"Why are liberals so condescending?"

Here's an alternate, ungated link.

Honestly, I've tried to understand the Leftist mentality, but it's as impenetrable to me as European pop music.

When one tries to discuss government policy with a liberal, it seems inevitable that when he is confronted with a question of practical consequences, he decides either to diagnose you or to claim moral superiority. A conservative can't possibly arrive reasonably at any conclusion; rather, conservative conclusions are symptoms of underlying phobias, delusions, susceptibility to propaganda, and/or disreputable self-interest.

The liberals, having seized more power in the US than any other political force in memory, find that instead of bringing the country a paradise, have managed to engineer for themselves a completely ineffective government, and are on the verge of a spectacular political meltdown.

They are great at giving advice and placing blame on others.

Once they get out of the area of expertise, however, they are a complete flop.

And now many of the strongest supporters can't help but see that.

God, yes, I miss him. What a mensch, compared to the pathetic weenies in power now.

Back to the topic.

"Why are liberals so condescending?"

Because it is so effective. It works for them. Far too many voters with an "R" beside their name do not hold fast to Republican principles or the Republican Platform. It makes them weak supporters because they are unprincipled moderates. The liberal media loves them and delights in exposing their weak kneed stances. They are worthy of condescension. It is out there for all to see. They are like the king with no clothes. They have no substance. The grass roots are sick of it and are beginning to stir once again.

If you realize that nobody is smart enough to run the lives of other people, you know you are part of the nobody.

The so-called "liberals" reject the premise. Some of them really think they are that smart.

lt must be some sort of psychological disorder that drives people to seek control over other people lives all the time. Cooperation and voluntary exchange seems so natural and normal to me.

Thanks for that!

"Why are liberals so condescending?"

Because they truly believe they are smarter than everyone else. Because of this, they don't trust the average person to be able to make their own life decisions. This is why they support every government program or piece of legislation that will make those decisions for the average person. Liberals are Hobbesian, conservatives are more Lockean.

I will admit it, here is what I tend to get "condescending" on people.

The idea that the "average guy" with no clue to law and politics will be able to govern effectively. We want the best of the best to lead. When HUGE companies start picking up random average people off the street to run their businesses, I will consider doing the same for the presidency.

"God made Adam and EVE, not Adam and STEVE." I really can't add to that one... heheheheh... I still laugh when I hear it.

The idea that the world is going to end soon because perhaps it COULD be translated that way in an ancient text written by man that has been translated many times. And it will be again: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

I also get condescending when it is assumed that I don't listen to Beck and Limbaugh. Just because someone else can't listen to conflicting stories and not have an idea when the "entertainment" is just that.... My anti-liberal friends never read or listen to anything remotely liberal, and call the MSM propaganda, and can actually think Fox as not being that way.

Bill Gates didn't finish college, but seems to be doing okay running a business. I can think of several people who have had successful business careers with high school or less. One comes to mind who had a comfortable 6 figure income in the food business. He dropped out of the 9th grade. Average people with the ability to learn from other people's mistakes as well as their own. We need people with common sense in government. Even lawyers who get elected hire lawyers to consult on legal affairs. Members of the Tax Committee don't do their own taxes - they hire others to do it. Someone with a 9th grade education could do the same, and might not be burdened with the certainty that no one can teach them anything.

BILL GATES is the average guy now? He left Harvard in his 3rd year to start up his computer company... We all know what happened thereafter! Heck, I would vote for Bill Gates though... Perhaps that "average guy" thing would work for him! :D

Domino,
I do not as a rule watch Fox and I've never watched Beck and only rarely listened to Rush Limbaugh on a long drive. I watch Chris Matthews regularly and get my news from the Economist, C-Span, the Washington Post and other sources.

I have worked on Democratic campaigns, worked in a Democratic office on Capitol Hill, and lived with liberals renting houses or apartments.

I've been through graduate programs and taught at the college level for five years - and colleges aren't known for being bastions of conservatism or libertarianism.

I'm pretty sure I know first hand how liberals think and what they say behind closed doors.

quote from Domino "The idea that the world is going to end soon because perhaps it COULD be translated that way in an ancient text written by man that has been translated many times."

I thought you were talking about "global warming" alarmists till I saw the link.

I agree with you, in part, about the "average guy" aspiring to elected office not having the experience or background to know how to lead a nation. Our current president is an active case study of the concept. Palin & McCain had years of government leadership experience under their belt, but the "average guy" won out....

