Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Get your degree in BS Studies right here!

Let’s talk about the leftist destruction of the very idea of moral judgments (it's called "idiotarianism" in the blogosphere). Believe it or not, in confronting this phenomenon, we're in the same position as natural scientists. Scientists are are busy trying to discover a theory to explain all the forces of nature, everything from why the sun shines, why the Big Bang banged, why electricity shocks, why refrigerator magnets stick, to why the toast that famously lands jelly-side down falls downwards at all. It can’t all be “just because”. There must be a single explanation. This scientific Holy Grail is to be called a “Theory of Everything” or “TOE”. If you look at all the marvelous events in the universe and scratch your head, then just wait until scientists find their TOE and you'll need scratch no further.

Conservatives scratch their heads, too, when they observe the plethora of leftist antics, verbiage, diatribes, and, in extreme cases, crimes against humanity. What’s the source of all this? There must be a formula, some rhyme or reason behind the baffling variety of leftist blunders. We need a theory to explain leftist nonsense, such as: the support for cop killers on death row; the support for anyone poor who suicide-bombs anyone not-so-poor; the stealing of entire press runs of student newspapers that run ads for a book arguing against reparations for slavery; the sacred faith in the wickedness of U.S. foreign policy; the gay rights group that urges its members to donate blood against the Red Cross’s policy aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS; the claim that sperm banks can be good daddies, too; the fact that a black applicant to a law school is 731 times more likely to be accepted than an equally qualified white one; the cancellation of excellent men’s college sports teams because there aren’t enough women’s teams; the utterance by the leader of the feminist movement that men do not generally have more upper-body strength than women; the starving to death of between two and five million Ukrainians because they didn’t want to embrace communism; the labeling of George W. Bush a terrorist; etc. I could go on, but so could you. This is, in essence, a long list of ways in which commonsense moral judgments are being slated for destruction by liberals. Of course, there are people on the left with plenty of commonsense and who decry these abhorrent leftist ways. But theirs is an unstable position, for they have to brace themselves and resist the leftward pull into the gloom. What is this force that pulls them, having swallowed up so many others on the left?

All this rot must have a root. The human mind simply will not countenance a vast array of unexplained phenomena. It will have its TOE, but in this case it will be a Theory of Leftism: TOL. I have a TOL for you. To what, according to TOL, do we owe the stream of nonsense emanating from the left? To Marxism. I don’t mean Marxism as just a historical precedent. I mean Marxism as a living, breathing creed, as the basic stance alive and well underneath all of the leftist buffoonery. The “basic stance” of leftism - call it “BS” - is this:

BS: Since the distribution of power amongst the various humans on this planet is uneven, those with less of it are oppressed, and any moral judgments that tend to preserve the distribution are merely ways for oppressors to maintain the oppression.

That’s it. End of story. That’s my TOL. If you pull this straw, the whole structure of leftism comes tumbling down. How? Take a look. Any liberal baloney you can name is based on the BS that my TOL claims is the fundamental Marxist position underneath every liberal gaffe. Bush goes to war against Al Qaeda? That preserves the uneven distribution of power. Someone says sperm banks don’t make good daddies? That preserves the unequal access to childbearing that husbandless women face. Gays politely asked not to donate blood? College men may have more teams? Those don’t exactly promote equal outcomes for all. Someone says it’s a violation of free speech to steal entire press runs of newspapers that suggest that certain people do not deserve trillions of dollars? Well that’s very convenient - for the people who have the trillions! “Right to free speech”? Please! If you can’t afford to publish your own newspaper, then you’re a fool to respect such a right. That newspaper has more freedom of speech than a hobo, so it ought to be trashed, because it suggests that the hobo does not deserve to have us write him a fat check, a suggestion which does not exactly help empower the hobo. Men have more upper body strength? Sure, believe that and you’ll just be perpetuating the unequal access women have to jobs requiring lifting things.

Run through the rest of the list of liberal laughables for yourself. Each and every one of them derives from BS. Go ahead, I’ll wait.... See? That proves TOL. Now think of some more common liberal nonsense.... See? TOL explains everything.

