IDEOLOGY OVER IDEAS–the Left’s Slogans, Emotionalism and Hypocrisy
Someone once described the key difference between left and right like this: for the left ideology informs ideas, for the right ideas inform the ideology.
It’s true. And it’s why the left is especially good at converting their ideology into bumper sticker slogans, “hey hey ho ho” chants with or without a drum circle, and the occasional riot. The left’s low information voter base requires such simplicity.
Such simplicity allows the rhetoric to tap an emotional nerve, resulting in an impassioned response for any given topic. impassioned responses cut off intelligent discussion (as an example, take note of the comments to this article as they appear below).
This in part is how the left gets away with presenting unmeasurable demands as goals America could attain if those mean-spirited and probably racist conservatives would get out of the way.
Take for instance the phrase “end mass incarceration”. Most progressives support this. Think about it though. End mass incarceration. At what point does incarceration become mass incarceration. Is there a quantifiable number or percentage at which we transition from incarceration to mass incarceration? No, no one on the left has offered up those kinds of details. It’s simply “end mass incarceration”.
Which is a lot like their insistence that America needs a “national conversation about race”. As if we aren’t constantly fixated on race in this country. Tune in to any television news program and you won’t have to wait long to find a conversation about race going on. Of course, there is no way to define just what actually constitutes a “national conversation”.
“Race” doesn’t simply mean the color of one’s skin (remember, this is the same left that named Bill Clinton America’s first black President then went on to question Barack Obama’s racial authenticity) but rather, it’s a code word for any number of progressive social programs. It’s also a rhetorical car bomb that allows them to shout “racism” whenever the worth of those programs is challenged. It’s not so much a national conversation on race the left wants. Rather, it’s one-sided acceptance of every social program they can come up with.
They openly claim that were there more programs, the street theater and free expression that went on in Baltimore wouldn’t have happened. Most people would look at Baltimore and call those events riots. Left of center though, it was street theater that burned a newly constructed home for the elderly to the ground. For progressives, free expression includes looting, assault, and wholesale destruction of public and private property.
Free expression doesn’t extend to Draw Muhammad events in Garland, Texas though. Things like that become re-cast as “dangerous” and maybe even “hate speech”. But it’s ok to advocate for the murder of police officers?
The left’s rhetorical gymnastics even go so far as to repackage conservative ideas and call them their own. The push to make $15 an hour the minimum wage is case in point. Despite government reports which forecast large-scale job loss if the minimum wage is increased to $15 an hour, progressives claim that the wage hike would create jobs as consumers spend more in the economy. When they called this “trickle down economics” they hated it. Now they call it the “fight for $15” and they love it.
If progressives were more interested in ideas instead of an ideology, perhaps such gerrymandering of the verbiage wouldn’t be necessary. Then again, if progressives were idea-oriented they’d be conservatives.
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlny/6239083844/