I was just thinking about how we "anti-liberals" allegedly never listen to anything "remotely liberal", and I still can't keep a straight face. You can't turn on a radio, surf cable, likewise surf the Internet, open a newspaper, read a magazine, go to a bookstore, go into most public places, go to family gatherings, read most modern "literature", for lack of a better word, go to work or (in my case) go to school without being bashed over the head with "liberal thought".
For the last year, no matter where you have gone in public or popular culture, we have been regaled with the greater glory of Obama, for example; we've been told repeatedly about how brilliant he is, what a great speaker he is, how accomplished he is, how historic he is, how studly he is, how incredibly beauriful his wife is (allow me to interject here that I think that she is reasonably attactive, but not the exalted beauty she seems to be considered by the 'right people'), what a great family man he is, and so forth.
Compare and contast Obama to the treatment that Sarah Palin has recieved--apparently, a dumber person with no reason for being on the national stage has ever walked the earth. She has been ridiculed for her looks, her faith, her education, the fact that she (unlike Obama) has actually run businesses, her family (because they're not perfect--with little examination of Obama's bizairre upbringing), and that she was a mayor and Governor of Alaska (she has actually successful run governments, again unlike Obama before he was elected President).
Why is the real reason for the disparity of treatment? It is simply this--Obama is a "liberal", and Palin is a conservative. If Palin was as accomplished as she is, and liberal, she would be hailed and venerated as an amazing woman. If Obama was moderate or conservative, he would be fortuanate to be a Illinois state senator, and if he had national political pretensions, he would be as ridiculed as a Michael Steel or a Condoleesa Rice.

Well, it's time for me to leave, and go listen about a stupid old book, and learn ridiculous things written in it, and worship my nonexistant sky god, instead of being a smart educated liberal who disdains anything except the worshiip of anything less important than, well, myself and my own brilliance.

Actually, if Obama had been a "conservative," he would have been treated much worse. Just look to "the race traitors" Alan Keyes and Clarence Thomas.

I'd sooner think that the political elites have so corrupted the orignal intent of the founders that no average man can be elected rather than the average man can't govern.

" But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration."

How can you seriously agree this statement is factual? Can you deny that if you reversed it and swapped "liberals" for "conservatives", it wouldn't be just as accurate?

Don't believe me? Make yourself a montage of sound bites from "conservative" radio and tv talk show commentators discussing the results of the recent Senatorial election in Massachusetts. And then tell me, straight faced, that conservatives don't believe liberal "positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration"

Or consider this. If liberals are condescending because they think conservative positions "are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration", do conservatives therefore believe liberal positions are right, and NOT illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration .

As I suggested in another thread, what a tremendous amount of time and energy is wasted tearing down the opposition rather than trying to win an argument using your own facts and ideas to support it.

How can you seriously agree this statement is factual? Can you deny that if you reversed it and swapped "liberals" for "conservatives", it wouldn't be just as accurate?

Well, no. First, it's not a "factual" statement. It's a general conclusion.

And there is a real difference between conservatives and liberals, as Claude Berube suggests, arising out of their principles.

Conservatives tend to trust that people, left to make choices, will create an emergent order. Markets, traditions, that sort of stuff.

Liberals tend to trust in rationality. As domino confirms, liberals believe that average people have "no clue" and need the guidance of smart people to make decisions for them.

At least we know what Domino thinks of us average people. I am glad to live in a town run by average people some of whom are elected to office. I would rather have a group average people running this country than the elitists we have now.

Quote:

..."what a tremendous amount of time and energy is wasted tearing down the opposition rather than trying to win an argument using your own facts and ideas to support it"....

That's because they don't have "facts" and "ideas" to use or even the notion that they should use "facts and ideas". To them "feeling it" is enough. They also are terribly defficient in the "logical thinking" areas.

Instead their entire ideology is based upon "emotions" ( the "I can feel your pain" that Bubba espoused so well!) and a smug sense of "superiority. Years spent in halls of upper learning, such as Havhad and Stanford, where feelings are all that matters, and everybody gets an "A", (forget acedemics, gotta brainwash em with the ultimate in PC!), and you have blessed us with the batch of know-nothings and do-nothings that are in power today.

Even a blind man can see that things like gun-control are a failure. Anyone who can think can see that Social Seccurity is a collapsing Ponzi scheme. Dont need higher education to see that. Do some 5th grade math and its obviousl That same 5th grade math would show anyone with a brain that the government giveaway that Maine government has become is likewise "unstainable" too. Trouble is most liberals are incapable of 5th grade math because that uses some logic!

