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Earlier today I asked, What Does the Left Care About?
If the question is asked just like this, attached to no other subjects, can the answer really be that the Left cares about nothing?
Im going to head over to the leading Liberal web site, the Daily Kos, later today, and see if I can find any posts that express a wish for the well-being of any people anywhere. This may be interesting. Stay tuned.
I’ve just had a look at all the posts put up so far today at The Daily Kos. The results are startling. So far today, he shows goodwill toward no one.
Here’s a review of those posts.
The Coming Judicial Nominee Wars.
Opposes Bush’s picks for Federal Appeals Court seats.
Bush stabs ‘faith-based’ gullibles in the back.
States that Bush is not delivering on promises to religous groups. Note that Kos specifically isn’t showing goodwill toward those groups. In fact, he deliberately and rudely insults them, calling them “gullibles.” Note also the vicious imagery in the title.
Iraq’s hollow military.
Argues that Iraqi troops are insufficiently equipped and armed—the point being not that they should be given more arms, but that previous administration statements on the subject were “all lies.”
Plame journalists threatened with jail.
At last—could it be that this post wishes to help the Plame journalists? Unfortunately, no. Per Kos, those journalists are dupes:
Miller and Cooper should just testify, already. They were played by a vindictive, treasonous adminsitration who would rather endanger covert anti-terrorist intelligence operations than brook any dissent. That Miller and Cooper insist on enabling those who lied to them about Plame and Wilson is ridiculous.
They are not protecting a whistleblower, or a broader high-minded appeal to the truth. They are protecting a treasonous liar who used them for political vengance.
This post also contains a specific wish of harm to a person—the very reverse of the goodwill we are looking for:
You know those fantasies we all have of Judith Miller rotting in a jail cell…
I feel sorry for anyone who has fantasies about anyone rotting in a jail cell.
FOIAs chase Guckert.
About the status of a Freedom of Information Act request. This contains another deliberate, rude insult:
Meanwhile, Guckert finally shuts up.
Gallup sucks.
This post slams Gallup for a poll showing that the President’s approval rating is down, after the previous Gallup poll showed the President’s approval rating was up.
Again, Kos makes sure to attack everybody involved. He attacks the President; attacks Gallup for showing the President’s approval rating was up; and again attacks Gallup for later showing the President’s approval rating is down.
And note yet another rude, deliberate insult in the title of the post, to the Gallup organization.
That’s all the posts on Kos so far today. The count:
That’s astonishing to me. This is evidence that the Left has goodwill towards few, and illwill toward most.
What is the Left doing to itself?
The harm that the Left is doing to itself by permitting itself to be consumed by illwill can hardly be overstated.
Update 2-15-05: Instalanche. Thanks, Glenn, and welcome, Instapundit readers!
#1
#2re the 01:50 post: yeah, ill will says it. i watch a lot of cspan book tv besides fox news. almost invariably the liberal featured authors on book tv and guests on foxnews frown, snarl,and splutter. by contrast the conservatives are genial and congenial--for example, remember the difference between john o'neill and his liberal interrogators? judging from the way these folks look on tv, liberalism is bad for their health.
#3Let's take a quick look at this look at this logic:
First some rough numbers:
Assume there are 260,000,000 people in the U.S. Roughly 18% identify as liberal (this is a rough stand in for what you call the "left"). 18% of 260,000,000 is 46,800,000. So, you are making a generalization about just under 47 million people. On what basis?
One half day of posts on one blog. But let's keep going. 444,302 people visit Kos a day. Let's assume, even though it's undeniably untrue, that everyone of those visitors is a liberal that exists within the 18% that identifies as a liberal. Let's also assume that all 444,302 of those liberals shares the point of view you attribute to Kos based on half a day of posts. I think these are generous assumptions, but even so, that is still less than 1% of the population that identifies as liberal.
So in the very best case, you are making the generalization that "This is evidence that the Left has goodwill towards few, and illwill toward most" based on a sample that is less that 1% of the liberal population.
