The Primordial Conservative

So as I was sitting here pondering what really has my goat I am drawing a blank generally. After spending a great weekend with by beautiful, sweet wife I am having a difficult time getting really bugged about anything. So browsing through FoxNews.com I see "The entire Jon Stewart Interview" So I watch that, and... Yeah, that did it...

This debate is eerily [Notice how I subtly insert that emotionally charged word?] ...eerily similar to every debate that I have ever had or witnessed with Liberals/Progressives. By the way, to avoid the burden of continually inserting the monikers of both "Liberal & Progressive" I really need a word that will encompass both of those synonymous groups. Perhaps Progerals? Libressives? No I am not digressing. That is actually directly on point. It's the very essence of this rant, and it can be summed up in that line in "The Usual Suspects" wherein Kevin Spacey expounds: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was to make the world believe that he does not exist." No I don't think Libressives are the devil. I think they are generally unassailably ignorant, closed minded, and um, what's the word? Let's go with "woefully" misguided. That seems different to the way that the "Progerals" seem to view us Conservatives. It seems that they truly believe us to be not just misguided, but stupid and/or evil incarnate. And that is just fascinating.

So Jon Stewart is sitting there duking it out with O'rielly, and the gist of every point is that he is really a reasoned, opened minded, logical, and deep thinking person while anyone that disagrees with him is a victim of misinformation, and a highly orchestrated, "cyclonic" emotional propaganda machine. It really is fascinating that Jon, and virtually every lefty I know believes that their view is not an opposing view at all but rather just unfettered open mindedness. Their view is not some view handed down by our ignorant predecessors, but an evolved view from critical examination of facts, history and science that were just not available before them. The skies have just now suddenly parted and endowed only them with all of the wisdom of the ages. [No I am not talking about teenagers. I meant Progressives.] It really is the ultimate shell game. We can argue our myriad opposing viewpoints, but they are really only the regurgitated mystical diatribes from a discredited mythology. So the very point of the Liberal/Progressive thesis seems to be to avoid being pigeonholed by any specific world view. And for those of you about to say "Aha, Relativism!" I can tell you that they will eschew this label as vehemently as any other. They are those not constrained by any limitation that would diminish their open mindedness. "They" simply have no agenda. They cannot be labeled. It is not so much that we disagree on any substance but rather that we are stuck sloughing our way out of the primordial idealogical ooze while they are already walking upright in their evolved enlightenment.

One of my favorite mantra's of the left that they always have at the ready in their arsenal is the old saw. "Well I can't really judge them." It is the one scripture known to virtually every lefty in the world. It is the ostensible atomic bomb for any debate of ethics or morality on any subject. Our statement will go something like "Moral statement, point point, fact, logic, more fact, more logic." To which the response goes something like "well who are we[read: you] to judge that person?" Never mind that they feel that they are free, even compelled to judge anyone that disagrees with their world view. Which brings me to one of the most memorable discussions of my life, many years ago. We are riding in a car, my dear sister and I, having our usual, much to her chagrin, discussion on the morality of I can't even vaguely remember what. So she pulls out the "Judge Not, Lest ye be Judged" club, and proceeds to beat me profusely with it. To her amazement, I, still in the fray and barely daunted reply: Isn't you calling me judgmental actually very judgmental itself?" As she fights a sheepish grin she responds with with Clintonian grace. "I am just making an observation." "Oh," say I, " So my observations are judgmental and your judgments are observations." Thanks for the clarification.

 

So I never took a debate class[I know what your thinking... "Probably never took an English class either!] Anyway, I believe that one of tenants of a diabolical winning debate is to never argue the facts when a good emotional appeal is all you really have. As the old Lawyer quip goes, "If you don't have the facts on your side pound on the law, If you don't have the law on your side pound the facts. If you have neither the law nor the facts on your side pound on the table."  Which finally brings me full circle to my original point. John Stewart, and every left winger I have ever encountered has played the old ideological rope-a-dope with varying degree's of rhetorical prowess, but it is all the same. They begin with the presupposition that we are barely evolved Neanderthals and that our world view is constrained by our ostensibly limited frontal lobe while their views are intrinsically more enlightened. We begin with the dynamic of them as the instructors of us, perhaps well meaning [or not], toddlers who can hardly understand such complex theories from the constraints of that small ideological box that our ignorant ancestors have left us in. You almost have to pity us really! So we fall for it every time, allowing them to perpetuate this presupposition unchallenged. We waste most of our energies chasing our tail trying to persuade the world that we are not really the straw men that the have created. Just as the Quixote frustrated Geico cavemen, we expend or vigor trying to convince the world that we are not ignorant bigoted hillbilly red neck simpletons. We go round and round, on this issue and that, never really impacting their world view in any significant way because we are trying to catch flies with chopsticks, and that is just the way they like it.