In his philosophical explication of the differences between the Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian political theories, Standout Author John C. Wright explains why the conflict between me and the writers presently dominating SFWA was not only inevitable, but will remain unresolvable.
The reason why political discussions between partisans of these theories
are so often futile is that their goals are unrelated to each other,
and the fears of one seem highly theoretical, if not ridiculous, to the
other…. Libertarian views of Liberals is one of deep seated and scathing
contempt. Where Libertarians are fundamentally intellectual and
conservatives fundamentally men of passion and honor, Liberals are
entirely emotional, and do not have the metaphysical or philosophical
groundwork needed to erect an intellectual defense of their position to
Libertarians, or to mount an intellectual criticism of Libertarianism.
It’s intriguing to see how closely his observations serve well as a predictive model concerning the behavior of both myself and my critics. I certainly tend to regard this particular set of critics with “deep seated and scathing contempt”. And, as we have seen, the SFWA writers have not only failed to erect an intellectual defense of their position, or mount an intellectual criticism of mine, [REDACTED PENDING APPROVAL TO QUOTE FROM SFWA FORUM]. They definitely regard me as evil.
This speculation is admittedly harsh.
It would have been gentler had I been asked my opinion in the days
before I exchanged many, many arguments with liberals of all stripes.
The one thing they all have in common, and this includes Catholic
liberals as well as atheist liberals, male and female, young and old,
all of them, all of them, all I have ever met: their argument is
primarily emotional, and they interpret disagreement as a moral failure,
not just an intellectual one.They do not think you are wrong, my dear conservative and
libertarians readers, they think you are evil. Not one I have met thinks
that there can be honest disagreement with their positions, or that the
matter is one where reasonable men can differ.This is not due to the personality of the liberals I have met, but it
is due to their theory. I have had angry Catholic socialists denounce
me angrily as wicked for not believing his nonsense, but I have also had
gentle grandmotherly socialists do the same in mild tones, and sneering
atheist socialists utter the same denunciation in sneering tones
without even bother to discover what the argument is or the objections
are. The tone depends on the personality of the liberal, and they are as
different as the whole spectrum the human race affords.But the the automatic imputation of vile motives and conspiracies by
one mass against another mass is not due to a character flaw in the
liberal psychology. Rather, the flaw is built into their theory. It is
what they have to say. They can say nothing else, since if they did,
they would no longer be liberals. The institutions of civilization are the enemy, since they and only they are the source of mass-oppression and inequality.
Wright’s observations are 100 percent in line with my own considerable experience of what he describes as the Liberal. And this explains why Jamsco’s assertion about the need for inoffensive dialogue is not only wrong, but futile. Because he only thinks about what he sees as being obviously offensive, he doesn’t recognize that it is not the sharper points of the rhetoric that offend, but rather the way in which the use of that sharper rhetoric correctly communicates to the Liberal that the non-Liberal is immune to their primary emotion-based tactics. He’s only looking at the surface, and in doing so, he’s failing to see the more substantial forces operating beneath it.
You cannot use Aristotelian dialectic with a Liberal. You cannot reason with him because he is not reasonable. You cannot engage in rational discourse with him because he is not rational. To paraphrase Aristotle, you can only rhetorically flay him alive while dialectically exposing the flaws in what passes for his arguments in order to persuade undecided third parties. And the more cruelly you flay them, the louder they shriek, and the more third parties are eventually inspired to see the difference between your reason-based arguments and the emptiness of their emotion-based non-arguments.
It would surprise – no, it would horrify – the rabbits if they had any idea how more and more people are coming over to agree with my positions as a direct result of Liberal pointing-and-shrieking combined with their total inability to make a coherent case, let alone a compelling one. Perhaps you recall how only last year various rabbits were trumpeting the significance of how popular Whatever was and asserting that I was jealous of their Chief Rabbit’s massive blog traffic? Less than a year later, my blogs have 4553 percent more pageviews than the Chief Rabbit’s warren.
Now, Wright’s series of posts – read the whole thing from the start – are not about my conflict with a group of SFWA members, and yet they demonstrate that those who see that conflict as a petty writers squabble are entirely missing the point. It is, rather, a micro-model of the great civilizational conflict that is already engulfing the entire West, whether most of those on either side realize it yet or not.