Leftists Behaving Badly, As Usual, and the Consequent Backlash

Leftists are proud of being able to shout down the opposition. They are willing to go to extremes to keep opposing voices from being heard. This makes leftists rather unique among modern political movements -- except perhaps among Germany's "ultra-rightists" skinheads.

In fact, leftists have made such arses of themselves for so long that they are due for something of a backlash. No, not like the American "Tea Party" movement. Those folks are far too civilised to be considered a backlash movement. The tea partiers simply want their government to return to its minimalist roots, socially, and to spend within its means, economically.

No, when I say "backlash," I really mean backlash, in a very painful and effective sense. The left leaves itself open to attack from many directions. It is fortunate for leftists that the media largely covers for their misdeeds and contretemps. That is not likely to always be the case, of course.

While academia is generally full of leftists, occasionally a more rational and honest intellectual will persist through the deadly obstacle course and become well-known and popular enough that academic and media institutions cannot deny them a voice. Such a person is Niall Ferguson, historian:

The historian has been living back in the UK for almost a year, the first time since leaving for the US in 2002, where he now teaches at Harvard. From the outside, it's looked like quite a successful stay; his Channel 4 series, Civilization, was broadly well-received, and the accompanying book is another dollop of vintage Ferguson history, devoted to the superiority of western civilisation. While here he's also been advising Michael Gove on the history curriculum in secondary schools, and now that the Tories, of whom he approves, are back in charge of the country, he must have found the political climate more to his tastes. But when I ask him for the single biggest change he's observed since leaving Britain, he replies with a kind of theatrical despair,

"I think the situation in British universities has gone from being parlous to being catastrophic. When you look at where British universities are going, and where Harvard's going, you'd have to really love other things about England to take the hit."

...He is forever insisting he is not rightwing – so could he offer some examples of his thinking which would demonstrate that he isn't?

"Ask me not are you rightwing, but ask me are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment? Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments, then I'm rightwing. If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing. If you think that it's rightwing to say that the welfare state has trapped 10-20% of the population of western Europe in a dependency culture, an abyss of social failure, then I'm rightwing." _Guardian

The dimwitted bimbette from the Guardian who interviewed Ferguson was clearly unprepared to face a non-leftist of Ferguson's articulateness and "in-your-faceness."

Not that Ferguson is representative of the backlash I mention. No, he is just that niggling little feeling in the back of the minds of leftists, which makes them wonder if perhaps their little academic monopoly game might not go on forever.

No, they wish that Ferguson represented the backlash, just as they wish the Tea Party movement were as bad as a backlash might get.

The backlash which leftists deserve is far worse than they can imagine, but it is unlikely they will receive the maximum sentence they are due. Yet they are such whining pathetic creatures, that anything except complete capitulation to their catastrophically dysfunctional and destructive plans is seen as a hellish punishment, through their eyes.

The thing that is coming will be somewhere in between what they deserve, and the taste of internal hell they are receiving as a result of the need for governments to reduce their disastrous levels of debt. And that particular adjustment of spending priorities is likely to go on for a long, long time, and to cut many of their pet causes very, very deeply.

Not the backlash, no. But it is coming all the same. And although it will not be particularly violent, it will be devilishly clever and effective.

When Feminism Meets the Real World, Again

The original feminists were common sense women, possessing a solid connection with their earthy roots and human nature. Later generations of feminists became caught up in revolutionary "rights and victims" movements of the left, and seemed to have lost all contact with human nature and what a workable and sustainable society would look like. Now, feminism may be returning to its roots. A new breed of ambitious, earthy, feminine feminists who are solidly rooted in common sense has burst upon the scene in the US. The late and badly shriveled form of revolutionary grievance feminism will not be missed.

The old guard, consisting mostly of lawyers, writers, journalists, and other media types, tended to cluster on the coasts. The new crowd came from the South, the Midwest, and the West, and a number of them were businesswomen—not surprisingly, given that women are now majority or equal owners in nearly half of American businesses. Some were techies, such as Tea Party organizers Jenny Beth Martin of Georgia, a computer programmer, and Michelle Moore of Missouri, who ran a technology consulting firm. Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s newly elected governor, was an accountant in her previous life. The new congresswoman from South Dakota, Kristi Noem, runs the cattle ranch that she inherited from her family. Tech geeks, businesswomen, and ranchers: not Lesley Stahl feminism, that’s for sure.

