Three blindspots

In Medium, Russ Roberts reviews the above book by Arnold Kling. He talks about three blindspots.

Liberals see the world as a battle between victims and oppressors.

Conservatives see the world as a battle between civilization and barbarism.

Libertarians see the world as a battle between freedom and coercion.

...I write these words at a time when I find it increasingly unpleasant to read the newspaper and my twitter feed. The level of disdain for those we disagree with runs high. It is a good time to remember the three languages of politics and to consider our blind spots as well. We look at the world in different ways. Each way has its own strengths and flaws. This is a good time in American history to keep that in mind.

Read more here.

Chinese government funds attacks on conservative free speech

Warner Todd Huston reports at The Lid,

One of the most prominent “research” groups behind the attacks on conservative free speech on the Internet this year is a company called “New Knowledge.” But now a new review of the company shows that one of its biggest backers is one of our biggest international opponents, the Chinese Government.

New Knowledge co-founder Jonathon Morgan describes his company as a “cybersecurity company specializing in disinformation defense for highly visible brands under attack by coordinated disinformation campaigns. Through machine learning and Ai, we detect threats and provide brand manipulation protection before damage is done.”

It is this “disinformation” that New Knowledge has been hired to root out and it is their work that has served as a basis for attacks on conservatives by The Washington Post and The Atlantic, not to mention the efforts by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others to eliminate conservatives from the Internet.

Some differences between conservatives and liberals, and the Florida school shooting

Bookworm has written a profound piece about the differences in worldview between conservatives and progressives. She links to an article by Dennis Prager at Town Hall.

Unhappy conservatives generally believe they are unhappy because life is inherently difficult and tragic, and because they have made some unwise decisions in life.

But unhappy liberals generally believe they are unhappy because they have been persecuted.

Bookworm covers a lot of subjects in this piece, including this:

Just as I believe in individual responsibility, I believe that nations and their people must at some point be responsible for themselves. Moreover, I would be happy to export to them my winning values — hard work, education if possible, marriage, honesty, etc. — except that I’m told I can’t do that because . . . racism, colonialism, cultural appropriation, microaggressions, macroaggressions, toxic whiteness, cultural relativism, and all of the other Leftist shibboleths that destroy healthy societies and keep unhealthy societies in a permanent state of sickness.

Bookworm links to a blog called Stately McDaniel Manor, which has detailed coverage of the Florida shooting and this:

Bookworm's post is here.

A new breed of conservatives

At Ace of Spades, Oregon Muse writes about a new breed of conservative.

I remember back in the old days, public conversations between liberals and conservatives usually went something like this:

1. liberal: says something
2. conservative: responds
3. liberal: you're a racist | sexist | bigot | pejorative du jour
4a. conservative: I am not a racist | sexist | bigot | pejorative du jour
4b. conservative attempts to give evidence for statement 4a.
5. liberal: not good enough
6. Goto step 3

Pussification: The Effeminization of the American Male by Doug Giles

This is how he advertises it:

PUSS-I-FI-CA-TION*: The act, or process, of a man being shamed, taught, led, pastored, drugged or otherwise coerced or cajoled into throwing out his brain, handing over his balls and formally abandoning the rarefied air of the testosterone-leader-fog that God and nature hardwired him to dwell in, and instead become a weak, effeminate, mangina-sporting, shriveled up little pussy.

* From The Doug Giles 2016 Dictionary of Grow the Hell Up, You Pussy!

Doug Giles, best-selling author of Raising Righteous And Rowdy Girls and Editor-In-Chief of the mega-blog, ClashDaily.com, has just penned a book he guarantees will kick hipster males into the rarefied air of masculinity.

That is, if the man-child will put down his frappuccino; shut the hell up and listen and obey everything he instructs them to do in his timely and tornadic tome.
There is a lot of hype here and I don't advise going to Giles' ClashDaily.com site without first strapping on an extra-strength ad blocker. Anyway, he is obviously being deliberately provocative -- he's all but mooning feminists and progressives. This would not be possible 30 years ago. But it's been a long time coming.

