excellent analysis Andrew! This actually doesn't surprise me at all. It fits with my entire life's experience.
DUQ, It shouldn't surprise anyone. We see evidence for this every day. Look at the way the left behaves in the media and in government. It's no surprise they would behave the same way with regard to their friends.
Andrew, What do you make of the result that more liberals than conservatives use social network sites?
DUQ,
Yes, liberals use social networks to hook-up and to let others know about their bowel movements. Conservatives socialize by going to conservative blogs and commenting.
DUQ, I see it two ways.
First, I think sites like Facebook have a use, so they let's exclude the fact that a good chunk of people are on them just because they find them useful.
But beyond that, I think these sites involve two aspects of human nature.
1. Some portion of the population are simply narcissists. A narcissist is someone who thinks they are entitled to be heard and respected even though they've done nothing to earn it. These are the kinds of people who think that they are always right and they are nearly infallible, and for that reason everyone else should worship them. That's actually what Twitter has tapped into -- it lets narcissists speak to the world and (in their minds) get the respect/worship they deserve no matter how stupid or inane their thoughts. Both Obama and Newt are classic narcissist who are simply incapable of accepting that others should not be worshiping their every word.
The other group of people (the majority) are on these sites because they are following the herd instinct. They want to do what the herd does and believe what the herd believes. They are out there using these sites to be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what to believe, etc. and to make sure that their choices conform to the desires of the herd.
Liberalism's penchant for groupthink is a form of the herd instinct in action. So it doesn't surprise me that so many more liberals than conservatives would join these sites because liberals have proven they are subject to the herd mentality... something few conservatives are.
I'm not saying all these sites are about one of those two groups, but I would say a hefty majority fall into one of those two groups... and liberals are much more likely to partake. Imagine that.
What do you make of it?
Joel, That's actually a REALLY crucial distinction. Conservatives are USING social media because we have been denied access to the regular media. Thus, the only place we can hear the truth about things and hear other people's thoughts is at these sites. That's why you see so much more debate and discussion at conservative sites -- because we've come to use our brains.
Liberals, on the other hand, use these sites to make sure they confirm to the groupthink/herd. That's why liberal sites are so one-sided, so without debate, and so venomous. They don't want a debate because that's not why they are there -- they are there to be programmed.
Andrew,
You make a valid point. The last time I saw some things at Facebook was my sister(liberal) asking a crucial question. Short and sassy hair or long and luxurious?
Joel, That's one of the things that REALLY drives me nuts with liberals. They want to absorb liberalism. When they get a politician like Obama, he becomes a fantasy figure -- a hero. And they will dream about him, they want to buy the clothes he buys, eat the food he eats, listen to the music he listens to, etc.
It's the basis of the cult of personality and liberals do this all the time -- they don't just pick leaders, they fall in obsessive love with larger-than-life messiahs.
Some conservatives do this, but it's a very low number compared to the huge number of liberals who do this. And I think this comes from a fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism -- conservatism is about logic, liberalism is about emotion.
That's why, when these liberals get together, they judge each other based on how they well they've managed to adopt the new style. And anyone who doesn't fit the herd enough is viewed with suspicion.
P.S. Joel, I've done a lot of web browsing and I am shocked at how much of the net is dedicated to people telling the world what they just ate, what they are wearing, and how much their friend XXX upset them. There are people all over flikr who do nothing but photograph their meals. Amazing.
Joel and Andrew, Very insightful. I thought it was something like, but I didn't quite have the words to explain it. It's like the internet for liberals is a place to go tell everyone how they should be living their lives.
Well said, Andrew. Liberalism believes that everything is a zero sum game, from wealth generation (one man's success steals from another) to national security (security for our country imposes our will on or destabilizes another), and everything in between. To square this obvious fallacy, they must pretend that conservatism is de facto evil, and liberalism is de facto good.