Further unsettling the feminist framework was the vigorous maternalism of the newcomers. Many heartland women had seen in feminism’s enthusiastic careerism, as well as its resentment of men and domesticity, an implicit criticism of their own lives. Hence their rejection of the feminist label even as they joined the workforce and lived lives that looked, in many respects, consistent with the movement’s principles. Now there appeared on the scene a new model of female success, one in which maternalism and even housewifery were not at odds with wielding power on the public stage. Palin’s name for the female midterm candidates was telling: “Mama Grizzlies.” Dana Loesch, a homeschooling mother of two, “mommy blogger,” and columnist, cofounded the St. Louis Tea Party. Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who won reelection in November, has taken in 23 foster children over the years. Before the election, some had predicted that 2010 would be another Year of the Woman; it would be closer to the truth to call it the Year of the Mom.

Actually, maternal feminism is nothing new. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, temperance fighters—and, to a lesser extent, suffragettes—viewed their role as wives and mothers as the source of their moral authority in public debates. But something important sets today’s maternal feminism apart from the earlier strain: it casts budgeting and governance as maternal issues. “From first-hand experience, [women] know you cannot spend your way out of debt at home and they know that philosophy translates to businesses and to the government,” Martin told Politico. Palin put her fiscal conservatism in the homey rhetoric of a PTA president: “I think a whole lot of moms . . . are concerned about government handing our kids the bill.” _CityJournal

Sarah Palin's name keeps popping up in discussions of this "changing of the feminist guard" for a very good reason -- she is both a prototype and a flashpoint for the new improved feminism.

Before 39-million viewers, Palin was the first public figure to openly and successfully ridicule the hitherto untouchable Barack Obama. She also was the first American woman to campaign for high office by paying homage, but no ideological dues, to the Sisterhood. This Alaskan small-town huntin’, fishin’ God-fearin,’ abortion-hatin’ mom of five showed that a woman can break through any glass ceiling she wants without the imprimatur of the feminist politburo.

Feminists watching Palin’s stunning performance knew a stake was being driven through their movement’s heart. They went ballistic. Feminist blogger Jessica Grose wrote on her Jezebel web site: “When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded … What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay murderous, rage.” Judith Warner wrote in The New York Times that Palin was an “insult to women.” Comedian Sandra Bernhard riffed on YouTube: “Turncoat bitch! You whore in your cheap f***ing … cheap-ass plastic glasses.” Academic Wendy Doniger opined, “Palin’s greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman.”

And who can forget Canada’s very own Heather Mallick — then of the CBC, now of the Toronto Star — who watched Palin with “my mouth open, my eyeballs drying out, my hand making shaky notes.” _NationalPost

Mallick's notes were not the only thing shaky about the old guard's reaction to Palin. The entire edifice of whiny grievance feminism was shaken to its roots. Since then, nothing has been the same. And the newcomers -- the improved feminists who seem to be real women for a change -- are growing more prominent and more numerous on most stages of society. And this despite the best attempts of the old guard to use their privileged positions in government, media, and academia to shut the new feminists out.

Hymowitz calls them Mama Grizzlies because they celebrate, rather than repudiate, their biological natures. Mama Grizzlies see men as different but complementary to women, and therefore as collaborators, not adversaries. Sarah Palin’s Down’s Syndrome-afflicted child and military-serving son — whom she speaks about proudly at public events — aren’t an anomaly in this circle of unapologetically maternal women. Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, founder of the House Tea Party caucus, has nurtured 23 foster children over the years.

No wonder feminists mired in the superannuated shibboleths of revolutionary feminism are shocked. As always happens with utopian revolutions, its pendulum, propelled outward by theories and ideology, can only swing so far from human nature’s permanent verities, and cause so much social damage, before corrective populist movements force it back to the middle. _NationalPost

The left has had things pretty much their own way in academia, most of the media, and huge swathes of government. With the coming of the great budgetary devastation brought on by government profligacy and a general anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial attitude coming from the great neo-leftist infrastructures, the happy little party at the top of the tax-supported world is just about to get crashed. And these party-crashers are not likely to cut the lefty-whiny feminists any slack whatsoever, because the newcomers arrive prepared to clean, disinfect, and re-budget the works.

Big Government Unions Hasten Collapse of the State

Public sector unions have an insatiable appetite for public funds. Governments cannot possibly balance their budgets and also keep big government unions happy. Something is destined to crash and burn, and if unions have anything to do with it, they will bring everything down with them when they go.

On the state level, public employment promises the full socialist ideal to a small minority-paid for with tax money looted from a larger, productive private economy. But the socialist utopia of public employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people's money.

