Monday, November 26, 2012

Being on the Wrong Side of History

Via The Young Fogey...
Despite the historical record, a peskily persistent fallacy is argumentum ad populum, the idea that the majority is right. The mob, no matter where it’s headed, whom it’s beheading, or what it’s burning down, has always deemed itself to be on the right side of history. So whenever I hear some smug, smirking, smarm-coated snarkmonster bleating that they are on “the right side of history,” what I hear is, “I feel safe within the crowd.” I don’t sense that they fear being on the “wrong” side of history so much as they’re afraid of being on the “losing” side. They don’t want to be on the wrong side of superior force. Many of them exhibit the shallow and neurotic herd-animal fear of being deemed uncool or out of step. In far too many cases, being “on the right side of history” amounts to nothing more than being trendy. Many of these types used to ally themselves with alleged “oppressed minorities,” but now that they appear to be on the “right side of history,” they openly mock the newly marginalized minorities. Once the victims of bullying, they now fear being on the wrong side of peer pressure and are the world’s neo-bullies. Others are the type who wait until there’s critical mass behind any social movement before joining it. Many of them have no core and will fellate power wherever it leads them and consider themselves bold for doing so. And at least as it concerns liberal white males, I’ve never seen people so eager to surrender to the very historical forces that seem destined to march right over their necks. 
Read the rest here.

6 comments:

123 said...

Being "on the wrong side of history" is just a pithier way of reminding people to make sure they aren't on the wrong side of a historically conditioned argument or the wrong side of what this argument might look like with a 100+ years' distance.

Anonymous said...
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John (Ad Orientem) said...

No trolling allowed.

William Tighe said...

The devil is not only the father of lies, but the patron of imbeciles,

Anaxagoras said...

Ha! I'm stealing that...

Anonymous said...

Listen, if that's the right term for reading someone.

I read the mofo's essay. All of it.

And I could not find anything in it that wasn't really the equivalent of a big flatulent explosion.

What I wrote earlier wasn't "trolling". It was quite simply an opinion.

The linked writer was basically flatulating. Nothing more, nothing less.

It had no intellectual substance, no argument, no real point. I could not get a point on which to respond. It was mere feeling with no thought. Romanticizing those who oppose the hoi polloi is not exactly a demanding task and it depends on who the hoi polloi is and what they're advocating for.I suppose that slavery is a boon for the writer...so is the lack of women in the political process, or minorities..etc;.
But the writer has no counter arguments except that of a King Canute.

Go ahead and eliminate this post too...but consider, you're really just limiting yourself. You're certainly not limiting me.