The Poverty of (rightist) Philosophy

One reason for my lack of recent blogging has simply been the paucity of decent counter-perspectives among the rightist media and blogosphere.

Increasingly, they're looking like a bunch of whackjobs and cranks.



Take this scholar's book, about 'Liberal fascism', invoking some of the more idiotic Godwin's violations around, by linking Hitler with the likes of Dewey and Hillary Clinton. According to the author:



The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.



No, this isn't a satire of the Fox News network.



What do we have elsewhere, but the usual retarded suspects making yet more 'scientific' arguments about the supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks. As the good folk of Grodscorp ably demonstrate, such cretinism is best met with mockery, and does not deserve anything so dignified as 'debate'.



Over in padded-cell territory, the um, 'Conservative Christians' are wetting their pants in anticipation of the Rapture, which naturally, involves getting Israel to slaughter as many of the towel-heads as is possible:



I would like to affirm that, as a Christian, I believe strongly and passionately in the destiny of the people of Israel and that they are truly a light on a hill that mustn’t be hidden.



A white phosphorous light, distributed by way of a million or so cluster bombs, methinks. And in the same post, 'IT WOULD BE DEADLY DUMB TO GIVE THEM [the Palestinians] A STATE'. My Christian teachers always told me the Church was meant to have a social justice component, but perhaps I learnt about Christianity at the wrong place. Like, not at the local Hillsong chapter in Alabama.



These are only some examples. Smears, obfuscations and diversions are routinely paraded as 'argument' by the rightists. Somebody like Keynes is conflated with Marx, and virtually all academic endeavour of the past hundred years is portrayed as a massive, leftist conspiracy.



The closest thing the rightards have to an 'intellectual', of course, is the execrable Ayn Rand. As far as I can see, Rand's readings of the great philosophers are more inept than the average high school kid's, and her 'philosophy' (ignored by philosophers regardless of political persuasion) is little more than a Reader's Digest style Nietzsche for retards. Like them or not, thinkers such as Trotsky would smash Rand in any debate, even if the guy had downed a bottle of Russia's cheapest vodka.



Lest we forget, recent Conservative leaders (Howard and Bush) have been instinctively and crudely anti-intellectual, both in their public personas, and their policies. For all of Rudd's faults, he at least knows something about something (i.e. can speak a bit of Mandarin; attempts, in writing, to engage with obscure German theologians).



Little wonder, when these are the Tory's mouthpieces, that these same dunces accuse 'teh left' of an enormous conspiracy, and dismiss opponents as being latte-sipping elites. This is precisely the 'politics of envy' that rightists loudly decry, whilst generally being too stupid to appreciate their own subordination to the same dynamic.



Ironically, the 'natural' constituent of anything resembling a 'left' is not the intellectual class, but rather, a class that ca be defined in economic, rather than educational terms. This is the class who put the Labor Government into power in Australia at the 2007 election. Many of them live in the poorer suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and Queensland, and they rejected rightist assaults on their class (qua economic entity) decisively and en masse.



With Conservatives this stupid around the traps, it's hard to imagine that many young people, possessed of intellectual curiosity, and interested in political and social issues, will ever come to designate themselves as 'Conservatives'. Even now, many of the semi-retarded hacks avoid the C-word, preferring to call themselves libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, Whigs, etc.



Revolution in Australia is not precisely around the corner but, nonetheless, these are exciting times.