[AntiTrace]

I've never followed politics, for many many reasons. However I've gotten interested in politics lately. Maybe I'm getting old and actually care about what happens in the world besides me, I don't know exactly what sparked my interest.

However when I browse Facebook or the comments on popular news articles, I can't help but question what makes a person throw all logic to the side and appeal to the emotional side that liberals seem to celebrate.

The vast majority of liberals seem so far out of touch with what is actually going on around them that is actually scares me. I've always prided myself with being able to look at both sides of an argument to come to a reasonable solution. However when it comes to major campaign topics the liberals push, I can't stop myself from doing the face palm and wondering what goes on in their brains. I try to look objectively and consider their arguments, but I can't see to understand why liberals are so...liberal. It seems to completely contradict all logic. They cite biased statistics in order to make themselves feel morally superior.

For example, one female was spewing at the mouth statistics about the relationship between drug use and unemployment. She claimed and "cited" some study that only 1% of unemployed persons were drug users. I questioned her on that, and she retorted with an aire of superiority that I should just "Google it". I responded that I don't need to google it, I can just walk down the alleys downtown instead.

Maybe this should go in the deep forum, because I would like contrasting unbiased opinions. I just can't seem to find that level of conversation with the typical liberal.

[R_Niko]

Here's why...

Liberal in the context most people use it means supporter of the welfare state. Women, given a political voice, will vote for maximum social benefits and minimal personal responsibility.

Liberals pander to women because they are the ideal voting block.

Women are out of touch with reality, therefore liberal politics or ideology is catered to an audience that is out of touch with reality.

[CynicalContrarian]

Some are self loathing & then identify with the 'oppressed'.
For some it's the retarded notion of white guilt.
For some it's envy. Easier to hate the proverbial 1%, then actually get off one's arse & achieve something.
Some are mere children in the guise of an adult & they actually need the overbearing reach of a nanny state in order to function.
Then some are just proverbial lemmings following the Pied Pipers tune off the cliff.

[Foolsgo1d]

They believe in the Hollywood version of a world rather than what it actually is.

[Eskhander]

Are you familiar with the acronym WEIRD? http://www.acronymfinder.com/Western,-Ed...EIRD).html

Most people are not like this and Liberals are extra like this. And highly individualistic (except for making money apparently). As such they don't see trends in people (unless they dislike them of course, then they are stupid and evil) hence their use of the Not All [X] Are Like That argument.

There's also Pathological Altruism to consider but I don't know enough about it.

[Anabasis to Desta]

Lately I've come to the conclusion that extreme liberalism is less of an ideology and more of a character flaw.

When i hear a liberal spewing nonsense the likes of which the OP mentioned i immediately dub them as brainless conformists. They are liberals of convenience.

Liberalism is cool and trendy nowadays. These same people might have as easily been hardcore conservatives, communists, Salafist Muslims or loyal peasants of absolute monarchs depending on what time and place they were born in.

If Mormons took over the government, school system and media & made Christianity cool again ... i guarantee the most self righteous, in your face SJW bitch with purple hair will turn into a respectful housewife committed to family values. Their views are not based upon principles but rather gravitate towards wherever the popular wind blows.

One might argue they are the realistic/practical ones in aligning themselves with the winning side as opposed to your typical cantankerous Tea Party enthusiasts fighting an increasingly uphill battle.

[Mr Finish]

This progressive movement really started gaining steam under Obama. He's championed a new sort of radical liberalism, and began dividing the country more than ever before. I have to go to great lengths in my college courses to endure through the garbage I hear. It's all emotion, reason be damned. We're in a day and age where gender is a "social construct" and every one gets a trophy, the would be dregs of society see that they now have a platform, power. A man is one comment away from being a misogynist or a racist. The media doesn't offer any other view than ultra liberalism, so everyone watching MSNBC and the like take it for granted.

[cowboy]

Liberals are liberal because they come from protected, sheltered western countries. They have been protected their entire lives by people they hate (mainly military and law enforcement who are mostly conservative). They have never really feared for their lives or gone to sleep hungry. How many bleeding heart liberals do you see in Liberia or the Ivory Coast? People in those countries are in touch with reality which is basically hustling in order to obtain food, shelter, etc. If Western Europe, the United States, or Australia were to collapse you would see liberal ideologies die very quickly.

