Winston Churchill
is attributed as saying: "If your not a Liberal at twenty, you have no
heart. If you're not a Conservative at forty, you have no brain."
There is also the maxim, "if you want to FEEL good be a liberal but if you want to DO good be a conservative." (See HERE)
Now,
if one doubts that emotions are a substantial, controlling influence for liberals, one need but consider the motives behind and nature of most
if not all liberal causes. As indicated in a previous post, the Left is all about
compassion and caring, and this to the point that some consider liberal
governments to be "nanny-ish." (See HERE and HERE)
Over the last century or so, liberals
have been harrowed-up by the depth and breadth of human suffering, and have
been emotionally moved to protest the ravages of war, set up soup lines
and food banks, provide homeless shelters, man civil rights marches,
advocate for the disabled, speak out for the environment and against
animal cruelty, pass legislation to assist the elderly, poor, sick and
afflicted, and the list goes on. This is to their credit.
I don't know if it is due to
the feminization of the Left or not, but liberals are quite sensitive. Feelings are very important to them. This is also made evident in the
way they oft make emotive appeals to the public when advancing their
causes--be it through heart-wrenching stories about innocent people who
were killed by collateral damage, prisoners that were water-boarded,
oceans soiled by oil, cute polar bears that have been dwindling in numbers, ice caps that are melting, children murdered by crazed gunmen and
drive-by shooters; or be it through fear-mongering ads, news reports,
and movies about the elderly being deprived of their benefits, the
earth's ecology on the verge of collapse, certain animals facing
extinction, potential epidemic or pandemic spread of disease, and so on
and so forth.
In many respects, and as repeatedly underscored
throughout my Leftist LUNCs of the Week blog, these are noble quests and the emotional motives
are to be respected.
However, as our bodies tell us, just as the mind
can't live without the heart, neither can the heart live without the
mind. Both the intellect and emotions are of value and need to be
rightly balanced and compliment one another and kept in check by one
another.
When the mind acts without the heart, there
is
coldness and apathy. And, when the heart acts without the mind, there is
stupidity and inanity. When they work together, there is wisdom,
virtue, and practicality.
Think of the mind as the rudder and the heart
as the wind in the sails. What good is a rudder if there is no wind to
move about the ship of state? And what good is the wind if
there is no rudder to give determined direction, but where the ship of state is left to be tossed
to a fro
wherever the winds of emotion are want to blow?
Unfortunately,
while liberals clearly have big hearts, there is serious question about
the bigness of their minds--and this in spite of how oft some of them
pride themselves on their alleged superior or elite intellects. Whereas,
the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Would many of the Leftist
LUNCs have occurred, let alone near invariably and at such grand scales, if liberals were ruled as much by their minds as their hearts? Would the liberal ship of state be continually blown off course by the winds of
emotions and run aground on the shoals of bankruptcy and disaster if there were sufficient intellectual rudder providing much needed and intelligent
direction?
Perhaps it is just me, but in my experience
with liberals these days, particularly during on-line discussions,
there appears to be ample sounds and fury and passion, superficiality,
and much echoing
of talking points, but little describable in-depth reasoning or
coherent analysis. To me, not only does critical thinking seems to
have become a relic of the distant liberal past, but a trend seems to
have emerged where leftist activists and respondents appear to have
developed a
remarkable complacency with inanity. It doesn't matter the compelling
power of arguments or strength and wealth of evidence contravening what liberals propose, nor the mounting bleakness of economic and
foreign policies, and not even the litany of scandals constantly in the
news, many liberals appear completely unaffected.
Evidently, what matters to them isn't what makes the most sense or what
demonstrably works or fails miserably, but rather having the right
intent and feelings and
being associated with the politically correct and popular causes. It seems more important to them not to offend than to do what is best and right.
And as
if that were not enough, many of them genuinely and fervently believe
that they are the ones making perfect sense and that their opponents
are banal. Up is down and down is up.
Again, is it any wonder that Leftist LUNCs occur and re-occur with relative abandonment?
Examples of liberal political emoting are replete, though perhaps no more so than during the prime-time "news programs" at MSNBC.
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