Come out, Come out, Wherever you are
I had a thirty five year overdue beer with Terry Glavin a couple of nights ago. A good time was had by all as I admire his writing all the way down.
We banged away about old Vancouver socialism, sturgeon, Kevin Annett and the Vancouver Students’ Association but, at one point Glavin asked a rather good question: why are the righty blogs more interesting to read than the liberal or lefty blogs?
I made noises about just how damned intelligent we are – well, actually, no. But I did point out that it was OK for me to disagree with Kate or Kathy or Ezra. They don’t send me Christmas cards in any case so I miss nothing by supporting SSM or what have you. Glavin suggested that orthodoxy seemed to rule on the left. And he is absolutely right.
But, and here’s the rub, we have our own Society for the Supression of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue: The Blogging Tories. Now, mercifully about half the BT blogroll has not posted in the the last year but the BT in chief, Steve Taylor, for whom I have a lot of respect, has been dragging the party line far too long.
Now that Rob Nicolson has let slip the dogs of, well, a Parliamentary Committee, maybe it is time for Steve to grow a spine and start writing about free speech in Canada.
Elephant meet Steve – Steve, the big gray object over, more or less, in the corner is a Free Speech Elephant. Go nuts, tell us what you think of him. It’s safe to come out of the closet now.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Steve is the CP version of Cherniak: a young, not that well rounded fellow intent on landing a Party Job if it kills him. All policy, no ideals or concrete principles. Just another conservative careerist, like so many would be party hacks on the BT roll.
May 31st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
It is now politically correct to join the choir. Sopranos can line up just to the left of center. Those who notice a pair growing can adjust a little to the right.
Emergency exit maps will also be issued for the faint at heart.
.
May 31st, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Orthodoxy does rule the left, but their writing is colorless because that orthodoxy demands lockstep conformity and no diversity of opinion. Certainly no critical thinking towards the orthodoxy’s sacred cows. The other thing that leftist orthodoxy does is dwell on deconstructing…..tearing down traditional convention regardless of proven utility and pointing fingers at ideological evils..creating demons of the orthodoxy’s critics and personally slagging them…it’s a sort of life long sanctimonious witch hunt of sorts.
In aggregate, this makes lefty a humorless Borg-like creature which is a slave to a central dogma that must be spread through conquest, censorship or any other oblique mass conditioning methodology …and lefty’s writing reflects this.
Take the more dawgmatic lefties, their writing mirrors the plodding, stern scolding dogmatism of cold war era Pravda journalism.
Lefty has bored me for years Jay, I never thought much about it because there are better things to dwell on than fossilized rehashed collectivist idealism.
June 1st, 2008 at 2:39 am
Most leftards I’ve met on the internet can’t debate, conversations end by them calling me a racist, bigoted hater. Their blogs aren’t just boring they are profanity laced temper tantrums. The only hate mail I’ve received via Email has come from leftards who are to afraid to debate me on a public internet forum.
Rude, cowards and boring sums up their personalities. Not all are unintelligent but the majority appear to be unintelligent. Alas, their war cry should be “It’s all about ME ME ME ME”. They are obsessed with hate and tolerance, and the result of that obsession is they are as vile as the mission they are on. Hate is an emotion it can’t be controled, tolerance is a two way street but the left refuse to reconized that fact.
June 1st, 2008 at 5:48 am
This might seem ironic because, as we all know, left equals diversity and non-left equals fascist, but IMO the main reason righty blogs are more interesting to read than lefty blogs is simply because of the right’s far greater diversity of individual viewpoints.
The left’s dialogue, by virtue of its inherent push for wealth-transfer rules and agreements, right up to the UN level, is always starting with an inherent, albeit often subducted or unacknowledged, demand that everyone, whether by agreement or force, must be subject to collective principles that will, one way or another, be made manifest through confiscation. The idea is, all must participate, with no exceptions; in effect, the discussion begins with a demand for universal cooperation and heads out straight from there.