The current crisis exposes more than just the financial unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few.

This is why the left is treating any attempt to fundamentally reform the public workers' paradise as an existential crisis. This is why they are reacting with the most extreme measures short of outright insurrection. _RealClearPolitics

Outright insurrection is not completely off the table, for these thuggish intimidators. They want to hold that option as a last resort. Before it comes to that, people who appreciate the advantages of a free, orderly, and lawful society may want to shut government down temporarily for some much-needed maintenance overhaul work.

America fast approaches several tipping points. Taxes have grown steadily more progressive across successive presidencies including numerous redistributionist credits ensconced in the tax code. Per the Heritage Foundation, “the country may be rapidly approaching a point where one-half of ‘taxpayers’ do not pay taxes, while receiving generous federal benefits.” These folks have no real interest in fiscal discipline.

Welfare, social security, food stamps and other entitlement measures have surpassed one-sixth of personal income. Entitlements of $2 trillion grow annually and promise to explode as Baby Boomers retire. Social Security has already crossed its tipping point and will henceforth remain forever in the red.

At all levels, governments now employ approximately twenty-two million workers. There are millions more dependent on government contracting for their livelihood. An unhealthy portion of us rely on government for sustenance. As the state’s reach smothers America, many millions are now nestled up to the public breast. Too many voters exhibit a keen interest in sustaining the unsustainable.

Frederic Bastiat observed, “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” _Forbes

With all government functions shut down except for the bare essentials, it will be easier for voters to see how unessential -- and downright counter-productive -- most government functions truly are.

Unions will have a harder time proving that their loss is American loss. That is partly because unions are a partisan issue. Gallup recently asked Americans whether government workers unions are generally more helpful or more harmful to their states. Two-thirds of Democrats said helpful. Two-thirds of Republicans said harmful. Independents split.

There is no longer a union mandate. Gallup regularly asks Americans about their confidence in more than a dozen institutions. Labor unions rank near the bottom, though still above big business. _RealClearPolitics

There are powerful forces seething just beneath the visible surface of everyday life, seeking to overthrow the established order in order to throw society into chaos. From the far left anarchists, to the lefty-Luddite green dieoff.orgy energy starvationists, to the budget-busting public sector unionists, to the pro-totalitarian leftist contingent controlling many university administrations and humanities faculties and media newsrooms -- the left is teeming with well-funded clusters of goons and zombies eager to "bring it all crashing down."

As long as Obama's regime is in power, the forces of chaos have friends in high political places. As long as the financial reign of big-money leftist agents provocateurs continues, these zombie-goons will have monetary resources to rely upon. In terms of sponsoring terrorism and societal sabotage within the US, there is no longer a need for foreign states such as the late USSR. Such sponsors of chaos have become the mainstream.

An Articulate and Sensitive Look at the Tucson Tragedy

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

Governor Palin expresses the majority view of Americans of all political persuasions in a brief, sensitive, and incisive video address.

This has not been the finest hour for America's journalists, many of whom made total fools and ghouls of themselves by trying to take advantage of several tragic deaths and woundings in Tucson to score political points against their opponents.

These pundits, politicians, and journos must be made to pay a grievous price for their egregious abuse of position and influence. The people are watching, and they are remembering.

Unrest In Europe as Pampered Pets Demand Treats

The people of Europe -- particularly public employees -- are accustomed to being kept by the state -- rather like pampered pets. But times are changing. The population of European taxpayers is shrinking. Crime is rising as third world immigrants with no love for Europe are filling the schools, the birthing wards, and the prisons. For Europeans to riot in response the government austerity measures -- at a time like this -- is like a pampered poodle pooping on the furniture to get its way. Very bad form.

In 35 countries for which data exists, nearly 40 per cent of jobseekers have been without work for more than one year, running risks of demoralisation and mental health problems, and young people were disproportionately hit by unemployment.

It noted that social unrest related to the crisis has been reported in at least 25 countries, including some recovering emerging economies.

This week riot police were on the streets as protesters in Spain, Belgium, Italy and Greece demonstrated against tough austerity measures. _Telegraph

Just wait until half or more of Europe's cities are populated by third world immigrants and their progeny. Europeans will then learn what rioting is all about.

The Fear and Hate that Leftists Feel Toward their Detractors

viaImpactLab
When the left wants to caricature its detractors, it has an entire palette of media colours with which to work. Late night talk and comedy shows are willing to do whatever it takes to ridicule anyone who publicly objects to the mainstream steamroller of expanding central control and dictate.

