I am a member of the far right.As I've written before, there is a difference between the Left and the Right. And it is an issue of who makes the decisions in your life. You, or someone else.
I am a member of the far right.
This means that I believe that there are plenty of times when I will succeed and I will fail. And that my success is the product of my ideas and hard work and that my failure is also the product of my ideas and hard work.
Sometimes, I'm just dumb.
And at those times I'm simply the unwilling tool of my own stupidity. But I have tended toward being more successful than I have been unsuccessful. It isn't random. It isn't because of some sort of outside intervention. My success and my failure is simply a product of good ideas and good ideas that didn't pan out.
I have given some paradigms in the past of my beliefs. I didn't really start blogging until I got tired of merely commenting on others' blogs and decided to try my hand. If you were to go to my earliest posts and then, read through those posts, you would decidedly see that I've changed both my voice and my interest. I write to you today as me. My earliest posts were undefined, between the voices of the first and third.
It is true that I still suffer from voice confusion.
But as I've matured as a blogger, I've removed most of the third party voice and replaced that voice with my own. I'm writing to you. You are the object. I am the author. I really can't see doing "Dickens" in this space.
So I am telling you that I am a right wing blogger. A conservative, right wing blogger.
Far right.
So, if you're on the Left, I'm scarey?
How did that happen?
As a Right Wing, ultra-conservative, Republican, how is it that I can be a threat to you or to your personal freedoms? When all I want from you is a respect of my own ability to make my own decisions, own my own property, raise my own children, pay my own bills?
It must be the selfishness of my ideology. My own freedom. My own respect. My own decisions. My own property. My own children. My own bills.
Me, me, me.
It's all about me.
And my hope is, that if you think about your life, your children, your job and your children and friends, it's all about you.
This is the ideology of the Far Right.
Me. Me. Me.
What is disturbing to to those on the Left is that my "me-ism" really doesn't have much room for "them, them, them."
When I wake up in the morning, I don't think about the poverty in Africa. My bad.
When I wake up in the morning, I don't think about what I can do to help inner-city kids getting a balanced, non-fat, non-sugar filled, racially tolerant breakfast.
This is the ideology of the Far Right.
What I do think about are the things I need to tackle, overcome and create during the day facing me. As a member of the Far Right, I don't spend time thinking about social justice, the failure of the Bush Adminstration and Hurricane Katrina, whether or not poor folks are poor because they don't work, or whether or not my health care is dependent upon a lack of government involvement in health care.
I gear up to tackle the prospects of this day.
How different the problems of the Left.
I begin my day with a consolidation of the prospects for that day; what I need to accomplish, what I want to accomplish, and what I am able to accomplish.
Far different from the Left. What are they doing, why are they doing it and what can I do to make sure that I receive a part of that which they do?
The Right, especially the Far Right thinks about self. It is, after all, a selfish ideology. The Left, being kinder and more advanced, thinks about the Other.
Having read Sartre, Jung, Kierkegaard, Kant and Chomsky I'm well equipped to advance the notion that the Left worries more about what the Right is doing than what it is doing, itself.
Existentialism, nihilism and post-modernism aren't really good prescription for self-analysis. But they are perfect for examining the other. In the po-mo world, the Other becomes the enemy. That which is not Us. The Leftist view of Hemingway is one of alienation, being apart and negation. The Right's view of Hemingway is of concision, brevity and thought.
The Right and the Left are served differently. The Right--just as I begin my day--is aware of choice and the choices I will make during the course of my day. The Left looks at externalities; how others will reduce my ability to self-actualize, constraining my ability to achieve perfection for myself and those around me, to limit me to concreteness--that my dreams are only my dreams, and that my dreams are ridiculous.
The Extreme Right believes that I am responsible for my choices. The Extreme Left believes that I am only encumbered from realizing my own, personal goals by others.
Quite a dichotomy, neh?
Me, me, me. Versus you, you, you.
I do not believe that the greatest good can be achieved by denying the least among us of his or her political rights. That the best law serves us all, equally, without privilege or rank. This makes me an Ulta-Conservative Rightest Nut.
This is my code. My trust, faith and belief.
On the other hand, there is the Left. And I frankly can't find any center to the beliefs of the Left.
Because the Left has no center, no belief.
