New Liberty Quote

16 Responses to New Liberty Quote

1. stackja

   #3023365, posted on May 23, 2019 at 11:15 am

   Yes! But GS was part of the problem.
2. mh

   #3023382, posted on May 23, 2019 at 11:36 am

   You can take it to the bank: the American election is effectively all over, Clinton has won. Trump cannot pull off victory from here.

   Greg Sheridan defended his statement following Trump’s thumping victory by using the Philip Adams excuse – that he didn’t realise the American people were that low, or words to that effect.
3. Karabar

   #3023384, posted on May 23, 2019 at 11:42 am

   When did he see the light?
4. Nicholas (Unlicenced Joker) Gray

   #3023388, posted on May 23, 2019 at 11:49 am

   I read that the Chinese Government was hoping to reset relations with the new government.
   Funny how they like multi-party democracies- in OTHER countries!
5. Caveman

   #3023391, posted on May 23, 2019 at 11:50 am

   GS just bum crawling.

   How the fark none of these commentators ever challenged the most fukd Labor policies ever during the election. No accountability , Labor has been exposed as the fukn rabble it is and they were going to unleash their economic utopia on us. They in the wilderness for the next 10 years.
6. Colonel Crispin Berka

   #3023409, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:08 pm

   On electoral outcomes the left typically claims that right-wing voters have been deluded into voting against their own interests by supporting a capitalist industrial captains class who will only exploit them.
   After the election is over and the issue of policy change (in welfare, health, education etc) arises, the left typically claim that right-wingers are just plain evil.

   So is the right wing evil or deluded? Surely we can’t be both. Because anyone who honestly thinks they’re doing the right thing for the world is not evil. Anyone who is evil in their intentions can only be effectively evil by holding an accurate model of how the world works, so is not deluded. Could the left get their story straight please?

   Flipping the argument around…
   There are some people who have personality types, through no fault of their own, that leaves them unable to deal with criticism and very reluctant to compete with others. They’d rather take orders than take risks. Such personality types are going to be naturally drawn to the Socialist doctrine as the politics most likely to make a world they can thrive in. For argument’s sake let’s call them the Type S personalities. I would only be guessing what fraction of the population that is, maybe 15% or 20% based on Greens votes, but don’t know where to look it up. Jonathon Haidt’s research on the relationship between moral reasoning and political membership found 74% of respondents were members of the Progressive ilk (American ‘liberals’). He also found:

   Libertarians score the lowest of the three groups on empathizing, and highest of the three groups on systemizing.

   We shouldn’t be telling Type S how to live, that their personalities are inferior to ours, taking away their unelected central planning jobs, and patronising and belittling them, and then expecting them to vote for our politicians. It works both ways.

   The problem is one of diversity at a very fundamental level, and how the whole society can keep ticking along when it is made of such different building blocks. (D’oh, looks like I just systematised.) If you define evil as “not caring about others” then libertarians and conservatives are the most evil. If you define evil as “using force to remove comparative advantage” then the Progressives are the most evil. We disagree on good and evil at the level of personality type, way before we get to any political ideology or political party. It is no wonder politics was a taboo subject in polite society. Yet the problem remains of how we can all get along.
7. Chris M

   #3023431, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:23 pm

   But GS was part of the problem.

   Indeed, they are all the same. First year in J-School they drill holes in their head, the balance of schooling is just the refilling process. Can’t graduate unless your brains and reasoning have gone.
8. Roger

   #3023432, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:23 pm

   When did he see the light?

   About 7.00AM on Sunday morning, I should think.
9. Bruce

   #3023435, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:26 pm

   As asked over at “Small Dead Animals”: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/05/20/whats-the-difference-between-the-eu-and-the-borg/

   What’s the difference between the EU and The Borg?

   One of the better responses:

   “One is a vicious predatory group linked into a single collective which has the ultimate goal of achieving its idea of perfection by assimilating all other life forms, regardless of cost. The other is a fictional alien group on Star Trek.”