In stark comparison, the right is, in the current domestic political sense, a mixed bag whose only overarching point of agreement is that the big-state, one-sized-finger-up-yo’-ass juggernaut of rule-makers who make a living off confiscation are going to have to be a little more sober in their aspirations. That’s really about it; there’s not much agreement beyond that. Variety is really the starting point. In a good day on a bad righty blog you’ll see hardcore so-cons eviscerating profligate libertarians on, say, abortion, but then strongly agreeing on something else; you’ll see an ultra-evangelical having at it with an avowed and insistent atheist on the use of the word “god” in the national anthem, say, but then typing “amen” to something else moments later when the topic changes.
On lefty blogs, it’s pretty much the case that the correct decision on such particular disputes has already been mandated; any disagreements, to the extent they occur, are about policy and implementation and leadership, and on how to ensure that these given positions are mandated by the state as the default ones, etc etc.
June 1st, 2008 at 7:01 am
Not to put too fine a point on it, lefty blogs are simply one long whine fest. Orthodoxy, towing the party line is the necessary rule – they are a mob in the true sense, they know in their hearts their ideas are for the most part bankrupt, they seek solace in numbers, and find it even when the number of True Believers is but a handful.
Case in point.
I saw Dawg mau mau’d off of Rabble because the Babblers said Elizabeth May didn’t want to kill enough unborn children, fast enough. Dawg disagreed and stated he thought May was just as committed to killing babies as they were. Dawg was booted in short order.
As for the Blogging Tories, well I think I have been to the actual site maybe a half dozen times, a few individual bloggers are on my rounds but thats it. I am not nor do I desire to be a policy wonk. Frankly they have marginalized themselves for the most part.
I have never regarded the Blogging Torie association as either an ally or an enemy, they are more a like a Blanc Mange.
June 1st, 2008 at 7:38 am
i remember a tennis playing blanc-mange once on monty python…..it were ‘orrible….i couldn’t stand the sight of egg whites or my very own balls for months….
anyway..seriously….another sign of a lefty i’ve discerned is that the women as the men all have mustaches…vestigial growths of course but still THERE….
June 1st, 2008 at 8:37 am
A good conservative, I think, works hard at not falling into the trap of becoming too pleased with his or her own position. This because he recognizes that his is a necessarily pragmatic burden in a world that is imperfect—but that is not, I hasten to add, for that reason necessarily Evil.
Kevin Grace—a conservative whom I greatly admire, though I often disagree with him—described this to me once as the “tragic view”; David Mamet, in an account of his own recent conversion to conservatism, describes it thus:
“Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read “conservative”), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
“And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
“And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace …”
A far from perfect state of affairs. But the least imperfect.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:59 am
Nah, you are all wrong, well maybe not entirely wrong, well mostly right but . . .:-)
What I find most lacking on lefty blogs is a sense of humour. Sure they play at it sometimes amongst themselves but its usually the humour is of the Jerry Lewis pie in the face variety. I very rarely get a spit out my coffee at the keyboard laugh out of a lefty site.
They really do need to lighten up.
June 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am
Cherniak + Higher Brain Function = Taylor
June 1st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
but seriously….the lefty flaw failing i’ve noticed over the years is their abysmal ignorance of man’s nature…of the fact we are fallen creatures possessed of a terrifying dualism..
ergo par example the blind lockstep behind transparent poseurs such as al gore or fatso moore(but their numbers are legion)...i suppose one could say they’re long on enthusiasm and short on history self awareness and any serious study of Alexander Pope…in a living breathing sense they are the contemporary equivalent of hannah arendt’s observation re the ‘quality’ of evil…..most of the time i quite clearly see and feel them as being not quite fully human.
June 1st, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Part of their problem is that they don’t recognize, at least not consciously, that they aren’t on the cutting intellectual edge anymore and that they’ve become insufferable prudes as a result. A lot of the leftist worldview has been disproven, challenged and/or rejected in the past few decades, which has to be very tough on anyone who thought he was riding the crest of an unstoppable historical wave. The response of many of them has been to replace argument and analysis with ever higher levels of outrage and moral righteousness. They seem to have replaced those huge, boring analytical tomes they used to inflict on us with witty retorts like “You’e a #^*&@ lying, racist homophobic,...(insert your favourite epithet)”. You can see this in the climate change debate or anything to do with the Americans. If you want to tackle those issues on any of their blogs you had better wear padding because you will be received not as someone to be persuaded and converted but as a liar, racist, traitor, science-denier or whatever—effectively sub-human. And their fevered demonizations of Harper are just plain weird. The man isn’t anywhere near that interesting.
