[MD] Freewill

[Michael R. Brown]

Hi, dmb -

> bombastic titles of books by conservatives

Again, we are in the area of "Frenchmen like to eat X." Generic labels 
rarely cover what they're boomed as covering.

> conservatives don't just think their policies are better. They think 
> liberals are just plain evil.

If that's true, they must be following the suit of "the liberals," who for 
several decades have helpfully told me I and my confreres hate the poor and 
are Nazis since we're classical liberals (otherwise known as a Bourbon 
Democrat, around 1895). I've been hearing it from "the left" since my 
Freshman year in college - 1983 - so maybe "the right" is finally catching 
up.

> Ann Coulter
> Sean Hannity
> Michelle Malkin
[ etc. ]

These equal "the conservatives"? How about Krauthammer and George Will and 
the late W.F. Buckley (whom I don't like)? How about avoiding false 
dichotomies and looking at Mises and Hayek and Sowell? Even Rand had equal 
ire for both sides, with probably more dislike for "the conservatives" 
post-Goldwater. She abominated Reagan.

One could readily name Michael Moore's various wacky untruths, and the 
seething hate on many thousands of protest signs carried by "the left." 
Remember "Bushitler"? Many calls to assassinate Bush in protests by "the 
leftists." Oddly, the media seemed far less concerned about those than about 
the far fewer in number calls for Obama's assassination among idiots on the 
right.

> bash liberals and liberalism.

Not that! "The left" never bashes "the right" and is always nuanced, civil, 
and compassionate.

> "New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America"

That's an understatement.

> I could do this all day, but you get the point.

Yes. Freeze it, polarize it, personalize it.

On a more serious level, this is is all about our evolutionary-psychological 
propensity to put thing in terms of simplistic dichotomies, and to look at 
human relations in simplified tribal terms. We need a good dose of Korzybski 
here.


MRB
http://www.fuguewriter.com