Okay, now you have your Bachelor’s degree in BS Studies. But you’re an inquiring mind. You want your Master’s. What’s really going on with this BS?

Liberals aren’t stupid. There is something to this BS. It’s this: BS believers think that it’s unfair for some people to start out with less of the good stuff in life - freedom, wealth, brains - than others. Why? Because that means they have less of a chance to end up with good stuff. It’s not fair! Others have a head start! Right?

Wrong. It sounds seductive, and that’s how it hoodwinks millions of people with triple-digit IQs into accepting the liberal BS. There is nothing unfair about not having as good a chance as someone else at having a good life. It’s simply bad luck, that’s all. If your oven tends to make your souffles fall, it’s not an injustice. If you were born with two left feet, this wasn’t a wrong done to you. If you are not well-to-do, this doesn’t mean Ritchie Rich has done you an injury. If you don’t have the brains for law school, this doesn’t mean law school graduates have gotten the better of you. If you don’t inherit wealth, this doesn’t mean those who do are oppressors. It’s just the breaks. The roll of the dice. Dumb luck. You might as well scream at the rocks in your backyard for not being gold. Unequal outcomes in life are not a sign of injustice in society, and therefore unequal starting positions aren’t either. If unequal outcomes were unjust, then the following BS would make good sense: “People who can afford only one house have a right to be outraged that other people can afford two.” But that BS doesn’t make good sense. Of course, for the wealthy to leave innocents to suffer in abject misery caused by severe poverty or other misfortune is indeed wrong. That’s the common sense that the Good Samaritan had and that conservatives do, too. But that extreme case does nothing to bolster the gobsmackingly sweeping array of claims BS generates, such as the idea of a right to as many sports teams as men.

You want your Ph.D. in BS Studies? Very well. Marx said that all moral judgments are merely attempts made by the well off to solidify the uneven distribution of power. Stealing is wrong? Very convenient, Ritchie Rich! Sure, keep me in jail for being a thief! Very convenient - for you rich folk, that is! Got it? Follow the money! Common sense moral judgments are a sham! They’re all about power!

That’s BS. But what’s really going on here? The problem is that the BS - that moral judgments that tend to preserve the distribution of good stuff in society are merely ways for oppressors to maintain the oppression - is horribly incoherent. Yes, Marxism is horribly incoherent, and TOL tells you why: Because the absolute egalitarianism that leftists champion - communism, socialism, or whatever - is itself a moral judgment that tends to preserve a certain distribution of good stuff - namely, an absolutely equal distribution. Therefore, it, too, is just another way for oppressors to preserve an oppressive distribution - namely the absolutely equal distribution which oppresses people who work hard and/or have good luck and/or desire to give their children an inheritance and/or decide to make something of their talents, etc. We know that it is not wrong for those hard-working, talented, and lucky folks to have their goodies while others don’t (except when it comes to the special case I mentioned of innocents in abject misery). As you can see, good old conservative values, like self-reliance, charity, hard work, private property, fair play, non-covetousness, joy in others’ good fortune, quickly come to the fore. These are targeted for destruction by leftist BS. Marxism, which is BS, is a moral judgment that says moral judgments are a sham. Talk about BS!

There you have it: TOL. The mystery of liberalism is solved. Please explain it to the liberals you meet. When they say, “Oh, that’s very convenient! That just perpetuates the structure of -”, then cut them off and explain it again. Don’t let them continue to destroy the very idea of moral judgments.

(You get your honorary doctorate for noticing the unholy marriage of BS and postmodernism. BS requires that you deny that there are any objective facts in the world, such as that men have upper body strength, that some people are smarter than others, that there are stars, that cars run on combustion, etc. Postmodernism is the insane asylum in which this BS passes for sophisticated insight.)

(Nobel Prize in BS: you realize that simple lefties who just let their hearts bleed feel too guilty to consider arguments against leftism because they think considering them doesn't serve the interests of the poor. They know that if those arguments removed them from their leftist slumbers, they will no longer fight for the downtrodden masses. This makes them feel guilty, so they don't consider the arguments. That's BS, because it lets truth and morality take a back seat to leftist dogma. It's also cowardly, but don't get me started.)