Another aspect of this too-desperate moralizing is what Tom Wolfe called rococo Marxism. They’ve all but given up fighting for the New Jerusalem on behalf of the ordinary working stiff, who proved to have the bad taste to move to suburbia and spend too much money at Home Depot. Instead they trawl the streets for new and ever more marginal victims of oppression, past and present, that they can champion and get their knickers in a knot over. I quite like Dr. Dawg and his site, but every time I open it of late there is a new group (Armenians, Gypsies, transexuals. etc.)that I feel I’m expected not only to learn about, but whose angst I’m expected to feel instantly if I had an ounce of humanity. The commenters then spew out bile and hatred of the usual suspects and then presumably go back to walking the dog or whatever. It’s as if they need their daily fix of bitterness and self-disgust. Strange.
But this syndrome isn’t unknown to the right, both libertarian and so-con, some of whom also reduce life to a series of simplistic abstracts and who can become very frustrated and angry when they are challenged. Ideology is great, but it tends to hide the ambiguities, irrationalism and comedy of everyday life. I assume that’s why the decent, muddled Canadian middle likes to keep both sides guessing.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:26 am
I’ve discovered the quintessential lefty blog post! What do I win??
http://centerface.blog-city.com/does_mark_steyn_drunkblog.htm
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 am
I don’t think the left blogs suck because of orthodoxy, not entirely, or a deficit of grey matter – I think they are unreadable because of all the loaded language.
Here’s an example from a Liblog: “[politician X will] Wage a Mike Harris style war against the poor through his promise to balance the budget by cutting spending dramatically”
I would prefer to read: “Politician X promises to cut spending dramatically” and then get the blogger’s analysis, opinion or comments at the end. But having it thrown in your face with every single word, every single sentence, it’s unbearable. It’s worse than church.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:38 am
“Orthodoxy does rule the left”
The quintessential wingnut delusion.
“In aggregate, this makes lefty a humorless Borg-like creature which is a slave to a central dogma that must be spread through conquest, censorship or any other oblique mass conditioning methodology …and lefty’s writing reflects this.”
Have you ever read Sadly,No? Alicublog? If you don’t think lefties are funny, you’re not looking for it.
“Most leftards I’ve met on the internet can’t debate, conversations end by them calling me a racist, bigoted hater.”
Come on down and debate it at the link below. Oh, and you probably are a racist. Prove me wrong. Your first debate challenge.
“but seriously….the lefty flaw failing i’ve noticed over the years is their abysmal ignorance of man’s nature…of the fact we are fallen creatures possessed of a terrifying dualism..”
Sorry, but since you are a dualist, you are trapped by your own thinking. Man’s nature has changed dramatically over the centuries.Consider, for example, the creation of the individual in the Renaissance. No one had ever heard of this concept since the Greco-Roman era. The Renaissance philosophy removed the authority from the church and the feudal lords-and gave it instead to the guild masters and their patrons. This was the first time an individual was free to make his own way. Lutheranism perfected that notion that a man is his work, which is another exampple of a change in human nature. You are still stuck in the Protestant ethic, and look where it’s gotten you-Marx pegged it-you are the babysitters of your toys, and obviously they do not satisfy you either. In this we agree.
Now, I didn’t swear once, I made some points against your points, I debated. I can even be funny, check my site. Sorry about the racist thing, let’s all focus on the dualistic man thing. I like philosphy.
SGT Battista
USA, MC
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
As Margaret Wente said in a recent column, Conservatives are much happier than leftys, and this is reflected in their writing, add to that the paranoid rantings and you have a troubled bunch of people and dawgs.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:37 am
“a deficit of grey matter – I think they are unreadable because of all the loaded language.”
What? Are you saying that wingers don’t use loaded language? George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, etc? Do they not promise an equally diaphanous spectre of a better future?