[Belgrano]

Liberalism is an ideology.
Ideology is religion without god.
It is thus based on belief only.

Treat it like a religion and everything will start to make sense.

[The Truth]

It's just the result of the excess of conveniences that we take for granted in the modern world. I've read through a lot of history books and I'm convinced that it's all just a never ending cycle. Liberalism begins during times of great prosperity and conservatism during times of turmoil and conflicts. I also believe in Murphy's Law, that anything that can go wrong, will. Even though modern liberalism is on the rise today and seems to be encompassing the country at a ridiculous pace, the system, just like ones before it, is bound to fail. Whether that day comes in the next 10, 50, or 100 years I don't know but all I know is that it will, and the ones who will be best prepared to deal with the change are people like us who can actually think for themselves.

[rpg]

The increase in liberalism goes along with the feminization of the west.
Watch the movie Charlotte's Web. The whole movie is about saving a dumb pig from becoming bacon. Liberalism fights against the greater good. It appeals to the current emotional warm feeling while throwing civilization off the cliff. It is the equivalent of the sleepy soldier who would rather grab some shut eye while the enemy is sneaking into camp under cover of darkeness. It is compouded in the US by subversive groups actively trying to topple the west out of envy.

[nomadbrah]

It's mostly a case of narcisistic personality disorder at subclinical levels:

"Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism."

[Libertas]

(11-28-2015 09:29 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Lately I've come to the conclusion that extreme liberalism is less of an ideology and more of a character flaw.

You're too kind.

It's a mental illness, and past age 30-35, I think there's only one cure.

(11-28-2015 09:55 PM)Celtic_Austrian Wrote:  

Liberalism is an ideology.
Ideology is religion without god.
It is thus based on belief only.

Treat it like a religion and everything will start to make sense.

It comes out of religion as well.

Wait until my project on the history of this thinking comes out to see, though I'm hinting at some of it in an upcoming ROK article.

[R_Niko]

(11-28-2015 10:21 PM)Libertas Wrote:  

(11-28-2015 09:29 PM)Anabasis to Desta Wrote:  

Lately I've come to the conclusion that extreme liberalism is less of an ideology and more of a character flaw.

You're too kind.

It's a mental illness, and past age 30-35, I think there's only one cure.

(11-28-2015 09:55 PM)Celtic_Austrian Wrote:  

Liberalism is an ideology.
Ideology is religion without god.
It is thus based on belief only.

Treat it like a religion and everything will start to make sense.

It comes out of religion as well.

Wait until my project on the history of this thinking comes out to see, though I'm hinting at some of it in an upcoming ROK article.

If you want to get into semantics, I'd say religion and politics are both examples of ideology, ie value systems cooked up with the aim of controlling populations.

Ideology is the opposite of philosophy. What to think, as opposed to how to think.

[Yagibozan]

It all comes down to money. To really grasp how fiscal policy work, one needs to be involved with it somehow. That means paying taxes.

Let's see how the taxpaying demographic looks at the issue:

[Sherman]

Excessive wealth seems to be a pre-condition for liberalism. Both the US and Europe are extremely wealthy compared to the rest of the world. When you have large numbers of people who are comfortable and never have had the experience of having to protect themselves from predators or find food, it disconnects them from reality in a fundamental way. A deer raised by humans to not have fear and then walks up to a lion was a liberal deer. My parents grew up during the depression and couldn't even begin to understand liberals and only saw them as whiners.

[Paracelsus]

(11-28-2015 11:10 PM)Sherman Wrote:  

Excessive wealth seems to be a pre-condition for liberalism. Both the US and Europe are extremely wealthy compared to the rest of the world. When you have large numbers of people who are comfortable and never have had the experience of having to protect themselves from predators or find food, it disconnects them from reality in a fundamental way. A deer raised by humans to not have fear and then walks up to a lion was a liberal deer. My parents grew up during the depression and couldn't even begin to understand liberals and only saw them as whiners.