Other than "you, you, you."
There has to be a modicum of understanding of the pure language that we speak. Do you take responsibility for your own actions? Or, do you seek to make others responsible for your actions?
If you are responsible for your actions, chances are you're an Ultra-Reactionary Right Wing Conservative.
If not, you are a Democrat.
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15 comments:
Well said. The bonus is that the "me, me!" individualist does not function in a vacuum. The successes he enjoys affect those around him. Rather like Smith's "unseen hand."
The us/them/other thing is their center.
The left believes that politics is all that really matters. And they believe that politics is the business of different groups competing to control the state, and then using the state's power to loot all the other groups.
That's what their "you you you" thing is about. The "you" they want to help is their own group. You and I are not part of that "you". We're the Other. In their primitive world, they imagine there to be a fixed amount of wealth, because they don't know where goods and services come from. In their view, a virtuous person's job is either to transfer that wealth from the Other to "us", like Hrothgar rewarding his gang of loyal thugs, or else to receive the stolen wealth.
Therefore, the Other must be bad and must have no rights that the looter is bound to respect: Because otherwise, what the looter is doing would be wrong and crazy.
We mean, greedy righties are not interested in that "you you you" stuff (but it's interested in us!). Politics is peripheral to our lives. We engage with it mostly when it forces itself on us. Our unwillingness to live by banditry is what the looters call "selfishness". They have to tell themselves we're evil, because they have to justify looting us. When they hate us, that's not incidental.
Those of us who didn't miss out on the Enlightenment can see that you can't run a modern nation-state that way indefinitely, because it just cannibalizes a rapidly diminishing pool of wealth instead of creating wealth. Nobody wins but a new class of parasitic rentiers like the UAW, Goldman Sachs, and a civil service which will continue to expand as long as there's any productive economy left to feed on.
They really believe that they're morally superior, though. They really believe that the more they punish people who produce wealth, the better off everybody will be. That's because punishing and looting the Other is virtuous, and if you do virtuous things, that must be good, right? They believe they're good and wise because when they look at members of their own group, they see people who are familiar to them, and therefore more pleasing to them than the unfamiliar Other. So therefore their own policies must be better than the Other's policies.
That's really as far as their thinking goes. They mistake their most childish emotions for profound truths about the universe they live in.
They, whoever "They" is, say in the blogosphere that the measure of a person's sanity is in the number of paragrapghs in their posts.
Inno--
We walked away from the protestant work ethic as a nation. Or, we're in the process of doing so.
Does anybody even assign Max Weber any more?
The only blogger that I've recently come across that has even mentioned the elements of the guilt of the Protestant is Clueless Emma.
By removing reference to religion in America, really outlawing reference to religion, we've found that the arguments that support the idea of exceptionalism have foundered. If personal responsibility is "simply" the invention of the religious, then it becomes ipso facto the privilege of the Left to emancipate us from those chains.
It is our state sponsored education system that is providing the locomotion for this supplanting of personal responsibility with social responsibility.
I was part of discussion group a year or so ago, and the question came up of "what would Buddha do?"
I explained that if Buddha were hungry, he would go about the tasks necessary to feed himself. If he wanted clothing, he would go about the tasks of clothing himself. If Buddha wanted shelter, he would go about the tasks of providing himself with shelter.
Geez! He's just like you and I, only you want the state to provide for you!
And Buddha, like Christ, was the kind of guy who lead from the front. Like every good boss I've ever had. Like the kind of boss I hope I am. I have never asked anybody to do a thing I was unwilling to do myself.
Retardo--
(Quite the nick.)
You're always welcome back. I'll keep pitching them high and slow. You keep knocking it out of the ballpark.
Patrick--
Long time no see. It's good to see that your latest contribution reinforces our beliefs about your ability to provide robust argument.
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Patrick--
Long time no see. It's good to see that your latest contribution reinforces our beliefs about your ability to provide robust argument.
This site?
Robust Argument?
What's to argue here but the inane?
Does this post about your philosophy as someone on the far right really start out with a drawing of a boob?
If so, why?
OG,
You might find this of interest:
A National Party
With supporting evidence here:
Why McCain Picked Palin
Also at Classical Values if you want a bigger audience. I give you props at "National Party" at CV.
