"they recognize that intellect is losing"

Orrin,

Wouldn't that need "as they define it" as a modifier in order to be true? After all, "leftist intellectual" is one of the all time greatest oxymorons in exisitence.

in existence, either

I will hunt Preeviw through eternity. In this life and the next, I will seek him out and destroy him.

I want to throw something out here that has been bugging me lately, and I would appreciate some responses from the thoughtful and learned people here (which is virtually everyone):

In retrospect, do you think the investigations of Bill Clinton and the whole Monicagate impeachment were unduly harsh, unfair, and politically misguided?

I am beginning to conclude that they were, and that the right in many ways poisoned the political discourse. I should add that I am unabashedly a person of the right.

Please discuss.

"politically misguided" yes

"unduly harsh, unfair" no

They were a subterfuge by people on both sides of the aisle to divert the voters' attention from the ease with which the PRC was able to get sophisticated, supposedly top secret military technology from American companies in violation of our laws. Too many oxen would have been gored so all the potential defendants decided to focus our attention on the stained dress of a fat intern.

Bart,

You are exactly right about the deliberate deflecting of media attention from Clinton's traitorous activities to his JHS boy's hijinks with all and any warm body in his orbit.

He should get a special academy award for starring in the longest lasting farce in the history of the union.

You think that Republicans were in on it? I don't. I think Republicans in congress are
so used to being in the minority and in the "Go Along To Get Along" mode, they did just that. They're still not used to being in charge, to wit, Spector's astonishing behavior before the ink of the election tallies was dry.

I'm glad he's being made an example of for the other RINOS to take note. Try going along to get along with our program, theirs has been discredited and discarded.

If Clarence Thomas is confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the story of the left in the United States will have been writ.

Bart:

No one cares. Wall Street for its reasons and the Left for its have convinced people that China is a good guy. Only Christian conservatives dissent.

Seven:

No one who went and read the House's evidence thought it was too harsh--even moderate guys like Chris Shays say he raped Juanita Broaddrick--and just trying to subvert justice in the Jones civil suit should have gotten him removed fropm office Unfortunately not one Democratic senator ever looked at the House evidence--a shocking dereliction of duty.

And all those people with "Free Tibet!" bumperstickers,

"In retrospect, do you think the investigations of Bill Clinton and the whole Monicagate impeachment were unduly harsh, unfair, and politically misguided?"

Not really. What was stupid was Clinton's refusal to come clean and quickly draw a line under the episode.

Yes, the vitriol expended on Monicagate cost us many Reagan Democrats who saw what appeared to be viscious, small-minded moralizers trying to end a presidency over fairly common transgressions. Most people don't know about Juanita Brodderick or "definition of is" or the depth of Clinton's depravity, they only know a couple of bj's was THE Republican issue for a couple of years. The 2000 election would have ended like the 2004 election had it not been for this severe misstep.

Jim:

What does people knowing it have to do with the responsibilities of members of Congress?

OJ: Republicans were on the brink of power, instead of the stalemate from '94 - '00; imagine what the world would look like now if Gore had won, that's what they were potentially sacrificing; so, in the end, I don't think it was too heady (!) to blunder ahead with such a PR disaster; Clinton left office with the highest approval rating in history and the Dems had a magnificent platform to regain the White House despite their declining demographics.

Liberals have favored numerous policies that were at the time (and if not, over time) demonstrably wrong based on pure intellectual (rational) analysis. These have ranged from their affection for command control directives as a way to "run" economies to their naive approach to the strategy of confrontation. Where was the intellectual insight then? They have also been reluctant to address some social issues through empirical cause-effect analysis, if it proves damaging to their pet theories. These have ranged from debating the cause-benefits of restricting gun rights, the efficacy of the death penalty, the effects of welfare on pathologies, etc. Where is the intellecual curiosity and honesty?

Sorry. Any one who has read Tom Sowell can not possibly believe liberalism is based on intellectual rigor.

Jim:

Yes, the risk of making Al Gore an incumbent running for re-election in '00 was outweighed by constitutional duty.

"Their agony isn't merely psychological, it's also a function of genuine ideological trauma."

We won, they lost. If Moses was wandering for forty years in the desert, methinks that Democrats will consume at least that much time figuring out which values buttons to push (the first twenty years to discover that there are no 'values' 'buttons').

The whole point of Samuelson's argument is idiotic. Why do we need to give a reason for the intense feeings that each side of the political divide has for each other? This is the natural order of things. Are we to imagine that previous political contests were not invested with such strong personal feelings, that they were gentlemen's contests? Politics isn't touch football.

Likewise Orrin's dichotomy of intellect vs morality is misdirected. If you listen to Dennis Prager, he'll say that the Left is all about feelings and the Right is about thinking. Both Lert and Right use intellect, emotion, and moral reasoning in their campaigns. The difference is in worldviews, the understanding of how the world works.

Robert:

It's the same thing. The intellect is personal, as are feelings. The Left is secular, materialist, individualist--they all tie together.

"Both Lert and Right use intellect, emotion, and moral reasoning in their campaigns. The difference is in worldviews, the understanding of how the world works."