I read something the other day that characterised one of the big differences between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers that followed them: the Greatest believed in the idea of earned happiness, while all the generations afterward have believed in happiness as something they could -- must -- have right here, right now.

There's an old LP record I used to listen to -- called "Just in case you think you're normal", by a Dr. Murray Banks, a 1950s psychiatrist/psychologist. I have not listened to that record for decades, but there is one phrase that still rings down the years to me, clear as crystal, from that concert: "Happiness is making the best of what you've got." I think it demonstrates the conservative thinking around at the time, the last vestiges of Greatest Generation popular thought about how happiness is achieved.

[mikeymike]

extremists on either side are out of touch with reality. I have as little in common with the sjw flying to every new cause and trying to feel self important by posting on facebook about it as I do the whackjobs who think every single liberal thought will lead us down the path of pedophilia running rampant.

[Collide]

I would say a good deal of Liberal lunacy stems from a denial of human nature. Liberals don't really believe humans have instinctive behaviors, rather everything is learned via culture. It's an appealing thought because one could theoretically design any utopia they'd like by shaping social institutions. But since it's completely false, it leads to massive cognitive dissonance. This explains why:

Everything is a social construct: Gender? It's whatever you want it to be because hormones and different wirings inside the brain have no influence on behavior. Sex? Males and females evolved exactly the same way throughout human history and natural selection did not really "select" for anything different between the sexes. Any disparities in interest/talent/temperament between the sexes is due to socialization.

Liberals must be cultural authoritarians: If everything is learned, it's the duty of liberals to make sure everything problematic is subsequently unlearned. Any movie depicting rape should be removed in case somebody decides to go raping as a result of watching the film. If Hollywood does not cast enough minorities, movie watchers will become racists. Showing men in positions of power in film will create a society in which men stay in positions of power. The only way to have an equal society is to create media in which no stereotypes exist.

Leniency on criminals: Individuals can't differ instinctively in aggression so criminals are therefore victims of social circumstance. The media, the parents and the culture at large all influenced this criminal behavior. Instead of keeping them in prison, we need to release them early, sending them to rehabilitation centers; that way they can unlearn their criminal behavior.

Rape: Men cannot have an instinct to rape because that would mean rape is natural and as we all know everything natural is good. Rape is not about sex, it's about power. Never mind the fact that coerced copulation is widespread amongst the animal kingdom; they learned it. The fact that victims of rape happen to be women in their peak reproductive years is just a coincidence. Through rape culture, young men have been "socialized" to rape (and they mysteriously lose that socialization in later years as sex drive diminishes).

I could go on but those four came to mind immediately.

[R_Niko]

(11-28-2015 11:41 PM)mikeymike Wrote:  

extremists on either side are out of touch with reality. I have as little in common with the sjw flying to every new cause and trying to feel self important by posting on facebook about it as I do the whackjobs who think every single liberal thought will lead us down the path of pedophilia running rampant.

Well there is this:

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/21/im_a_ped...a_monster/

[philosophical_recovery]

Quote:

I don’t think protected progressives are afraid of violence all the time and I don’t think they realize how vulnerable they look to the rest of us. They are the pinkest, plushiest, softest of targets but they don’t think about threats because they don’t think it’s their job to deal with threats.

And they won’t, until the lights go out. When the lights go out, they’ll realize how vulnerable and helpless they’ve been their whole lives. They’ll see what we saw the whole time.

This may be why they seem to be so profoundly traumatized by violence when it happens, and so “triggered” by references to violence afterward. If you’re expecting violence and someone gets the best of you, you’re going to be angry about it, but you have a way to process it. It makes sense. If you’ve always assumed that violence happens to other people, and then it happens to you…it’s going to turn your whole world upside down.

Masculine men are, by their very nature, afraid of being afraid. Or perhaps more accurately, men are naturally afraid of being seen as being afraid. Looking scared means losing the circular stare-down that precedes violence. Vulnerability invites violence. It makes it look easy. This is a rational fear. It can collapse into irrational paranoia, sure, but unless you are trying to blend into a crowd, why wouldn’t you want to look like a hard target in a flock of fleeced pajama boys?