Of course, in reality your generalization is far worse. You make a broad observation based on a half day sampling of one blog. Not exactly statistically relevant to, well, absolutely anything.
#4We're approaching the point Microsoft reached with Apple a few years back - keep them going just to stave off the anti-trust suits. We're almost at the point where we need to give lefties a few clues just so that we'll be able to have real two-party elections! Your technique might do that.
#5Thanks Patrick!
#6Harry, I hear you, but check part 1 of this post which I put up earlier in the day. There's more reason than a partial day of Kos posts for this opinion.
#7Your first post is a collection of unsupported assertions.
You've presented no relevant evidence to support your conclusions; neither the ones in your first post nor the generalizations in this post.
Some questions:
Why should we assume that the posting on a single blog can, for example, answer specific questions about how the Left feels about women in other countries? Why should we assume that the postings on a single blog can create broad generalization about the collective illwill of tens of millions of people? Why is a blog the best thermometer for measuring the goodwill or illwill of 18% of the U.S.? Why not transcripts of congressional debate? Or records of charitable giving? Or preference for various entertainment media? Or studies on socialization? Does the absence of media commentary on any one of the specific or general issues you raise have any relevance to the actual viewpoints or actions of the Left? In other words, are you assuming that by not writing blog entries about a particular subject, that a person neither cares about or supports (in some other way) the issue you raise? Why wouldn't you consider, say, memebership in advocacy organiztions? Or giving to charitable organiztions?
This is all to say that casual observations are merely glib and serve as evidence of nothing -- certainly not as answers to your specific charges.
#8What Does the Left Care About?
Abortion.
And maybe gun control. That's about it.
#9Lets see if it works on Atrios
First post: idiots
2nd:Republican Senator Praises Filibuster (in Iraq - it's a snarkie post comparing GOP's position on filibusters regarding Judicial nominees, with advice being given to Iraqi pols)
3rd:Those Damned Dirty Immigrants
4th: Please stop - (thinking about changing gas tax)
It holds up pretty well - Atrios has nothing good to say
#10Harry has a bit of a negative tone towards this whole exercise, yes? Cripes, lighten up. Or better yet, show Vik he is wrong instead of complaining about his post. You start proving him right without even realizing it.
It's back to the Afghan quagmire for me, to make Central Asia safe for Halliburton's pipelines...
With malice and hatred towards all, and charity toward none...
Maybe I'm just kind of crazy, but I sure wouldn't want to live with the anger and hatred that Kos, Oliver Willis and Atrios display on a daily basis. That sort of stuff warps the soul, till they get like a pit-bull that's been mistreated so badly that they'd savage even the folks who'd want to do them a good turn - not that some folks would be inclined to do so after looking at their sites.
Really, supposedly the reason the Democrats lost (according to Dean) is because they didn't get their message out. Could it be that we do see the message, as exemplified by Kos and the like, and see it all too well?
J.
#12Er, that's actually people who self-identify as liberal. Not quite the same thing as liberal relative to the overall political spectrum.
#13Hey Harry!
Thanks for demonstrating Vic's point... frankly, you did it better than he did...
Where are the happy warriors a la Al Smith?
On the right!
Who's left?
It's the Prozac generation, doin the librul shuffle, shuffle, shuffle...
#14Note that harry went into all these statistical contortions, when the ostensibly much easier way to disprove Vik's point would be to simply find some examples of upbeat and goodwill-showing posts on Kos. Only that that apparently wouldn't be so easy after all, which explains the stats approach that Harry felt the need to take instead, thus unwittingly confirming the theme of Vik's post both by the tone of his comment and by its content.
As to the charge that looking at Kos proves nothing, well, it is the most widely read blog in existence, no? And almost exclusively read by those who consider themselves liberal (or left of liberal), so surely analyzing the content of the blog allows for some reasonable inferences about what lefties like to read, and thus how they think.
#15These comments are great. I hope you guys will feel welcome to comment on this site any time!
#16It's very simple. The American "liberal" is the first wife of American politics, put aside and bitter about it.
#17Left2Right generally has well-thought-out, positive, spleen-free wisdom.