Progressives aren't interested in what we have to say, or in having a "reasonable dialog" with us. It's nothing but "shut up or we'll shut you up!". This is what their shouty, dialed-up-to-11 rhetoric is designed to do. And this generally works, or at least, that's how it has worked in the past. But what has happened over time is a process very much like how we produced antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Like a dose of penicillin, the shouty rhetoric takes out "nice" conservatives or conservatives who decide they have better things to do than to get shouted at by shouty progressives. But some conservatives manage to survive, so the dosage is upped: the shouts get even louder and the attacks get more vicious and are extended beyond the political arena into personal lives. This creates a very hostile environment. But even it drives out or silences many conservatives, it also creates a new strain of tough conservatives who don't mind fighting, who like to fight, and can throw 2 punches for every one they take. I'm thinking of Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, and Milo Yiannapoulos. To this we can add the guy who wrote this book, Doug Giles, and Townhall.com columnist Kurt Schlichter. There are probably others I've missed. And of course, what is now the most imperviously resistant conservative ever, Donald Trump, who is so impervious that nobody really knew for sure until a couple of months ago that he even was conservative. Oh sure, there were indications, but there were indications the other way, too, so it was kind of a guessing game as to how he would actually govern until he started naming individuals to fill the various open cabinet positions.

Nothing in the progressives' conservative eradication toolkit has worked against Trump. They keep upping the dosage, the shouting gets more shouty, but it all just bounces right off. They've actually got a new drug they've been trying to use, they've left off calling Trump a "racist" because the word has lost its effectiveness due to overuse, like the little boy who cried 'wolf', after awhile, people stop responding. This new drug they've rolled out is "white supremacist", which I guess is supposed to a more potent version of "racist." They first tried it out on Trump aide Steve Bannon. But even though it didn't work, the specialists haven't figured out that it didn't work, and is not working on Trump, either. Another "next-gen" drug they're using is "literally Hitler." They tell us that Donald Trump is "literally Hitler." Now, at this point, the progressives have pretty much shot their wad. What could possibly be worse than being "literally Hitler"? Literally Hitler's mom? Literally double-secret Hitler?

There have been downstream consequences of the progressive failure. Many conservatives simply don't care anymore. Warden's excellent piece earlier this week makes this clear. The new, Trump-era "honey badger conservative" playbook appears to be this:

1. conservative: says something
2. liberal: you're a racist | sexist | bigot | pejorative du jour
3. conservative: fcuk you.

Somewhere, Andrew Breitbart is smiling.

"Grow up, conservatives!"

At American Greatness Seth Leibsohn takes on the #NeverTrumpers and points out all the valuable conservative stands Donald Trump is making.

For more than a decade, the conservative movement has been asking for more talk of American exceptionalism. One candidate centered his whole campaign around it, the other surrounds herself with the likes of Huma Abedin and a coterie of transnational progressives. Now think about personnel as policy. Better education outcomes? Who is in the pocket of the unions and who knows all-too-well how much the unions stand in the way of excellence? A quick look at what the union bosses have to say about Donald Trump should easily dispatch that question.

Yes, it is actually pretty easy to see the interests of this country are ill-served by not only Hillary Clinton and her record, but by the kinds of people she brings with her. These are the people who will staff her White House. Then, of course, there is her husband and all that he represents.

It is actually pretty easy to see that “indecorous and infelicitous” language should be just about the last concerns we all have when it comes to saving our country. Every current or former member of any military branch, or reader of military history, learned that lesson long ago.

And it is not novel to point out that too many conservatives now have a vested interest in proving they were right in saying Donald Trump cannot win. You will never read a word from any of them about the things Trump has done right, not even his ongoing outreach to the minority community—something else movement conservatives and party regulars have begged their candidates to do for at least a generation but have proven incapable of doing effectively themselves.

