Tuesday, May 19, 2009

More on Liberals Vs. Conservatives

I meant to publish that Adams piece yesterday by the way.

Anyway today's analysis of Liberals comes from John Hawkins who is somewhat less nuanced than Adams.
Liberals love to think of themselves as sophisticated, nuanced intellectuals, but the truth is they have a kindergartner’s view of the world. If it has been defined as "nice" to people they like, they're for it. If it has been defined as "mean" to people they like, they’re against it -- and that is about as deep as it gets.
Hilarious. Untrue, but hilarious.

I will note that he echoes Adams from yesterday on one point.
There is no dream more eternal in the liberal heart than completely remaking human nature. If we could all just care about the person across the world as much as we do our families, we could live in a utopia! Unfortunately, in practice, human nature tends to be quite a bit more difficult to subvert than in the liberal imagination. That's why, despite more than 5,000 years of human civilization, very little progress has been made in this area – but, oh, the Left is still trying.
I like the phrase remaking human nature - it kind of puts a creepy mind control spin on the idea people react to their environments. If people live in a crummy environment that they see little hope of getting out of, they will turn to almost anything that promises a way out or at least some dignity. If we can make people's environments less miserable and hopeless, the Osama Bin Ladin's of the world will not be quite so persuasive.

But wait, it turns out that thanks to conservatisms more accurate view of human nature, terrorists would be come terrorists no matter what, because they are just evil inside. So trying to make the world less crummy is a waste of time. Yeah, that's the more adult way of looking at things.

2 comments:

Random Goblin said...

I do think that the political left is based on the essentially utopian idea that human society is perfectible through human effort.

Bryant said...

Well that's true - but there's nothing essentially wrong with that. Baring a theocracy, human effort is what we have to work with.

I think a distinction might be made between improvable and perfectible. Some Liberals and Leftists presumably do believe it is perfectible (Marxists for example), but most liberals would settle for it improving. But Conservatives are not sure even that is possible.