I wish your voice was bigger on the Far Right. Because they seriously have lost their way. They don't see that the persuasion of Jesus is better than the swords of Rome.
"An Outline of the Far Right."
I must be a boob. And, as you know, if you need to explain the joke...
For those of you who have never come across Patrick McGee, it's important as a primer to note that the Left does not engage in conversation. They instead rely upon whole series of logical fallacies. The fallacy being employed currently is the "straw man" or name-calling fallacy. By calling one a name, one seeks to divide the reader from the writer; "Robust Argument? What's to argue here but the inane?"
If, as a first time reader, you have a hard time understanding the concepts being discussed here, it is easier to reject these concepts if you are told that instead of needing a more educated background to delve into this subject matter, you may dismiss the whole thing, since everything you don't understand is simply inane.
Which comes back to the image at the top of the post, the title of the post, and my self-declaration and admission that I am an Ultra-Reactionary Right Wing Conservative.
Because I don't call the Left out simply through stringing together name-calling, equivocation and dissembling.
I am attempting to advance an argument; that I am better off when you leave me alone to do my own business, just as I believe you are better off if everyone leaves you alone to do your own business. And that it is this "agenda" that drives the Left to use terms like Nazi, thug and boob. And the more calm you are, the greater the invective that is heaped upon you.
Ah! the tolerance of the Left.
M.Simon--
I read your post on "A National Party" earlier today. Living in Oregon, one needs to deal with a level of political tolerance for thought, discussion and argument exhibited above by one of the commentors.
This being the case, when I come across posts like yours, I don't always try to deposit the two cents. I will say, though, that much is being made by the Left about the Republican effort to self-destruct by returning to conservative/libertarian roots. I am grateful to my friends of the Left that intend to look-out for me and my ilk with the advice to avoid having strongly held beliefs as a source for unity within my political party.
That I ignore their advice re-inforces the conclusion that I am an iconoclastic Ultra-Reactionary Right Wing Conservative.
That is, I am a boob.
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Oh, I get it. Boob. Naughty words are fun.
Solid--
Well,there's that. But its also a beautiful image.
Multi-tasking. It's what I'm all about.
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OG,
I generally trust people with strongly held beliefs who state them openly.
So why do I trust you despite my having different opinions on more than a few subjects? You understand the critical importance of the "leave us alone" option in a pluralistic society.
It is why I'm so fond of Sarah Palin (politically) and why I supported Hoffman in NY 23.
BTW it is also why I can support Ron Paul on most issues (well he is kinda nuts on foreign policy).
We have an event in this state called the Dorchester Conference.
It's a great event. Point being, the Paul guys are great, but they get wound up just a little too much. They do not lack energy. Just a little narrowness. They rarely know anything about money and the private banks, as in the Scottish experience, nor do they appreciate that fiat money existed well before the Federal Reserve.
I understand the Jacksonian impulse,and have written of it on this site. I tend to be an optimist because the Jacksonian impulse is consonant with the libertarian/conservative impulse. What I have a problem with is the didactic approach of people like Buchanan when it comes to foreign policy. In all things, never make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I too tend to trust those who speak openly and honestly. I had this conversation with a former B.C. Premier with whom I became acquainted. He was a Socialist. Big "s". I, of course, am an irrecondite conservative. Read, Ed Burke.
But it was an easy discussion when we talked about policy because he didn't feel the need to dissimulate on the basis of his socialism. So, to am I a fan of Terry Glavin.
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/
When you're honest about your socialism you don't have to hide behind an attempt to "not appear" to be socialist. You can be a socialist "and" a patriot. In Mr. Glavin's case, he is a proud Canadian and while I disagree with the economic model that he embraces, I find that his "liberal" views mirror mine on many other issues relating to defending human rights.
Think of Daniel Moynihan. The man was brilliant, and never apologized for his defense of our national interest.
Of course, this requires honest admissions of disagreement. Not denser equivocation.
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Excellent post, OG. I can certainly add nothing. I'll just link it.
I saw a bumper sticker this morning on teh way to work "Republicans Suck"
I thought to myself, obviously this guy doesn't like Republicans.
It reminds me barbarism begins at home.
g--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cTxNlxPasw
Thanks for your visit, bub.
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