Does "Leftism" Destroy Everything It Touches? Or Is That Just Another Slogan from P.U.?

The latest research is rather interesting, and indicates conservatives don't trust anyone they can't catch in a lie and watch being punished. For them, the test of anyone's trustworthiness is not in whether they tell the truth more often, but whether they are contrite when caught. This reflects their patriarchal culture which uses morality as a weapon they seldom apply to themselves.

 

#4. Late night TV ( I kid you not!). Prager complains It used to be you could watch Johnnie Carson or Jay Lenno before bed and chill out with some good entertainment. Now thanks to "the Leftists" , Late Night TV has become "Left Night TV". Ain't it Awful?!! Hmmmm. I always thought Late Night TV, like the rest of television in the U.S., was a commercial enterprise, determined by private corporations, sponsors, and the marketplace. That's capitalism! Is Prager some kind of commie? I also note that my TV has a remote that allows me to change channels, so that if Steven Colbert, Seth Myers, Jimmy Fallon, etc., become too unbearable, there's always some late night movie I can watch for entertainment. The inability of conservatives to field a successful similar Late Night TV satirical program of their own has been something of a mystery. Fox has tried offerings like The Greg Gutfeld Show and Dennis Miller, but they haven't drawn the viewers. I understand there's a new right wing offering in the works called DWECK. I have no idea what it could be about, but we'll see. The inability of conservatives to make a go of this in the past has been the subject of much speculation. Some think it's because conservatives are too deferential toward the status quo, they tend to punch down instead of up, or are too mean spirited, racist, sexist, etc. (think Roseanne). There's a limit to how many anti-Hillary one liners can hold an audience.
Why can't rightwing comics break into US late-night TV?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-conservative-leaning-late-night-show-like-“The-Late-Show-with-Colbert”
Anyhow, whatever the reason, Prager hasn't really delved that deeply into the phenomenon, but is content to attribute it to some conspiracy by "Leftists".

 

If other channels or programs are like The daily show and the sorts and it's dominating the 'tv landscape' you can't blame right wingers for complaining about that. But yeah, I thought your country had whole channel alternatives

 

#5. Religion. Gimmie that old time religion! According to Prager, the left has ruined much of mainstream Protestantism, Catholicism and non-Orthodox Judaism, which are now little more than left-wing organizations with religious symbols. Au contraire, I think progressive religion has rediscovered the true core principles behind the doctrines and rituals of our weekend services: peace, love, understanding, and the social gospel. I went to Sunday school yesterday in a Methodist church where the tone was definitely progressive. One floor down, same church, is a conservative Sunday school where the religious observance would probably be to Prager's liking. The trend has favored Prager's brand of religion, at least in Christianity, since the mainline Protestant churches have been losing ground to the Evangelicals, although religion seems to be losing ground to the "Nones". Prager may think progressives are destroying religion, but I think traditional religion is destroying itself by clinging to outmoded forms and doctrines and embracing charlatans like Trump. Jesus said we could distinguish the true prophets from the false ones by their fruits. The false ones bring forth "bitter fruit". Prager's embrace of out immoral President speaks to the deficiency of his own religiosity.

 

It's odd you would insinuate I'm easily duped for pointing out logical fallacies

 

The Methodist Church is decline and sharply I might add.
In all likely hood there will soon be a split within that denomination.

The none's are soon to be the majority in America as overall church attendance continues to tank.

 

Republican and logical in the very same sentence or phrase is an example of something dichotomous. I've never met a logical one of 'em … never.

 

Remember John Ashcroft? He said, "You will lose your freedom!" He was a Republican. Concerning your guns: The BATF can handle the confiscation. Go and watch a video of what happened in Waco to see what the feds can do.

 

I could have happily lived the rest of my life without hearing the name John Ashcroft and you had to mention this jerk !

Scum if there ever was any !

 

#6. Free Speech. Says Prager "If there was anything virtually every American considered a bedrock value it was freedom of speech. Yet the Left is destroying even this unique American achievement." Here Prager repeats a favorite right wing talking point of late. From Fox to National Review to Breitbart; "a national chorus of alarm, goaded by a well-funded crusade, has spent most of the last year-and-a-half hunting up threats to our freedoms from students and deans on some of the nation’s college campuses."
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/07/21/the-unbelievable-hypocrisy-of-free-speech-conservatives/
The right is using the comments of left-wing professors to delegitimize higher ed (essay) | Inside Higher Ed
And yet he seems oblivious to the greater threats to speech posed by his favorite president Trump: calling journalists "enemies of the people", threatening them with meritless libel suits, banning them from White House press conferences, etc And the threat posed by Republican-controlled state legislatures are factories for bills restricting speech.
The Paradox of Free Speech in America Today - Higher Education Today
The Real Threats to Free Speech Aren’t Campus Protests
Here in Oklahoma, it was religious conservatives who led the effort to ban showing The Last Temptation of Christ on college campuses, requiring a lawsuit by the ACLU to require the State Regents to allow the film to be shown.

