Quote of the Day
Those who carry guns don’t push that belief on others; they simply want the right preserved. Those who hate guns want them outlawed for everyone. That’s the difference between freedom and tyranny. It’s a distinguishing characteristic between conservative and liberal beliefs.
Army of the Poors @ArmyOfThePoors
Posted on X, June 28, 2021
I’m not convinced it is a “distinguishing characteristic between conservative and liberal beliefs.” It certain is A Conflict of Visions. But I see it a distinguishing characteristic between individualists and collectivists. The collectivist somehow believes it is necessary for everyone to have the same beliefs and act in essentially the same way. If the people lobby for teachers to be allowed to carry guns in schools to protect the children, then the collectivists cannot take those words literally. They insist this means we are intent on forcing all teachers to carry guns in schools.
It is very bizarre to me. Some other examples:
- They cannot imagine a society where people have the freedom of choice to spend their money as they see fit.
- They cannot imagine a society where people are allowed to raise children in a manner other than what the collective insists is the one true way.
- They cannot imagine a society where a baker is allowed to refuse baking a cake for an occasion celebrated by the collective which is repugnant to the baker.
I suspect it is a form of mental illness. I once had a relationship where I lived with similar bafflement for decades. I would literally write things down in the clearest possible words. And yet, those words would be warped to mean something entirely different in their mind. I would have them read the words carefully, demanding they show me the words that meant what they interpreted them to mean. After a few minutes, I would convince them I had not said what they claimed I had said. Then, literally 10 or 15 seconds later, they would revert to their original misinterpretation. Even though they had admitted they had wrongly interpreted the words, it was impossible for them to hold on to the literal meaning of the words I used.
I suspect a form of this mental illness infected the Democratic Party. And once it reached a critical mass the craziness caused the implosion of their voting base and the record low approval ratings. Somewhat like the Emperor’s New Clothes, everyone, except the crazy’s themselves, can see the truth and are no longer afraid to say it out loud.
What is ironic is that the people who proclaim the glorious benefits of diversity the loudest are the collectivists, who talk up the amazing goodness of difference while pushing everyone toward a homogenous sameness of opinion (and sometimes appearance as well, as they all dye their hair unnatural colors and get the same ugly tats and piercings as an act of “rebellion” against normalcy).
Mental illness is one way to look at it. And in some people, it certainly comes naturally.
But in most it’s brainwashing. It’s intentionally programmed into them so as to allow a smaller group the freedom to do whatever evil comes to mind without consequence.
As Yuri told us. “Once they’re demoralized, you could literally show them the empirical proofs. And they would still not believe.”
Evil is real, satan is real, and those people that have been programmed are going to follow that program until some trauma snaps them out of it.
Communism is a convenient name for it. And one most everyone today understands.
But it’s been used the world over by evil since humanity started building power structures.
And weapons control is always its first target.
No one wants to get rid of guns. They just want only the few evil people at the top to use them for their own whimsical maligning evil proposes.
Wither those demoralized understand that’s what is going on or not, doesn’t matter.
That’s always where it ends. In someone having the “divine right of kings.”
And the real question is what are we prepared to do to stop it?
We know what our forefathers did.
“There is no law from tyranny that serves justice. Therefor there can be no law restraining the just.”
I often encounter the misinterpretation problem. That I can tell, it has nothing to do with political leanings, one way or the other. Mostly, I think that people tend to overlay their own beliefs, desires, and/or opinions on top of whatever you or I say or write, and just cant see past them to the plain meaning of the text.
The point about collectivists interpreting advocacy as coercion really stood out. It’s a pattern I’ve seen often—where simply wanting the freedom to choose gets spun as a threat to the collective norm. That reframing seems to shut down genuine dialogue before it even begins.
Probably the fundamental difference between left and right is one side simply wants to be left alone to live their lives. The other side wants to tell EVERYONE how they should live their lives…and wants the government authority to impose that on everyone. Everything else flows from this mentality
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Great article indeed. And yes, collectivism is of course a strange from of ‘mental illness.’ It is the desire to always be subsumed by the ‘herd’ and to never have to make serious decisions – all one’s decisions are made for them.
“It is the desire to always be subsumed by the ‘herd’ and to never have to make serious decisions – all one’s decisions are made for them.”
It seems like abdication of personal responsiblity is a key component of collectivism; that, and the “security in numbers” that belonging to the herd provides.
Particular examples of mental infirmity aside ((Joe’s example, above), I’m wondering at what point is it possible to differentiate between “brainwashing” and actual mental illness, and is there any overlap in one – the illness component – making the other more effective.
And, if indeed collectivism (and all its associates and subsidiaries) is a valid indication of mental illness, there’s a rather large cohort of our society which should be flatly prohibited from any access to the levers of power, even the small ones such as private committees and elected ones all the way down to dogcatcher because their mental condition(s) is anathema to the principles upon which our country, and its society, are based.
Edited to add:
After I posted the comment above, I continued my usual early morning blog crawl, and ran across this, linked from Insty:
https://scitechdaily.com/what-happens-to-your-brain-without-vitamin-k-new-study-reveals-surprising-effects/
Quick synopsis, it references negative brain function(s) from deficiencies in Vitamin K. It got me to thinking – what, and to what degree, if at all, is the mental health problem(s) we regularly see are related to dietary deficiences and aberrations? There is no question that a certain (perhaps large) number of people are fundamentally irrational (at least as compared to the verfiably rational segment of society) and is such irrationality rooted in genetics, mental conditioning (aka “brainwashing”), or chemical imbalances ?
It’s become obvious that in the United States it is no longer possible to purchase non-GMO food unless one subscribes to known and verifiable organic sources. Given that our diet has shifted to predominately prepared foods, especially commercially offered by franchise conglomerates interested primarily in profit (McDonald’s, Domino’s, Taco Bell et al) and precious little from completely naturally-grown (try to find corn from a cultivar that has not been bred for glyphosphate resistance – it can be done but you’ll have to work at it), it makes one wonder what the perpetual ingestion of “wonder chemicals” so convenient to mega-farmers and large food processors has, and is, doing to our mental faculties and processes.
“To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
— Charles Krauthammer, 2002
It’s tempting to attribute insanity to those who disagree with us, but it’s not always productive or accurate. Consider that the logic of the original quote works as well for this now-universally unacceptable claim: “Those who own slaves don’t push their belief on everyone; they simply want to preserve the right. Those who hate slavery want slave-owning outlawed for everyone. That’s the difference between tyranny and freedom.”
The perfectly reasonable counter-argument is of course that a gun is not a slave. But to someone who perceives widespread private gun ownership as a phenomenon similarly dangerous to human life and freedom — a perception I now consider mistaken, but that I know from personal experience it is possible to hold without being stupid, insane or evil — accusations of “collectivist thoughtlessness” are not going to change anyone’s mind.
There is no such thing as a coherent culture which doesn’t criminalize or hold taboo some acts, or some beliefs, or some ways of living. One can strongly believe in individual freedom and still hold that some ways of spending money, raising children, or selecting who to do business with should be illegal, or at least publicly shamed and condemned. No man is an island and all our actions affect others, however free we like to think ourselves, and the belief in law that says, “We forbid X to everyone, regardless of how likely some may do X without harm, because the likelihood of harm once X is widely adopted exceeds what our values allow us to tolerate,” is only a collectivist principle insofar as equality before the law for all is “collective”.
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