They're also moderate-conservative enough that they're practically Republicans, and I feel kind of sorry for them, since all their readers are rabid right-wing Republicans who throw barrels of rotten fruit at them daily.
I personally find most of their policy suggestions naieve, an opinion borne out by what happened to the TennCare program, but at least Left2Right is worth reading.
#18Harry
For goodness sake, this doesn't have to be a scientific exercise. The question is, can one find positive postings about any subject at Kos or Atrios. In the sample taken, there were none. This at the most popular left sites on the web. Perhaps you can't draw a definite conclusion, or maybe Kos edits out the positives, but there is something wrong, and it is not Bush's fault! Regards,
#19Note that harry went into all these statistical contortions, when the ostensibly much easier way to disprove Vik?s point would be to simply find some examples of upbeat and goodwill-showing posts on Kos. Only that that apparently wouldn?t be so easy after all, which explains the stats approach that Harry felt the need to take instead, thus unwittingly confirming the theme of Vik?s post both by the tone of his comment and by its content.
PW: I might have done that, except I don't read Kos and really don't know much about what he posts.
It's that very reason that I thought I'd comment here. Kos's readership, though substantial, represents less than 1% of those who self-identify as liberal. And that's assuming all of Kos's readers are liberal. Vik visited today. I doubt he's the only non-liberal. I don't politcally line up with Instapundit, but I visit several times a day.
My argument was two points: Frist, that as a logical argument, the conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence. There are too many steps/assumptions necessary to prove along the way. Thus the questions (Does half a day of Kos posts represent Kos? Does Kos represent the left? Even if he did, wouldn't it be necessary to consider other benchmarks of liberal attitude?).
Second, even if one accepted most of the above steps, as an instance of inductive reasoning, the sample size in the best possible instance, less than 1% of the total self-identifying liberal population, is too small to have any statistical meaning.
This post might, if it was followed up on in a consistent fashion and accompanied with a study of Kos's archives, lend evidence to a certain world view endorsed by Kos. And from that, it might be possible to induce what a tiny segment of the liberal population's online reading interests are. But that's all.
I don't fit into a neat ideological cast and I chafe at the current mode of discourse on all sides that insists on generalizing others. We are multitudes, all of us.
Oh, and PW, about my tone. I may sound cold, but I'm not negative. Vik, fwiw, seems like a genuinely nice fellow, especially to host all of our jabbering.
#20jabbering?
SO NOW WE ARE NOTHING BUT MONKEYS TO YOU?
ha just kiddin
#21Do y'all notice that Kos sure likes words the root of which is "treason", yet the lefties squeal like a stuck pig about us "questioning their patriotism" if we even look at them sideways? I guess they are patriotic, it's just that they're patriotic to a different country - Cuba? North Korea? Chomskyville? you decide.
#22I guess they are patriotic, it's just that they're patriotic to a different country - Cuba? North Korea? Chomskyville? you decide.
LOL
#23Harry, thanks for the good words, and I'm glad you like the site.
Well, can you tell us what the Left cares about?
#24Well, can you tell us what the Left cares about?
Hi Vik. In short, no. And I doubt anyone can. And I certainly can't tell you anything about what the Right cares about. There is no collective Left or Right. It's a spectrum across the board, defying labels. We tend to operate on an assumption that our political adversaries are caricatures. Perhaps partisan blogs deepen this assumption. But the polical blogging world is a tiny echo chamber that spends most of the time bickering with itself.
But the vast majority of all people don't live in the insular blogosphere. Their views are far more textured than our (blog) media and the main stream media has the capacity to articulate. Generalizations make it easy, but ultimately they don't speak any truth about the character of this country and its people. Partisans don't do a very good job of capturing the plurality of America.
#25I'm a Democrat because it's the party of Thomas Jefferson.
Say what you like about liberals. You probably can't see anything to be proud of in something you've convinced yourselves to despise. The same problem unfortunately seems to be overcoming liberals right now too. I was shocked by an anti-right message I saw on Kos.