This is why they feel justified, nay, it is their duty to silence conservative ideas through whatever means necessary, including slander, libel, nuisance suits, vandalism, threats, government, etc. They are merely preventing the spread of evil in their twisted little minds.
Thanks DUQ! I see a lot of that too.
wahsatchmo, Excellent thought! You are correct: liberals so see the world as a zero sum game, with every winner matched by an equal loser. Thus, would naturally see conservatives as enemies rather than people who simply think differently because every "win" conservatism makes is a "loss" for liberalism. Interesting thought, I'm going to have to ponder that one.
When I lived in Boulder, CO, it was so infested with Nazi Liberals that they thought that my being conservative was "adorable". It was kind of like they wanted to have a minority friend...
As to Facebook. I take EVERYONE off my news feed but my daughters. I keep people as friends and visit their pages when a news event happens and I want to hear them whine and rant!! :)
Cris, I've spent time in Boulder and I know of what you speak. They have no tolerance whatsoever for different opinions. And you're 100% right about them wanting a token minority friend. It's amazing how often they would say things that translate into: "I'm a good person because I let a minority be my friend." It's an incredibly condescending attitude.
What was even more amazing about the liberals at Boulder is that they lived in such a bubble that they really thought they represented the vast majority of the public. Hardly. They are a fringe of a fringe.
In terms of Facebook, I don't think your conduct is what the poll meant. They really were pretty specific in their questions about this being retaliation for the person having views they don't like.
Yup, Andrew. It was as if I were mentally retarded and they were putting up with me! ugh!
Hey, I got a job! I may be able to chime in less but I will be reading along!
Cris, Congratulations! That's excellent news! :)
Feel free to chime in whenever you can. We'll be here!
I know what you mean about them "putting up with" you. I've gotten that attitude from liberal friends before as well, as if they were tolerating me despite there being something wrong with me. Needless to say, they would never tolerate the same behavior aimed at them.
There has never been a more selfish, envious, self-loathing bunch of miscreants, than the modern liberal. It must be absolutely miserable. It’s the rare occasion indeed, that you run into a liberal where it’s possible to have an adult conversation, when you do, I must say, it’s great fun to openly discuss issues.
Good read you hit the nail on the head…liberals suck!
Thanks Stan. I agree. It's the rare, rare liberal who can carry on an open and adult conversation about their views. And I can't imaging going through life so intolerant, uptight and fearful of hearing that people have different views. What a miserable way to live.
Excellent analysis. I see the evidence for this everywhere among liberals. Look at Pelosi and tell me that she wouldn't cut off her friends if she discovered they weren't liberals.
Joel, I think that's a good point. Most of the conservative sites I see are people talking politics. Most of the liberals sites are more like rumor sites.
Thanks Ed. I thought it was an interesting poll. I can't imagine Pelosi being a very tolerant human being.
Cris, believe me, none of the liberals I know think it's "adorable" to have me as their friend. I don't think there's a one of them I haven't tangled with at some point.
T-Rav, We have a service for that! For a small fee, we could teach them all to fear you. For a larger fee, we could brainwash them! How would you feel about becoming a cult leader? :)
Andrew
I thi8nk there is another area that is relevant and it comes from what Breitbart says: "Politics is downstream of culture"
Everything that you state about the intolerance of liberals is on display in the MSM all the time. Bill Maher, John Stewart, Colbert, Ed Schultz, even the liberal news anchors or the people on the view.
They reinforce the idea that "conservatism" is some kind of stupd psychosis and that it is OK to not only dismiss them but to harm them as well. The movie in the link below is an excellent example of this, The Last Supper.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/reviews
Becasue liberals see this in TV and Media they assume that this is the norm and act accordingly.
I beleive Orwell refered to this as the two minutes of hate.
Indi, That's very true. Liberals are simply mimicking the herd. And in this case, the herd leaders are people like Maher, Stewart, Colbert, Schultz, Maddow, etc. And they are extremely smug and they attack conservatism as some sort of illness. They are intolerant and view themselves as superior. And they treat bumpersticker thoughts as if they were real argument. All of that passes on to the liberals in the population.
