Ranting to /dev/null

You are so right. Only the Conservative champions the little guy.

There's one slight problem with using this quote to make your point. Liberals don't believe that even "the norm" is at all complex or sophisticated. Liberals actually consider only themselves to be complex and sophisticated, and, of course, they're above-norm. Everyone else -- norm or below-norm -- is subject to outrageous condescension. Liberals think that they are the only ones refined enough to devise policy. They recklessly ensnare the poor, the Arabs, and the Third World into their diabolical plot of snobbery and insidious motivation. Michael Moore clacks with glee every time a stupid poor sucker votes for a Liberal.

Oh, yes, those of the contemporary Left are a devil's delight. They heap praise on the worker, and say that they're in solidarity, but we know that they deign to have their ivory fingers touch the calloused hands of the true hero. Oh, those college professors, those academic blowhards! Oh, those gilded actors and pampered rock stars! How I long to see their hypocrisy exposed, to see these pillars of the Left, with their media whores, pilloried by none other than the naive masses to whom they've pandered for far too long!

Liberals ought to be taken out and shot for their rampant hatred of America and love of all things French. Or Arab. Or, wait. What? Oh. I -- uh, I have to -- GOD BLESS AMERICA! GOD BLESS AMERICA! War on Terror. Yes, yes. That's it. Liberals hate America. They condescend to minorities and the poor. Ah, yes, it's coming back now. GOD BLESS AMERICA! SUPPORT THE TROOPS! I can explain the motives of the Liberals. They think they're smarter than the common man! Oh, man, if I could just get into one of those universities, I'd show them!

Your second two paragraphs are basically accurate, minus the sarcasm. Somebody get a mop, 'cause it's started to drip.

Can't you do any better than that? Don't you have anything to say except "I know you are but what am I?", because that's the logical content of your reply. I've made an assertion that the contemporary left's attitude towards the rest of the world can be explained by a blanket attitude of condescension. If anything, your post only supports my thesis, as all you've managed to say is... well, you haven't really managed to say much of anything. Talk about "blowhard".

Care to try again, or is that all you've got?

Those condescending liberals are everywhere. Take for example this comment by someone named "Ryan" from http://rahm.covblogs.com/archives/004985.html praising the lower complexity of spanish linguistics: "...I think it has to do with the fact that English has several times as many words as Spanish does (two to four, depending on who you ask). This means that what can be beautiful poetry in Spanish is, in English, hopelessly prosaic. Spanish does not possess the sheer number of possibilities for expression as English, and so a lack of such variety in English is a far bigger problem than it is in Spanish. Spanish is just an easier language to use.
I am told by people who have spent much time in Latin America that the culture is not one given to interpersonal emotional restraint, and does not have much use for either irony or understatement. When it comes to appreciating CCM, all of these cultural traits are really useful, as CCM in this country tends to lack artistry, subtlety, and sophistication by American and English-language standards. As such, a song that would accurately be derided as cheesy in English can and often should be taken as genuine and heartfelt when said in Spanish in a Latin American context."

Ah, the venerable tu quoque fallacy.

Try again. If you want to call me a bad name, just go ahead and do it and save everyone involved the time and energy: you don't have to spend hours trying to find some way of making it seem as if I've contradicted myself, and I don't have to deal with logically spurious rhetorical devices. It makes you look bad, not me.

Of course, you couldn't even be bothered to shape your accusations into an argument, but it would have been a fallacious one had you been even that competent.

My mistake; I meant it to be an ad hominem fallacy.
Actually it only took me ten minutes to find it and I put it up there because I thought it was funny.
But being invited to call you a bad name, I will indeed call you a mother scratcher.

Tu quoque is an ad hominum sub fallacy.

There. Now doesn't that feel better? It has the same logical content as your first comment, but gets to the point much quicker.

Yes. I have learned a valuable lesson here.

Ryan:

Here's an argument for you. I can fault "liberals" for an attitude of condensention to those they intend (or claim) to show compassion and in doing so cause more harm than good. However, the opposite of this is what conservatives or "the right" tries to do and can be equally harmful: attribute a form of absolute agency to everyone, holding them and no one else responsible for their problems, suffering, attitudes, hatred, whatever. The result of this is a denial of actual structures in place which really do exploit people and make them who they are, which then leads to villifing those people. That is not very effective at fixing anything.

In simpler terms: the left may say too often "you're inferior, so it's not your fault," while the right slips into the "it's nobodies fault but your own, thus you are inferior." Both positions end in a state of false superiority.

Mello: sure you have.

Paul: I'll generally agree with your assessment, but would like to try and get out of your criticism of conservatism. I'd say that I tend to be "condescending" without attributing greater goodness or virtue to those I view as less complex. This may make me something of a bastard - I've never attempted to deny this - but I do think it makes for a more functional domestic policy than either of the perspectives you've set forth. I neither assume that people's problems are never their fault or only their fault. Admittedly, I tend more towards the latter than the former, but I won't argue that there are no structural obstacles to success.

This also means that mello's ill-conceived attempt at deprecation doesn't apply to me either: in the passage he quoted, I don't attribute greater goodness to anyone, I just flat out state that Spanish is not as complex a language as English, an assessment I am confident that any linguist would support.

In all seriousness, I think you are right about both Spanish and liberalism (though I like the gender specifics of Spanish).
I enjoy your blog mostly because of your vocabulary. And I like to poke a little at people - all in good fun. So forgive my steps over the line if I go too far.

mello: I'm okay taking some heat: I dish out plenty. I'd much prefer argumentation to banter, but I'll engage in the latter from time to time.

Welcome, and enjoy your stay. I'd only ask that you keep your poking from getting personal, about me or anyone else. Other than that, have at thee!

Ryan -- What it seems you are saying is that you personally try to have a more complex political and social vision, albeit leaning toward conservatism, than the simplistic alternatives I defined. I have absolutely no problem with that. But that is the problem with simplistic definitions, particularly when we want to attribute that position to a real person. If I was doing that to you, than you were probably doing that to "liberals" in your initial post.

If we want to talk about fallacies, I think they call that the straw man in logic class.

El español tiene 300,000 palabras en su léxico. El inglés tiene 900,000. Y esto es de mi profesor de lingüística.

So yeah, songs that are cheesy in English can be “genuine and heartfelt” in Spanish. But Spanish poetry is where the language really shines, not Spanish pop music. Everything I’ve read - from medieval to Latin American contemporary - has a phenomenal way of using the relatively smaller lexicon to make intelligent, discriminate poetry. A lot of it is in imagery – it’s not about exacting word choice, it’s the potency of the image that matters. Regardless, I do think the hyper-amalgamate lexicon of English is pretty okay.

Though the Spanish-speakers of the world have us embarrassed for the way English sounds. Who said it was a good idea to breed Latin with a bunch of barbarians’ grunting, anyway?

I know that was tangential to your "antiwar"-caning. Thought you might be interested.