The rules are different when the left attacks the center or the right. When the left is on the attack, there are no limits, no rules of conduct, nothing beyond the pale -- everything is allowed, including violence and various forms of privacy invasion. The end justifies the means, when you are assured of your own righteous purity in the service of the One Truth.

Understanding the way that a person's brain would have to be wired in order to derive any type of assurance or self-confirmation from viewing the caricatures pictured above will leave an educated observer more than a bit discomfited. It is rather like the way a Palestinian's brain is wired, that leads him to rip an Israeli to bloody pieces with his bare hands. Disturbing.

Humans are naturally violent, so it is necessary for any surviving human populations to possess the capacity for violence -- if only in self-defense. But when latent human violent tendencies are stoked by political opportunists, the problem can become endemic or institutionalised. Such perverted societies can promote war in the name of peace, or genocide in the name of tolerance.

Why the left lends itself to this approach is fairly easy to see. It is desperation and fear of loss of power. Such desperation can be used to excuse virtually anything. And it will be.

LA Teachers Hold Revolutionary Rallies to Inspire Students

H/T News Alert

We knew they had to be teaching something besides traditional instruction in schools -- very few high school graduates are prepared for college. The teaching of revolution is in keeping with the ideals of many curriculum designers at university teachers' colleges -- or schools of "education" as they are called.

Most immigrants from Latin America wanted to escape this type of radical fomenting of violence which they came to know all too well in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico. But the radical pseudo-intellectuals of the dieoff.left never get enough violence or death. It is what they are all about.

Islamic Terrorists at Times Square, Greek Communists Riot, Kill

Although leftists and Islamists are the ones rioting, murdering, and terrorising, you can always count on politicians, academics, celebrities, and the media to keep trying to blame grass roots Tea Party activists for being violent.

[satire]Eric Holder and a gang of Justice thugs worked unsuccessfully on the Times Square terror suspect for 36 hours straight, attempting to get him to renounce Islam and join the American Tea Party movement. The Obama administration is desperate to create an "Oklahoma City bombing" style boost to the president's badly sagging poll numbers. Getting Faisal Shahzad to join the Tea Party would be a huge public relations win for Obama - Pelosi, and it is unlikely that AG Holder will let up on his efforts any time soon. [/satire]



Greek leftist freeloaders are unwilling to live within their means. So they riot and murder to express themselves.

Given the public sector pension disaster developing in the US, we may see union thugs and leftist activists committing the same crimes in American cities soon.

H/T Reversespins

Old Brit Lefties--Where are They Now?

Online Videos by Veoh.com
This is from a BBC look back at the leftist backlash in 1987 against Margaret Thatcher's tough love rescue of Britain's economy.

Hat tip David Thompson via Philosophical Detective.

9-11 Conspiracy Theories--A Haven for the Rabid and the Incompetent

Rosie O'Donnell is not the only nitwit to espouse 9-11 conspiracy theories publicly. In fact, there are apparently more than 800,000 web pages devoted to the deluded imaginings and wishful thinking of the lunatic left mainstream.

Increasingly, such beliefs are migrating from the fringes and into the mainstream. French author Thierry Meyssan’s The Big Lie, which argues that the U.S. military used one of its own guided missiles to attack the Pentagon, was a bestseller in France, and his claims have been widely repeated in European and Middle Eastern media. When Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President George W. Bush in May 2006, his rambling missive included broad hints that the American government was involved in organizing the attacks. Allegations of American complicity in 9/11 have become standard fare on talk radio, and among both radical left- and radical right-wing groups. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia, has held a Capitol Hill hearing on the topic. Celebrities have gotten into the act as well. “Why did Bush knock down the towers?” rapper Jadakiss asked in his 2004 hit “Why?” And, in an interview with conspiracy-oriented talk-show host Alex Jones, actor Charlie Sheen embraced a variety of popular conspiracy theories.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was fond of saying. “He is not entitled to his own facts.” Sooner or later, even the wildest 9/11 theories rely on factual claims. And facts can be checked.

Popular Mechanics became involved in investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories in the fall of 2004, after an advertisement ran in the New York Times for the book Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid, demanding that the 9/11 investigation be reopened. Hufschmid’s book includes a number of tangible claims regarding 9/11. It states, for example, that because jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, the fires in the World Trade Center towers could not have caused their collapse. And it claims ample evidence exists to show that demolition-style explosives were prepositioned in the buildings.