In my experience with discussions with leftists, they genrally tend to react to policy prescriptions based on what they feel the outcome should be rather than whether or not what they're proposing actually has a solid chance of working and fixing the problems they see.

Want a safe environment? Give the EPA all the power it needs over business.

Want blacks to do well economically? Provide lots of AA.

Want to reduce crime? Outlaw guns.

Want to promote peace in the Middle East? Crack down on Israel and stop them from breeding terrorists.

Moe and Ali are exactly right.

I don't see how any rigorous analysis--by definition intellectual--leads to the left.

Jeff:

Belief in Reason leads Left, as in your case.

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1208/

Jeff, all analysis proceeds from assumptions. If you start from the assumptions of the Left worldview, logic will lead you to the same conclusions. Logic is computational - garbage in, garbage out. The Left's worldview assumes that humans are born as a blank slate. The Right's worldview assumes thta humans are born with a nature that predisposes them to evil behavior.

Robert:

I beg to disagree. Reason also requires including results.

The Left (both religious and otherwise) worldview requires society--not individuals--to be largely responsible for social ills. As it has turned out many times, basing social policy on that assumption doesn't work, because the assumption has nothing to do with the nature of the beast.

That assessment is amenable to analysis, regardless of one's religious background.

In other words, there is no such thing as a good theory that doesn't work in practice.

Exactly. One could start from a position that taxing the rich to a high degree and distributing the proceeds to lower-earners is more beneficial to an economy than supply-siding but unless you can reconcile that to the empirical evidence, it becomes a matter of idealogy rather than reason.

Jeff:

To the contrary, folks just assume their reasoning has been somewhat faulty, but rarely so faulty as to jettison the assumptions, as with Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, Nazism, Socialism, etc. All of which have survived their spectacular fauilures in practice.

Really ?

Nazism and Communism are alive and well ?

Aside from a few skin-heads, Cuba, and Vietnam, could you point to any credible society or sub-culture that still truly believes in Nazism or Marxism ?

Besides Germany?:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/europe/14cnd-germany.html

Jeff, Ali,

You can always chalk up the lack of progress to the interference of extraneous factors, or the residual effects of traditional beliefs, or insufficient time, etc, etc. If the data does not match the theory, then the data has been contaminated. Worldviews are very persistent. People become personally invested in their worldviews. Just look how hard it is for people on this board to accept that the dollar will be heading into the dumper.

Robert:

You are correct as far as you go, which is a fair way.

You highlight why it was important to allow Communism to ostentatiously collapse of its own accord, rather than get strangled in the crib.

Hear much out of Communists anywhere anymore? I'll bet if you collected the entire Universe's population of those whack jobs, you couldn't fill a school auditorium. Contrast that with, say, 1973.

Fitness ultimately prevails. The Euros will eventually find that their political/economic model just can't compete, and they will change in response.

Similarly, even Democrats are rarely heard any longer whinging about welfare reform.

There are over a billion.

Please.

There are over a billion NOMINAL Communists; how many committed zealots ?

Even the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party don't believe it's the future, and certainly the common Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cubans don't believe in Communism.
They're just getting by under it.

OJ:

A billion subjects of a Communist dictatorship doth not a billion communists make.

Michael:

How many committed republicans are there? Most people are nominal whatevers.

Jeff,
Old falsehoods never die, they mutate. They get a fresh coat of paint. They get revised, improved, re-imaged. They get a new ad agency. Or they just lie in slumber for a generation or two, until everyone who believed in them has died, along with everyone who defeated them.

People hold worldviews for a reason. A person's worldview is that definition of the world that makes the world worthwhile to them. A communist is a communist not because he believes that communism has proven itself empirically, but because communism represents that definition of the world that is acceptable to the communist. A communist cannot accept that some people can be wealthier than others. A communist cannot accept that some people can have more power than others in society. For a communist to accept the unworkablility of communism would be to accept that the world is senseless and evil.

And for a Darwinist to accept it's wrong would mean accepting God.

Robert:

So what the heck happened to all the communists? Even some in the academy have taken the failure on board.

OJ:

If you had even a glancing familiarity with the Theory of Evolution, you would know it says nothing about the presence of absence of God.

I'm not surprised.

It says Nature wherever reality says God.

Jeff,
They're busy creating the EU and the ICC, or they've turned Green (fresh coat of paint).

Robert:

I should have thought a little more before typing. In general, you are right, but institutions still manage to change in the face of sufficient contrary evidence.

For example, in England, Clause 4 (I think that is the term) of the Labour Party constitution mandates nationalizing all means of production.

In the early 80's that was an accepted goal among party members.

By the early 90's only a minority of the party still believed it.

I haven't checked lately, but that particular clause may not even be in the Labor party constitution any longer.

Something changed--certainly the roster is different now, but enough members remain so that most of them must have changed their minds.

OJ:

Nature says Nature. St Augustine has an opinion on what that means.

Jeff:

Bring him back and St. Augustine would look out upon a world unchanged since he was around and laugh out loud at the notion that evolution is ongoing.

Nature says Nature.

God said "Nature" and it was. And He saw that it was good.