It is no coincidence that the nastier people like Olberman got and the more vile people like Michael Moore were, the more vile average liberals became in return. It is all connected.
Joel, short and sassy. What? We're not doing that?
tryanmax, "hair." We're about to become a style blog because they get more hits. :)
I can safely say that I have only unfriended one person on Facebook due to political stuff. It was a guy from film school that I never talked to anyway. He was very religious but of the annoying variety. (There were plenty of other religious students but, you know, normal ones! I'm still friends with these people.)
Anyway, everything this guy posted on Facebook was simply a link to James Dobson's latest screed and after a few weeks, I decided "F--- this noise" and unfriended him. I doubt he noticed. :-)
Other than that, I've got a few conservative friends on Facebook, a few liberal ones (including at least one Democratic party worker and one Planned Parenthood volunteer), and a huge swath of people in the middle who aren't political at all, and that's how I like it.
Having said that, I don't link to this site on Facebook out of fear that one of my liberal relatives will accuse me of being... something or other. :-)
tryanmax,
I didn't wait around to find out. Sorry.
Ed,
Yep, gossip. When it comes to the interesting issues of the day, strangely silent or letting the sycophants know of the latest conservative outrage.
Scott, Let me ask... do you have the same fear that your conservative friends will be upset if you linked to a liberal site?
P.S. I'd unlink someone who kept linking to Dobson too.
Andrew -
I knew you were going to ask that and you already know the answer is no.
Having said that: a.) my closest friends - and the ones most likely to comment - are the apolitical ones, and b.) the one friend of mine who managed to venture on over here completely misunderstood your article (on healthcare) and I ended up looking like an idiot for sending her here!
On blocking Dobson posters, um, I think my mom would notice if I blocked her.
Scott, We can offer no warranty of you-will-understandability. :)
I knew what the answer was of course, because it's the rare conservative who would get upset at friends for having different views... at least until you get to some of the fringers.
But liberals are a very different crowd. In my personal experience, it's the rare liberal who won't get upset when they discover that people they know have conservative leanings. It's really pretty psychotic.
(P.S. I recall the issue with your friend.)
tryanmax, Yeah, probably. LOL!
Andrew and tryanmax -
Re: the Dobson guy, I have a little story here. In film school, some students were assigned to make a 16mm film about ghost soldiers during WW2. This one aforementioned student saw the film as a metaphor for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To that, I said, "No problem. We all get different things out of movies. Good for him!"
So this guy and some classmates went ahead and filmed their own version of the film which reinforced this idea. Again, no problem.
So what does he do? At the opening of "his version" of the film, he inserted a title card that literally spelled out: "This film is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Whaaa?! He left no room for ambiguity or interpretation on the part of the viewer - in essence, robbing people of the same revelation he had - and that is what bothered me.
That's all. End of story. :-)
Scott, I would hope there's more to your story? That just sounds like someone who wasn't sure their film got the message across very clearly. Hack writers do it in almost every movie!
ScottDS,
Have you ever explained to the guy what "on-the-nose" means?
No, that's it. Like I said, I never spoke to him while we were in school. I don't even remember how I was able to see his version of the film.
I don't know what he's up to now and I couldn't give the slightest shit!
Then again, with his hack writing skills, he's probably writing for sitcoms. :-)
Joel - Nope! I never had the opportunity (or interest).
Joel, That's when that kid punched the thing in Star Wars so it would stop bothering his buddy Jar-Jar-Binks, right?
Scott, Yeah, he probably thrives in sit-com land today.
A freind of mine published a poem he got at church on his facebook page. Written normally it read that you did not need God and were better off without him.
But if you read the lines of the poem from the bottom to the top it said the exact opposite thing. The post sat there for several weeks with no comment. I posted one comment explaining how cool the poem was because it had the double meaning.
