The Left is Unprincipled

I used to think that liberals stood for something, and conservatives were defined by being against whatever liberals were asking for. In this viewpoint, liberals have a relatively clear agenda: they were for environmental regulation, for animal rights, for LGBTQQXR;πr² rights. They were for taxation and social programs, and all the things we would call the liberal agenda. On the other had, conservatives didn't really stand for anything in particular, but only resisted the changes being pushed upon them.

However, I'm now convinced that conservatives are the pro crowd, and liberals are the antis. Conservatives are pro-family, pro-constitution, and pro-Christian values. They are very familiar with what aspects of society they wish to preserve. The liberals don't have a rational agenda or clear vision for the world, so much as they are against what they see as an evil tradition. They are anti-conservative. They don't define themselves, they merely form up in opposition of the conservatives. Whether the dynamic itself has changed, or merely my viewpoint of things has changed, is uncertain. But I think it is both.

Here's an example that illustrates my point, and thinking about it prompted me to write this post. Liberals were once opposed to the EU. They saw the EU as just a consolidation of power for the old European order. Today, the right-wing have turned completely against the EU. The immigration crisis has demonstrated just how much national sovereignty they have lost, and they have mobilized and now Britain has voted to leave the EU. And the lefties are going nuts. Really foaming at the mouth, calling all the leave voters racists, bigots, morons, and much worse. The mainstream has been openly racist against whites, openly biased against older people; really no amount of hatred is being shied away from in their denigration of the vote.

But they used to be against the EU. Supposedly they were principled, but once the conservatives got on board, the lefties now are utterly certain that the EU is the greatest institution ever, and always has been. Why? Because they are unprincipled. They can only stand opposed to others. This goes a long way to explaining why most liberals can't rationally argue their support for the EU! They have no principles!! You cannot have a logical system with no axioms. It's no wonder that what they put forth as "argument" is almost invariably a mush of emotional string-pulling, ad hominen invectives, and rambling straw man arguments. That would simply have to be the result. They are only equipped to attack (because they are anti, no pro), and even those attacks are a sort of primitive clamoring that sidestep almost any notion of empiricism. (Some put forth the appearance of empiricism, but it is generally very shallow or misleading venture, such as a a link to biased "sources" like Politifact.)

So the right is pro, the left is anti, and yet I feel something has been omitted. What of us who only became conservative because we are anti ourselves. For instance, I only finally became a full-on conservative in response to (1) the immigration crisis in Europe, and (2) the lefty student coup that occurred at my state's flagship public university, Mizzou. So I am actually a reactionary myself. The left is a reaction to the right, but another group, usually called the Alt Right, is a reaction to the liberals after we've seen just what they are leading us to.

So does our right-side reactionary viewpoint suffer the same shortage of axioms that now define the left? Intuitively I say it does not. I have been very surprised at the level of logical discourse and intellectualism that occurs at the alt right. Surely there must be some axiomatic underpinnings, and yet we are inherently reactionary. Is this a contradiction? Have we merely adopted the axioms of the conservatives in response to the left? I will explore this some more in a later post.

Ignoring the alt right for the moment, the conclusion stands that the left are merely reacting against tradition, and that largely explains the desperate shrill shrieking, the hate-filled rhetoric, and the almost complete lack of rationale being emitted by the left in response to Brexit. I feel like if tomorrow the conservatives all united in their support of gay marriage, and became very vocal in promoting it, the liberals would flip their position, and claim that marriage was a way of imposing old control structures or moralities on homosexuals. Pay attention from now on when you see a liberal stance on any issue. Ask yourself, is this a genuine concern, or does it seem to be merely another anti-conservative reaction?