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01-11-2011

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Vendetta
Subject: The Idea Of America — The Choice Is Ours

"People should not be afraid of their governments.   Governments should be afraid of their people."
—
V – from V for Vendetta
In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Arizona, there has been an outpouring of vitriolic accusations from every quarter, as the progressive left has continued writing its "narrative", by asserting that the actions of shooter Jared Loughner were the responsibility of Tea Party conservatives (as if simply saying it would somehow make it so!), and conservatives and libertarians have responded with outrage at the willingness of those on the left, and in the media, to hurl these indictmentments without a shred of proof to support their claims.

Having read a great number of articles on both sides of the issue, I ran across an essay by Jim Quinn, posted on his blog, The Burning Platform, which I highly recommend that everyone carefully read. This is the best piece of analysis I have encountered pertaining to this affair, and the title of this article is taken from the last line of the piece. Click on the following title to access the commentary.

And for any of you who have not yet seen the film V for Vendetta, I strongly recommend that you do. It is a powerful treatise on the dynamics between individual liberty and totalitarian control.
"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."
—
Evey Hammond – from V for Vendetta
In an interesting Facebook note by my friend Allen Small (no relation), where he discusses the "blame game" that is being played out over the Arizona shooting, he got me thinking about human nature and how it can operate in these types of situations. The human mind is structured with certain features that have evolved to benefit our survival. For example, we have acquired a highly refined ability to recognize faces:

A Rocky Cliff Bingo! Mold on Cheese Rocks on Mars Clouds

even when they are not actually there!

In a similar vein, our conceptual minds are organized to identify cause-and-effect relationships. When we observe an action, we immediately look for the source responsible for its occurrence. In the case of people, we seek to understand the motivation for their acts. So when a young man murders a group of apparently random people, it is natural to look for the causes that influenced him to commit such an atrocity.

So, is the rush by the left to categorize Loughner's actions as a causal result of the rhetoric of the right, reasonable? And if, as it has been clearly demonstrated, we find that there are no valid facts to justify the accusations, do we merely dismiss this as an error, similar to seeing a "face" in a wispy cloud?

No, we do not!

If the goal is the pursuit of truth, then one must ground one's observations and analysis in the facts of reality. It is not enough to "see" a face. One need to examine the fact further in order to distinguish an actual face from an aberration. In the same light, one might reasonably jump to an immediate hypothesis that there may be a connection between the statements of certain highly visible spokespeople and the actions of one of their followers. But there is certainly an obligation—to one's own mental integrity—to investigate the facts that support this suspected relationship and motivational connections, before finalizing one's conclusions. And when it comes to broadcasting a story to a national audience, the hallmark of professional reporting is supposed to rest upon fact-checking.

So what does it mean when facts are no longer seen as being relevant to the opinions held and positions adopted by a large segment of the population? It means that we are dealing with people who have inverted the proper method of rational thought. Rather than working from facts to conclusions, we have people who start with pre-determined conclusions and work their way back to what they believe are the so called "facts" which support them. This is an implicit form of the metaphysical view know as primacy of consciousness, which discounts the existence of an objective external reality, instead believing that what we call existence is merely a construction conforming to the content of one's thoughts. It is literally a belief in mind over matter.

It is for this reason that I describe the progressive left as writing their own narrative. They create the story as they wish it to be, and then believe that all that is necessary to see it realized is for enough people to say it. Would you like the Tea Party members to be ignorant, hate-filled bigots who can simply be dismissed? Then call them racists. If some group is called racist, then they must be racist. It's that simple! The progressive turns Captain Picard's dictum, "Make it so!" into "Think it so!.

  • Communism, Socialism and Fascism, have been tried repeatedly and have always proven to be good at one thing only: mass murder. But the historical facts are of no value to today's reality. This time the progressive "spirit" will prevail and create the utopian society of which we dream.

  • Keynesian economics has been thoroughly debunked and discredited, both in theory and practice. But this presents no problem to the progressive, who wants it to work, and that's all that matters.

  • Government run Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs are all insolvent with no visible means for adequate future funding. No problem! Simply expand the government entitlement program into a vast new area and we will realize huge cost savings as a result. Why? Because we say so, that's why.

And this narrative methodology is completely transparent when observing the progressive's obliviousness to the massive contradictions contained in the various positions that they take.

  • Have an unstoppable progressive majority in Congress. Let's play by the rules. Lose a bunch of seats in the midterm election? Let's change the rules of the game.

  • Are the leaked Climategate documents bad for your narrative? If you are the progressive New York Times, indignantly refuse to publish the illegally obtained documents. Do the illegally obtained WikiLeaks files fit your agenda? Then proudly publish them in the "public interest".

  • When Nidal Malik Hasan jumped onto a desk, shouted: "Allahu Akbar!", and then proceeded to walk through the Fort Hood army base with four guns, killing 13 and wounding 30, the left demanded that we should not "jump to conclusions" about the motives involved — because speculation concerning a muslim connection doesn't comfortably fit their story. Now, just fourteen months later, when Loughner commits an almost identical act, killing 6 and wounding 18, the left sees an opportunity to accomplish one of their goals — discrediting conservatives — and therefore does what is necessary, even though they are devoid of facts to support their case and have to adopt the tactics that they demanded be previously rejected.

Contradictions are only a problem when your thinking is grounded in objective reality. They pose absolutely no problem for the progressive thinker! Whereas the older modern-era liberal operated by Machiavelli's maxim, "The ends justify the means", the contemporary progressive, adapting to the post-modern age, has transformed this into, "The ends fabricate the facts".

But, if you want the most telling example that a huge segment of our population has become completely unhinged from reality, just consider that two short years ago, despite having spelled out his intentions in great specificity on his campaign website, a majority of people elected Obama and a progressive congress, based solely on the repetitive chanting of the slogan: "Hope and Change". What does it mean? Anything you wish; whatever you might hope for! What type of change? Who cares. Just get me out of here!

It is not possible to repair the minds of people who have dedicated themselves to a fantasy of this magnitude. As those of use who are grounded in facts and truth know all too well, objective reality will be the teacher and final arbiter of the follies being perpetrated — and the lessons are already well under way. Instead, what we must do is work diligently to become untethered from the progressives and their destructive practices. Let each person — and only that person — reap exactly what they sew.

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