Monday, April 02, 2012

The American Left As "Intellectual Couch Potatoes" ?

Hey, I didn't say it, Jen Rubin did.  But her argument bears repeating, as the entire liberal establishment stands slack-jawed as the argument for Obamacare was ripped to shreds before the Supreme Court, and the nation:

In sum, the left systematically has dumbed its side down, to the point where supposedly well-educated elites are untrained and unaware of our country’s history and constitutional traditions. The left thinks words have no fixed meaning (health care and health insurance, are close enough, so they insist we can define the latter to be the former.) The liberal elites have a poor grounding in market economics so they swallow the idea that health-care insurance is “unique” because others’ purchases affect your cost of goods. (Surprise: all markets operate this way.)
They advance illogical and counterfactual arguments (e.g., withdrawing a 100 percent subsidy for health care to seniors is a “mandate”) because they are unused to vigorous debate that upsets their preferences dressed up in a thin veil of factual distortion. (Sorry, taking away a freebie is not remotely the same in logic or in law as requiring you purchase something.)

In moments like the Supreme Court argument we see how vast is the gulf between conservative and liberal elites.

All of this should give the left pause. Have they become intellectual couch potatoes while conservatives have been training for a marathon? It sure seems that way
.

So how will the Left respond to the "F" in Civics 101 they just received while a entire nation looked on, bemused?  Will they re-devote themselves to scholarship, undertake to understand once again what type of nation the Founders were building, and where their political philosophy fits in?  Will they once again accept conservative arguments as legitimate, and hold them worthy of debate?  Will they challenge the universitiy system that left them so woefully unprepared for this battle, and demand a renewed application to the understanding of market economics, American constitutional government, and early Western thinkers, even (gasp!) those of a religious bent?

Nah. Every try to get a 350 pound man off the couch and into the gym?  It's not the threat of a heart attack that will get him to move - not even a false alarm - but it takes the actual heart attack itself - assuming it is non-fatal - to get the couch potato moving again.  And even that is not a definite; many would rather die than make the effort to adapt and stay alive.


The liberal mind... 

And such will be the fate of liberals in the USA.  Not yet ready for a re-thinking of their base premises (that they are the superior intellect), they will instead lash out with anger, hatred, and possibly even violence.  Oh, wait, that's already begun...

Maybe when the Democrats get their clocks cleaned in the 2012 general election, and lose control of both the White House and Congress, they'll wake up to their new reality and apply themselves to figuring out how to survive within it.

Maybe.

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