This weekend I had an epiphany and after decades of consideration I finally figured out the core of the liberal ideological problem. It’s a complex psychological illness which requires the abbreviation of an analogy in this forum. But take my word for it, I’ve thought this through carefully and only my description is abbreviated, not the concept itself.
The basic issue can be described this way: Both conservative and liberals have people in their lives that they care about… their parents, their children, their siblings and their friends. They both also have other people in their lives with looser connections – acquaintances of various types and degrees and even total strangers for whom they feel some other affinity. But when it comes to the people they care about liberals always see the people in their lives as supporting cast members in their personal story, while conservatives have no problem seeing themselves as a supporting cast member in the lives of others.
A mother who lives her life for her children – makes sacrifices and compromises her own happiness for their sake will be a conservative, while another who sees her children strictly as objects and is solely concerned with what they express to others about her, will always be a liberal. The same is true of a father, a sibling, or a friend. For liberals it’s always about them. Even in the small ways. For all their talk of thinking of others, the only people they really care about are themselves.
No one is perfectly liberal or conservative. We all have moments of selfishness, and even the most devoted liberal will set their own issues aside now and then (usually when the camera is pointed at them and they want to look ‘selfless’) but I’m talking about a broader lifestyle here.
That’s it – that’s the secret. Ponder this just a little and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean. I'll have more to say later, but right now I have some stuff I need to do for others.
5 comments:
This is completely accurate, and the best example I have for it is my Aunt. She is the only severely liberal person among my close relatives. She has an illegitimate child (whose father was half her age when she slept with him), who "receives" checks from his father that he knows nothing about because my Aunt takes them and spends them on herself.
She is a social worker at a children's hospital, which is a completely honorable job. But, like you say - this is all about her and how great she can tell people she is. A few years ago she was honored by a radio station in her area for the work she does at the hospital. All these families called in and talked about how much they loved her, etc... This, also, is great for her and I wouldn't want to take that away from her.
But- That Thanksgiving when we were at my grandmother's house for dinner, she brought the tape recording of the radio show and made us all sit there for over an hour and listed to every moment of it. It was awkward and creepy. Rather than just sharing the moment with us by telling us about it, we had to witness everyone praising her.
Meanwhile, my mother is a nurse of 30+ years who takes care of my diabetic, trouble making, arrest-prone brother, while going to school first for her bachelors, then for her masters, and then working to become a professor. My other aunt who was sitting there has a paralyzed son with spinabifida and a husband with MS. Neither of those people have parties to celebrate just how awesome they are. They also happen to be conservative.
The big joke with Bill Clinton was "me , me, me, me, me, me, me ...but enough about me... what do you think of me?" (In my family that also describes my mom.)
There are liberals in every age group but I think the big proliferation was a product of the neverland that was the 60's. They never grew up, and still don't want to because as perpetual adolescents everything can always be all about them...forever. In the meantime, the generation before and after them is more conservative than they are.
Modern American conservatism is about a lot of things... the triumph of the objective over the subjective, the importance of considering results instead of intentions, and the desire to let each American decide for themselves how to live their lives instead of being ruled by an elite. And the liberal position on each and every one of these issues comes form their desire to have the world revolve around them.
Think about it... it goes right to their core.
Brilliant. You can dig deeper in the dirt, and see some more evidence how liberals do not, and as I see it cannot, approach life looking beyond themselves. My in-laws and wife, 4 children, are all highly intelligent and have Ivy League or slightly less educations. 2 are Kool Aid drinking rabid liberals (I have induced them into screaming head exploding fits in them) and two others substantially left of blue dogs. Their father was a son of a b*itch, Ivy League educated success, who chose the bottle and prescription cabinet over them. The damage he caused to his wife and their mother before the divorce was profound.
People with abandonment issues latch onto and desire a an all encompassing government. It is their captive. They can make it do what they want, which is what their parent failed to provide. A safe place to live. Health care. Education. They want it to love them. That is why reason and debate with some liberals is not worth your breath.
I've always thought that at their core liberal's problem is insecurity. People disagree with me about all kinds of things all day long and I don't get into that kind of white hot anger over it. But when you disagree with a liberal they take it personally because they don't hear a simple disagreement, they hear an indictment of their very character.
When you say to a liberal "I don't think that's a good idea...' what they hear is "I think you're a stupid person" etc.
So they build up an entire worldview designed to hide their insecurity from others (as if we couldn't see it) and to help them cope with their own self worth issues. That's why it's all about them... because they're actually trying to pretend to be someone that they really don't believe they are. They bend and twist their worldview until they look to themselves like the greatest person alive in spite of whatever totally human flaws they may have. In their worldview, those flaws become virtues and anyone who doesn't possess them too is simple unenlightened. And when you confront them with reality, particularly if you confront them about the truth about themselves, they either dismiss it out of hand (therefore your opinion doesn't count) or they react with rage.
I could go on and on but I can tell that you see my point.
Not only do I see your point, I live in the world where white hot anger is the risk of revealing truths like "More Guns Less Crime.". I remember late October '92, I was in Manhattan speaking with a fellow, a Russian immigrant and recent NYU law grad, when he asked who I was voting for. I looked down into my drink and mumbled "bush..." He smiled widely and said, "Say it loudly and smile!"
So we indulge the insecure and we spare the abandoned children, now adults, the memory of their Daddy walking out the door, teaching the next generation accept that it is good to surrender liberty to keep the calm.
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