Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Why the vast gulf between Left and Right?  Why do Leftists live in their own little bubble?

There is a famous anecdote about a journalist (possibly Pauline Kael) who was amazed at the election of President Nixon.  "But I don't know anybody who voted for Nixon", she said.  That bubble again.  Wyeth, an Australian  Leftist, spells out at some length how Left and Right seem to live in two different worlds, with very little communication between them.  Wyeth does not know why, however.

I think the answer is obvious.  I think that the separation exists because the Left has a reflex of closing its ears to anything it does not want to hear.  They do that because their beliefs are so easily open to challenge.  They cannot AFFORD to listen.  Reality is against them.  They have to invent a fictional mental world where, for instance, "all men are equal", despite the perfectly obvious fact that all men are different.  All men are (allegedly) equal only in the sight of God -- and Leftists don't generally believe in him/her.

Global warming is a good example of reality denial too.  It is agreed on both sides of the divide that the total amount of warming over the last 150 years has been less than one degree Celsius.  Why is such a triviality worth notice?  Leftists never say.  Global warming scientists theorize that the warming might suddenly leap but that is mere prophecy  -- and we know how successful prophecies generally are.






















Conservatives, on the other hand spend most of their time in politics discussing and refuting Leftist arguments.  Read almost anything on Townhall.com, for instance, and it will be discussing and refuting Leftist arguments and policies with appeals to the facts -- anything but ignoring them.  By contrast, the fact that Leftists do NOT generally address conservative arguments is what makes them seem alien to conservatives.  It makes them seem alien to rationality.  Leftists very often mock conservative arguments in a superficial and cherrypicked way but that is a far cry from seriously working through them and honestly addressing ALL the relevant facts

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