In case you missed it: Our Intellectual Overlords, Part I Part I looked at the payoff for being on the left: with some rote memorization of leftist dogma, you get to be an intellectual overlord: superior to, and lording over, the rest of us.
Today's Part II examines the rationales behind much leftist dogma. I turn Part II over to Evan Sayet: former liberal; and former writer for Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect show on HBO - back in it's original days, when Maher's show was still funny, before it degenerated into bitterness. Mr. Sayet speaks, with charisma and humor and insight, in this videotaped speech from the Heritage Club: link.
The speech is entertaining, yet long(about 35 minutes). I can read faster than I can listen. I can understand better when I write things out. So, I took notes of the speech, and, for my sake as well as yours, I present a synopsis of Mr. Sayet's speech below. I invite you to listen, or read, and to enjoy a real political discussion - of the type which rarely happens anymore. Enjoy an opportunity to think.
Notes of Evan Sayet's speech before the Heritage Club:
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Growing up I knew one thing: Dems are good and Repubs are evil.
I tell this story - its not true, but it shows what happened to me - about an old friend:
He constantly complains about his wife, and you smile and think: he doesn't really hate his wife. Then one day, his wife is getting beaten up. You jump up: "Lets go save her!" He says: "Nah. I'm sure she deserves it", and you realize: he really does hate his wife.
That's what happened to me on 9/11. My friends complained for years about our nation, and I thought: they don't really hate America. Then 9/11 happened, and I jumped up: "America's in trouble, lets go help her!" My friends said: "Nah, I'm sure she deserves it.", and I realized liberals really do hate America. I started a quest to understand the mindset. How could this be?
I discovered that Democrats are wrong on every issue - as wrong as wrong can be.
It's not an accident they are wrong. It's part of a philosophy which invariably results in siding with:
- evil over good,
- wrong over right,
- and the behaviors that lead to failure over the behaviors that lead to success
Liberals side with evil. Are they evil? No.
Are they stupid? No. Besides, if it was just stupidity, they'd be right more often. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Whats their plan? How do liberals think they are making a better world?
I discovered the modern liberal looks back on thousands of years of human civilization, and knows only one thing for sure:
None of the ideas mankind has come up with, none of the:
- religions
- philosophies,
- ideologies
- forms of government,
none have succeeded in creating a world devoid of
- war
- poverty
- crime
- and injustice.
Liberals are convinced that since all of these ideas of man have proven to be wrong, the real cause of war, poverty, crime, and injustice can only be found in the attempt to be right.
Their thinking is this:
- If nobody ever thought to be right, what would we disagree about?
- If we didn't disagree, surely we wouldn't fight.
- Without fighting there would be no war.
- Without war there would be no poverty.
- Without poverty there would be no crime.
- Without crime there would be no injustice.
Its a Utopian vision.
All that's required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all
- fact
- reason
- evidence
- logic
- truth
- morality
- and decency
These are all the tools you and I use in our attempts to be better people, and to make the world more right, by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving towards it.
When this first started to dawn on me, I would take my liberal friends out and question them...
What you have is people who think the best way to eliminate rational thought, and the best way to eliminate the attempt to be right, is to work always to prove that right isn't right, and to prove that wrong isn't wrong.
They want to bring about a philosophy like John Lennon's song:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
While trying to attain that goal, everything they do - all media, etc - has one criteria/result:
- Does it tear down what is good, and elevate what you and I would say is evil?
- Does it tear down what is right, and elevate what you and I would say is wrong?
- Does it tear down the behaviors that lead to success, and elevate what you and I would say are the behaviors that lead to failure?
Their goal is to tear down everything, until there is nothing left to believe in. There is no liberal standard for truth, beauty, and justice.
Abu ghraib: 44 days on front page of NYTimes: Why? It met one criteria: you think America is good? We found something to show you America is not that good.
Koran's being flushed at Guantanamo? It meets no journalistic standard, and it's an impossible story. No one can flush a book down a toilet. Why did Newsweek run a bogus, illogical story? Because nothing mattered to Newsweek, except that the story attacked America.
There is no artistic standard, or aesthetic criteria, by which a jar of urine with a cross in it is beautiful. No one says: "lets take down the Monet and put up the jar of urine." But it met the one and only standard of art that exists for the modern liberal [tear down what our society values].