By all indications our side is getting nastier these days. Soon we'll catch up with folks who actively try to keep adult US citizens from voting in just about any marginally legalistic manner they can, while proudly "exporting democracy" with every breath.
#26This is a great idea...but perhaps you should go over to the biggest right-wing blogger, and monitor them, too (I'm not sure who it would be? Powerline? Captain Ed?) and see what they can manage. It might help some on the left to see what it is they are doing to themselves.
#27Harry,
...I certainly can't tell you anything about what the Right cares about.
One thing we care about is freeing people from oppression and tyranny, and giving them a chance to be self-governed, and to have democracy and capitalism. Afghanistan and Iraq are examples. The Left has shown no approval or encouragement for achieving those goals in those countries.
#28Thanks for the suggestion, Anchoress. I may just do that.
#29Actually a sample size of over 400,000 would be quite significant in any survey. Far fewer people are sampled for infant mortality rates for instance or presidential election polls. 1% would be quite a significant sample of any group.
I must say I am in partial agreement with Harry, despite being a pretty staunch conservative. I have many liberal friends who demonstrate the same bitterness with all things connected to Bush - trying to turn any positive associated with him into a negative - but who otherwise in their lives demonstrate some real charity. It's as if Bush-hating is the one glaring incongruity in their character. Fortunately for us it translates to a tone that makes them sound extremely bitter and unelectable.
#31Quatrain,
I?m a Democrat because it?s the party of Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson (and Jackson, who held sway over the direction of the party following the JQA divide) both have far more in common with the current Republican party than with the Democrats. They were firm believers in such things as limited government (yes, I know this isn't exactly GWB's thing, but it is still more GOP than DNC) and the rights of citizens to make their own choices, etc.
If you really want to follow the example of Jefferson, and I commend the selection, you really should look at what he believed, not just at some supposed linear descent of his party name.
#32Harry - good point about the overgeneralisation. The real problem with discerning what the left wants may be similar to the problem of discerning what the average Muslim wants: the moderate middle is outshouted by the lunatic fringe.
On the other hand, the problem is not the SIZE of the sample (most polls use much smaller ones) but the SELCETION process that is flawed.
On the gripping hand, as a Jacksonian Democrat (read War-Mongering Lunatic Rightist) I really dont care what the left cares about unless they get on board with stopping the jihadi fascists.
#33The left wants the world to stay the same as it was in the late 60s and early 70s, plain & simple. They were young and had some influence then.
But they have become so old, grumpy & out of touch that they turn all normal people off. Q: if you were young and rising, with energy and hope and excitement at your life ahead, which would you go with: A) those who are dour & hate everything and see evil in you, your family, your beliefs and your nation, & have no joy in life OR B)those who are generally positive and optimistic & see opportunities for improvement and growth, and generally enjoy the wonderful gift called life?
I choose B.
#34Very interesting conversation - thank you.
I have to agree with Harry's point that the blog postings are not necessarily indicative of what most liberals believe. I think blogs (and TV shows, radio programs, opinion pieces) tend to strive to be controversial in order to interest readers.
As an analogy, one could deduce that conservatives are bitter, hateful people by summarizing the discussion points on a Rush Limbaugh program. But, many of his points are not representative of most conservatives, nor is his manner of presentation. It may be a similar situation with Koz's blog.
#35Being new to the blogs, I have a comment about the back-and-forth going on with Harry. Harry, with whom I disagree with (full disclosure!), is doing something that I do not see much in political discourse in this day and age. He is disagreeing with Vik (and others) and using evidence to back up his assertions, which are not at all meanspirited.
In other news, good job, Vik, this is an excellent site!
#36Second, even if one accepted most of the above steps, as an instance of inductive reasoning, the sample size in the best possible instance, less than 1% of the total self-identifying liberal population, is too small to have any statistical meaning.