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 am
I bet Ron is an anti-semite.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Hey, some of my best friends are Jews. Our friendship survived despite our obvious religious differences.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
What’s with the moderation, Jay? Does it get that hot in here? First time Ive ever heard of you…but all I know of your wingnut brethren in Canada is Adam Yoshida, which I suppose even you find ridiculous.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:29 am
“Conservatives are much happier than leftys”
This has been scientifically proven to be incorrect. Think of all the things you fear. That’s what you’re good at, being scared.
Plus, you simply aren’t funny.
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
“Does it get that hot in here?” You sucked up all the oxygen in here. Anyone got a match?
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Ron, no time to come to your blog and debate right now, but just a quick note to say I think this is typical lefty nonsense:
“Consider, for example, the creation of the individual in the Renaissance. No one had ever heard of this concept since the Greco-Roman era.”
What could your possibly mean? What is a concept of an individual? No doubt there are many historical points at which greater individuation is achieved; but individuation has been going on since the very start of mankind; even in the most primitive tribes where the mask or role is more important than the individual performer, there is nonetheless some individuation going on, especially in profane life.
As for Christianity, it takes the idea of the persona – Latin for mask – and founds a new idea of personhood, on the model of Jesus, applicable to profane life. This idea which was developed through the entire history of Christianity. The medieval era is not some intellectual nothing land, except to the lefty who needs a myth of revolution and modernity in order to understand where his ideas come from, and as if Christianity were not the revolutionary source for individuality that it is.
In other words, the key weakness of the lefty mind (a weakness which a few people are presently overcoming) is that he can’t yet explain, anthropologically, where his key human intuitions – the value of equality, and, to a much lesser extent, of individuality – come from. The left invoke “the modern revolution” because they can’t see how the seeds of their intuition were always there from the start of humanity.
Why is primitive man equalitarian, when the animal world is structured by pecking orders? The usually Darwinian leftist has no answer to that; and since he can’t take religion seriously, even as a source of anthropological wisdom, of insight into human origins – the origin of language and religion – he will always struggle to get it.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I rest my case.
-Glavin.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
“What could your possibly mean? What is a concept of an individual?”
I’ll have to refer you to a cultural history book. I can’t really make a dualist understand this. But, thanks for making my point, you seem to agree with my lefty nonsense, so let’s move on.
“As for Christianity, it takes the idea of the persona – Latin for mask – and founds a new idea of personhood, on the model of Jesus, applicable to profane life. This idea which was developed through the entire history of Christianity.”
We agree again, but individuality in early Christinity was controlled by church doctrine. Everyone was on their own vis a vis sin and forgiveness, but later on Lutheranism suggested you don’t need the church to be forgiven. You need to work hard and lead a modest life.
“The medieval era is not some intellectual nothing land, except to the lefty who needs a myth of revolution and modernity in order to understand where his ideas come from, and as if Christianity were not the revolutionary source for individuality that it is.”
Never said it was, so there goes that point. All I was saying is that economically and socially speaking, man identified with his manor and his lord-that was his only claim to individualism. Every man not on the manor was a dangerous stranger.
“In other words, the key weakness of the lefty mind (a weakness which a few people are presently overcoming) is that he can’t yet explain, anthropologically, where his key human intuitions – the value of equality, and, to a much lesser extent, of individuality – come from. The left invoke “the modern revolution” because they can’t see how the seeds of their intuition were always there from the start of humanity.”
Feh. Once again, you know nothing about the lefty mind, the lefty mind you concieve of is a mirage so you can decieve yourself that your mind is superior; it is not. You guys are so backwards thinking it’s unreal. You have been wrong about everything for the last eight years, what does that say about your “mind”?
“Why is primitive man equalitarian, when the animal world is structured by pecking orders? The usually Darwinian leftist has no answer to that; and since he can’t take religion seriously, even as a source of anthropological wisdom, of insight into human origins – the origin of language and religion – he will always struggle to get it.”
I don’t know. You are simply wrong about equalitarianism in mankind. Pecking orders are the norm for every society. I take religion very seriously; it is enshrined in the Constitution and I make no bones about the fact that is has been man’s greates source of identity. But we are overcoming these institutions. At least, as you said, some of us are.
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Ron…you’re boring me.
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 am
Hey, I’m just working with what I’m given. Go play with yourself if you don’t understand what the grownups are talking about.