The sole example Prager picks to back up his charge concerns "young people", almost half of whom, we are told, believe in free speech but not "hate speech". Does this make them "Leftists", or does he have some other reason for singling them out as examples of "Leftists" who are destroying Free Speech? Where did he even get this information? He doesn't tell us. Apparently, it was from a survey of some 1,200 students by YouGov, a global opinion and data survey research company for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) between May 25 and June 8, 2017. Specifically, 48% didn't think the First Amendment should protect "hate speech". Here again, Prager is overgeneralizing. The Supreme Court recognizes that not all speech is "protected speech" under the constitution. Crying fire in crowded theaters, incitement to violence, fighting words, libel and slander, and obscenity are non-protected. Hate speech is protected. Does the First Amendment Protect Hate Speech? - Lawyers.com But some commentators think it shouldn't be. Should the First Amendment cover racism and hate speech? | The Perspective Should Hate Speech Be Protected Under The First Amendment? Hate speech should not be protected under the First Amendment - The Daily Texan In any case, the opinions of students in a single survey on a debatable subject hardly provide support for the generalization that Leftists are destroying free speech, and it's the only evidence Prager does provide.

 

Higher education is responsible for it being illegal to vote for Mickey Mouse and one in five Americans insisting the sun revolves around the earth. They are a marriage made in heaven for the republican party.

 

Collectivism does destroy everything


Tragety of the Commons is high school level economics

 

Free market capitalism does not exist. The guys holding the guns to your heads and insisting you borrow money from them are not your friends. The idiot in the White House who never pays taxes and cuts the mass media a deal on their rent is not looking out for your interests.

 

I'm usually not a Grammar Nazi but in this particular instance perhaps your statement would be more persuasive if you spelled tragedy correctly.

 

6

But when I asked you before what you base your political, social and economic thinking on you told me a lot of it you got from ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand

Is a bad sci-fi novel really the best way to understand economics?

So it’s not that surprising that your level of knowledge about economics seems rather lower that high school level

But don’t feel too bad you are not the only right winger who comes to the forum promoting ‘free market’ and ‘neoliberal’ type economics who doesn’t seem to know much about it and finds it impossible to defend it against criticism.

 

6

But what is meant by ‘Collectivism’?

Is it simply group interests been given priority over individual interests?

In those terms anything that is imposed by the community that inhibits an individual’s self-interest would be ‘collectivism’.

So any regulation that is meant to protect the community against an unscrupulous individual would in anti-collectivist terms be wrong.

And in the same way any regulation that is meant to enhance the collective good but can end up helping some but not others would also be seem as wrong by anti-collectivist, making for example taxation for say universal ‘collective’ healthcare wrong.

To me there should be a balance between the individual and the community, calling anything that helps the community ‘evil collectivism’ that ‘destroys everything’ isn’t helpful.

 

Okie

Well done for going through the video’s points one by one, the worrying thing to me is that you needed to do it at all. I mean the points raised by DP are so obviously flawed that you would think any rational mind would see it either immediately or after a small amount of research.

But thanks

 

There is a density issue here; consequently, I doubt he could absorb your information. It's sort of like trying to pass a beautiful chocolate cake through an ugly brick wall.

 

I don't know whether or not you're a P.U. graduate, but your statement has some of their distinctive characteristics: vague, seeping generalization and lack of any supporting clarification, argumentation, and/or evidence: What is collectivism? To what degree? Did even Stalinism and Maoism (which most people would probably agree were pretty collectivist), destroy "everything"? I think a case could be made that cutthroat competition and rugged individualism of the Gilded Age when Social Darwinism was in vogue produced similar devastation. Are there only two boxes. What about mixed economies?

Even postgraduate economics can be problematic.
The Pseudoscience of Economics
Is economics a science?
Robert Shiller: is economics a science?
The Neo-liberal (libertarian) brand currently in vogue has contributed its share of destructiveness to the world.

 

Crony-Capitalism is the American way.