A challenge for the lefties

My intention is for this to be strictly an intellectual exercise. Let's try to keep the froth to a minimum (and that includes me!). My hope is to use your answers to gain some insight into the leftie mind, since much of that is hopelessly alien to me. This really extends beyond American politics, so I'm hopeful that PJ will dip his toe in the pool as well. I don't plan on responding outside of maybe requesting clarifications or if specifically and directly asked to do so. The floor is, and shall remain, yours.

I have here 5 sentences. I'd like for y'all to attempt to refute them and/or justify the actions that they are condemning. I figure #1 and #5 are the shakiest of the bunch since there's some subjectivity to them, and I'm really hopeful that someone will take up the leftie banner on behalf of #4 since that appears to me to be a very tough nut to crack. There's no requirement to do all 5, although that would certainly be encouraged. Without further ado:

1) You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2) What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3) The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4) When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

5) You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Thar ye be. Have a go!

Sorry, dte, but... no. Just... no. Face it, man—the lefty mind is just something you'll never be able to understand, however hard you, or we, try. Just think of us as your alien overlords, and you'll do fine.

I'd love to say that really you're begging the question when you talk about lefties and minds in the same sentence, but I won't!!

Those questions, DTE, are so wrong, and shows your complete lack of understanding, that it's pointless to even begin…

In what ways are they wrong? Please be specific as I see nothing wrong with them at all, and I'm totally a-political:- I hate them all equally!!

If you can't see the bias in the wording, well...

Is this anyway related to the Heartless, Clueless and Confused?

You finally lured me out of lurking the Watch after 3 years. I'm a staunch leftie Brit living in the midwest, so I have to defend my beliefs on a daily basis - not a joke!
Unfortunately I'm pushed for time right now, but I will give some quick responses now with more to follow.

1) Depends on your definition of prosperity, but assuming we are talking about material wealth…. If you remove wealth from one person it has to go somewhere, and why not to a person meeting the opposite criteria of the source?

2)The word 'must' invalidates the argument. One person can give another a gift purely for the joy of it.

3)True statement ( assuming 'take' means 'recieve' ).

4)True statement ( assuming the entire nation believes in one of only two specific modes ).

5)True statement. What increases is the denominator, ie. how many have access to it .

Thrasher said:

Those questions, DTE, are so wrong, and shows your complete lack of understanding, that it's pointless to even begin…

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1) They aren't questions. Those are called sentences. Learn to tell the difference.

2) They aren't my sentences and, as such, make no statement about me whatsoever.

3) Since you apparently have nothing constructive to add to the discussion, kindly STFU so others might partake without your pointless drone.

Philistine said:

You finally lured me out of lurking the Watch after 3 years. I'm a staunch leftie Brit living in the midwest, so I have to defend my beliefs on a daily basis - not a joke!
Unfortunately I'm pushed for time right now, but I will give some quick responses now with more to follow.

1) Depends on your definition of prosperity, but assuming we are talking about material wealth…. If you remove wealth from one person it has to go somewhere, and why not to a person meeting the opposite criteria of the source?

2)The word 'must' invalidates the argument. One person can give another a gift purely for the joy of it.

3)True statement ( assuming 'take' means 'recieve' ).

4)True statement ( assuming the entire nation believes in one of only two specific modes ).

5)True statement. What increases is the denominator, ie. how many have access to it .

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Welcome to the jungle. Glad you decided to join in and looking forward to your insights. By way of clarification on your #2, would a gift not have to be made/worked for/created prior to being given, thus maintaining the statement?

dteowner said:

1) They aren't questions. Those are called sentences. Learn to tell the difference..

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Need I quote you, since you are so clearly wacked out? I think so..

My hope is to use your answers to gain some insight into the leftie mind, since much of that is hopelessly alien to me.

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I'd like for y'all to attempt to refute them and/or justify the actions that they are condemning.

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dteowner said:

2) They aren't my sentences and, as such, make no statement about me whatsoever.

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You selecting them make no statement about you? Wrong on 2 counts.

dteowner said:

3) Since you apparently have nothing constructive to add to the discussion, kindly STFU so others might partake without your pointless drone.