That's just plain wrong, Harry. A sample size of 1% of a large population would ordinarily be considered huge. Many political polls that feed inferences about, roughly, 150 million voters sample about 1500 people - or about one one-thousandth of one percent. The issue is more about representativeness than about the size of the sample. Also, the inference I think Vik wants to make is not to tens of millions of voters, as you suggest, but rather to the organized or professional left. The issue is, with tens of millions of voters up for grabs - they either held their nose and voted for Bush or held their nose and voted for Kerry last time - who is going to attract (as opposed to simply not repel) those voters. If I understood him, Vik's point was that the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, as represented by Kos, isn't going to do it because they are relentlessly negative. That isn't about tens of millions of voters.
I chafe at the current mode of discourse on all sides that insists on generalizing others.
Say, that's not a generalization, is it?
#37Harry is correct that it would be an error to over-generalize from what one reads at the Daily Kos, but I don't see Vik's post that way. Rather, it sees Kos as emblematic of a problem which is indeed widespread.
I few days ago I attended a discussion of frontiers in the biological sciences--where we can expect breakthroughs that will be have a radical, transformative effect on society and culture. This seems an unlikely forum for partisan politics, and yet I had to endure repeated gratuitous insults directed at conservatives, Republicans and especially President Bush and his supporters. It didn't seem to occur to these "progressive" and "tolerant" people that their behavior was way out of line, or that it revealed far more about their character than about the putative lack of intelligence of conservatives. (Not to mention wasting the time of those more serious, adult attendees.) I also am casually acquainted with a planetary astronomer who cannot have a conversation without loudly and obnoxiously voicing her contempt for Bush in professional settings. Note also the attempts in the scientific community to pillory and anathematize Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."
I know supposedly moderate liberals who see conservatism as synonymous with fascism. On the other hand, there is no condemnation of somebody who asserts that Harry Truman was morally indistinguishable from Joseph Stalin because he did not end third-world poverty. So much for judgment and moderation. I also know a couple (once again, supposedly liberals) who enthusiastically support Maoist-style indoctrination wherever it can be gotten away with. For instance, they feel that a legitimate and desirable condition of employment should be public confession of un-PC thoughts at "diversity" training sessions. What does such mind-rape have to do with liberalism? If such people can call themselves liberals, and be accepted as such, then what has happened to liberalism?
One of the things that I noticed even when I was a naive liberal many years ago, was that conservatives tended to be more polite and respectful than liberals. I was regarded as mistaken and naive, but I was generally treated with respect and I was able to comfortably debate issues. With liberals, however, this tends to be much more difficult. They tend to see those who disagree as not just naive but stupid and evil. Needless to say, this makes civil discussion difficult.
Al Gore famously (or infamously if you aren't a partisan hack) gave a speech in which he called Republicans "evil, evil!" Howard Dean recently said "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for." Such demagoguery does not leave much room for bipartisan dialogue and bridge-building. And can you imagine the outrage if a Republican presidential candidate spoke of Democrats in such terms? It's ironic that Bush is the supposed fascist, but it's the Democrats who routinely demonize their opponents--not to mention send thugs to terrorize campaign workers and slash tires. And more, it is significant that such vileness causes no waves of public outrage from liberals.
#38Patrick,
"That?s just plain wrong, Harry. A sample size of 1% of a large population would ordinarily be considered huge."
You are certainly right that a 1% sample size would be huge for most polling purposes, but the Kos readers are a self-selected sample, not a random selection of liberals, and so cannot be assumed to representative of the whole.
#39I agree mostly with spt314 on this. Of course, this discussion depends mostly on a semantic issue: what exactly is the "left"? Those with liberal views? Those with *all* liberal views? Their cultural and academic leadership?
Now, if you're talking about the Democratic party, I'd have to make two points.
-There *are* Democrats who support the Iraqi war, and are disgusted with their party's tactics and move toward the extreme left. See http://www.ornery.org for an example.
-There is no doubt in my mind that the Democratic party leadership *is* moving toward, and to a great extent is already at, the extreme left. As exhibit A I present Michael Moore sitting up front at the DNC, evidence which also shows the leadership's current love affair with extreme partisan hatred.
This saddens me. We need two healthy parties, and I know many Democrats that I greatly respect.
