Liberals and the End Game
10th April 2015
Freeberg has some thoughts.
This absolutely fascinates me. If you imagine liberals thinking about their goals the way normal people do about theirs, beginning with the end in mind and persevering through setbacks large and small — if you imagine them that way — you would have to credit them with optimism beyond the perimeter of sanity, plucky resolve that is just off-the-charts, inhuman. You would have to see them as bursting at the seams with exactly what they do not encourage in others. The attitude of: Don’t worry, you’ll win in the end. This is 180 degrees contrary to their message to everybody else, which essentially is one of: If you’re making $45k a year now, we can guarantee you will never make more than $55k in your whole life. You need social programs. Don’t try. Give up. The rich people have rigged the game. Go on “foostamps.”
Do liberals think about the end game? They have such enthusiasm, in those low trenches following their most disappointing setbacks, I know I’m not capable of matching it in mine. And so I don’t think of them that way, I think of them more like the dog chasing the car. Not a thought in the world about where this is all going, the possible scenarios, the victory, the defeat. There is only the pursuit. That’s why they pound the pavement just as hard when things aren’t going their way, as they do when they are. Just like the dog. I think.
The ‘progressive’ mind is locked into a certain intellectual loop: 1. Progress is inevitable (things get better because they always have), 2. There is no progress without change, 3. Since progress is inevitable, any change is good because it will ultimately lead to progress.
This is not purely a political belief system, but rather a religious belief system with a political agenda — much like Islam. Even when one points to changes that have had bad effects, the response is always ‘Well, be patient — everything will work out for the best.’ (‘The Best’, of course, from the ‘progressive’ viewpoint.) This is why spending trillions of dollars of tax money on a problem with only negative results leads to continued calls to throw good money after bad — in social welfare, in education, in any high-minded program you can think of. If progress has not occurred, it’s because we haven’t tried hard enough, we haven’t spent enough money, we haven’t had enough change.