Liberal Thinking: Follow The Leader

We’ve talked twice now about the difference between conservative and liberal thinking. Today we’re going to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. Then we’ll talk about how this knowledge can help us.

In the first discussion, I pointed out that liberals are short term thinkers, whereas conservatives are long term thinkers. Short term thinkers live for the now, i.e. they value instant gratification and discount the future. Long term thinkers are the reverse, they seek to maximize their gratification in the future and will sacrifice in the present to achieve that goal.

This isn’t necessarily a criticism as both types of thinking have their place. For example, without short term thinkers, no one would set out to Hollywood to become a movie star. . . which, by the way, explains why Hollywood is full of liberals. But when it comes to problem solving, short term thinking is a disaster.

Short term thinkers don’t realize that people will change their behavior in response to the solution offered. If you give a man a fish, more men will choose dependency. If you raise taxes, people will work less. If you make it less profitable to become a doctor, fewer people will become doctors. Short term thinkers don’t realize this. Thus, while short term solutions may solve a problem momentarily, they will almost always make the problem worse in the long term.

In the second discussion, I described how liberal policies are often premised on the idea of changing human nature: “If we can only ban people from saying the wrong things, they won’t have the wrong desires anymore.” Yet, thousands of years of liberal attempts at changing human nature -- from wishful liberal thinking to political correctness to communist reeducation camps -- all failed. The simple fact is that human nature cannot be changed. We are hardwired to want, to need, to hope, to fear, and to feel the whole gambit of emotions. We can hope to “incentivize” people with punishments and rewards, but we cannot change their fundamental natures.

So what’s still missing? Liberals believe that superior people should make all of the decisions for the rest of humanity. Of course, they won’t admit this. To the contrary, they will assert that they strive to keep an open mind, to examine all sides of an argument and be independent thinkers, blah blah blah. Yeah, right, and they’re all moderates too. Consider the evidence. . .

First, with rare exceptions, liberal policies always involve handing off decisions to some higher authority, i.e. an “expert” who is supposedly trained in making the specific decision. Liberals want experts to tell you how to spend your money and how much you can earn. They want “consumer advocates” to decide what loan terms you can accept. They want the government to make health care decisions for you. They want you to stop smoking and they want experts to tell you what to eat. Government experts will invest your retirement for you. Counselors will instruct you on how to raise your children. And so on.

This should be proof enough that liberals innately put their faith in distant experts over average people (sometimes even themselves). They want someone better than us to make all of the important decisions of our lives. Many don’t want the responsibility of making critical decisions. Other simply don’t trust us mere ignorant fools to make these decisions for ourselves and they want these experts to take care of us idiots. Indeed, they don’t call it the “nanny state” because it trusts average people to take care of themselves.

The fact that liberals view these experts as superior people can be seen in their rhetoric, which is simultaneously worshipful of the experts and dismissive of the public at large. These experts are deemed to be of superior intelligence and ability. . . visionary and noble. If you want proof, consider how they idolize their experts, i.e. their “higher authority.”

It is not enough for liberals to respect their leaders. They feel compelled to worship their leaders. They don’t want merely to agree with their leaders, they want to fall blindly in love with their leaders, to give themselves over entirely. How else do you explain the insatiable liberal need to put their leaders on a cult-like pedestal. They want to wear what their leaders wear, to eat the same foods, to own the same pets. They regularly declare their leaders as the most handsome or beautiful or stylish people on the planet. They cry or faint at their leaders’ speeches and describe them as the greatest speeches they’ve ever heard. They compare them to stars or gods. They talk about their leaders being heroic. They are historic. They are greater than all that has ever come before or ever will come again.

And lest you think this was just some fascination with Obama, where journalists brought their kids to his rallies and cheered him uncontrollably and wrote columns describing their sexual fantasies involving him, the same was true with Clinton when he was first elected. Moreover, look at the way they idolized JFK, RFK, MLK, and FDR, and the way they’ve mythologized monsters like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. It is not enough that these were men with whom they agree, they need to be seen as messiahs. . . shining moments in humanity that promised to bring about Heaven on earth.

Liberals trust these super humans implicitly, no matter what evidence exists to the contrary. They forgive all their sins and failures (at least until it becomes clear they’ve been betrayed by these false messiahs). They refuse to hear anything that contradicts their unconditional love. Indeed, as anyone who has ever argued with liberals has discovered, liberals don’t think -- they repeat what they’ve been told by the people they consider authorities. They will uncritically repeat obvious lies, they will repeat obvious contradictions and logical inconsistencies, and they will even repeat mantra that flies in the face of their own experience. Their leader’s words are gospel and you contradict them at the risk of speaking heresy.

Indeed, if you try to argue with them, your assertions are immediately dismissed as distortions or lies. If you produce evidence contradicting their chosen authority, they will dismiss the evidence as being from a biased source or incomplete. These self-described open-minded individuals will not accept anything as true unless it comes from an approved authority. Finally, if the evidence cannot be refuted in any way, e.g. it comes from liberal sources, they will declare that there must be some mistake and they will drop the matter, sure that their leader has told them the truth. Like cultists, they have inoculated themselves from truth.

So what does this mean? It means that arguing with liberals is difficult. Though, this gives us points to raise in arguments. Point out the long term effects of their solutions and the inability to change human nature. Point out the arrogance of their position, claiming to be superior to “average” people. Know to have sources that they cannot refute, particularly from liberal sources.

Moreover, careful use of this knowledge can help conservatives defuse liberal resistance in the policy arena. For example, conservatives looking to advance a legislative agenda should always include an expert report or two from sources that liberals will accept as authoritative -- like the CBO. They should also include what one might call “placebo experts” in legislation to placate liberals. If you wanted to privatize social security, for example, you could offer to include plenty of “experts” who can advise taxpayers on how to invest (in a non-binding way of course). And realizing that liberals are short term thinkers, conservative legislators should consider including “placebo solutions” that liberals would see as fixing the immediate problem, while the conservatives implement the real, long term solution. Again, committees of experts aksed to examine issues are a great way to buy time and yet placate liberals.

Consider each of these traits the next time you argue with a liberal or you try to sort out something they’ve proposed. Knowledge is power.