25 Comments

This review makes it sound like porn for self-righteous conservatives, rather than a work focused on actual ideas like Rand's novels were.

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Just what we need. More material to help "conservatives" misunderstand liberals. :)

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author

Yes, it is a one-sided book. It does not offer any concessions to people on the left of center.

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If by ‘liberal’ you mean the so-called progressives, the only thing to understand is they are evil and their evil is always done in the name of good - it is the worst of all evils, done by the worst of all evil-doers.

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It's like you want to prove his point for him.

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I was making my own point.

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You have clearly expressed the attitude that I reject and hope others will reject: consider "evil" people who disagree with you.

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You are making judgements about me without knowing me. I consider people to be evil by their deeds, not whether they agree with me.

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Then talk about evil deeds, not evil people

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I don’t take direction.

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You have lost the present definition of "liberal", Thomas.

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"Liberal" "Neo Liberal" "Progressive," whatever. It's the free-floating animosity of "conservatives" for people that they disagree with that is poisonous.

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I am quite sure you believe that, Thomas.

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Of course. Why else would I try to get others to agree with me? :)

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I'm sorry- where exactly have you been trying to persuade anyone?

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Here. Facebook, newspaper comments when they'll take them, blog comments. personal conversations.

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I didn’t quite take away whether you thought the book is good or not. I was a little surprised you reviewed it given the nature of the book, but I am wondering if I should bother reading it.

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author

I was torn. I admire the skill with which it was written, and it did have me turning the pages. But I am not sure that someone who disagrees with it to begin with will find it persuasive.

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If we had to put numbers to it

1. What proportion of journalists are progressive? (Me: ~ 90%)

2. What proportion of journalists weaponize their reporting to further socio-political ends? (Me: ~ 90%)

3. What proportion of politicians (understood to broadly include politically active people with ties to government and political parties, not just the relatively small number of elected officials) are progressive? (Me: ~50%)

4. What proportion of politicians (again, broadly including politicos and "civil servants" here) would be willing to commit fraud (even indirect fraud, such as tampering with mail, harvesting votes, registering illegal votes, filling in ballots for incompetent people, etc)? (Me: ~50%)

5. The probability of 4 conditional on the probability of 3 is > than the P4 conditional on NOT P3.

Anyone was to disagree with any of these beliefs?

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For me, all of 1 through 4 are over 95%, and a "Progressive" is anyone who wants to keep LBJ's family-destroying welfare system in place. It is the root of nearly all our troubles, and of poor people's misery as explained by Thomas Sowell.

I would not call Leef's work fiction at all. Certainly not the lying and cheating, which the main bad guys admitted to in Time Magazine for the world to see.

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If either or both of 3 or 4 were >95%, it seems to me that we'd never have had successful, relatively fraud free elections.

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For all I know we haven't had one since the New Deal.

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What's your definition of "progressive"? Some would say anyone to the left of Joe Biden, others would say anyone to the left of Marsha Blackburn.

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Progressives usually aren't shy about self-identification, so I'd say anyone who says they're a progressive is a progressive.

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I can't argue with that.

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