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OK, all those statements are about wealth, money, or work. Trying to understand the other side's point of view exclusively in those terms clearly shows you have no clue…

dteowner said:

Welcome to the jungle. Glad you decided to join in and looking forward to your insights. By way of clarification on your #2, would a gift not have to be made/worked for/created prior to being given, thus maintaining the statement?

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How the gift came into the givers possession is a seperate case. The giver recieves a sense of satisfaction from the act.

Something I should probably re-emphasize about the exercise. I am looking for the "next level" on each of these sentences as well. A couple of them are truisms, based strictly on the meaning of the words, so disputing them would be arguing against Merriam Webster. My goal isn't to get into a word-parsing fest (outside of using it to smack Thrasher around for trashing the thread with insults when he apparently can't manage the task requested) here. If y'all deem that to be the case with any of the sentences, I'm interested in your dispute with the "spirit of the thing" more than getting wrapped up in the "letter of the law".

Hope that helps a bit. Carry on.

By the way, dte, if your goal really is to try to understand the lefty mind, here's a clue.

In the lefty mind, your approach is wrong. What you should do instead is this:

(1) Write down five similar propositions that you think are as fundamental to *lefty* beliefs as you believe your propositions are fundamental to *rightie* beliefs.

(2) Ask lefties if they agree that they're fundamental to lefty beliefs. If not, ask them to correct them for you. Else GOTO (5).

(3) Rephrase the corrected lefty propositions according to any understanding gained in phase (2).

(4) GOTO (2).

(5) Take the first proposition and attempt to explain why a lefty would think it is true and fundamental.

(6) Ask lefties to correct any errors in your explanation. If corrections were made, rewrite an explanation based on any knowledge gained, and GOTO (5). Else GOTO (7)

(7) Repeat steps (5)-(6) for propositions 2-5.

(8) END

I can see how a rightie would want to do this your way. A lefty, however, wouldn't, and a part of the reason is something that's fairly fundamental to the lefty worldview.

(N.b.: This game, I would be willing to play with you.)

You really don't want to tackle the challenge, do you? This really wasn't supposed to be this complicated. It's clear y'all don't agree with the sentences, which was only to be expected. Why don't you agree? Simple enough mission, me thinks.

If you'd like to generate/locate/rehash 5 sentences that would mimic the exercise from the leftie perspective, I'll be happy to take a swing at it. It seems to me that it would be tremendously silly for me to attempt to put words in your mouth. Might was well ask me to come up with 5 sentences in Finnish. What would that really accomplish, other than me butchering Finnish and giving y'all the glorious opportunity to hammer me for not speaking perfect Finnish? That's not a conversation starter--that's setting up your insults for you and that doesn't really appear to be very fair.

dteowner said:

You really don't want to tackle the challenge, do you?

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No, I really don't.

This really wasn't supposed to be this complicated. It's clear y'all don't agree with the sentences, which was only to be expected. Why don't you agree? Simple enough mission, me thinks.

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Unfortunately, it isn't simple. The sentences are trivially true, but they don't represent the whole truth. Explaining enough of the whole truth to put them into context would be a very long and tedious trek. I've tried to do that, more or less, over the past five years, with very little visible effect—you yourself admit that you believe that you could no more put together five lefty sentences than five sentences of Finnish.

What's more, I believe that IF your goal is to understand the lefty mindset, this is the wrong approach to it. More on that below…

If you'd like to generate/locate/rehash 5 sentences that would mimic the exercise from the leftie perspective, I'll be happy to take a swing at it. It seems to me that it would be tremendously silly for me to attempt to put words in your mouth.

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Yep, I understand that you would feel that way. However, that approach is fundamentally flawed, according to my world-view, which is what you're trying to understand.

Might was well ask me to come up with 5 sentences in Finnish. What would that really accomplish, other than me butchering Finnish and giving y'all the glorious opportunity to hammer me for not speaking perfect Finnish? That's not a conversation starter—that's setting up your insults for you and that doesn't really appear to be very fair.

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Here's the thing. You're attempting to understand a world-view that's deeply different from yours. If you want to accomplish that, you need to step completely out of your existing cognitive paradigm for making sense of the world. Completely. Out. I believe that the approach you've chosen is structured in a way that you will never be able to do it within it.

