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Nov. 6th, 2006 02:33 amWhy are they coherent, we diffuse? I'll tell you why.
Leftists are too smart.
1. Leftists realize--or uneasily suspect, or devote costly energy to talking themselves out of uneasily suspecting--that one vote or one face in a crowd doesn't matter. It's not that it has no effect; it is the much more disheartening and confusing fact that the effect is of a specific mathematical tininess, that is the problem. Talking yourself into unreal size or illusory participation in great Voltron-like popular bodies is exhilarating but leaves a bad taste in mouths with sensitive tongues. Leftists know there's something wrong. They scream too loud and then go silent. Republicans chant. Each one is sure his vote meaningfully affects the world; often sure it affects his very own life. A vote for lower taxes? Why, that's money in the bank.
2. Leftists know that truth hates God. Those of us who hate God too don't dare say so in even-numbered years, for fear of offending the others. Those others instinctively shrink from truth talk on key issues, fearing God and sense will destroy each other like antimatter meeting its mate. Only atheists and fundamentalists can argue freely from premises, in ethical matters, and one of the two groups is mad.
Example: Abortion. Fundamentalists take the injunction to not kill, the theological necessity of individual souls, and the aesthetic inelegance of soul implantation at any point but conception, and make a coherent position out of them. Atheists typically use a sympathy criterion, observe that uncongealed life doesn't have feelings or interests in a recognizable, active sense, note that even the possibility of fetal misery fails to outweigh the manifest misery of some uncongenially situated mothers, and accept the utility of the right to abort. Can one even describe what the moderate religious do? Atheists and fundamentalists deal with concepts that can only be quantified comparatively. Poor religious moderates have to compare these concepts, soul and misery, against each other; or escape this impossibility entirely arbitrarily, by weakly picking a new point of soulbirth.
Where clean arguments from true or vividly imaginable premises can't be found, enthusiasm becomes erratic. Leftists know what's right but can't let themselves say, sometimes know, why.
1. We need to make voting compulsory, or give tax incentives.
2. We need to destroy God by teaching logic to 1st graders.
Leftists are too smart.
1. Leftists realize--or uneasily suspect, or devote costly energy to talking themselves out of uneasily suspecting--that one vote or one face in a crowd doesn't matter. It's not that it has no effect; it is the much more disheartening and confusing fact that the effect is of a specific mathematical tininess, that is the problem. Talking yourself into unreal size or illusory participation in great Voltron-like popular bodies is exhilarating but leaves a bad taste in mouths with sensitive tongues. Leftists know there's something wrong. They scream too loud and then go silent. Republicans chant. Each one is sure his vote meaningfully affects the world; often sure it affects his very own life. A vote for lower taxes? Why, that's money in the bank.
2. Leftists know that truth hates God. Those of us who hate God too don't dare say so in even-numbered years, for fear of offending the others. Those others instinctively shrink from truth talk on key issues, fearing God and sense will destroy each other like antimatter meeting its mate. Only atheists and fundamentalists can argue freely from premises, in ethical matters, and one of the two groups is mad.
Example: Abortion. Fundamentalists take the injunction to not kill, the theological necessity of individual souls, and the aesthetic inelegance of soul implantation at any point but conception, and make a coherent position out of them. Atheists typically use a sympathy criterion, observe that uncongealed life doesn't have feelings or interests in a recognizable, active sense, note that even the possibility of fetal misery fails to outweigh the manifest misery of some uncongenially situated mothers, and accept the utility of the right to abort. Can one even describe what the moderate religious do? Atheists and fundamentalists deal with concepts that can only be quantified comparatively. Poor religious moderates have to compare these concepts, soul and misery, against each other; or escape this impossibility entirely arbitrarily, by weakly picking a new point of soulbirth.
Where clean arguments from true or vividly imaginable premises can't be found, enthusiasm becomes erratic. Leftists know what's right but can't let themselves say, sometimes know, why.
1. We need to make voting compulsory, or give tax incentives.
2. We need to destroy God by teaching logic to 1st graders.
