France, as understood by a Frenchman

[cwelsch]

Well the habit of liberalism (by which I mean classical liberalism and many of its modern descendants) is truth and progress.  It behooves one, then, to be self-critical of all things in order to achieve progress and/or discover truth.  Further, liberalism tends to be more universalist or at least non-nationalist (as opposed to socialism and nihilism which are not universalist but relativist) and combine all of that together and you have people who ideally want to look critically at anything to see if it holds up to how things ought to be.

Of course, it's different as the American leftish folks get closer to soft socialism and a general utilitarian-radical bent instead of an older liberal one.  They are starting to move into a more self-hating role, which you can see in other ways like hating white people or hating men.  It's morphed into an anti-rich, anti-power, anti-system kind of thing because most of those people are themselves somewhat well off.  It's a way to reassure themselves that they're good guys because they hate the people that are wrong.  They see it as hating the people that are wrong, but they ought to simply hate the ideas and acts that are wrong.

The maximization of this liberal criticism tendency, of course, is the libertarians, who tend to be of a specific personality type that stresses critical thinking (as in criticism, not just smarts), comparing/contrasting, and of course rational consistency (it's called NT, in Myers-Briggs lingo, regards of I/E or J/P, but usually J).  That's why libertarians tend to not only criticize this country but basically anyone anywhere that violates specific beliefs about human behavior, and go beyond that to construct their ideal society from scratch (like Locke and the state of nature).  If they don't criticize everyone everywhere, it's not for lack of claiming they do so.


And I like Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South park is hilarious.  Screw you guys, I'm goin' home.



Q: What do you call people from Paris?
A: "Parisites."