IT MUST BE NICE TO BE SO ENLIGHTENED

Yuval Levin notices something funny about the political left:

E.J. Dionne says that if the Court overturns any part of Obamacare, “we will need a fearless conversation about how a conservative majority of the court has become a cog in a larger right-wing project to make progressive political and legislative victories impossible.” James Fallows says that “the Roberts majority is barreling ahead without regard for the norms, and it is taking the court’s legitimacy with it.” Yale law professor Akhil Amar thinks the proper outcome is so obvious that if even four justices disagree with him then the Court must be a sham—and he takes it personally. “If they decide this by 5-4,” he told Ezra Klein, “then yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud. Here I was, in my silly little office, thinking law mattered, and it really didn’t. What mattered was politics, money, party, and party loyalty.” Other examples abound this week.

It would be easy to criticize all this for its sheer unselfconscious lack of seriousness: These people are actually saying that any outcome except the one they want must be driven by an outcome-oriented political crusade. Only their view could result from an actual engagement with the question before the Court, and any other view could only be a function of corruption or of cynicism. It must be nice to be so enlightened.[lINKS AT THE ORIGINAL PIECE]

Don't you think it's interesting that they don't seem to notice this about themselves? Or, if you are cynical, then maybe you think that these leftist ideologues do this deliberately and consciously, knowing full well that they are being led by the balls of their postmodern socialist ideology?

It is certainly true that some of them are not at all concerned about the lack of serious intellectual rigor; nor do they have any interest whatsoever of engaging you in any debate about the issues. THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, don't you know. GLORY TO SOVIET POSTMODERN LEFTIST THOUGHT!

Facts are not important. Neither is reality. For today's left, the name of the game is Rhetoric and controlling the narrative.

Eric Allie captures perfectly the difference between rhetoric and reality in this cartoon:



Obama, the perfect postmodern political President is a master at the art of rhetoric--which is at the heart of all progressive postmodern leftist attempts to obtain and consolidate power.

With postmodern rhetoric you can "talk" tough, but carry a limp stick. You can say whatever your audience at the moment wants to hear and still be philosophically consistent when you do exactly the opposite. Or you can say the opposite to a different audience (just like these guys) since truth is not the objective; only manipulation and deceit to achieve the desired political effect.

It's a sleight of hand known as using "contradictory discourses" and it is a political strategy where truth is rejected explicitly and consistency is an extremely rare phenomenon. As I said, what matters more than truth (or honesty) is achieving the desired political outcome (i.e., getting others to believe what you want them to believe about what you believe).

And, if they don't achieve their policital outcome, then they do not revisit their premises; they only change their rhetoric.

If Obamacare fails, it's not because it's unconstitutional; it's because the court is a bunch of hacks. Or because we are all racists. Or because of Bush. Or all of the previous rationalizations.

They consider themselves so enlightened that it is inconceivable that they could be wrong.

What's important to the postmodern demagogue is the language's effectiveness at achieving the desired result. Stephen Hicks wrote in Explaining Postmodernism[pages 175-177]:

To the modernist, the "mask" metaphor is a recognition of the fact that words are not always to be taken literally or as directly stating a fact--that people largely use language elliptically, metaphorically, or to state falsehoods, that language can be textured with layers of meaning, and that it can be used to cover hypocrisies or to rationalize. Accordingly, unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality.

For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality....

For the postmodernist, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rehtoric. Rhetoric is persasion in the absence of cognition....

Hicks goes on to note that:

Language is a tool of social interaction, and one's model of social interaction dictate what kind of tool language is used as....

And so given the conflict models of social relations that dominate postmodern discourse, it makes perfect sense that to most postmodernists language is primarily a weapon.

This explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. The regular deployments of ad hominem, the setting up of straw men, the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language. Stanley Fish, as noted in Chapter Four, calls all opponents of racial preferences bigots and lumps them in with the Ku Klux Klan. Andrea Dworking calls all heterosexual males rapists and repeatedly labels "Amerika" a fascist state. With such rhetoric, truth or falsity is not the issue: what matters primarily is the language's effectiveness.

If we now add to the postmodern epistemology of language the far Left politics of the leading postmodernists and their firsthand awareness of the cirses of socialist thought and practice, then the verbal weaponry has to become explosive.{emphasis mine]

All threats to the effectiveness of their message--and to the perceived threat to their sense of superiority-- must be attacked, and they will scarcely notice the cognitive dissonance required to compare the empty suit with FDR one minute and Ronald Reagan the next. Or, that when the court agrees with them it is a beacon of social justice and an example of truly enlightened consideration; but when the Supremes disagree with their ideology (and stands in the way of their progressive postmodern agenda), the court becomes "a sham" and "illegitimate."

Of course, we shall see tomorrow what the court's decision is about Obamacare. I am sure, that in the end the Justices will make their decision based (as all decisions are based) on their understanding of the law. Could that understanding be flawed? Certainly.

Whenever human beings are involved, you can expect the imperfect; but that doesn't mean we are not capable of wonderful things. Nor does it mean that we should suspend that particular reality and try to change human nature.

In postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, the political left, and the remnants of Marxism, socialism and communismhave found the perfect epistemological, ethical and political vessel to reassert their ideology--an ideology that requires the willing suspension of reality by its adherents to "win the future."

And, it's absolutely inconceivable to these arrogant bastards that the implementation of their perfect progressive, "reality-based" future is always being blocked in some perverse way; or, that they could ever be wrong about anything....

I'm glad that I find it so extremely conceivable.