This one guy then posts several comments about how crappy the poem was and dares to lecture my freind that he should somehow segregate the post he made on his facebook page so that this guy would not have to read the title. Amazing!
But I guess this is more of the two minutes of hate. Emmanuel Goldstein has to be stopped you know...
Indi, One of the saddest/"funniest" things I saw was on Flikr. A person who took very good photos and had built a huge audience one day decided to post a short message about something which pissed her off. She said simply: "Why should I pay taxes to support people who refuse to look for jobs?"
This brought a FIRESTORM of liberal outrage. People started defavoriting her (or whatever the word is over there) and they started reporting her photos as "inappropriate" so they would be removed as soon as she posted them -- they weren't sexual at all, but she eventually had to mark them as sexual content to keep from having them deleted because of all the people flagging them as inappropriate. They would also come along and post nasty comments about the quality -- the same people who sang her praises before.
The ironic thing is that she's a liberal. And she never thought she was saying anything conservative, she just thought it sounded stupid to pay people who refuse to try to find work.
Well, she learned all about liberal intolerance. She eventually closed the account because she said it wasn't worth the effort.
Another one, which I actually do find hilarious, involves a sports blog I visit. They are all liberals running the blog. And they have decided that all of these liberal sportswriters (who are a very standard liberal group) are somehow evil conservatives because they're all "fat, rich, white guys," so they must be conservatives. And they LOVE to attack them.
So you get these hilarious moments of liberal on liberal crime, where they are diving through hoops trying to convince themselves that the guy touting Algore's book and whining about guns in America is really "a corporate stooge conservative racist." It's really funny to see how they are entirely incapable of recognizing friend from foe.
Their favorite thing is to whine how these guys are all on million dollar contracts (hardly) and expense accounts, and so they are "rich f*cks who can't understand the common man" and who "want to see blacks returned to slavery so the sport league owners can profit."
Good times! It would be like watching Obama attack Pelosi as a right-wing industrialist fat cat. I just sit back and chuckle at their abject stupidity.
Good post, Andrew!
I used to buy comics a long time ago, before they started getting pc or at least too pc for my taste. Not to mention too expensive.
So I was happy to see that Mike Baron is a conservative (Flash, Badger, many others).
Unsurprisingly, he lost many fans once they found out, and some of the comments by those people are very vile indeed.
The same thing happened to Frank Miller, although I believe he is more of an libertarian than a traditional conservative.
Both these guys are also big on free speech and hate political correctness (since PC works against free speech).
There's no denying that both these guys are talented but merely due to their beliefs they are shunned by most liberals.
The thing is, you would never know what their leanings are if you only read their books.
And unlike many liberal writers they never felt the need to constantly beat their own ideology drum.
Lefties are, generally speaking, equal opportunity haters if you dare to not tow the party lyin'.
I saw an increase in this behavior among libs as the bluedogs became extinct.
And while some democrats may still claim to be bluedogs their voting records will say otherwise.
Oddly enough we have relatives that consider themselves bluedogs but they get quite irate if I ask them to point to any in Congress.
Last time one mentioned Ben Nelson to which I offered a link on his voting record over the last 4 years.
Apparently this relative thought he was a bluedog based only on what he says rather than what he has done.
Anyways, I have noticed a correlation there. Even as recently as the 80's liberals were much more civil and non-hypocritical than they are now, again, generally speaking.
Unfortunately, said relatives are either being obtuse or have gone full retard because they still vote democrat, but at least now they know they sure as hell ain't voting for bluedogs anymore so they can't use that excuse.
PS- IMO they have gone full retard. Why else would they vote for scoundrels that don't have their interests at heart (nor the Constitution, but I repeat myself).
RE: Frank Miller--A short while ago he wrote a piece against OWS that got copied over to Big Hollywood. I went over to Frank's blog to leave a comment, pretty much just "Hear, hear!" and "I love your work." There were only a couple dozen comments at the time, so I thought nothing of it.
