Beyond parody
Why do we laugh at the right and call them wingnuts? Because of pieces such as this. Here is a rightist "thinker" suggesting that anyone who is in the least bit liberal or progressive is actually a secret Marxist.Kimball writes:
Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.
Erm, hold on. Those aren't "code words". Those are the words for those things. I mean, if "peace" is communist, colour me pink.
You couldn't make this shit up. If you were writing a parody of rightist nutterism, you'd read this and straight away realise that you were not up to the job. You simply cannot beat this.
Hungary's youth, having been fed a steady diet of values-neutral (atheism) and radical sex education while simultaneously encouraged to rebel against all authority, easily turned into delinquents ranging from bullies and petty thieves to sex predators, murderers, and sociopaths.
Erm, what, all of them?
Consequently, and by extension, [cultural determinism] also rejects the first principles of our liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. These are our "unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Cultural Marxism must reject these because these principles of liberty "are endowed by our Creator," who made man in His image.
Erm, but couldn't it derive the same principles from a different source? This is the whole problem with this kind of thesis: it takes a black and white view of everything. You "love freedom" or you're a communist. But you must "love freedom" in exactly the same way I do. This thinking informs the neocons. They have a set of ideals -- not all of them by any means distasteful -- but they believe that there is only one way to worship their particular idols. Other models are just evil. Of course it also informs extreme left nutters too. They have the same "my way or the highway to hell" mentality. True believers tend to. It seems to me that without doubt the exercise of the intellect is doomed to be stunted; it works better unrestrained than it ever will following tramlines.
posted by Dr Zen @ 4:55 pm
7 Comments:
"reject the brainwash" should be the subtitle of every ideology.
People who are convinced of their being right will never be found to allow doubt--in others or in themselves. Seems tautological, but I find myself (and I do not think I am alone) constantly surprised at just to what extent this is true. One being convinced that someone else is wrong is just as damning.
Seldom does one truly understand what it means to entertain doubt.
More rare still is when one is willing to display anything more than mere lip-service to the principle.
"It seems to me that without doubt the exercise of the intellect is doomed to be stunted; it works better unrestrained than it ever will following tramlines."
Without doubt, there's no reason to even have an intellect. In the presence of certainty, reason is redundant. Indeed the two can hardly co-exist. One is sure to obliterate the other.
I used to bookmark that site, but I never found anything there worth reading.
Not reading the whole article but finding this more or less at random --
"In its turn, cultural determinism was birthed by the Darwinian idea that man is but a soulless animal and therefore his identity is determined by for example, his skin color or his sexual and/or erotic preferences."
-- I can see I've missed nothing. I can grok being soulless but not the conclusion drawn. Seems a harebarined attempt to blame racism on liberalism, as if identity politics (much of which is indeed bullshit) arises from a rejection of the Biblical foundation. These folks are twisting in the wind.
From what i have read on blogs concerning the left/right split, it seems there are some scary people out there on both sides.
The difference is, Lucy, that the right talks up a couple of local incidents, while the right is packed with morons like the one I comment on here.
And rightwing bloggers echo each other's lies. One will say "I got hatemail from a liberal", and 15 others will post that too. But most liberals are educated. Their "hatemail" will be a complaint about the blogger's posts or attitudes. It might be heated but it will generally be sane. The same can't be said for the hatemail liberal bloggers get from wingnut supporters.
I haven't got any hate mail or got into an online war with anyone yet. I must be doing something wrong!
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