#40Harry,
That was my point: the issue is representativeness, not sample size. The two are quite distinct. One way to obtain a representative sample is by random sampling, which clearly Vik's post did not use. But all of this, in my view, is largely beside the point. It wasn't a scientific exercise Vik was engaged in.
Patrick
#41My grand unifying theory of lefty spleenishness: Much of what attracts people to contemporary American liberal-leftism is that it constitutes a socially approved license to hate. To be hateful, condescending, sneeringly contemptuous of others outside our "tribe"--that's a dark side of human-ness that we all need to learn to transcend. I see this very same inclination displayed routinely in the realm of sports fan-dom. I work at a university; I am surrounded by good, otherwise reasonable people who are unhinged, politically speaking. I think this is their "dark refuge" in life, where they can give vent to all their subhuman tendencies. And believe me--they find lots of positive reinforcement for this sort of self-indulgence in the insular world of the university.
#42Thanks Driftright!
#43My grand unifying theory of lefty spleenishness: Much of what attracts people to contemporary American liberal-leftism is that it constitutes a socially approved license to hate. To be hateful, condescending, sneeringly contemptuous of others outside our ?tribe"--that?s a dark side of human-ness that we all need to learn to transcend. I see this very same inclination displayed routinely in the realm of sports fan-dom. I work at a university; I am surrounded by good, otherwise reasonable people who are unhinged, politically speaking. I think this is their ?dark refuge? in life, where they can give vent to all their subhuman tendencies. And believe me--they find lots of positive reinforcement for this sort of self-indulgence in the insular world of the university.
This is definitely true of universities. I believe that there are other things that attract people, however. The desire to be accepted by those around you, even if you don't share their views (especially true of university students). Misguided beliefs of all descriptions. Too much exposure to the modern media, by which I mean not just the news but novels, movies, music, and other arts which are generally dominated by the elitist viewpoint. A generally vague, ill-informed but often intense hatred of organized religion. Misguided compassion, by which I mean things that *seem* compassionate but really only damage their intended beneficiaries. And above all, A DESIRE FOR SECURITY OVER FREEDOM, which I believe is one of the questions at the very crux of the battle between left and right.
There are plenty of others.
#44Anchoress,
The post you suggested is up.
#45Sometimes it's only possible to determine the root of the problem posthumously. Given the current rate of decline, the body of the American left should be available for autopsy some time next Tuesday afternoon.
#46Hey Vik, Check out Armando's pathetic passive agressive response to this over on Kos.
#47Nate, is that this one? Armando does seem to be reaching a mile to call those things "hate."
#48Yeah, that's the one. Not only does he appear to be reaching, but he appears incredibly hypocritical in light of your latest post on the subject.
Anyway, good work with the blog. I enjoy it. Keep it up.
#49I think you miss the point really. Back in the 90's, talk radio was full of pi$$ and vinegar toward President Clinton, if anything, that hatful, negative attitude of those days set the bar for all opposition comment that has followed. Democrats are the opposition and as such, need to yell to be hear, just as the Republican's did back in the day. To attack them now for it is just hypocritical.
Plus, as a reformed GB supporter and now left-of-the-dial blogger myself, there's just too much to choose from not to want to yell a bit. it's easy pickings on Pennsylvania ave.
#50Thanks Nate!
#51LeftBehindChild, that's a very interesting thought.
It certainly is true that the Right tried very hard to get Clinton impeached -- something I felt strongly opposed to doing at the time.
I wasn't blogging when Clinton was in office. (Were there any blogs yet at that time? I think John Carmack of ID Software may have had one). However, I did write a letter to the LA Times opposing efforts to impeach him. That letter wasn't printed, but I later blogged a similar argument here.
Of course, the nation wasn't considered to be in wartime during Clinton's presidency. A counter-argument to your suggestion might be, that this is the first time the party out of office has so strongly opposed a president during wartime.
Anyone who listens to Air America for an hour or so will be struck at how much spleen and invective is hurled in all directions; and how little that is favorable is said about anything or anyone at all.
These guys are hippies minus the talk about love. But if you subtract that from a hippie -- what else is left that's even remotely attractive?