How long ago was that? Because I am still getting regular update messages that more comments have been left in the firestorm that will apparently burn until the internet ends.
BTW, I love the expression "gone full retard."
I am shocked!
... or not.
In my class, we are getting to the cultural competence part of the course. Now, I fully agree that knowing cultural idiosyncrasies would be very helpful in counseling (who thinks eye contact is offensive, who tends to be more concerned with familial harmony, etc). But! In chapter 2, the text starts explaining "social justice" and such concepts - OK, I'll play along and not gripe - but then it gave a list of admirable, inspiring persons of social conscience: Cesar Chavez, Saul Alinsky. That's where I stopped reading. I'll have to pick it back up this weekend... The good thing is that the prof was sick, so we're a little behind. I figure we'll skip the intro stuff and go to the application. But still - SERIOUSLY???? Chavez, I expected. Alinsky shocked the breath out of me. Then I started cussing my book.
Ben, Thanks! "the party lyin'" LOL! Nicely put.
You raise a couple interesting points. For one thing, it's funny that liberals get bent out of shape about conservatives even when they don't infuse their politics into their products. Thus, once they know someone is a conservative, they have nothing but contempt for their art, music, books, films, etc. even if the conservative never once mentions politics in their work. That is the definition of intolerance.
And I do agree that liberal intolerance has gotten worse since the 1980s. I think that's a factor of two things. For one thing, their leaders have gone full retard, as you and Tropic Thunder put it. For another, they realize that they've been rejected by the public and that makes them angry.
Indeed, that raises the other interesting point. There is a strange disconnect among liberals that on the one hand, you need to toe the party line 100%. Even a suggestion that you aren't pure is enough to bring hate raining down on you like fire. But on the other hand, they view it as perfectly acceptable to lie to the public about their views.
Think about that for a moment. How twisted does your worldview need to be that you will accept your leaders lying about their views? It boggles the mind.
tryanmax, Liberals are big on perpetual guilt. They simply will not let something go because their goal is not to change your mind, it is to destroy those who harbor impure thoughts.
I like that phrase too and I use it all the time... no matter what the PC police say. :)
rlaWTX, One of the more interesting experiences I ever had in that regard was in a sociology class I was forced to take as a college requirement. The bastard who taught the class worshiped the Sandinistas and he would go down every couple years and pick beans at one of their labor camps to show his disdain for the US. His heroes were all communist thugs. And he would start lecturing about this crap instead of the topic.
At first, I decided to stay quiet and just be done with the class. But that's not really me... ain't possible. Plus, he wouldn't shut up. One day, I almost killed him... literally. When he called Reagan a war criminal, I literally saw only red -- could not see anything else and I started out of my chair to beat him to a blood pulp. I'm honestly not sure what stopped me. After that I decided to get the f**cker, so I went in class after class and just savaged him and his bullsh*t theories. I was a good deal smarter than he was, so this was quite simple -- logic holes, wrong facts, etc. I could throw his own words back at him and tie him in knots. He was pissed. (Fortunately, the school requires anonymous grading.)
Anyway, slowly but surely I turned everyone in the class against him except for a couple hard core liberals. And then one day, magic happened -- he lost the liberals in a double-mistake when he used the term "Indian giver" while praising people who help dolphins. Suddenly, the two big liberals just went after him. One was an Indian and accused him of being racist. The other attacked him for supporting dolphins because (get this) "it's been proven that male dolphins beat their mates." Huh??!!! I almost fell out of my chair laughing. This was retard on retard hate for 40 minutes -- a three way. When it was over, I applauded as they all stormed out of the room through separate doors.
Good times.
Andrew, that is awesome! Congrats on fomenting rebellion.
