Do liberals seem elitist to you?

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I've actually seen more cruelty from the left, only they can't even recognize when they are being cruel when it is pointed out to them.

Now that I see you've flipped flopped on your stance regarding making generalizations about ideological groups, I'd just like to remind you that many crucial libertarian thinkers like H. L. Mencken and Herbert Spencer were undoubtedly elitist and distained the masses. Indeed, the "stupidity of the masses" as a rebuttal to democratic governance is a key theme among libertarians and Randian thinkers.

As for the OP, any well-defined ideological group will, almost of neccessity, be elitist against people outside their ideological camp.

My ideology tends more to the left, and not simply to liberalism. There is a lot of elitism on the current hard left. The reverse snobbery is incredible. When I was a student, I met a lot of people who thought they were of a much higher morality due to not drinking Coke or watching television. As an old-fashioned materialist with Marxist sympathies, I believe the main problem with capitalism is economic inequity, not 'brainwashing' by the mainstream media. I think it's appropriate to criticise consumerism, and if you want an alternative lifestyle without any consumerism, go for it. However, a lot of that way of thinking leads to self-righteousness. I'd go as far as to say it's the same kind of self-righteousness that pious religious people have, and that PETA has.

I think I'd enjoy my creature comforts whether I was brainwashed into consuming them or not. Call me a hypocrite, but I dislike capitalism, but I like my Coke and video games. I have committed grave sins against the revolution and against Mother Earth

Anarcho-primitivists are much more elitist than anyone on the liberal left. The liberal left were complacent in the past, and they are currently resigned and fatalistic - not elitist. Conservatives are not elitist because of the simple fact of being conservatives. Some of them are unthinkingly elitist because they come from money and have socially conditioned attitudes towards the poor. Even some conservatives who come from money aren't elitist, some even go too far the other way and are annoyingly populist. These are the conservatives who call the liberal left elitist; in reality the liberal left is simply less populist.

Economic libertarians are usually elitist. Them, and anarchists of all stripes - green, communist, feminist, capitalist, primitivist, People's Front of Judea, etc.

How is posting another man's thoughts about some of the problems of today's liberalism suddenly making a mass generalization?

Also; flip-flopped? Seriously? You really ought to change your avatar to something more appropriate, perhaps Karl Rove superimposed on a Canadian flag... Look at your post, the only purpose is to try (again) to discredit me by making a marginal claim of hypocrisy and then attempting (again) to tie me to a questionable ideology which I don't hold. I ought to be flattered that you view me as so threatening that you have to spend so much time trying to preemptively discredit me, but enough is enough already.

Edison was also a thief. He died rich because he stole ideas from others, not because he was an inventor alone. Edison stole the monetary part of Tesla's alternating current idea (after using AC to electrocute animals to death in trying to fight it and keep direct current as the standard). Con Ed should be Con Tes in all reality. It was his design and his invention.

Tesla never had revenge on Edison and Edison's name lives on in industry while Tesla only lives on in obscurity with those of us who actually study and appreciate invention and creativity.

Dox47, that would be insulting Karl Rove because Rove doesn't usually try to demonize people like that especially now that he is retired.

False. Ever heard of an Edison Coil? But we hear a great deal about Tesla Coils. Also Tesla's name is a unit of magnetic flux. What unit was ever named after Edison? Every time someone uses AC they memorialize Tesla.

Edison also invented stuff. He turned into a rather tough businessman in the process. Tesla always remained an intellectual which is probably why he died poor.

ruveyn

Not elitism, though many think of themselves as elite. The correct term is snobbery.

Edison - yes very much a jerk from all accounts though I would not myself want to talk about specific instences of theft, misrepresentation, etc - not my pidgin.

But that raises a question:

At what point does character [think Clinton, while we are talking about Jerks] negate whatever our crierion for "elite" status may be?.

On the one hand, all of us got feet of clay. On the the hand, we would like a proportion of gold in our elite

I agree. At least the righties tend to put up a front of civility. If a lefty don't like you, for WHATEVER f8cked up ass reason, they make it apparent. Mind you, I'm liberal in my thinking.

Liberal in thinking is fine by me. I can talk with people who think. The ones who just react are hard. While I am the universal heretic, much [not all] of my thought is closer to liberal thought. The problem with "Liberals" is that too many are neither liberal [in the original sense] nor in touch with liberal or any kind of thinking.

The precept "never agree with your enemy even if he is right" I originally heard from someone close the the Conservative [I think, hard to say given how I knew him], but it is too much in the discourse of "Liberal" academia today.

The "jerk" invented a telegraph systems that could carry several message streams. He also invented the forerunner of the stock ticker tape machine. He labored to produce the first practical incandescent lamp on this side of the Atlantic (Swan did the same in England) and (this is important) he also designed the power system to light his lamps. Edison and his buddies wired the lower part of Manhattan for electric lights (it went on Sept 4, 1882). He also developed prefabricated concrete walls for putting up commercial buildings very fast.

ruveyn

We are told Mussolini made the trains run on time.

I do not at all diminish Edison's work. Nor Carnegie's. Nor Greenberg's [though some of his is overrated, partly because of his self-puffery].

If we judge PURELY on accomplishment, then fine.

If we judge PURELY on character, I have known losers who shine.

Clearly, if a person is a great contributor to the world AND a wonderful person, then great, and we can just hand out the elite blue ribbon.

I happily embrace the incandescent bulb. I really would not want to share an office with Edison.

I believe people can be elitist no matter what political or social philosophies they prescribe to. they just tend to express it in different ways.

Implying that the modern American liberal movement has a problem with intellectual arrogance is practically equivalent to stating that the modern American conservative movement - especially at its more extreme edges - has a problem with racism.



Yes, seriously. Whining that the generalization that many very conservative Americans hold racist attitudes that influence their policy-related thinking is wrong yet generalizing that liberals are arrogant is somehow okay indicates a stark flip-flop when it comes to meta-ideological principles (that you claim to enforce as forum "vigilante").

On second thought, it'd be better to say you selectively apply principles to others who hold leftwing views but shelter yourself and other economic rightists from their application (classical hypocrisy).



I noted that arrogance wasn't a particularly liberal problem and that libertarians fester with that problem. You need to pay more attention to what I write if you're going to try responding to it.



You get a lot of gratification as "vigilante" - pushing out moderators and whining to people that they're "generalizing" or "acting like Rove". Somebody had to stop this pretentious nonsense and you really annoyed me with your consistent. hypocritical, and baseless complaints.

I'm only quoting you in order to preserve this for posterity; I don't want it disappearing after you come down from whatever you were on when you wrote this and decide to hide the evidence. Honestly, I'm not going to refute a single thing, it's all so self evidently thin or massively distorted that I'm confident in the membership at large here's ability to see through it, and by extension, you.

I do take back the comparison to Karl Rove, he isn't this shameless, or at the very least wouldn't put his name on such weak ass sh*t.