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More circle dancing — 16 Comments

  1. This is an unfortunate tactic that the Left learned from Communism, which is very strict about party (or just ideological) discipline and uses bullying, personal attacks, and excommunication as tactics.

  2. At 11:45 AM, August 12, 2005, David Thomson said…
    …the Left is convinced that terrorism is merely the logical blow back of our allegedly imperialistic policies. …the Leftists are highly influenced by Marxism….

    Actually, Marx never made a big deal out of imperialism… if anything he though it was good because it would industrialize the less developed areas of the world. Hitler bitched about it a lot, but it called it interference from the ‘plutocracies’ (allegedly with Germany via some kind of Jewish / Capitalist / Anglo conspiracy)…

    It didn’t become a leftie issue until the 50s and 60s. By then, it was obvious the plight of the proletariat was getting better (re: they wouldn’t not rise up and fight for them) and they needed new issues to be outraged about…

    Its fun reading about lefty progressive history… real eye opener…

  3. It was funny to turn to your blog today — which I did to pick up a link to your blog for a post I was doing — and to discover that you were posting along parallel lines to mine. My post, which is here, examines the idea that deep biases prevent the Left from being able to review and analyze any facts that are contrary to their dogma. I also posit that those who have made the journey from liberal to conservative have had some epiphany that’s enabled them to step back from their biases — and I mentioned your “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change” series in connection with my post.

  4. knoxgirl–I hated linking to Wolcott at all and giving him any hits. I didn’t explore his page too much when I got there myself, but I’m not surprised that it would contain the sort of stuff you describe.

    Another theory I’m floating (and this is a complete guess, since I don’t know much about the guy) is that his attacks on bloggers come from the fact that he sees them as a threat to his own livelihood– amateurs trying to usurp the pro.

  5. Nick Cohen is the latest apostate. Our ranks are growing!

    Kundera also talked about the lure of the grand march of history

    Some of the leftists still need that fix of euphoria that comes from “national liberation” movements, bright flags, camaradery. Seductive…for a time.

  6. “..having the notion that terrorism is really in response to capitalism, oil and pax americanaism…”

    Deep in their guts, if not even consciously, the Left is convinced that terrorism is merely the logical blow back of our allegedly imperialistic policies. The terrorists are victims of capitalist exploitation. It is therefore foolish to fight these murderers when we should instead remove our foot off their necks. In other words, the Leftists are highly influenced by Marxism. Unfortunately, one is charged with McCarthism when pointing this out.

  7. Here’s the first couple definitions of liberal according to dictionary.com

    * Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
    * Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

    I live in San Francisco and my journey since 9-11 has been similar to neo-neocon’s and probably many others reading here. I still consider myself a liberal and by these definitions I qualify.

    But the US seems to have gone through the looking glass somewhere in the last decade or so, and the word liberal has been appropriated to mean identification with a very particular, dogmatic, and intolerant political viewpoint.

  8. Totten’s post had a link to Wolcott’s blog. I poked around and did some reading… and I truly can’t believe how lame Wolcott’s rantings are. This guy is a paid writer for a major magazine??

    I didn’t expect to agree with the guy, but I certainly didn’t expect there to be strings of vitriol against people like Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon. I mean, these guys aren’t exactly Rush Limbaugh… Wolcott has the sort of rage toward them you expect to see directed only toward people like, well, the 9/11 hijackers, for example.

    Further sad proof, I guess, that there really is no room for diversity of opinion among the left anymore.

  9. Left?Liberal rage at apostates? No way! Seriously it can be vitriolic when a person dares go against the party line ! As an old Leftist I know first hand that this happens a lot.

  10. My friend Susan is into square dancing, and my sister Debbie likes line dancing.

    As for myself, I can do a fairly impressive Limbo…not to be confused with Limbaugh.

  11. I’ve had Wolcott on my blogroll for ages, but have just decided it’s not worth bothering any more. He’s an interesting source for Manhattan coterie gossip. The rest is just full of bile.

  12. It’s really the age-old problem that arises when someone is so blinded by their ideology, that all manner of reason and civility are cast aside. In other words, it’s groupthink run amok. You see, for a ideologue like Wolcott, anyone who differs from the Party line is no longer fit for the kingdom. Liberal hawks must know what this is like, having been forced to prove our liberal credentials to the inflexible “true believers.”

    The intellectual disease infects all ideologies, including liberal ones. For men like Wolcott, and the antiwar Leftists who agree with him, we’ve all lost our minds, and have been seduced by the sweet-talk of the “neo-cons.”

    Of course, we know this is absurd (unless you really have been seduced by the neo-cons). The fact is, they say we’ve abandoned the Left, when in actaulity, they’ve abandoned their OWN principles.

    Last I checked, liberalism and liberation were like brothers.

  13. They do appear to be lashing out in frustration and fear. 9/11 put a big crack in the liberal ideology of extending the principles of good faith, benevolence and fair play to 3rd worlders, having the notion that terrorism is really in response to capitalism, oil and pax americanaism, primarily a 3rd world response. Reason, logic, empathy, understanding, generosity, guilt alleviance, all combined can overcome social ills you know. The wealth and religion of bin laden and relative middle class standards of many of the 9/11 terrorists hit them hard. Their education and stark raving commitment to jihadism startled them. They still can’t fully accept that it’s mostly about religion. The bona fide and unquestioned existance of al qaidah training camps startled them again, followed by a rash of bombings, particular the Bali night club slaughter and the unheard of malaysian/philippino connections. Then the UN headquarters and the Red Cross headquarters in Iraq got blown up, bastions of what liberalism essentially stands for, the beheadings started, then came the London attacks, which really opened up the crack in their ideology, given the nature of British liberalism and cultural pluralism. Defections can’t be tolerated – the covered wagons are circled but some of the wagons are peeling off, knowing there is no hope in staying surrounded.

  14. I think it’s probably widely agreed that the accusation of “racist” is a manipulative scam.
    “Do what I tell you or I’ll accuse you of racism.”

    The giving or revoking of “liberal” seems, instead, to have genuine mana to liberals. They actually BELIEVE, which it is pretty clear they don’t when slamming accusations of racism or homophobia or whatever.

    Very strange.

  15. In more ways than one Wolcott lives a barren life. Barren people always seem to tend towards the mean and bitter.

  16. Good post, as usual, neo. I think this left-liberal rage at apostates is a real social/political phenomenon, and is a vivid indication of a belief system that sees itself as threatened or endangered. Here’s another blog post along similar lines (also picked up by Michael Totten, interestingly), the comments to which provide more evidence of the phenomenon.

    In particular, in these pieces and elsewhere, you can see an extreme sensitivity to the supposedly magical properties of a political label, as though threatening to attach the “wrong” — i.e., conservative — label just by itself should be enough to spook any sliders or free-thinkers. Here’s what I wrote in the comments on this (sorry for self-quoting):

    People on the left seem to spend a lot of time obsessing over labels — who’s “lurched rightward”, who’s “DLC”, who’s “hard left”, “rightwing”, “neoconservative”, etc. — and not so much actually thinking about, and making, an argument. It’s as though they think assigning a label just IS an argument. But it isn’t. I understand, of course, that such labels provide a kind of context and shorthand for a beleaguered community, but they also tend to short out thought. Those worried, consciously or subliminally, about excommunication from the community will need to worry about the label-slinging, it’s true. But those more concerned about being “reality-based” will follow their thought where it leads and let the labels fall where they may.

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