Explaining Leftists: Answering "Three Line" Tony's Question

Here is an email I got today from "Three Line" Tony (partly in response to my recent entries on the problems in Mexico, and how we are letting Mexico export its problems here). "Three Line", by the way, got that nickname because of his criticism of this blog, and my emails, that modern writers on the internet know better than to write more than three lines at a time, since that is all people are willing to read. Anyway, here is "Three Line's" email (more than three lines), followed by my reply (way more than three lines):


"Please explain the logic or rationale or whatever explaining the liberals agenda (i.e., big government, open borders, etc.) It makes no sense. Why would anyone want to open our borders to uneducated, poor people. Do I feel sorry for them? YES. Can we absorb all of Mexicos' population that want to come here? NO. I have lived on the border my entire life and over the last 40 years have watched the living standard decline significantly. Why? Because the costs associated with allowing a poor, uneducated immigrants has it's costs..... bi-lingual education, health care and on and on. I would be curious as to the costs to the taxpayer for treating the 40 victims of Mexicos' violence, in addition to the danger posed to the other patients in the hospital. It is only a matter of time before the hit men come over here to finish off the wounded, or spray a restaurant with machine gun fire. Oh well, hopefully there will be some liberals between me the shooters."


My reply:



"As best I can tell, there are two "explanations" for leftists (including Paulson, President Bush, and the Communists on Wall Streeet)--well, maybe 3.


1. Arrogance and fear: the essence of the delusion that central planning is effective. The arrogance is the idea that if only you (leftists) were in charge of all decisions, those decisions will be right (better than either the market or the mass of individuals can make on their own--leftists clearly do not really believe in democracy). The fear is not just the obvious fear that things may go wrong if "enlightened" leftists do not intervene--or the fear that anything that has gone wrong cannot be "fixed" without "enlightened" intervention. There is also the desire for power, and the fear that you will not have that power. If you are in power, like President Bush and Congress, there is the fear of losing power and/or reputation if you don't "fix" every single thing that goes wrong with central planning--in the face of both theory and practice proving that central planning is ultimately a disaster (you might remember the Soviet Union).


2 (these items are interrelated): People want the government to take care of them. This is especially true of people who are poor, or can be convinced that they are poor. This explains why true leftists want to import Mexico's poverty problem to the U.S.--making it our problem, even though it is impossible for us to solve Mexico's poverty problem. We will go under trying. However, for leftists to gain power, and be in charge, they need to import more people into this group 2. An easy way to do that is to import people from Mexico who need the government to take care of them (or think they do). Yes, this also explains why there is no chance that leftists will ever declare either racism or poverty "solved". They need the dependent underclass to rule with their central planning.


3. Upper economic class leftists tend to feel guilty (although not so guilty that conservatives do not give more of their own money to charity--a guy did a study on it and wrote a book--going in with the idea that "compassionate" leftists would give more to charity, only to find that generally incorrect). These leftists think that the only "moral" society is one in which everyone is absolutely equal--even if it means that everyone is equally miserable or badly off. You can summarize this last delusion by imagining leftist men as wanting everyone to be married to ugly women, instead of some being married to someone like Angelina Jolie. In practice, of course, they marry Angelina Jolie instead of Phyllis Diller (with the opportunity)--no matter how "feminist" they profess to be. Leftists preach equality, while seeking power and inequality for themselves (especially true of leftist politicians)."


By the way, I don't endorse every word used by Tony, but I think most of the country would agree with most of what he says (as do I). That leads to the question of how the Republican Party managed to destroy itself, to the point it now stands for nothing (on illegal immigration or almost anything else). Yes, the Republican Party actually nominated John McCain!!! And Tammy Bruce (see Caroline Kennedy entry today) is right that President Bush turned into a leftist mole in the Republican Party on domestic policy. Too bad. We can only hope that the Messiah (a.k.a. Barack "World" Obama) will resurrect a conservative leader out of the dead remains of the Republican Party. It is probably too much to expect, at least from this particular Messiah, that he resurrect Ronald Reagan (desirable, despite Reagan's amnesty mistake--which might not have been such a mistake if we had followed through with vigorous immigration law enforcement after that).