Monday, July 21, 2003
DAVID CRARY Associated Press
Let's hear it for left-wing open-mindedness. These discontented folks cannot tolerate a democracy in which their viewpoint is not dominant:
Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.
Profiles in courage:
Hanley, who works for a Fortune 500 company in Manhattan, doesn't know how the move will affect his career. "It's a challenge, it's scary," he said. "We'll have to drop everything we know here, go up there and figure it out."
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Conversely, Mollie Ingebrand says some of her friends - people who share her left-of-center views - argue that she should stay at home to battle for changes here.
"I've been there and done that," Molly said. "I don't want to stay and fight anymore. I can have that bittersweet love for my country from somewhere else." Battle? Fight? Canada attracts those Americans who don't have the stomach for conflict. Or the consequences of competition.
Moving away helps this how?:
"The U.S. educational system is unfair - you have to live in certain areas to go to good schools," he said.
So much for the NEA.
Crary's paean to the brave souls escaping to the maple Elysian fields doesn't mention until mid-story that though only 6000 Americans moved to Canada in 2001, thirty thousand Canadians descended from paradise to our "neo-conservative" nightmare. (Parity in proportion to population would require 280,000 Americans emigrating north.)
Our defense budget allows them to neglect military spending for overextended social programs. And the reporter neglects to mention that universal health care, which inspires so many Canadian doctors and nurses to become Americans, would be impossible without the US economy and market.
Let's hear it for left-wing open-mindedness. These discontented folks cannot tolerate a democracy in which their viewpoint is not dominant:
Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.
Profiles in courage:
Hanley, who works for a Fortune 500 company in Manhattan, doesn't know how the move will affect his career. "It's a challenge, it's scary," he said. "We'll have to drop everything we know here, go up there and figure it out."
-----------------------
Conversely, Mollie Ingebrand says some of her friends - people who share her left-of-center views - argue that she should stay at home to battle for changes here.
"I've been there and done that," Molly said. "I don't want to stay and fight anymore. I can have that bittersweet love for my country from somewhere else." Battle? Fight? Canada attracts those Americans who don't have the stomach for conflict. Or the consequences of competition.
Moving away helps this how?:
"The U.S. educational system is unfair - you have to live in certain areas to go to good schools," he said.
So much for the NEA.
Crary's paean to the brave souls escaping to the maple Elysian fields doesn't mention until mid-story that though only 6000 Americans moved to Canada in 2001, thirty thousand Canadians descended from paradise to our "neo-conservative" nightmare. (Parity in proportion to population would require 280,000 Americans emigrating north.)
Our defense budget allows them to neglect military spending for overextended social programs. And the reporter neglects to mention that universal health care, which inspires so many Canadian doctors and nurses to become Americans, would be impossible without the US economy and market.
Friday, July 04, 2003
Thomas Sowell People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding," Hoffer said. "When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the "true believer," who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.
Certainly. Alienated zealots enter into a perpetual cycle of intolerance: once they begin judging and opting out of the community/society, they become less and less capable of inclusion, and more and more remote.
This not only exacerbates their busybody activities, but retroactively provides justification for their anomie via "personal experience."
For example, suppose every time one left the house one assumed that any negative interaction with neighbors was because of their bigotry towards a race or religion. Even if one heard no pejorative, even if the neighbors had other reasons for aloofness or crossness, one would build a cumulative case of a long record of slights and grievances (paranoia). I've referred to this as "race-colored glasses." This chip on the shoulder becomes a social barrier, further deepening the chasm due to the neurotic behavior one would exhibit.
In the same way, the "true believers" of Sowell's column/Hoffer's book begin to see their own (self-engendered) frustration as society's fault, and as they become less compatible (or competitive), they find even more profound faults in the cosmos. Jihadists, Marxists, indymidiots, are the most vitiated and intemperant of this lot.
These zealots, political or religious, self-righteous and cynical, see themselves as Hoffer said: "...ready... to claim all excellence for his religion, his race or his holy cause." It's paradoxical because most of these mass movements share an egalitarian motif. The Marxists cry for brotherhood but commit their lives to arrogant deprecation and destruction of their fellow man's way of life. Ideological fratricide? The muslims scream for us to worship the "Peaceful and Merciful" as one, but exhibit no peace or mercy to anyone outside their sphere. Who wants to join?
But there's a balance to the statement
People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements.
Some social reformers begin as zealots, but temperance and personal character allow them to pursue their dreams, even leading mass movements, towards a positive end. I think of Gautama Siddhartha, who, while leaving his Brahmin world to be among the Dalit, could have become very much like the raving foamers at IMC or the Nation, but instead chose the high road. Francis of Assissi, or Charles Johnson, similar trend. Gandhi also could have chosen a fruitless, angry, foul path like Arundhati Roy or Jinnah, he chose to not only win for his group. but to win for his enemy, peace and a better life. He freed India and Britain too, and same could have happened for Pakistan, but alas.
Personally, I think the pattern is humility, warp and woof with honesty (esp. about one's limits) and optimism.