Excerpt from
http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2015/11...e-is-fear/
But be also reads it from his podcast.

[R_Niko]

(11-28-2015 11:44 PM)Collide Wrote:  

I would say a good deal of Liberal lunacy stems from a denial of human nature. Liberals don't really believe humans have instinctive behaviors, rather everything is learned via culture. It's an appealing thought because one could theoretically design any utopia they'd like by shaping social institutions. But since it's completely false, it leads to massive cognitive dissonance. This explains why:

Everything is a social construct: Gender? It's whatever you want it to be because hormones and different wirings inside the brain have no influence on behavior. Sex? Males and females evolved exactly the same way throughout human history and natural selection did not really "select" for anything different between the sexes. Any disparities in interest/talent/temperament between the sexes is due to socialization.

Liberals must be cultural authoritarians: If everything is learned, it's the duty of liberals to make sure everything problematic is subsequently unlearned. Any movie depicting rape should be removed in case somebody decides to go raping as a result of watching the film. If Hollywood does not cast enough minorities, movie watchers will become racists. Showing men in positions of power in film will create a society in which men stay in positions of power. The only way to have an equal society is to create media in which no stereotypes exist.

Leniency on criminals: Individuals can't differ instinctively in aggression so criminals are therefore victims of social circumstance. The media, the parents and the culture at large all influenced this criminal behavior. Instead of keeping them in prison, we need to release them early, sending them to rehabilitation centers; that way they can unlearn their criminal behavior.

Rape: Men cannot have an instinct to rape because that would mean rape is natural and as we all know everything natural is good. Rape is not about sex, it's about power. Never mind the fact that coerced copulation is widespread amongst the animal kingdom; they learned it. The fact that victims of rape happen to be women in their peak reproductive years is just a coincidence. Through rape culture, young men have been "socialized" to rape (and they mysteriously lose that socialization in later years as sex drive diminishes).

I could go on but those four came to mind immediately.

Awesome. But where does that denial of human nature come from, what is its impetus? It had to start somewhere.

I'd label the denial of human nature as tantamount to political correctness, essentially one and the same. Capitalism started with people wanting to extract maximum economic value out of their labour and natural resources. What birthed political correctness?

[Eskhander]

Yes but why is this the religion? Why these ideas? Telling you, WEIRD psychology.

[Collide]

(11-28-2015 11:49 PM)R_Niko Wrote:  

Awesome. But where does that denial of human nature come from, what is its impetus? It had to start somewhere.

This denial is cyclical so every century you had intellectuals that would falsely assume the mind is a blank slate for various reasons. Prior to the twentieth century it probably arose due to a lack of available evidence at the time. If all you have is a theory, you're going to construct a theory that sounds the most appealing.

In the twentieth century the theory was revived by the Frankfurt School to further promote Marxism and Communism. If all individuals are equal and the mind is clean and ready for programming, that makes a greater case for collectivism over individualism. The reason why communism failed every time it has been tried is mainly due to the reality that humans are not as malleable as an authoritarian dictator would like. As E.O. Wilson brilliantly described Communism, "Wonderful theory. Wrong species."

[Eskhander]

(11-29-2015 01:01 AM)Collide Wrote:  

(11-28-2015 11:49 PM)R_Niko Wrote:  

Awesome. But where does that denial of human nature come from, what is its impetus? It had to start somewhere.

This denial is cyclical so every century you had intellectuals that would falsely assume the mind is a blank slate for various reasons. Prior to the twentieth century it probably arose due to a lack of available evidence at the time. If all you have is a theory, you're going to construct a theory that sounds the most appealing.

In the twentieth century the theory was revived by the Frankfurt School to further promote Marxism and Communism. If all individuals are equal and the mind is clean and ready for programming, that makes a greater case for collectivism over individualism. The reason why communism failed every time it has been tried is mainly due to the reality that humans are not as malleable as an authoritarian dictator would like. As E.O. Wilson brilliantly described Communism, "Wonderful theory. Wrong species."

All in western countries too. Because that reasoning really doesn't fly elsewhere to my knowledge. Still WEIRD.