trong words as the title of Chapter 4 of William Voegeli’s 2014 book The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe against Liberal Compassion.
So lets review the list of dumb and dumber proposals by the left, whose goal in life is self esteem and advertising and promoting their good intentions and intellectual and moral superiority. No hard-hearted people in their club of wonderful people.
the Chapter contains intro discussion and then a list of Bullshit policy grand strategies that oritinate from the smart people on the left.
I will extract from Voegeli’s book insights and discussions on liberal compassion and how it fails, recognizing that Voegeli borrows heavily from Henry Frankfurt’s Book On Bullshit. Frankfurt is a Princeton U Prof of Philosphy:
Frankfurt’s premise of his essay On Bullshit that was made into a best seller book, is summarized by the Wiki entry:
On Bullshit (2005), by Harry G. Frankfurt, is a philosophical essay that presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyses the applications of bullshit in the contexts of communication. As such, bullshit either can be true or can be false; hence, the bullshitter is someone whose principal aim — when uttering or publishing bullshit — is to impress the listener and the reader with words that communicate an impression that something is being or has been done, words that are neither true nor false, and so obscure the facts of the matter being discussed.[1] In contrast, the liar must know the truth of the matter under discussion, in order to better conceal it from the listener or the reader being deceived with a lie; while the bullshitter’s sole concern is personal advancement and advantage to their own agenda.[1]
I will track the sense of the chapter and the various topics that demonstrate liberal policy making bullshit. I hope to make you consider, even read Voegeli and Frankfurt on how the left uses social and economic problems as a stage for demonstrating their delusional and self-serving sense of importance and good intentions. More important they use societal problems to garner more political and social/cultural power and influence riding a false victory parade car that is powered by their well demonstrated good intentions. They are superior, they care, their opposition are cruel monsters who don’t care–always try to stop the generous programs of the well-intentioned.
THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE USE OF THE WORD BULLSHIT IN THIS CONTEXT IS THAT WHETHER IT IS TRUE OR FALSE IT IS COMMUNICATED WITHOUT CONCERN FOR THE TRUTH, BULLSHIT IS INTENDED TO PROMOTE THE IMAGE OR STATUS OF THE DECLARANT–BUT ALSO MAKE THE DECLARANT APPEAR IN A MORE POSITIVE AND SUPERIOR ROLE.
Implementation and prescriptive Liberal profligate incompetence and misconduct.
The overview of how they go so wrong–first their approach to implementation of their plans.
The example Voegeli uses to open his discussion of Liberal Bullshit policy making is focused on Implementation of well-intentioned programs, and the poster board program is Head Start. Liberals claim that few federal programs have been more successful than Head Start, but Head Start is a program that government auditors and researchers admit doesn’t work.
The research and audits showed over and over again for 4 decades that Head Start could be congratulated for improving the “readiness” of children up to the point when they started school, then it was apparent they were no more academically ready than non Head Start children.
This is a 46-year-old program that by 2011 had cost 180 billion, and in reaction to the negative reports, the bamster proposed that the anyone who would suggest reducing funding didn’t care about kids and was mean and hard-hearted, moreover that the lack of benefits was unfortunate in light of the costs and good intentions, and new oversight would be instituted to assure that Head Start programs meet “clear, high standards” but poor performers would be required to endure competitive bidding with those who would promise to perform better.
Such breathtaking empty headedness. Excused because of good intentions? “For the children” covers a lot of sins and stupidity. “For the poor children” even immunity from criticism.
The point that Voegeli is making in his book is that the reason compassionate liberals don’t fix things is that they really don’t care–they are mostly about burnishing their own image as caring so they can grab more power.
Essay number two will be on prescriptive bullshit, followed by the Liberal Bullshit canon programs and political/policy bullshit–gun control, green programs, diversity (multiculturalism, identity politics, affirmative action), the “comprehensive” bullshit canard (big statist solutions), and finally bullshit generosity. Now the list is not complete, since the hymnals and canons and the objects of pity and attention for the left are extensive–but viewing these subjects through the prism of the bullshit detector will help the inquisitive and intelligent observer.
Frankfurt and Voegeli’s writings on bullshit certainly seem to fit our agenda here at JunkScience.com.
http://junkscience.com/2015/08/10/how-liberal-compassion-leads-to-bullshit-william-voegeli-chapter-4/
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