We all know many a Republican who voted for Barack Obama. One is even running for the vice-presidency on the Libertarian ticket. Do we also remember what just one year of his presidency meant? Here are some notes to jog our memories: Sonia Sotomayor. The crushing of the dissident movement in Iran (now, we learn, in the service of a nuclear deal with Iran). The beginning of the New START treaty, appeasing Russia. The dismantling of missile defense in Europe, also appeasing Russia. The template of a priori attacks on police. The initialization of ObamaCare.

That’s a pretty rough single year, never mind what “fundamental transformation” he was able to effect in a full first term. Not one of these actions has received anything but praise from Hillary Clinton; and one can expect her to double-down on every one of them should she be elected.

We’ve yet to even mention Libya. Barack Obama says Libya was his “worst mistake.” In a list many of us could add to, that’s quite a statement. Now, quick: who had the entirety of the Libya portfolio?

...It’s about saving our country. Most call that patriotism. So, yes: Let’s grow up, Conservatives.

Read more here.

Were the Birchers right about the UN?

In their discussion of the alt-right, Hugh Hewitt and Jonah Goldberg mentioned William F. Buckley driving the John Birchers out of the conservative movement. Here is what I remember about the Birchers. When I was living in Texas, the Birchers put up billboards urging Americans to get out of the United Nations. I don't know what else they advocated, but the UN issue seemed to be their biggest issue. I think they were right on that issue. What do you think?

Which bias do you like best?

At National Review Ian Tuttle writes,

There’s an unseemly impulse among liberals to reflexively silence people who express opinions with which they disagree. But the myth of a prelapsarian Internet is steering the Right wrong, and it’s time to think differently.

There are no neutral spaces, and there never will be. Whether the forum is public or private, certain people are going to be in charge, and they’re going to impose certain parameters. The goal should not be to create neutral spaces; it should be to create non-neutral spaces more attractive than existing non-neutral spaces.

That is the success story of conservative media. National Review in the world of print, Fox News in the world of television, and the Drudge Report online carved out spaces that were not in the least neutral, but which handled their “prejudices” in a way that was more attractive than the alternatives.

That’s the solution to the hegemony of the current social-media powers. Facebook is not going to change. Someone who is tired of Facebook imposing its opinions on its users will have to create a better social-media site that is based on conservative principles, and uphold those principles in a way that gives users more freedom. Conservatives will never make the existing social-media open up to their satisfaction. But they can create their own space in the social-media world and provide a counterweight to the existing ideological monopoly. It won’t be easy. But other conservative media show that it’s possible.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436797/social-media-facebook-twitter-google-lean-left-conservatives-have-build-better

Republicans are not conservative?

Dennis Prager writes at National Review,

There are many reasons Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The four most often cited reasons are the frustrations of white working-class Americans, a widespread revulsion against political correctness, disenchantment with the Republican “establishment,” and the unprecedented and unrivaled amount of time the media afforded Trump.

They are all valid.

But the biggest reason is this: The majority of Republicans are not conservative.

...Why haven’t Americans over the past three generations known what America stands for?

Probably the biggest reason is the influence of left-wing ideas.

America stands for small government, a free economy (and therefore capitalism), liberty (and it therefore allows for liberty’s inevitable consequence, inequality), the “melting pot” ideal, and a God-centered population rooted in Judeo-Christian values (so that a moral society is created by citizens exercising self-control rather than relying on the state to impose controls).

Only America was founded on the idea of small government. But the Left is based on big government.

America was founded on the principle that human rights come from the Creator. For the Left, rights come from the state.

...The American Revolution, unlike the French Revolution, placed liberty above equality. For the Left, equality is more important than all else. That’s why so many American and European leftists have celebrated left-wing regimes, no matter how much they squelched individual liberty, from Stalin to Mao to Che and Castro to Hugo Chávez. They all preached equality.

