Sunday, December 13, 2015
On Being Liberal, Conservative, Nice or an A... hole
by Tom Kando
Here is a question for you: Is there a correlation between how nice a person is and how liberal?
Logically, liberals should be nicer than conservatives. They believe in giving to the poor, in sharing wealth, in making love and not war, in turning the other cheek, in kumbaya. Conservatives should be mean. They believe in competition, the survival of the fittest, in selfishness, in fighting wars, etc.
But then, why do I know so many liberal a....holes and so many nice conservatives?
During my forty years as a professor, I had many conflicts with many colleagues. Several of them were a...holes, and as everyone knows, most professors are liberal.
On the other hand, many conservative people are as kind as can be; they are the salt of the earth. So there are four possibilities: 1. Nice liberals. 2.Liberal a....holes. 3. Nice conservatives. 4. Conservative a....holes.
1. Nice liberals: I hope that I am one of them. I am sure that my wife is one, and I believe that President Obama is one.
2.Liberal a....holes: I have met many of them, especially among intellectuals, academics and in Europe. These are people who are always convinced that they are right, and who are very unfriendly towards anyone with whom they disagree. They are very critical and judgmental. It’s true, though, that many of them are right. That is because they are very smart and knowledgeable. An example of a very liberal public figure who at the same time seems to be an a....hole to me is MIT linguist Noam Chomsky. I may be wrong, since I have never met him.
3. Nice conservatives: Had I written this a generation ago, I would have said this: Many conservative Americans are deeply religious and they live what the good book preaches. Thus, they are often extremely kind, hospitable, giving, generous and compassionate, as the church taught them to be.
Unfortunately, America has undergone a cultural revolution: Evangelicals and the rest of what Jerry Falwell used to call the silent majority have metamorphosed into a shrill and militant social movement - the Tea Party, the followers of Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, etc. They have been led in this direction by the hate-spewing demagogues at Fox and on talk radio.
So it is difficult for me to maintain that many conservatives today are nice people.
Nevertheless, over the span of my life, I have met many absolutely wonderful, giving and kind “rednecks,” simple people in the many provinces of this great country, including the rural Midwest, the Deep South, and yes, even in Texas!
I am sorry, my liberal friends: I still have many conservative friends, whom I like because of one simple reason: They are NICE.
4. Conservative a...holes: As I just said, there is now the problem of an increasingly radicalized right-wing populism in America, a resurgence of racism and other forms of hatred. However, rather than condemning the millions of simpletons who are flocking to new false prophets such as Donald Trump, I would hold those snake oil peddlers themselves responsible.
The true conservative a....holes today are the likes of Sean Hannity, Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and others.
© Tom Kando 2015
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9 comments:
Tom,
You “hit the nail on the head.”
We trust that you and your wife will have a wonderful Holiday Season.
Interesting problem, Tom, though a bit oversimplified. Probably your characterization of European liberals may be accurate; of the others I can only guess. Nevertheless, Noam Chomsky has for most of his life been associated with MIT. Perhaps he’s a bit arrogant, but I know of no evidence he is not nice. Actually I think a lot of people would describe him as beloved. I am not particularly fond of many of his ideas, and, without being a linguist, I suspect his linguistic contributions, though brilliant, are passe.
I suppose the biggest problem is how to be a good person and not an obnoxious self-centered pest; and that’s a problem for liberals and conservatives. And also how to do this without giving in so much to others that you’re taken advantage of. It’s a lifelong study.
Jon:
Oops. Thanks for your correction re Chomsky(MIT, not Harvard), which I also made in the post. And as I said, I haven't met Chomsky, so I guess he may be the wrong example for this category. I value your input.
Well, Hillary is certainly a Liberal A...hole!
Conservatives tend to be nicer than liberals because they tend to be happier than liberals. The majority of self-reliant, self-confident alpha males, veterans and independent businessmen are predominantly conservative; wussified white beta males tend to be liberal. Unhappy, angry feminists, lesbians, black women, and unwed mothers are for the most part liberal, with low regard for men, and therefore unwilling to go out of their way to attract men. In contrast, Republican women, who are drawn to independent, self-reliant, successful men, tend to work at being more alluring to attract and keep their men. Thus in addition to being financially successful and not reliant on the government, Republican men tend to be happier because they are more successful at attracting the better looking members of the opposite sex, and therefore have more fulfilling sex lives than their beta male liberal counterparts (notwithstanding the happiness of the small liberal gay wing of the Democrat party).
Tom. I also never met Chomsky and know of him only through media where he died seem to pontificate on a variety of subjects and is reliably critical of any establishment strategy or position, obnoxiously so, I think, but his interlocutors admire and respect him and he obviously reads a great deal
And he knows a great deal. Perhaps he is nasty in print occasionally. I've never read or heard that he is nasty or ungenerous in his personal life. Sadly, for whatever reasons , his transformational -generative grammar influenced primary and college teaching of both grammar and writing for a generation, and made, in my humble opinion , thousands if not millions of American schoolchildren ( and then college students and adults) functionally illiterate in grammar. But that's not nasty and I don't know that he endorsed the uses to which his theory was put.
However , in the nasty liberal camp, sadly, the poster child is barbara boxer, a reliably liberal voice in the Senate and a good Democrat, but I've heard a # of times she treats her staff like shit, and there is high turnover, whereas . As your blog suggests, Republican legislators apparently are well known for treating their staffs with kindness , thoughtfulness and generosity . It's a vast generalization , so I'm sure it's flawed.
I knew I was opening a pandora’s box (can of worms?). That was the idea. So far, the comments seem to refute my hypothesis: The two anonymouses are nasty conservatives. Anonymous One’s’ predictable opinion requires no response. Anonymous Two’s theories should perhaps be deleted, since they are somewhat offensive, but I offer them to the reader because they are so idiotic as to be (a little bit) funny.
As to Jon, he seems to be right.
I would say there are three types of people, reactionaries, revolutionaries, and integrated transformationists. Because integrated transformationists tend to be the nicer people but there is no political party that represents them, you end up with some of them voting in each party. However, you will be less likely to find them name calling or using a political party to get something for themselves at the expense of others. They tend to think in terms of what's good for society rather than what's good for an interest group.
Reactionaries and revolutionaries are two sides of the same immature coin. They are both responding to cognitive dissonance in what they were told and what they see by either being for the system or against it, whereas maturity of thought would seek to transform the system and make it more functional--even if it means a loss in pay or personal sacrifice. Both political parties are ultimately driven by money, which is why 41% of Americans now claim to be independent. They have hijacked conservative and liberal sentiment and polarized it in the fight over money.
It seems that good sociology would have to try to determine what inherited traditions that conservatives espouse serve the cause of social peace and harmony, and which ones should be rejected. Too often sociologist seems to line up taking all or nothing positions like children do. I would hope we can encourage good social science that does not see the world in black and white but recognizes that society is a complex system.
I thank Gordon for his analysis.
My post is somewhat in jest. It isn’t meant as a scientific suggestion - only as a commentary on my personal experiences over the years. Basically, what I meant to say is this: I have known many liberals and many conservatives in my life, and I have also known many nice people and quite a few nasty people. I really don’t know whether these two dimensions/variables are related in any fashion or not.. Just a thought...
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