I doubt it will come up, but I am still undecided if I am going to call the book out on this. Mostly because most of the class would not understand. They just aren't the brightest, most aware bulbs in the box.
rlaWTX, Thanks! It's what I do! :D
Yeah, that's always the danger, that the other students won't understand what is going on. Too many of them are like sponges just waiting to absorb whatever the professor says without ever really thinking about it. Those people are beyond help.
"At first, I decided to stay quiet and just be done with the class. But that's not really me... ain't possible. Plus, he wouldn't shut up. One day, I almost killed him... literally. When he called Reagan a war criminal, I literally saw only red -- could not see anything else and I started out of my chair to beat him to a blood pulp. I'm honestly not sure what stopped me. After that I decided to get the f**cker, so I went in class after class and just savaged him and his bullsh*t theories. I was a good deal smarter than he was, so this was quite simple -- logic holes, wrong facts, etc. I could throw his own words back at him and tie him in knots. He was pissed. (Fortunately, the school requires anonymous grading.)"
LOL! Goin' all John Galt/Andrew Breitbart on his arse.
I have the same sort of temperment in regards to imbeciles like that. I just can't sit there and take it.
I laughed when you told about turning the class against his BS. :^)
I had to deal with a junior officer that was sort of like that but not as overt.
He even had a Hitler mustache and he abused his authority all the time.
He got enraged when I would tell my shipmates their rights (I knew the UCMJ almost by heart) and that they didn't have to obey unlawful orders.
He saw me as a threat and told me he would get me kicked out. I knew it was a matter of time before he found some frivolous thing to charge me with but I wouldn't back down when I saw him abuse his authority.
One day I was five minutes late to muster and he wrote me up and pushed it to Captains Mast.
Fortunately, out Capt. was a decent guy and reminded me of John Wayne in his mannerism.
I explained what happened and what this LTJG had told me and the Capt. dismissed the case.
Then he gave LTJG Hitler a verbal assault like none I ever heard.
Great Captain that had the utmost respect of every crew member!
A few months later he was transfered but until he was he never directly spoke to me again. :^)
Evil triumps when good men (or women) do nothing.
Ben, It's just not part of my temperament to sit there and let these people spew without challenging them. I try, but it never works out that way.... I always end up speaking my mind. And that never sits too well with these champions of free speech.
As you say... evil triumphs when we sit on our butts.
Good for you on the junior officer. If there's one thing I cannot stand it's abuse of power, be it a junior officer or a professor.
Andrew those are great stories.
What do you say to a liberal artist who hass to drop her Flickr account because raging leftists mistake a common sense comment for a sin against the orthoxyh of the politically correct.
Why, you say
"Welcome to the Republican Party"
You know what Andrew
My Capstone Strategic Management professor is a liberal. At least I think he is because he believes that Obama is a necessary swing back to regulation away from the laisez faire attitudes of Reagan.
He is fairly intelligent though and very fair minded. I think he is more old school liberal that the communist ilk of today but he is much older (70's).
Even still there is a meme that is going around in class that I find interesting. It is the idea that the banks are partially (read mostly by implication of the context of their argument) for the financial mess because they tranced loans and sold them as securities.
The idea of the trance being you stratify mortgages into three groups (low risk, moderate risk and NINJA loans) and sell the resultant earnings to secure bonds which are sold on a market. He goes heavily into how AIG was an underwriter that specialized in selling these instrumets and eventually the collapse happened when the could no longer underwrite the mortgages.
The professor talks of how the banks used this to allow themselves to securitize debt and keep making these mortgages.
This part is all true. But I disagree with the next part of the meme (to a moderate to great extent). This is that the bankerrs were engaging in this as a way to get around sensible banking rules by moving the risk of the bad mortgages off to bond holders who were left holding the bag. The idea is they started doing this because they were greedy.
My take on this is that it started because the CRA law forced bankers to make loans to people who could not pay them in the name of social justice, combating racism and singing kumbayah and other great liberal economic arguments.