It took generations, but the Left has succeeded (primarily through the schools, but also through the media) in substituting its values for America’s. While the Left has been the primary cause, there have been others. The most significant is success.

So, then, thanks to leftism and America’s taken-for-granted success, most Americans no longer understand what it means to be an American. Those who do are called “conservatives” because they wish to conserve the unique American idea. But conservatives now constitute not only a minority of Americans, but a minority of Republicans. That is the primary reason Donald Trump — a nationalist but not a conservative — is the presumptive Republican nominee. As I noted from the outset, I will vote for him if he wins the nomination — because there is no choice. But the biggest reason he won is also the scariest.

Read more here.

Conservatives and liberals need each other

Chateau Heartiste writes,

Conservatives need liberals for their creativity and (usually) aesthetic lifestyle sensibilities. Liberals need conservatives for their guardianship and wisdom. Too few liberals, and conservative society can become static and self-satisfied. Too few conservatives, and liberal society can become self-destructive.

In this view, conservatives are the more crucial linchpin to civilization. Without liberals, we might have worse movies and fewer charming coffee shops. But without conservatives, we might have no civilization at all, having handed over the keys to the White kingdom to babbling barbarians.

So there is something to this formulation that amygdalae-deficient shitlibs, poets till the consummating end, need (if not consciously want) the pimp hand of warriors with full hearts and clear eyes to stop shitlibs from blowing up the nation and taking everyone down with them.

Read more here.

Why liberals feel first and think later

From Chateau Heartiste: The stereotype of liberals as emotionally underdeveloped children who feel first and think later now has support from the very entity liberals have raised to divine status: SCIENCE!

Liberals and conservatives exhibit different cognitive styles and converging lines of evidence suggest that biology influences differences in their political attitudes and beliefs. In particular, a recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure, with liberals showing increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, and conservatives showing increased gray matter volume in the amygdala. Here, we explore differences in brain function in liberals and conservatives by matching publicly-available voter records to 82 subjects who performed a risk-taking task during functional imaging. Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization of party identification long thought to be one of the core findings of political science. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and they support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli. […]

These ideological differences between political partisans have been attributed to logical, psychological, and social constraints and past scholarship has focused primarily on institutional political processes or individual policy preferences, rather than biological differences in evaluative processes. But recent work has revealed physiological correlates of the differential responses to risk and conflict by liberals and conservatives. Consistent with the previously identified attitudinal divergence, conservatives have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli than liberals. Conversely, liberals had stronger physiological responses to situations of cognitive conflict than conservatives.

The insula and amygdala often function together in processing situations of risk and uncertainty [30]. The amygdala plays a critical role in orienting of attention to external cues [31] and fear conditioning [32]; however, this structure is also important for other emotional information processing and behavior [33]. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown amygdala activation in reward related processing [34], encoding of emotionally salient information [35], risk-taking [36], processing positively-valenced stimuli [37], and appetitive/aversive olfactory learning [38]. In comparison, neuroimaging studies of insular cortex have observed critical involvement of this neural structure in pain [39], interoceptive [40], emotion-related [41], cognitive [42], and social processing [43]. In particular, the insular cortex is important for representation of internal bodily cues crucial for subjective feeling states and interoceptive awareness[40], [44]. That differences in the processing of risk and uncertainty differentiate liberals and conservatives suggests an alternative way of conceptualizing ideology.Related study results: Testosterone level influences amygdala functioning.

The activity of the emotion centres in the brain – the amygdalae – is influenced by motivation rather than by the emotions themselves. This can be concluded from research carried out into the hormone testosterone. Testosterone increases amygdala activity in a person who is approaching a socially threatening situation and decreases the activity when such a situation is avoided. It was already known that the amygdala response to images of angry faces was stronger in a person who had received testosterone. This new study shows that this only happens when people approach angry faces and not when they avoid them.

Related study results: Testosterone level influences amygdala functioning.

