In America, we have been brewing a Cultural Holy War since 1969 and I have mindfully tried to stick myself, not in the middle of the argument between Conservatives and Liberals, but between the two diametrically opposing ends to shadow the mean sun. As a child of the Midwest and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln undergraduate, I comprehend the conservative core. As a graduate of Columbia University in The City of New York, I understand the liberal mentality. As I have written many times, this Boles Blog is dedicated to preserving common ground where everyone has a safe opportunity to be heard and that we do our best to honor a “liberal mindset with a conservative morality.”
On one side, we have the religious, Bible Thumping, Right who live through the Word of God and who quote Leviticus and John 3:16 as the motivating drive of their lives:
[16] For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
On the other side, we have just as dangerous extremists — the Nincompoop Liberal Elite — who believe they are so highly educated and smarter than the rest of us and that we are just too dumb to know that they already know everything. They quote philosophy and history without living the lessons, they long to examine their lives down the lint in their belly buttons because nothing in the world is more important to them than themselves:
[38a] and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you. Besides, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve anything bad. If I had money, I would have proposed a fine,
Both sides of the extreme tempt cruelty against the rest of us. Because I am more currently directly exposed to the East Coast gang of the Liberal Elite Nincompoop Brigade, I have to wager they are more threatening to the common ground of our country because of their disloyalty, unpredictability, and lecherous morality with larcenous community consequences.
The conservative Bible Thumpers are also dangerous, but they are much more reliably predictable — and can therefore be proactively dealt with on a grander scale. You pretty much know where they live on social issues and economics. They stand their ground. Their minds are made up. Negotiating with their self-interest can be a devastating and negative experience, but at least they do stand for a circular moral core that allows few ripples of discontent. They follow and believe because they are required to do so by their Faith.
Dealing with the Godless Leftist Elite is like trying to pin a firefly to a donkey’s ass. You have to first get a weather report to learn the current direction of the wind; then you have to find a firefly to follow; then you have to line up the donkey’s in the right azimuth. The easiest part of the whole process is finding a pin sharp enough to prick the fly!
The reason these big, nincompoop, thinkers believe they are so infallible is because of their oddly innate ability to change their hopes, goals, and morals on the turn of a dime spinning in mid-air: Heads they win; tails you lose. Having a convenient, interchangeable, set of core values makes them ripe for manipulation by those with money and power. The elites are kept in check by their monied masters as they line up for anointing and approval by winning grants and honors and awards — but if they ever step out of line, or question the authority of their keepers, then they will be de-socialized and their allegedly sharp intellects will be circumcised by a circus circumspection that will cut them at will. Not only is the King without clothing, his clingers-on are also clothesless.
The Elitist Nincompoops are a grave danger to society because they stand for nothing but themselves. They see the world through the prism of their own invented greatness and no other kaleidoscope, or salient point-of-view, matters to them. If there isn’t anything quantifiable in it for them — grants, awards and honors or social power — then forget the wistful and the honorable, because they aren’t interested in being in it, and that’s the worst kind of sociopath you want in the world. Who wants a numb, well-educated, novelty thinker who believes only their mind matters and only their aesthetic can define a dramatic notion or a potentialized public policy?
I’d much rather lean on a reliable rock than try to ride a roiling ocean beset by waves of contempt for the human spirit.