Two years ago I watched a parent at a public elementary school music concert, get up in front of the crowd and sing the praises of the retiring elementary principal. This lady, well known in town for her (ultra) liberal views got so emotional that she broke out in tears and could not contiune. My wife and I watched this performance and were very moved by it all.

First off we just could not believe that anyone could become so overcome with "feeilng the emotions of the moment , that they would totally dissolve in front of a crowd. I would be so ashamed of myself that I could not hold my head up.

But this is a first class example of how liberals THINK.

Worse, its a nice example of how they GOVERN!

And we as a nation are worse off for it.

WC

I have to disagree Economike. In my experience, the Liberals I know are not much concerned with reason. Liberalism seems to be infused with "feel-good" attitudes and ideas. If one listens to the proposals made by Liberals, you hear stuff like...Its good for the children. or, It promotes diversity or equality...all without any type of data or reason to say such things. Listen to a sharp Conservative and you will hear logic and reason for their positions. How else can we see millions of Liberals vote for a man who professes to be a Socialist and wants the USA to convert to a discredited, failed bankrupting scheme of government.

Watcher -

I didn't write that liberals are concerned with reason.

"Rationality" isn't the same concept. See discussion here, for example.

The family and I lived next door to an ultralib a few years back at an Eastern Maine lake in the camp we used to own. This guy was a doctor, a shrink, a head guy. One who "knows" what everybody else should do. Couldn't cut the "liberal" out of him with a chainsaw for god's sake.

Guy had all the answers for someone else but, alas, lacked any shred of common sense. None. Nada!

Poor schlub had the misfortune(!) to have a flat tire on his jeep wagon one fine morning. Of course he could NOT change a flat tire. I actually think it had more to do with getting a bit of dirt on his hands than actually knowing what to do though the jury is still out on that one.

I was gone off working so he asked my wife if she would change the tire. When I came home for supper and she told me this I was just blown away. Says I: "Did you actually change that tire for that SOB"?

Oh yes she said.

I asked her how could she do such a thing.

"Oh its ok" she says.

"I just left the lug nuts a little bit loose!"

WC

Economike - "I didn't write that liberals are concerned with reason.
"Rationality" isn't the same concept. See discussion here, for example."

We understand the word differently. I went by the dictionary definition:

ra⋅tion⋅al⋅i⋅ty
 –noun, plural -ties.
1. the state or quality of being rational.
2. the possession of reason.
3. agreeableness to reason; reasonableness.
4. the exercise of reason.
5. a reasonable view, practice, etc.

WC - your wife is nicer than I would have been... I would have insisted he do the tire change himself, while she directed. Applications of axle grease would have been included in the "lessons."
lol

This man, for the sake of argument and getting even, violated the client-patient confidentiality laws so I can assure you he is not a nice guy.

I wouldn't have done what she did. I would have tightened up the lug nuts.

Then I would have gone and loosened up the other three. He would still be standing there waiting for someone to come along and tell him what was wrong.

I am not a nice guy when provoked by these kind of people.

WC

We understand the word differently. I went by the dictionary definition.

watcher -

I meant no criticism of your comment.

I acknowledge that I used "rationality" is a more limited sense than another might, and simply wished to clarify my remark.

Economkie - "I meant no criticism of your comment".

Thanks Economike. It reminds me of a saying my father had....I know you think understand what you thought I said, but, I am not so sure that what you think you heard is what I thought I meant.

Frrom the Abbott thread, credit to Thrasybulus:

Smart people will go and ask the candidate, the dumb people will do what they always do: vote for the safest looking, most plausible candidate. That is almost always a Dem in Maine, because they LIE.

No condescension here ....

Hey, let's cut Domino some slack. Her statement "The idea that the "average guy" with no clue to law and politics will be able to govern effectively. We want the best of the best to lead. When HUGE companies start picking up random average people off the street to run their businesses, I will consider doing the same for the presidency." could have been lifted right out of Plato.

All Socrates would have to do now is turn the discussion to the question of what "the best" is when it comes to governing, and once Domino figures that out, she will be a true conservative: a proponent of just, moderate, cautious and prudent governance. Sound money, sound policy and the experience of history as our guides. In short, a TORY.

Welcome, Domino!

Actually, it might be interesting for a show of hands, and honest admission of those who have read Plato's Republic and those who have not - I think this classification may be more valid than the often false and labored distinction between "conservatives" and "liberals".

It always amazes me how current the dialogues are - how often we see the very same opinions, personalities, and arguments lo these many centuries later. With each reading, the enormity of Socrates' wisdom, the precision of his humor, and the skill of his rhetoric becomes even more evident. We might do better to re-read that old classic than to continue to argue over which team has better manners.