The method I've proposed, OTOH, *requires* you to attempt to "come up with 5 sentences in Finnish" — step out of that paradigm of yours, and attempt to wrestle with a completely alien one.

Of course your first five sentences will be complete gobbledegook. That's why I'm offering to help you by pointing out where the mistakes are, so you can try again, and again, and again, until you're eventually able to form five coherent sentences of Finnish/lefty-speak, and understand what they mean, and how they're formed.

This isn't going to be easy. I would expect it to be about as difficult as learning to communicate in Finnish at a rudimentary level; i.e., if you're approximately as intelligent as you appear to be, it would take you about four months of serious study and practice.

What you're trying to do is learn Finnish by giving five sentences in English, and then demand that a Finn tells you what's wrong with them. It makes no sense. OTOH trying to put together five sentences in Finnish using a dictionary and a book of grammar, and then asking a Finn to correct them for you, *might* work as a method for learning Finnish (although probably not the best one).

Similarly, my throwing out five lefty-sentences for you to pick apart would help you no more than my throwing out five sentences in Finnish and asking you to pick *them* apart. Get my drift?

I'll try to help you a bit further: here's one proposition that I think might resemble something like you'd come up with on the first round. I'll emphasize that it's most definitely *NOT* something I believe; however, it is something I believe you might think I believe, and it's something I could work on. If you can come up with five like it, we'll have something to go on:

"It's unfair that some people are wealthier than other people."

EDIT: Never mind, I had a better idea (see below.)

Hey, dte — I had a better idea.

I'm still assuming that your motivation is a genuine desire to find out how we "lefties" think.

Imagine a country. Let's call it Spendinavia. You've heard a bunch of stuff about strange Spendinavian ways and customs, and you may even have run across the occasional Spendinavian. These encounters have left you completely puzzled about what they think, how they live, and why they choose to think and live as they do.

However, you're lucky enough to be a combined psychiatrist and anthropologist. You have absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever. It makes no difference to you at all how the Spendinavians live or think, since you don't live in Spendinavia and have no intention to move there, and the Spendinavians have no plans on invading your country or otherwise taking control of it. (Yeah, I know, this is a stretch, but we're imagining, right?)

Now, you have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to interview a real live Spendinavian. You can ask him whatever you like, about any odd custom, political feature, or belief you've observed or heard that they have. The Spendinavian in question is a helpful fellow, eager to explain his strange ways to you. However, he's neurotically non-confrontational, and will immediately clam up and run away should you attempt in any way to challenge what you hear.

I'm the Spendinavian. Interview me.

Go.

I appreciate the effort, honestly I do, but I'm not certain how to get started and there's certainly no way I can do it justice here at work.

Referring to your original offer (2 posts up, although it's probably hiding under the hood for offer #2 as well), I'm troubled by something. You appear to be saying that there's no real bridge between the two mentalities (which I'm not sure I'd dispute)--to properly discuss Finnish, one must cast off all trappings of English. But, if there's truly no bridge, then your path leads to assimilation and not greater understanding. Once I've transcended, there's no way back. That's picking up sticks, moving to Finland, living in an igloo, becoming a lumberjack, and actually caring about World Cup until somebody tosses my frozen corpse under a glacier. I'm more looking to spend a couple weeks travelling the countryside, admiring the architecture, eating the food, taking lots of pictures, saying "my pumpkin is despair" in textbook-perfect Finnish while trying to find the bathroom, buying the T-shirt that they only sell to stupid tourists, and then going home, with my world ever so slightly bigger and more colorful for the experience.

That doesn't equate to a 30,000ft flyover with an hour layover at the airport. I'm interested enough to get off Main Street and try pickled seal tits at the back-alley restaurant where the locals eat, even though I won't really fit in and I'll have to be careful not to make a spectacle or else get a proper beatdown in said back-alley. I'm just not quite ready to burn my passport.

dteowner said:

I appreciate the effort, honestly I do, but I'm not certain how to get started and there's certainly no way I can do it justice here at work.

Referring to your original offer (2 posts up, although it's probably hiding under the hood for offer #2 as well), I'm troubled by something. You appear to be saying that there's no real bridge between the two mentalities (which I'm not sure I'd dispute)—to properly discuss Finnish, one must cast off all trappings of English.

