The Analphilosopher is Hot This Weekend!

Speaking of the libs, here's Keith Burgess-Jackson on "Turning Back the Clock":

I'm not taking sides here. I'm trying to understand liberal discourse and tactics. Liberals, for all their vaunted talk about freedom of expression, don't want a robust debate on issues such as privacy, affirmative action, and redistributive taxation. They are true believers--dogmatists--who view opposition to their views and values as malice, ignorance, or stupidity rather than as a reflection of honest and respectable disagreement. In short, liberals have become totalitarians. Whatever happened to the liberal ideal of a free and open debate on issues that matter? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas? Conservatives, as such, aren't malicious, ignorant, or stupid; they have a different vision of the just society. They do not share the liberal view that things have gotten morally better. If the concept of moral progress makes sense, then so does its opposite, moral regress. Progress is in the eye of the beholder.

I said at the outset that I was once a welfare-state liberal. Everyone should be, at different times, a liberal and a conservative. When you're immersed in an ideology such as liberalism, you come to take its principles for granted. You cease interrogating them. You stop thinking, questioning, and examining. If and when you leave the ideology, you see it in a different light. You gain the detachment that allows you to see what was previously invisible. You lose your blinders. I've been inside and outside the liberal circle. I believe this gives me an epistemically privileged vantage point. How many liberals were at one time conservatives? I'm not asking you to accept what I say on authority. I'm asking you to think things through for yourself, Socratically. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living.

It's relatively short -- READ THE WHOLE THING. KEITH HAS JUST EARNED A SPOT ON MY LINKS.

As someone who grew up with a staunchly conservative father and a strongly liberal mother, I also have a bit of perspective on this matter. To accuse either of them of being corrupt or mean-spirited would be just risible. They were (Dad) and are (Mom) two of the nicest people in the world.

Most people in this country are of generally good will. Look around you -- to believe that we could achieve the level of prosperity and cooperation we have by being a herd of mean-spirited morons just brings tears of laughter to my eyes.