Pigeonholing And You
There’s a danger to subscribing too much to a singular view of a given ideology. When you refuse to acknowledge that anything other than your narrow interpretation of a class of people or philosophy is the correct one, it forces you to interpret events and occurrences along your narrow thesis. This is true in science as well as in the liberal arts and humanities. If you build a religion around your belief, ultimately you’ll look like a schmuck.
Thomas Frank, author of the vaunted left-wing treatise “What the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, proves he is the poster boy for this affliction in his latest New York Times Op-Ed, “G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In The Conservatives” (have to be an NYT subscriber).
To look back, in Frank’s “seminal” work, Kansas, he argues that it wasn’t conservative ideas and principles that won over central America and took former “working class” bastions of Democrats and changed them to Republicans overnight. The problem, he stated, was that Republicans used fear and deception to turn otherwise loyal, but gullible and perhaps slightly retarded, Democrats and other Middle America values voters into frightened sheep who would vote for anyone who would protect them. The same logic was often used, I recall, during the end of the Cold War by Leftists who could find no other real argument for conservatives’ opposition to communism. So Kansas took an old Cold War meme and resurrected it for the 21st century. Leftists love it when old Marxist tactics become new again and thus Franks has received much acclaim for his work.
Frank’s basic argument was that conservative policies are innately damaging and unhealthy to these very salt of the earth who voted for them. Never mind that we have 40-60 years of government largesse and failed liberal, even socialist policies to prove conservatives’ very point or to offer an abundance of reasons of why Middle America might have wanted to walk away from a party that has radically drifted to the Left over the last few decades. That is inconsequential. What matters are Republicans and conservatives (which is just another word for Republicans) are evil. And now you can say you’ve read his book.
Getting back to Frank’s NY Times piece, the crux of his argument seems to be that conservatives are equally unfit to govern, because they believe in small government. There seems to be a belief on his part that, after using fear and manufactured terror to get into power, obviously “corrupt” conservatives in turn corrupted and scandalized large sectors of an otherwise benevolent bureaucracy. Through this evil master plan, conservatives, now that they’ve wormed their way into power, will corrupt that power and then fuel cynicism among the masses over the failures, in turn blaming those failures not on themselves but on hapless Democrats and liberals. The fiends! Of course, I’m paraphrasing, but not much.
This Leftist media darling, the flavor of the month in a pool of little fish that tries to be the next Chomsky or Zinn, says what most conservatives joke about liberals saying and becomes the next in a long line of caricatures that refuse to see the world through any other lens than their “alternative” view of history.
Arguably, conservatives can be guilty of this world view as well, pigeonholing liberal wins into failures of the people or the masses, blaming anyone but themselves. Whichever side does it, it is an unhealthy behavior and a failed manner of belief. If you fail, you must analyze the fault in why you failed. I’ve often heard that fundamentally people are suckers for the truth. I’ve also heard that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The left these days routinely lies to the masses about their true intentions and then tries to fix a society that wasn’t fundamentally broken to begin with and they’ve done it so often and, previously, against light opposition that they’re starting to believe their own press as gospel. It’s time to start admitting when they’re at fault and that perhaps it isn’t just some evil puppet master conservative boogeyman. Maybe, Frank should just consider that Kansas, and the rest of the “red states” just aren’t buying what the Left’s selling anymore.
Hat tip to Newsbusters for this story.
There’s a danger to subscribing too much to a singular view of a given ideology. When you refuse to acknowledge that anything other than your narrow interpretation of a class of people or philosophy is the correct one, it forces you to interpret events and occurrences along your narrow thesis. This is true in science as well as in the liberal arts and humanities. If you build a religion around your belief, ultimately you’ll look like a schmuck.
Thomas Frank, author of the vaunted left-wing treatise “What the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, proves he is the poster boy for this affliction in his latest New York Times Op-Ed, “G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In The Conservatives” (have to be an NYT subscriber).
To look back, in Frank’s “seminal” work, Kansas, he argues that it wasn’t conservative ideas and principles that won over central America and took former “working class” bastions of Democrats and changed them to Republicans overnight. The problem, he stated, was that Republicans used fear and deception to turn otherwise loyal, but gullible and perhaps slightly retarded, Democrats and other Middle America values voters into frightened sheep who would vote for anyone who would protect them. The same logic was often used, I recall, during the end of the Cold War by Leftists who could find no other real argument for conservatives’ opposition to communism. So Kansas took an old Cold War meme and resurrected it for the 21st century. Leftists love it when old Marxist tactics become new again and thus Franks has received much acclaim for his work.
Frank’s basic argument was that conservative policies are innately damaging and unhealthy to these very salt of the earth who voted for them. Never mind that we have 40-60 years of government largesse and failed liberal, even socialist policies to prove conservatives’ very point or to offer an abundance of reasons of why Middle America might have wanted to walk away from a party that has radically drifted to the Left over the last few decades. That is inconsequential. What matters are Republicans and conservatives (which is just another word for Republicans) are evil. And now you can say you’ve read his book.
Getting back to Frank’s NY Times piece, the crux of his argument seems to be that conservatives are equally unfit to govern, because they believe in small government. There seems to be a belief on his part that, after using fear and manufactured terror to get into power, obviously “corrupt” conservatives in turn corrupted and scandalized large sectors of an otherwise benevolent bureaucracy. Through this evil master plan, conservatives, now that they’ve wormed their way into power, will corrupt that power and then fuel cynicism among the masses over the failures, in turn blaming those failures not on themselves but on hapless Democrats and liberals. The fiends! Of course, I’m paraphrasing, but not much.
This Leftist media darling, the flavor of the month in a pool of little fish that tries to be the next Chomsky or Zinn, says what most conservatives joke about liberals saying and becomes the next in a long line of caricatures that refuse to see the world through any other lens than their “alternative” view of history.
Arguably, conservatives can be guilty of this world view as well, pigeonholing liberal wins into failures of the people or the masses, blaming anyone but themselves. Whichever side does it, it is an unhealthy behavior and a failed manner of belief. If you fail, you must analyze the fault in why you failed. I’ve often heard that fundamentally people are suckers for the truth. I’ve also heard that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The left these days routinely lies to the masses about their true intentions and then tries to fix a society that wasn’t fundamentally broken to begin with and they’ve done it so often and, previously, against light opposition that they’re starting to believe their own press as gospel. It’s time to start admitting when they’re at fault and that perhaps it isn’t just some evil puppet master conservative boogeyman. Maybe, Frank should just consider that Kansas, and the rest of the “red states” just aren’t buying what the Left’s selling anymore.
Hat tip to Newsbusters for this story.
posted by Rob Beck | 11:55 PM
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