As editors of a magazine devoted to science and technology, we saw these claims as significant. Was there hard evidence to support them? And, if so, what would be the implications for our understanding of 9/11? At the very least, we thought, someone should look into these allegations. If there were even a hint of truth to these or similar claims, then the conspiracy theorists had a point: There should be a deeper investigation.

....The magazine assembled a team of reporters and researchers and methodically began to analyze the most common factual claims made by conspiracy theorists--assertions that are at the root of the majority of 9/11 alternative scenarios. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses, and members of the investigative teams--more than 300 sources in all. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs, and transcripts. The results of our research appeared in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. That cover story, “9/11: Debunking the Myths,” provoked a strong reaction on the internet and in the mainstream media. The online version of the article remains the most frequently read story on www.popularmechanics.com and has been printed out more than 850,000 times.

Source

As someone with limited time to waste, I have not spent very much time looking at theories that were clearly dreamed up by people several cards short of a full deck. Nevertheless, since the leftist mainstream is composed largely of academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates with pathological narcissism, such theories find a ready audience there.

When a person's personal and political ideology is comprised largely of hate and anger, he becomes an easy target for such poorly reasoned treatises which try to deny a worldwide problem of surplus jihad-aged muslim males trained to kill for religion, and lay all the world's problems at the feet of the hated US government.

No wonder Al Gore is doing so well with his little propaganda film. It all fits, if you focus your hatred clearly enough on the chosen scapegoat.

The Angry Left? No, That Would Be Redundant

If using the term, "nappy headed hos" can get a person fired, vilified, demonised, and castrated, imagine the aftermath. Courageous athletes and head coach of an excellent athletic team reduced to wallowing in self-pity. A governor lying in an intensive care unit on a ventilator. A presidential candidate attempting to use the team as a springboard in her presidential ambitions.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton finally dropped by Rutgers to meet with the school's women's basketball coach -- but the players themselves skipped the half-hour meeting, citing their studies and Imus fatigue.

Perhaps they grew tired of wallowing.

Ms. Clinton could have used some more wallowing from the players, particularly since she is vying for the endorsement of Al Sharpton--master wallower--against Barak Obama in the 2008 US presidential election.

And how about the Duke university "gang of 88", and their ho-like refusal to apologize to the Duke players they had libeled, defamed, and attempted to bury. I like to call them monkeys, rather than professors, as their behaviour warrants.

Fortunately for the monkeys of Duke, universities across North America are controlled by the angry left.

Houston Baker, the Duke faculty member who wrote the appalling letter about the alleged rape, got rewarded with a job offer at Vanderbilt where he is now distinguished professor. He has never apologized or retracted his Salem-witch trial like rantings.

Being a member of the angry left, like being an islamist, means never having to say you are sorry.

Why won’t the Duke president or the culpable faculty apologize?

Because deeply entrenched among the Left is a notion of moral justice that transcends the law and is now to be adjudicated by elites versed in race/class/gender theories. In this way of thinking the “rape” is just a matter of semantics, the law an obstruction to the larger question still unresolved: a poor black woman performed sexually for white rich males.

De facto this is an indictment of our entire male-dominated capitalist system that put the poor, the female, the person of color in bondage to the white, male and wealthy.

In that prism, technicalities of law don’t matter and surely don’t address these larger pathologies so endemic in the United States, against which the university nearly alone exists to combat. That the “victim” lied under oath, ruined the reputations of innocents, was on drugs, was engaged in promiscuous sexual activity, and had a criminal record is simply proof of her victim status.

[Leftists] are endlessly tolerant of rude behavior, as long as the ox being gored isn’t one of their own. You see Imus committed the ultimate Liberal sin; he lampooned one of the Liberal media’s “sacred cows.”

Now, was Imus a young, angry, black “artist,” his use of the terms “nappy headed ho’s” and “jiggaboo wannabe’s” his comments most probably have gone unmarked. If he had used similar racially charged language about a white football team, or say a…um…I don’t know…a…white, Southern lacrosse team, for instance, this entire event would not even have warranted a page 7 paragraph in the New York Lies…uh…Times or the Washington Pest…err…Post (sorry, I just keep making that mistake), but Imus is white, male, and he crossed the sacred line. He exercised his Constitutional right to free speech against the wrong group.

The point of this screed is that there is no “reserve of decency” in today’s [Leftist] Paleo-media, there are only sacred cows (or cattle, I’m not sure which).

Source

Leftists are angry, which today is only to say that leftists are leftists. Condemned to ally themselves with islamists in seeking to overthrow western civilisation and its legacy, leftists can only seek to destroy. Expect to see a lot of that.