100 monkeys typing.

My Dogma Wants to Bite You

Part VI in the Series: Dennis Prager is Holier than Thou, we're subjected to alternating finger waggling and halo polishing as Dennis explains the war between "values" and "lefties"

He starts us off with a wee history lesson...

With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. Instead of being guided by God, the Bible and religion, great numbers -- in Western Europe, the great majority -- have looked elsewhere for moral and social guidelines.

He goes on to explain that the elsewhere is Communism and Nazism... and for the rest of us degenerates, it's feelings.

In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions.

Quite right Dennis, feelings. I feel that the theocratic nation concept you so aggressively masturbate to would be oppressive. I feel that preying on the weak is wrong, building up the rich on the backs of the poor is reprehensible, that not nuturing the planet we all inhabit is criminal. I feel your piety is insincere and manufactured.

more after the jump.

Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that "War is not the answer"? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war -- from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.

How is it morally ignorant if you have no idea what the question was? Not every great evil has been "solved" by war. Some wars actually are just. WWII, for the US, war wasn't the answer until we were pulled into it. Knowledge of the atrocities suffered by European Jews atrocity wasn't even known when we got into the war nor was it the primary reason for our involvement. The important thing for a nation who's supposed to be on the side of "righteousness" is to work to not *start* wars. As for conservative bumper stickers, Dennis just needs to get out more.

The entire edifice of moral relativism, a foundation of leftist ideology, is built on the notion of feelings deciding right and wrong. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Subtle ain't he? Dennis, the English would have viewed the Minutemen as terrorists in the 1700's. Terrorists aren't all "leftists" and visa versa. Of course we are quite handicapped in the area of distinction as God's not popping in every 5 minutes to point out the evil-doers for us.

The animals-and-humans-are-equivalent movement is based entirely on feelings. People see chickens killed and lobsters boiled, feel for the animals, and shortly thereafter abandon thought completely, and equate chicken and lobster suffering to that of a person under the same circumstances.

The unprecedented support of liberals for radically redefining the basic institution of society, marriage and the family is another a product of feelings -- sympathy for homosexuals. Thinking through the effects of such a radical redefinition on society and its children is not a liberal concern.

Connecting the illogical dots with a Spirograph. The small percentage of people who empathize with the killing of chickens is not the same as those who believe it benefits society as a whole when we treat all people the same. Thinking through the effects requires one key element, the thinking. Thinking that starts out of the uptight "we know best" box and staying out of it. Gay marriage benefits have only yet to be explored and who can fathom the long-term social impact of allowing love to flourish unabated? This nation used to think we'd slide into moral decay if a white woman married a black man...

The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst.

No, it's fucking economic you stupid ass. We all need each other. Small planet, large solar system, we're all we got and it's important for the longevity of the species for us to get along. We go to war and to hell with everyone else, who pays? The American public. Who holds the majority of our debt? International banks. We at least should behave in a manner that would garner respect. Your boy Bush is over there sucking up now, why? Feelings?

For liberals, the entire worth of the human fetus is determined by the mother's feelings. If she feels the nascent human life she is carrying is worth nothing, it is worth nothing. If she feels it is infinitely precious, it is infinitely precious.

Rather than taking the conservative approach and determining the life is worth nothing *after* birth; by reducing child care credits, education funding, pell grants, medicare/medicaid, shipping jobs overseas, creating open ended wars and futzing with retirement guarantees... not to mention the vast vast VAST overload of CPS cases and the backlog of children waiting to be adopted. It's an overused analogy, but if men were the ones that had to give birth, abortions would be available at 7-11.

Very often, liberals are far more concerned with purity of motive than with moral results. That's why so many liberals still oppose the liberation of Iraq -- so what if Iraqis risk their lives to vote? It's George W. Bush's motives that liberals care about, not spreading liberty in the Arab world.

Or maybe some of us are opposed to the occupation because it was criminal in nature. We weren't done in Afghanistan, funds were diverted, data was manipulated, no threat was posed, planning was non-existent and vast amounts of money was embezzled. Until the US troops are gone, they have *NOT* been liberated. A nation cannot spread altrustic liberty using DU bombs.

Elevating motives above results is a significant part of liberalism. What matters is believing that one is well intentioned -- that one cares for the poor, hates racism, loathes inequality and loves peace. Bi-lingual education hurts Latino children. But as a compassionate person -- and "compassionate" is the self-definition of most liberals -- that is not the liberal's real concern. His concern is with an immigrant child's uncomfortable feelings when first immersed in English.

No, compassion is the faux flag being run out ahead of the conservative neocon movement as articulated by your Dear Leader. Empathy and understanding are the primary concerns. Equality doesn't hurt much either.

Reliance on feelings in determining one's political and social positions is the major reason young people tend to have liberal/left positions -- they feel passionately but do not have the maturity to question those passions. It is also one reason women, especially single women, are more liberal than men -- it is women's nature to rely on emotions when making decisions. (For those unused to anything but adulation directed at the female of the human species, let me make it clear that men, too, cannot rely on their nature, which leans toward settling differences through raw physical power. Both sexes have a lot of self-correcting to do.)

So those crazy youths just need to grow up, stop being so touchy-feely, put faith in Dennis' God, toughen up and become NeoCons who will shrug off those emotions long enough to send someone else to fight their wars.

To be fair, feelings also play a major role in many conservatives' beliefs. Patriotism is largely a feeling; religious faith is filled with emotion, and religion has too often been dictated by emotion. But far more conservative positions are based on "What is right?" rather than on "How do I feel?" That is why a religious woman who is pregnant but does not wish to be is far less likely to have an abortion than a secular woman in the same circumstances. Her values are higher than her feelings. And that, in a nutshell, is what our culture war is about -- Judeo-Christian values versus liberal/leftist feelings.

Do I contradict myself, well then... I contradict myself. Ignoring the easy targets, focus on whose values are competing against leftist feelings. Not Buddist or Muslim or Taoist... Judeo-Christian values are at war with the left. It could be a composite concept and doesn't *have* to be a manufactured conflict. WAR, doesn't *HAVE* to be the answer.

Posted by kerry at February 23, 2005 02:29 AM | TrackBack