The Western Disease, by Victor Davis Hanson

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I could go on, but you get the picture of this current madness. There is something terribly wrong, something terribly amoral with the Western intelligentsia, most prominently in academia, the media, and politics. We don’t need Osama bin Laden’s preschool jabbering about “the weak horse” to be worried about the causes of this Western disease: thousands of the richest, most leisured people in the history of civilization have become self-absorbed, ungracious, and completely divorced from the natural world — the age-old horrific realities of dearth, plague, hunger, rapine, or conquest.

Indeed, it is even worse than that: a Paul Krugman or French barrister neither knows anything of how life is lived beyond his artificial cocoon nor of the rather different men and women whose unacknowledged work in the shadows ensures his own bounty in such a pampered landscape — toil that allows our anointed to rage at those purportedly culpable for allowing the world to function differently from an Ivy League lounge or the newsroom of the New York Times. Neither knows what it is like to be in a village gassed by Saddam Hussein or how hard it is to go across the world to Tikrit and chain such a monster.

Our Western intellectuals are sheltered orchids who are naïve about the world beyond their upscale hothouses. The Western disease of deductive fury at everything the West does provides a sort of psychological relief (without costs) for apparent guilt over privileged circumstances. It is such a strange mixture of faux-populism and aristocratic snobbery. They believe only a blessed few such as themselves have the requisite education or breeding to understand the “real” world of Western pathologies and its victims.

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Brad

I live in the bastion of this disease. When I first moved here as an undergraduate the Professors would constantly grill me because my views which I had never considered anything but a realist were of course in their minds conservative. One Professor actually said at one point how can you be an artist and conservative. If I were not waiting on a grade from him the retort on the tip of my tongue would have been how can you be so over the top liberal and educated.

Serveral months ago during some after dinner conversation the topic slipped to the world at large. I made a comment of how I had a hard time understanding the hate that is out there in the world directed towards Americans. That on a whole we do not teach such hate here in the United States. The other people countered that oh no there is racism in the United States. This optimizes the western disease thinking because it was said in a way as though racism only exsist here in the United States and no place else which in turn validated the hate the rest of the world rightfully should have for Americans.

Recently Human Rights week past. I had to watch a play that explained what is really happening in the world. They started the play by saying that what you are about to see and hear will not have been seen in the mainstream media. When they were done I wanted to say the reason the mainstream media has not reported anything you had to say is because you just made everything up. It was pure delusion. The play actually suggested that under Saddam Hussien there was an Iraqi Oil Minitstry that gave all the oil money to the Iraqi people and now that is all gone with the toppling of Saddam.

One Professor actually said at one point how can you be an artist and conservative.

That's a fascinating subject, Rico. I submit that to be a good artist one needs to be a keen observer. Isn't art best when it doesn't lie? Isn't art best when it is challenging held beliefs?

It's a rare leftist artist that is not just towing the party line and is truly challenging our beliefs and stretching his or her imagination. I can tell you for a fact that it takes an extraordinary amount of guts, chutzpah, nerve, character, intelligence, imagination, grit, determination and moxie to take informed conservative stances on certain issues. It takes nothing more than a genuflect to the left to profess many of the leftist beliefs.

When they were done I wanted to say the reason the mainstream media has not reported anything you had to say is because you just made everything up.

God save the independent thinker with a sense of humor. LMAO. I loved that retort. It seems to be the nature of the left to display as much, if not more, faith in what they believe as any Christian fundamentalist. To get into their heads a bit, it makes one feel important and compassionate (and probably relieves guilt) without having to do a lot of fact checking or thinking. It is a de facto ritual, as I think much of leftist philosophy is taking the place of religion for a good number of people. By regurgitating the usual tripe, one is clearly signifying which tribe they belong to. But it's often hardly an honest search for truth.

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I can tell you for a fact that it takes an extraordinary amount of guts, chutzpah, nerve, character, intelligence, imagination, grit, determination and moxie to take informed conservative stances on certain issues. It takes nothing more than a genuflect to the left to profess many of the leftist beliefs.

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Spoken like a true ideologue. But you can't tell me for a fact at all. By your statements, it is exceedingly obvious that you are too blinded by your conservative rhetoric to make a factual statement about the strength of anyone's beliefs. I would contend that "it takes an extraordinary amount of guts, chutzpah, nerve, character, intelligence, imagination, grit, determination and moxie" to make up your OWN mind, irrespective of how anyone else feels about the subject matter. To break free of any political, religious, or economic alignments and make your OWN choices and decisions, and to arrive at your OWN beliefs. To stand firmly on the ground of your OWN convictions no matter which side decides to attack you because they fear your beliefs might show them to be wrong in the least, and fools in the worst. It takes nothing more than a genuflect to the left OR right to profess many of the liberal OR conservative beliefs. And where there is merely party rhetoric, there is only cowardice and stupidity, afraid to deviate from the pack and too idiotic to think for one's self.

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By regurgitating the usual tripe, one is clearly signifying which tribe they belong to. But it's often hardly an honest search for truth.

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Such a magnificent statement about what you just wrote yourself, no need for me to comment any further.

Civilization continues to crumble, with Berkeley being on the leading edge. This is almost too bizarre to be true. But I think it is true. Berkeley High School may be getting rid of science lab because that's a white student thing.

Berkeley's Unbearable Whiteness of Science
by Thomas Lifson

Sowell calls that kind of stuff "moral exhibitionism." It's not about improving anyone's lives. It's about trying to show the rest of humanity how supposedly morally sophisticated you are.