The bankers new they had to take on this debt and the trancing was a form of protection. They securitized the loans, mixing them with what they thought were enough good mortgages to diversify the risk in order to be able to comply with Democratic congressional mandates.
Problem was that the congressional democrats took the initial success in doing this as a clarion call to do even more. Eventually the whole pawnsy scheme fell apart.
As to the fraud of bankers doing this to put one over. The best way to ensure fraud happens in yhour organization is to create a bunch of rules that are so complicated orgainization members have to break them just to get the job done. The eventual bad apples in my mind were encouraged by the laws.
When I hear the bailouts and banks being talekd about the liberals are using a soft form of intolerant outrage. They focus on this issue whenever someone brings up Washington's failure.
Just my take on it. I am not discussing this with the professor because I like him and I think he mihgt disagree but it irkls me a little as I think this line of reasioning is a clever dodge using bankers as straw men for the failure of Washington DC.
Indi, I agree -- that should be a major invite to Republicanism. I don't know if that will happen as far too often these people get pulled back into the herd. But it should at least by an eye opener for her and maybe she'll realize that liberals are not good people.
I think a lot of famous ex-liberals came to our side because of those revelations. I understand Mamet finally got pushed over the edge by liberal intolerance.
Indi, On your professor...
I doubt the theory very much that bankers tried to do anything untoward. There's just too much potential liability for bankers to try to defraud investors.
What they were doing made sense to them at the time -- they tried to hedge the risk of loss by diversifying the risk. Business has been doing that for decades through mergers, conglomerates, mutual funds, etc. The idea is that you are looking to get a better return than you would normally be able to get by taking bigger risks, while you simultaneously hedge those risks by mixing them with more stable assets. By bundling risks, you decrease the chance of losing everything while you increase the chance that one or two of your investments "will hit."
The problem here is that they failed to grasp two things. First, that the divorcing of the ownership of the assets from the person getting the profit meant it became much more risky and harder to manage. Secondly, they wrongly assumed the housing market wasn't in a bubble. They wrongly assumed it would just cool rather than deflate.
So I think your professor is partially correct, but his conclusions are entirely wrong.
Andrew
I agree with you however the professor is not the first person to promulagate this theory.
I first heard this from Barney Frank and other liberals in Congress when the bailouts were being talked about. They were blaiming the bankers for using bundling to allow them to make bad loans.
The professor was the first person I have heard tout this that put it into a rational argument as to how it worked. So as I say it is a dodge. A way to deflect the argument from the CRA law an d Fannae Mae and Freddie Mac to private industry. The failure of government regulation being the justification for more government regulation.
Indi, Yeah, this has become the standard line on the left -- that this was greedy bankers trying to sneak around regulators (aided by Bush) so they could rob investors. It's BS, but that's what they plan to believe whether it makes sense or not.
As a fellow Conservative, I have tried to make peace with liberals in the past...there's no "peace" with them. And their "it's MY way or the highway" attitude is the reason why I don't date liberal women. Trust me, there's nothing more frustrating than a liberal.
The MSM/FSF & the Feminists crowds are the worst. If you disagree with them on things, they'll call you a "hater", "bigot", "homophobe", etc. I could go on & on about how vile they are, unfortunately I'm working on engineering & physics homework.
Anyway, I came up with the best way to deal with them: Tell them TRUTH, & if they get mad & whine, it's THEIR problem. I can't tell you how many pro-LGBTs supporters (which BTW are VERY uber-liberal)I have pissed off just for using biological facts to prove my points. On Facebook, a whole crowd of liberal faggots got mad because I supported Chick-Fil-A's stance on marriage. What did I do about it? I told them to straight hard facts then told them to "GET OVER IT". Needless to say, that shut them all 40+ of them up. Liberals HATE the truth.
The best way to deal with liberals: Don't give them attention & appeasement they want. When you stop treating them like they're the "center of the earth", they'll stop believing it.
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