The activity of the emotion centres in the brain – the amygdalae – is influenced by motivation rather than by the emotions themselves. This can be concluded from research carried out into the hormone testosterone. Testosterone increases amygdala activity in a person who is approaching a socially threatening situation and decreases the activity when such a situation is avoided. It was already known that the amygdala response to images of angry faces was stronger in a person who had received testosterone. This new study shows that this only happens when people approach angry faces and not when they avoid them.

Different standards

Schlonged? Was Donald Trump the first to use that expression in a political context? Here is Neil Conan of NPR in 2011:

Thomas Lifson points out that, as with cartoons mocking children,

liberals are held to an entirely different standard than conservatives.

But as even liberal Jeff Greenfield noted in a tweet:

On further review, Trump is right on this. "I got schlonged" is a commonplace NY way of saying: "I lost big time," w/out genital reference.

Read more here.

The corrupting of conservatives

Goldberg writes at National Review,

...If you want a really good sense of the damage Donald Trump is doing to conservatism, consider the fact that for the last five years no issue has united the Right more than opposition to Obamacare. Opposition to socialized medicine in general has been a core tenet of American conservatism from Day One. Yet, when Republicans were told that Donald Trump favors single-payer health care, support for single-payer health care jumped from 16 percent to 44 percent.

I’ve written a lot about my problems with populism. One of my favorite illustrations of why the populist mindset is dangerous and anti-intellectual comes from William Jennings Bryan. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver,” Bryan announced. “I will look up the arguments later.” My view of conservatism holds that if free silver is a bad idea, it’s still a bad idea even if the people of Nebraska are for it. But Trumpism flips this on its head. The conservatives of Nebraska and elsewhere should be against single-payer health care, even if Donald Trump is for it. What we are seeing is the corrupting of conservatives.

Read more here.

“Ours was intended to be a citizen government”

You have probably read about Erick Erickson disinviting Donald Trump to his Red State gathering this weekend in Atlanta. Carly Fiorina was not disinvited. Here is an excerpt of what she had to say about the differences between progressives and conservatives:

“I’m a conservative because I know that no one of us is any better than any other one of us,” Fiorina said. “Each of us are gifted by God. All of us want to live lives of dignity and purpose and meaning. And I know that our values, our principles and our policies work better to lift everyone up.”

She said the progressive message is that “some of us are smarter than others. Some of us are better than others. Some of you really can’t live lives of dignity and purpose and meaning, But don’t worry. Some of us are going to take care of the rest of you.”

“It is the height of disrespect and disregard, and it is the fight we must have in 2016,” Fiorina said.

Kate Scanlon at The Daily Signal gives us more from Fiorina's speech:

Fiorina, a Republican presidential candidate, was the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 company.

She said that the next president must break up the bureaucracy of the federal government.

“Crony capitalism is crushing the engine of economic growth in this country,” Fiorina said.

She said that as president, she would implement a “new deal” with Iran: stricter economic sanctions.

“We need an unmistakable signal that America is back in the leadership business,” Fiorina said.

Fiorina called for zero-based budgeting in the federal government, expanded school choice options for parents and reinvesting in the military.

Fiorina, who has never held political office, said that “ours was intended to be a citizen government” because “a professional political class” becomes entrenched in the “status quo.”

“People who protect the status quo most aggressively are the ones who have benefited from it,” Fiorina said.

Read more here.

Comparing Obama to Reagan?

At Powerline Steven Hayward takes on those who compare Obama's negotiations with Iran with Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev:

Remember one salient fact: Reagan eventually got a deal on his terms—including vigorous on-site weapons inspections that the Soviets had previously refused—by walking away from the table in Reykjavik and hanging tough on his missile defense program. (The Soviets caved on all points within a few months.) Dionne and others conveniently forget that at the time liberals were outraged that Reagan walked away from the table, while conservatives said it was his finest hour.