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If I believed that, would I be making you this offer?

I think there *is* a bridge, or, rather, that we possess the means to build one. However, I also think that building it is going to be a lot of work, and the effort will have to come from the one who wants to cross to the other shore—in this case, that being you.

But, if there's truly no bridge, then your path leads to assimilation and not greater understanding. Once I've transcended, there's no way back. That's picking up sticks, moving to Finland, living in an igloo, becoming a lumberjack, and actually caring about World Cup until somebody tosses my frozen corpse under a glacier.

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Oh, I'm quite sure there's a way back. In fact, I would be very, very surprised if you wanted to become a permanent resident of Spendinavia. However, if you really wish to understand what makes us tick, you would have to do the same thing as if you were, say, relocating to the Chinese countryside for a few years all by yourself: you have to put everything you think you know on a shelf, and attempt to see the world through Spendinavian eyes. In the beginning you're guaranteed to fail, just like you're guaranteed not to be able to speak Chinese in the beginning of your Chinese stay. However, if you stick with it, keep listening, and keep inquiring, you will eventually learn to get by in Chinese—and that won't make you forget English.

And yes, I do think our differences are at least as big as all that.

I'm more looking to spend a couple weeks travelling the countryside, admiring the architecture, eating the food, taking lots of pictures, saying "my pumpkin is despair" in textbook-perfect Finnish while trying to find the bathroom, buying the T-shirt that they only sell to stupid tourists, and then going home, with my world ever so slightly bigger and more colorful for the experience.

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You do realize that you can stop the exercise at any time?

My basic point remains this: there is no way I can explain my world-view to you using terms and concepts you currently use to make sense of the world, any more than a Chinese guy could explain Chinese to you using only English terms. All the Chinese guy can do is scratch you the pictogram or make the funny sound when you point at something and make a confused face; you'll have to be the one doing the work of putting it together.

That doesn't equate to a 30,000ft flyover with an hour layover at the airport. I'm interested enough to get off Main Street and try pickled seal tits at the back-alley restaurant where the locals eat, even though I won't really fit in and I'll have to be careful not to make a spectacle or else get a proper beatdown in said back-alley. I'm just not quite ready to burn my passport.

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I'm not asking you to burn your passport. I am asking you to temporarily suspend your disbelief and attempt to put your conceptual world on a shelf, and try to walk a mile in my shoes. That's all. Come on, dte—do you seriously think that this exercise would suddenly turn you into a stark, staring Communist or something?

So, interview me. Come on, dte—ask me anything, I'll do my best to answer. How hard can it be?

No, I'm not expecting to start shopping for a signed copy of the Little Red Book, but when you say things like
"If you want to accomplish that, you need to step completely out of your existing cognitive paradigm for making sense of the world. Completely. Out."
that doesn't exactly sound like an intellectual exercise either. Pitches that start with that line usually involve cults, narcotics, or Florida timeshares. "Assimilation" probably wasn't the best word for me to choose, though--improper connotations.

Maybe, though, we're indirectly debating the validity of those "It's a [whatever] thing. You wouldn't understand." shirts. Yet another void to traverse. I think those shirts are a cop-out, BTW.

To build a bridge, one can't start by deciding he's already on the other side of the gorge. You start from your side and build toward the other. And if the gorge is as deep and wide as we're advertising, it's not like one can hop from side to side at will. I'm not sure we even have enough of a structure to support a rope to Tarzan across.

Said another way, I'm not sure how you can ask me to walk in your shoes at the same time as you tell me your shoes are 7 miles down the road from here, and that I probably won't recognize them as shoes when I see them. We've got to cover those 7 miles before we can even start, yes? This whole thread was nothing more than trying to take a few steps toward those 7 miles. I certainly had no illusions that it would be the entire journey and I'm really not trying to set anyone up with the approach.

OK, one last attempt to belabor the point.
"My basic point remains this: there is no way I can explain my world-view to you using terms and concepts you currently use to make sense of the world..."
Isn't this a bit of a "defining the word with itself" situation? To get a basic understanding your structure, I have to be within your framework. To be within your framework, I have to have at least a rudimentary understanding of your structure, yes?

My head hurts.