If the zealots and misfits were able to see the limits of their own comprehension and worth, they might not show such "distaste for man." If only they were able to see that if they are "enlightened" it is NOT because they are special: the same enlightenment could/should happen to anybody/everybody. Isn't that what they should want, as they claim?
By contrast, true reformers that are humble enough to realize that they experienced a personal change. They might have had an epiphany or conversion from a (now seen) failed perspective to a better (or ultimately best?) one, then enter and engage society to persuade, tolerate, accept, motivate, invite, communicate, etc etc. "Mister, it is easy to be full of rage. It is not easy to go to work and build something."-Hoffer
Without an alienating chip on the shoulder, they see their fellow humans as aspirants maybe, equals certainly: "I have no special knowledge that this fellow cannot learn, at least one day." (Confucius said Teach not-ripe person, waste of words. Not teach ripe-person, waste of person.)
So if the "ruling intelligentsia," instead of "treat[ing] the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed and wasted at will," would relinquish the patronage and arrogance, and pursue cooperative, conscientious and civil self-interest (properly understood), they would elevate society far faster.
I am a conservative because I care about the poor and have realized (after trying for a long time) that I can't help them all that much. My best strategy is to create jobs and share what I know about producing better results in one's life.
We can't help them if we limit freedom and make subsistence levels the national standard, so we can all miserable together in solidarity. If a mogul was felled to lived in a hovel next door, I don't see how that creates justice for me.
What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the "true believer," who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century.
Certainly. Alienated zealots enter into a perpetual cycle of intolerance: once they begin judging and opting out of the community/society, they become less and less capable of inclusion, and more and more remote.
This not only exacerbates their busybody activities, but retroactively provides justification for their anomie via "personal experience."
For example, suppose every time one left the house one assumed that any negative interaction with neighbors was because of their bigotry towards a race or religion. Even if one heard no pejorative, even if the neighbors had other reasons for aloofness or crossness, one would build a cumulative case of a long record of slights and grievances (paranoia). I've referred to this as "race-colored glasses." This chip on the shoulder becomes a social barrier, further deepening the chasm due to the neurotic behavior one would exhibit.
In the same way, the "true believers" of Sowell's column/Hoffer's book begin to see their own (self-engendered) frustration as society's fault, and as they become less compatible (or competitive), they find even more profound faults in the cosmos. Jihadists, Marxists, indymidiots, are the most vitiated and intemperant of this lot.
These zealots, political or religious, self-righteous and cynical, see themselves as Hoffer said: "...ready... to claim all excellence for his religion, his race or his holy cause." It's paradoxical because most of these mass movements share an egalitarian motif. The Marxists cry for brotherhood but commit their lives to arrogant deprecation and destruction of their fellow man's way of life. Ideological fratricide? The muslims scream for us to worship the "Peaceful and Merciful" as one, but exhibit no peace or mercy to anyone outside their sphere. Who wants to join?
But there's a balance to the statement
People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements.
Some social reformers begin as zealots, but temperance and personal character allow them to pursue their dreams, even leading mass movements, towards a positive end. I think of Gautama Siddhartha, who, while leaving his Brahmin world to be among the Dalit, could have become very much like the raving foamers at IMC or the Nation, but instead chose the high road. Francis of Assissi, or Charles Johnson, similar trend. Gandhi also could have chosen a fruitless, angry, foul path like Arundhati Roy or Jinnah, he chose to not only win for his group. but to win for his enemy, peace and a better life. He freed India and Britain too, and same could have happened for Pakistan, but alas.
Personally, I think the pattern is humility, warp and woof with honesty (esp. about one's limits) and optimism.
If the zealots and misfits were able to see the limits of their own comprehension and worth, they might not show such "distaste for man." If only they were able to see that if they are "enlightened" it is NOT because they are special: the same enlightenment could/should happen to anybody/everybody. Isn't that what they should want, as they claim?
By contrast, true reformers that are humble enough to realize that they experienced a personal change. They might have had an epiphany or conversion from a (now seen) failed perspective to a better (or ultimately best?) one, then enter and engage society to persuade, tolerate, accept, motivate, invite, communicate, etc etc. "Mister, it is easy to be full of rage. It is not easy to go to work and build something."-Hoffer
Without an alienating chip on the shoulder, they see their fellow humans as aspirants maybe, equals certainly: "I have no special knowledge that this fellow cannot learn, at least one day." (Confucius said Teach not-ripe person, waste of words. Not teach ripe-person, waste of person.)
So if the "ruling intelligentsia," instead of "treat[ing] the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed and wasted at will," would relinquish the patronage and arrogance, and pursue cooperative, conscientious and civil self-interest (properly understood), they would elevate society far faster.
I am a conservative because I care about the poor and have realized (after trying for a long time) that I can't help them all that much. My best strategy is to create jobs and share what I know about producing better results in one's life.
We can't help them if we limit freedom and make subsistence levels the national standard, so we can all miserable together in solidarity. If a mogul was felled to lived in a hovel next door, I don't see how that creates justice for me.
