Do liberals seem elitist to you?

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I find a lot of the openly left people to be elitist. It's ironic since I'm pretty democratic, but looking back I've come across a lot of really snobby libs.

In my experience conservatives are condescending and liberals are dismissive. Elements of both have little regard to the reasonable objections of either.

As far as the "progressives" are concerned, the correctness of their position seems (to them) to be self evident and anyone who seriously disagrees must either be evil or stupid or both.

ruveyn

The Randroids are probably the most elitist and they believe that they are in the Elite or will inevitably join them. They are on the far right. Leftists are not elitists, really, at all.

As for leftists believing that their being correct is self-evident, many on the Right thinks this surely though the leftsts are right. Sometimes I think that people support the Right because they love villainy - perhaps the same reason why women like "bad" men, perhaps? Those people care so much about the spotted owl? Screw the spotted owl! Let them go extinct! Hahahaha! People don't have the right to live. Let them die! Hahahaha! I'm a cold-blooded bastard and I'm proud of it! Seriously, that's how a lot of these Right people come across.

Has anyone seen that Alfred Hitchcock movie Rope? Don't tell me that those two killers were leftists. These people claimed to be in an elite and killing made this so... that they were superior people, their victim was inferior. That kind of thinking is more prominent with those types of people than many people think.

I know more than enough conservatives who are condescending, elitist bastards. Plenty of liberals are as well. I doubt such personality traits are very closely correlated with political ideology at all. Even among "anti-elitist" or populist groups, you still get a sense that they regard the other side as being inferior human beings.

I know people who hold exactly those views, and have expressed them almost verbatim as you have.

I knew someone who liked to mouth off shocking extremist right wing views in order to get women... I actually saw him reel one in with that...

The movie -Rope- was Hitchcocks take on the infamous Leopold-Loeb affair. The real-live Leopold and Loeb believed that they was completely above and beyond the mundane political and social spectrum. They believed themselves to be in a class of their very own where the rules and laws of society don't apply. That imbibed a bit too much of Nietzche's philosophy for the safety of the general public.

ruveyn

Too true ruveyn

Sounds quite a bit like Ayn Rand... whose Bible is the second most influential book in Congress.

In theory the Objectivists (Randians) oppose the initiation of force.

I never joined their club. Ayn Rand and her lap dog Leonard Peikoff were and are total ignoramuses with regard to science and mathematics. I subscribe to Robert Heinlein's dictum: Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.

ruveyn

Rand who fawned over someone who tortured a child to death as a superior man persecuted by unthinking society... this thing about "un-initiation of force" is a bad joke designed to say Hey, we are so peaceful. We just like to kill by kindness, as it were. That conservative critic in the National Review was right about Atlas Shrugged - all the pages cry out "To a gas chamber, go!"

Indeed.

I think it depends on what you consider elitist. It seems conservatives consider being informed and caring about critical thinking as elitist traits.

Funny, the liberal progressives I run into tend to be extremely uninformed, as for whether or not they care is a matter that is open to debate.

Btw, your comments about Conservatives kinda proves CaptainTrips222's point.

That they don't like to have to think? Yeah, I know. That isn't elitist. It's condescending. It's not hard to think, you just opt not to. There isn't some elitist platform like the Republicans have where you don't get the fair tax cuts and get the real government help unless you have 9-figure incomes and are a legacy regarding ancestry. THAT is elitism.

When I see Sarah Palin, I tend to elitism.