Not everyone who voted for Kerry is aware of the leftist blueprint to eliminate anything worth standing up for. The elitists have succeeded in indoctrinating our children into a cult of indiscriminateness. They do this by teaching our children that rational and moral thought is an act of bigotry, and
- that no matter how sincerely you may seek to gather the facts,
- that no matter how earnestly you may look at the evidence,
- that no matter how disciplined you may try to be in your reasoning,
your conclusion is going to be so tainted by
- your personal bigotries
- and your upbringing
- and your religion
- and the color of your skin
- and by the nation of your great great grandparents birth,
that no matter what your conclusion, it is useless. Your conclusion is nothing other than a reflection of your bigotries.
Therefore, for elite leftists, the only way to eliminate bigotry is to eliminate rational thought.
My thinking is greatly influenced by a book Allen Bloom wrote in 1987: "The Closing of the American Mind."
Bloom asked himself: why were his university students suddenly so stupid? He finally realized they had been raised to believe indiscriminateness is a moral imperative, because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. In order to eliminate discrimination the modern liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.
For example, in airports, we intentionally pretend we don't know some things we do know.
The problem is that the ability to discriminate is the essence of rational thought. So, quite literally, we are dealing with a whole of Western Europe and today's Democratic Party being dominated by this philosophy that rejects rational thought as a hate crime.
So what you're left with, after 10 - 15 - 20 years in the indoctrination centers that our schools have become, are citizens of voting age who, on the one hand, are utterly unwilling and incapable of critically judging the merits of the positions they hold, and have held, unquestioned, since they were 5 years old.
Its not that liberals are unaware of all the adult things we are aware of. It is that they need to reject them in order to remain in their utopia, which they are told is the only hope for mankind: mindless indiscriminateness.
You are left with adults of voting age who not only cannot judge their own positions, but are virulently antagonistic to any position other than their own. Why? When you are brought up to believe indiscriminateness is a moral imperative, any position other than your own must've employed discrimination in it's formulation. Any form of discrimination is "Discrimination = Bad!" They know theirs is a position arrived at through the moral imperative of indiscriminateness, therefore any position other than their own must've been arrived at through the employment of discrimination - which makes you not just wrong, on your issues and your stances, but, more importantly: bigoted.
They don't even think about your issues and your stances. They don't have to. Even if they were willing to, even if they were able to, they don't need to. Would you sit and contemplate Hitler's Social Security policy? No. You would fight Hitler.
What you're left with, coming out of the schools, is people who quite literally cannot differentiate between
- good and evil,
- right and wrong,
- better and worse.
Here's a key: Indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. Indiscriminateness of thought invariably leads the modern liberal to side with
- evil over good,
- wrong over right,
- and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.
Why? Because in a world where no behavior is to be deemed better than any other, then your expectation is that all behavior should lead to equally good outcomes.
You and I know different behaviors lead to different outcomes, because we think. But to the modern liberal, who cannot make that judgment, must not make that judgment - because that would be discriminating, they have no explanation.
So the only explanation for success has to be that somehow success has cheated. Success, simply by its existence, is proof positive to the modern liberal of some kind of chicanery and likely bigotry.
Failure, simply by its existence, is proof to them of victimization.
The same is true for good and evil. Since nothing can be deemed good, and nothing can be deemed evil, that which society does recognize as good must be the beneficiary of some sort of prejudice. That which society recognizes as evil must be the victim of that prejudice.
Many rank and file Democrats embrace their victimhood. They mindlessly accept whatever policy tears down good things:
- America
- Israel
- Walmart.
They will elevate what is evil, until everything meets in the middle, and there is nothing left to fight about [like John Lennon's song].
Once you belong to this cult of indiscriminateness, there is no other conclusion you can come to other than that good is evil, and that evil is the victim of good.
If there is no objective difference between the terrorist and the freedom fighter, then why teach George Washington is a hero, and Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein are villains? You and I know why, b/c we think. Washington risked his personal fortune to lead his troops into battle, against uniformed forces, in a noble cause. Yasser Arafat stole his people's money and sent 14 year olds into battle in order to prop up his corrupt dictatorship. Pretty villainous stuff. We can see that. But to the folks at the NYTimes, who have established as official policy that there is no objective difference between the terrorist and the freedom fighter, "why do we teach our children that George Washington is a hero?" They've no idea. Their only possible explanation is b/c George Washington was a white Christian of European descent. If there is no difference in the behavior of the terrorists, why do we teach that Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein are villains? There can be no reason other than they are darker skinned Muslims of Middle Eastern birth.
Once you subscribe to indiscriminateness, anything other than indiscriminateness is the evil of having discriminated.
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