{"id":57436,"date":"2016-02-11T07:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57436"},"modified":"2016-02-10T19:48:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T01:48:23","slug":"peak-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57436","title":{"rendered":"Peak Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been my theory that Minnesota “progressives” – especially here in the Metro area – are incapable of debating conservatives on a level deeper than ad-homina and strawmen because they never learn what it’s like to deal with dissent. \u00a0They grow up in “progressive” families, sure – and then go on to 12 years of public education run by and for the left. \u00a0Then 4-8 years at a U of M or a Saint Olaf or a Macalester, where conservatism is treated as a villain in a melodrama, all but twisting its mustache in sadistic glee, and where no realistic debate is tolerated. \u00a0Then they go on to careers in academia, public education, non-profits, or public sector unions, where people marinade in unquestioned “progressivism” for decades without a break.<\/p>\n

In other words, for Minnesota “progressives”, their entire life is a “safe space”.<\/p>\n

Robert Tracinski at\u00a0The Federalist\u00a0<\/em>thinks that’s a bad sign for progressivism – that it will lead, eventually, to “Peak Leftism”. \u00a0In fact…<\/p>\n

\n
\n

At the beginning of the year, I speculated<\/a> that we may have reached \u201cPeak Leftism,\u201d the point at which the left has achieved such uniform control of the commanding heights of the culture that they have no place to go but down. Their mania for soft ideological conformity suggests a mechanism for this decline. They are growing so accustomed to living in an ideological \u201csafe space\u201d that they will no longer understand what it means to debate their positions, much less how to win the debate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And this is bad for “progressive”ism because… (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The most powerful historical precedent for this is the totalitarian creed of the Soviet Union\u2014a dogma imposed, not just by campus censors or a Twitter mob, but by gulags and secret police. Yet one of the lessons of the Soviet collapse is that the ideological uniformity of a dictatorship seems totally solid and impenetrable\u2014right up to the moment it cracks apart. The imposition of dogma succeeds in getting everyone to mouth the right slogans, even as fewer and fewer of them understand or believe the ideology behind it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Go ahead. \u00a0Talk some some Sanders supporters for a while. \u00a0Tracinski’s thesis doesn’t seem so far out.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been my theory that Minnesota “progressives” – especially here in the Metro area – are incapable of debating conservatives on a level deeper than ad-homina and strawmen because they never learn what it’s like to deal with dissent. \u00a0They grow up in “progressive” families, sure – and then go on to 12 years of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,51,349],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-liberal-tyranny","category-urban-liberal-privilege-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57437,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57436\/revisions\/57437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}