Sunday, March 18, 2007
Getting Them While They're Young
We liberals may actually be doing a good job of this! I've recently heard a lot of complaints from religious conservatives about the near domination of the youth book market by books with agendas that even I would agree are very liberal and the dearth of well-written books with a conservative agenda. In these complaints is also the inevitable knocking of liberals who dare make a lot of money.
Of course, I need not mention how much projection these complaints display. But for the abundance of liberally oriented children's books, religious conservatives would have a near monopoly on the "getting the children while they are young" market. Conservative religious institutions have always been aggressive about promoting prayer in school and other techniques designed to ensure that youth are maximally exposed to their particular religious beliefs. And, while many religious institutions are quite financially strapped (as am I, Mr. Synagogue Treasurer -- I'll pay up my dues soon, though, I promise!), some of the more institutions that are the most aggressive in recruiting, e.g., youth, are also very good at getting money.
So, when religious conservatives complain about the gay agenda recruiting youth, liberally themed books brainwashing youth, and everyone making money and getting power from the process, considering how the religious right works, this is rather a bunch of projection, nu? Anyway, we must be doing something right if they have their dander up. If our liberal books and such were having no effect, we wouldn't be on their radar, would we?
But the canard that somehow it is evil for we liberals to make a profit spreading liberalism really does rankle, though, don't it? Reactionaries mistaking all liberals for Marxists would have you believe that we are hypocrites for making a dime in the free enterprise system. But many of us are avowed capitalists, so the idea that we are Marxists, and hypocritical ones at that, is leaping from assumption to assumption, even as, alas, too many people buy that narrative lock, stock and barrel.
But there is something else going on: part of the reason why conservatives are so keen to bash "limousine liberals" is not just because they figure they can score cheap points by equating us to Marxists and then using that equation to decry a non-existent hypocrisy on our part (which, considering Jesus' teachings regarding wealth, may be a yet another example of reactionary projection -- of their own hypocrisy regarding their wealth!), but because they want to wage a divide and conquer strategy of class warfare. If they can paint liberalism as a luxury belief that poor people cannot afford to have, they can turn the lower and middle classes against each other and win a class war. And bourgeois liberals, who make the sum total of liberalism the right of icky people to do icky things and an idea that us carnivores who don't have the money to eat fancy organic food are evil for destroying the planet, play right into this class war.
Anyway, let us remember that when the right accuses us of playing at class warfare, they are projecting big-time. And let us remember that, with the youth, we are winning! So let's keep up the good work.
Of course, I need not mention how much projection these complaints display. But for the abundance of liberally oriented children's books, religious conservatives would have a near monopoly on the "getting the children while they are young" market. Conservative religious institutions have always been aggressive about promoting prayer in school and other techniques designed to ensure that youth are maximally exposed to their particular religious beliefs. And, while many religious institutions are quite financially strapped (as am I, Mr. Synagogue Treasurer -- I'll pay up my dues soon, though, I promise!), some of the more institutions that are the most aggressive in recruiting, e.g., youth, are also very good at getting money.
So, when religious conservatives complain about the gay agenda recruiting youth, liberally themed books brainwashing youth, and everyone making money and getting power from the process, considering how the religious right works, this is rather a bunch of projection, nu? Anyway, we must be doing something right if they have their dander up. If our liberal books and such were having no effect, we wouldn't be on their radar, would we?
But the canard that somehow it is evil for we liberals to make a profit spreading liberalism really does rankle, though, don't it? Reactionaries mistaking all liberals for Marxists would have you believe that we are hypocrites for making a dime in the free enterprise system. But many of us are avowed capitalists, so the idea that we are Marxists, and hypocritical ones at that, is leaping from assumption to assumption, even as, alas, too many people buy that narrative lock, stock and barrel.
But there is something else going on: part of the reason why conservatives are so keen to bash "limousine liberals" is not just because they figure they can score cheap points by equating us to Marxists and then using that equation to decry a non-existent hypocrisy on our part (which, considering Jesus' teachings regarding wealth, may be a yet another example of reactionary projection -- of their own hypocrisy regarding their wealth!), but because they want to wage a divide and conquer strategy of class warfare. If they can paint liberalism as a luxury belief that poor people cannot afford to have, they can turn the lower and middle classes against each other and win a class war. And bourgeois liberals, who make the sum total of liberalism the right of icky people to do icky things and an idea that us carnivores who don't have the money to eat fancy organic food are evil for destroying the planet, play right into this class war.
Anyway, let us remember that when the right accuses us of playing at class warfare, they are projecting big-time. And let us remember that, with the youth, we are winning! So let's keep up the good work.
# posted by alberich @ 5:34 PM 