   So, how are we traveling in the Antipodes?
10. Tim Neilson

    #3023439, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:28 pm

    If you define evil as “not caring about others” then libertarians and conservatives are the most evil.

    I don’t agree with this part of an otherwise insightful posting, Colonel.

    Conservatives do care about others. For example they care about potential victims of terrorism (who ‘progressives’ couldn’t give a shit about, unless they’re Mvsl!ms, because ‘diversity’) and potential victims of random king hits by ice heads (who libertarians couldn’t give a shit about because ‘freedom’).

    Conservatives do, however, expect people to accept constraints necessary for the welfare of others and to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions, which means that conservatives often don’t do indulgent “but they want to!” like libertarians or fluffy mollycoddling ‘tolerance’ like ‘progressives’.
    That’s not lack of ‘caring’, that’s just an understanding that ‘caring’ isn’t always manifested by licence and indulgence.
11. Roger

    #3023447, posted on May 23, 2019 at 12:34 pm

    If you define evil as “not caring about others” then libertarians and conservatives are the most evil.

    And yet the most murderous political types have been Socialists of one stripe or another.

    Why is that so?

    Because, despite their pretence of caring for others, their philosophy makes the individual a means to an end and therefore dispensable for the cause.

    Always beware of those who claim to love humankind; it’s usually only in the abstract.
12. Colonel Crispin Berka

    #3023474, posted on May 23, 2019 at 1:24 pm

    Yes well spotted there, Tim. That remark by Haidt was only about libertarians, but I lumped them in with conservatives. Revising my statement to match the real survey data then…
    If you define evil as believing that might makes right, valuing purity over heterogeneity, and giving more favours and help to cronies and family members than to needy strangers, then conservatives are evil. That’s the preference of conservatives and is unsurprisingly a recurring criticism by lefties.

    You can watch a presentation about this on youtube “The moral roots of liberals and conservatives – Jonathan Haidt”, the most relevant portion is about 11 minutes long starting at 5:27

    https://youtu.be/8SOQduoLgRw?t=327

    Very interesting stuff. I’ve begun to see political ideologies not just as morality clubs, which is all that Haidts research supports, but furthermore as personality unionism.

    I imagine how terrible the world would become if we literally shipped all the Type S off to their own island, and all the ESFJs and conservatives lived in their own country, and all the INTPs in their own country. The ESFJ personalities would launch a world war and take over everyone else. This doesn’t happen because they are spread around the world, disjoint, and surrounded with other personality types. Phew! But if this present multi-personalityism is the best solution for preventing different personality types from unionising and escalating into violence… well what would therefore be the solution for preventing different cultures from going to war? Yes, exactly. So if multiculturalism is so terrible, what alternative solution are conservatives going to put in place that hasn’t already demonstrably failed? Or flipping it around, if we can already tolerate different personalities intermixing, can we not tolerate everyday friction between imported cultures by the same mental and behavioural tricks?
    I don’t know the answer, but would never have thought of asking the question if I hadn’t seen that video.
13. notafan

    #3023478, posted on May 23, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    and giving more favours and help to cronies and family members than to needy strangers, then conservatives are evil. That’s the preference of conservatives and is unsurprisingly a recurring criticism by lefties.

    I don’t know about ‘conservatives’ but Christians are the most generous when it comes to charitable giving

    Flies in the face of the lefty narrative.
14. Bruce of Newcastle

    #3023482, posted on May 23, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    A worthy Liberty Quote! Well done Mr Sheridan.

    Greg doesn’t always get it, but he has this time.
15. Seco

    #3023574, posted on May 23, 2019 at 3:30 pm

    Greg Sheridan – the Catholic case homosexual marriage.
16. Entropy

    #3023680, posted on May 23, 2019 at 5:34 pm

    I like River Tam’s version

    “People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.”

    While it is true River is fictional, Summer Glau is much better looking than Sheridan.

Comments are closed.