Reagan’s defense buildup and tough stance led the Soviets to recognize that they could not keep up, and that it was in their interest to reach significant arms reduction deals. But again—liberals like Dionne were outraged at Reagan’s arms buildup at the time, and uniformly blasted SDI. And the first half of this paragraph is wrong: it was Reagan’s prolonged stubbornness that weakened Kremlin hardliners: if Reagan had given in on SDI or on-site inspections, as the hardliners demanded Gorbachev get from him at Reykjavik, they would have been strengthened at home. It was precisely because Gorbachev came home empty-handed that he was able to tell his “hard-liners” that the game was up. Transcripts of post-Reykjavik Politburo meetings make this crystal clear.

Among other howlers, after having prattled on about her concern for human rights, Pelosi pushes back at a reporter’s question about why Kerry didn’t get the four Americans that Iran is holding on trumped up charges released as part of the deal. Pelosi squirms a bit and suggests it is a separate issue: “This is a nuclear agreement,” and not a suitable forum for human rights issues.

Once again, if liberals really wanted to follow the Reagan model, they’d recall that at every summit Reagan always passed a list of specific names of political prisoners we wanted released from Soviet jails. Even at Reykjavik, amidst the tense discussions about strategic nuclear warheads, Reagan still did this. Did John Kerry ever press the issue of human rights in general, or the four American in particular, in the Vienna talks? Someone should ask the State Department and the White House this question directly.

Read more here.

More people self-identifying as "liberal?"

The Wall Street Journal publishes a graph from a poll taken by WSJ/NBC News indicating that over the last year the number of Americans calling themselves "liberal" has increased, while the number of people calling themselves "conservative" decreased, and moderates increased.


Read more here.

Do I need to organize seniors?

Yesterday I heard a local conservative talk radio host say, "I'd like to see Social Security and Medicare go the way of the dinosaurs." What??? Is this what conservatives believe?

It was the last minute of his show, but I still called to talk with him about his statement. He was still in the studio, but would not talk to me. The call screener gave me his email, and I emailed him asking him to explain his statement. He still has not replied. He is on again this evening. I will call him during his program, if he has not answered my email.

Liberals?

David Horowitz writes,

Conservatives have rarely approached the individual conflicts with the seriousness they deserve, describing their adversaries as “liberals” — as if they subscribed to the principles of Lockean individualism, tolerance, and political compromise. Only with the advent of the Obama administration have some conservatives begun to connect the dots of origins and outcomes and to grasp the real nature of the national transformation that their adversaries intend.

Read more here.

The Founding Fathers created the most revolutionary society in the world

Are you a "progressive," who believes that conservatives want to "keep things as they've always been?" Sarah Hoyt has some words for you:

You see, in modern day, we vile “conservatives” are people who want to upend the social theories that have been in place (and largely driving people nuts) for at least fifty years: such as the idea that nothing is any individual’s fault or credit; the idea that laws SHOULDN’T be equally applied but equal OUTCOMES to any endeavor should be enforced; the idea that your taking my stuff is theft, but the government taking my stuff and giving it to you isn’t theft; the idea that if you just have enough self confidence you will never commit a crime; the idea– I could go on, but this is already too long. Suffice it to say that of the various isms of the twenty century, the only one that was proven real was Zionism, which was based on the idea that people would like to kill Jews, and so Jews needed a place where they could be safe. All others have proven poisonous fruit in various degrees.

And they’re not new. Or scientific. Or even “progressive.”

Sarah goes on to say that conservatives

claim intellectual descent from the Founding Fathers. Keeping things the way “they’d always been” was the least of their interests. Which is why they created the most revolutionary society in the world.

One we’re not going to allow you to destroy just to take us back to ideas that were old and disproven a 100 years ago.

You can call us names, and you can do your best to lecture us. But I suggest you start to read what we say and to actually pay attention. These straw men of yours are very pretty, but they bear no resemblance to us.

And we are infinitely more dangerous.

Read more here.