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Frisch Fried

11 July 2006

Being new to the blogosphere I thought it a good idea to spend some quality time on some other conservative blogs. I could get a sense of what others are doing, perhaps get some advise on issues like platform, comments, trackbacks, etc. and generally improve my ability to pursue blogging. I was not, however, prepared for what I stumbled across.

Conservative blogger Jeff Goldstein over at www.proteinwisdom.com had a run in with left wing whacko Dr. Deb Frisch, now formerly of the University of Arizona. Frisch, who was a visiting instructor at UoA teaching psychology, likes to frequent conservative blogs and throw bombs looking for a reaction. She gets increasingly belligerent until she gets the reaction she’s looking for.

In this case, after repeatedly trying to bait Goldstein and not making much progress, Frisch decided to ratchet it up a notch or two and began asking about Goldstein’s child, a two year old son. Frisch made comments about his son being Jon Beneted, made sexual comments about the child and said she wouldn’t lose any sleep if Goldstein and his son were shot.

After reading all this, and there was a LOT to read in following it, I was speechless. I knew there were some whackos on the left (if you’ve ever read the liberal blogs you know some of them probably ought to be in straight jackets) but this was simply amazing. I have to hand it to Jeff for his even keeled handling of the whole situation. I’m not at all certain I would have been as reasoned as he was, though I could hope.

In the end, Frisch lost her teaching job over this. She deserves to be locked up in my opinion. She’s just dangerous.

But the really sad part is, this isn’t all that uncommon amongst liberals. Think about it. Even during the darkest days of the Clinton administration when conservatives were ravenous for Clinton’s hide, it was NOT typical for conservatives to act anything like Frisch. And this points out a serious difference between liberals and conservatives well beyond simple ideology. The difference is this: Conservatives exercise reason and logic, liberals live by emotion. Liberalism is all about how they think things should be, not about how things actually can be.

That is the problem with all utopian thinking. To buy into it you have to throw out everything we know about human nature, economics, politics, etc. Liberalism, like all utopian thinking, is an exercise is wishful thinking. It says I want my vision of a perfect world and I don’t care if it’s practical or even possible. I want it no matter what. The cost is no impediment.

Conservatives, on the other hand, look at the world as it is and, based on the experience of history, examine how it can be better. We like things that are tested and proved. Trying some new fangled economic system that might be great if it works but that has little to no basis in human experience, strikes us as silly at best and dangerous at worst.

It is difficult to imagine a way for these two sides to ever come together. How can reason ever communicate with the absence of reason? How can the rational and the irrational ever have common ground?

The only possible answer I can see is for people like you and me to work to persuade those who aren’t onboard with conservatism. Blogs are a great way to do this. Indeed, the reason I have decided to enter the blogosphere is my desire to persuade. I have to believe that, ultimately, reason will win over irrationality. I hope I’m right.