Purpose of Blog

As you read through the weekly Leftist LUNCs, you may ask: "Why is it that Liberals typically start out with wonderfully positive and laudable intents, but end up with negative and regrettable consequences?" "Why do Leftist LUNCs continue to happen, over and over again and on such a grand scale?"

There are various answers to these questions hinted at in the Leftist LUNCs, themselves. I will briefly discuss each in this blog.


Friday, August 2, 2013

The Politics of Emotions

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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