Western Standard - April 03, 2023


Popping the progressive bubble


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

181.03314

Word count

1,160

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Progressives live in a self-induced, entitled bubble. They know what they want to see, while refusing to accept any explanation, though, of why they may not be able to have it. Instead of reconsidering a policy when it fails to achieve its objective, progressives scream louder and double down, as if that could change the outcome.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I want to start with a quote from a fantastic man, P.J. O'Rourke. I loved his work.
00:00:06.140 And this quote really says it well about, he calls it liberalism, I call it progressives.
00:00:11.340 It's similar things.
00:00:12.840 At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child, miserable, as all spoiled children are,
00:00:18.460 unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic, and useless.
00:00:22.640 Liberalism is the philosophy of sniveling brats.
00:00:26.300 Yes, O'Rourke wasn't one for beating around the bush, and he summed it up brilliantly.
00:00:30.200 May he rest in peace.
00:00:31.660 Now, modern progressives live in a self-induced, entitled bubble.
00:00:36.360 They know what they want to see, while refusing to accept any explanation, though, of why they may not be able to have it.
00:00:42.340 Instead of reconsidering a policy when it fails to achieve its objective,
00:00:46.980 progressives scream louder and double down, as if that could change the outcome.
00:00:51.800 Now, what got me going on this one is hearing some elected officials and activists recently calling for rent control.
00:00:57.200 And yes, inflation and higher rents are pressuring many citizens, and we'd all like to find ways to ease that pressure.
00:01:02.340 The problem with rent control, though, is it's been tried dozens of times in dozens of jurisdictions,
00:01:06.840 and it has maintained an impressively consistent 100% failure rate.
00:01:11.760 It only causes shortages in supply as investors and property owners flee the rental market.
00:01:16.880 Undeterred by reality, though, progressives insist on soldiering along and demanding rent control,
00:01:21.740 because this time, just maybe this time, it might work.
00:01:25.520 Sounds a lot like the contemporary supporters of communism.
00:01:28.560 This habit of willful blindness doesn't stop at rent control, of course.
00:01:32.180 That's just a recent and more stark example.
00:01:34.180 Let's look at addiction enablement activists, for example, as they continue to push their ideology of deadly, unintended consequences,
00:01:42.580 despite the catastrophic failure of their policies in every city on the west coast of North America.
00:01:48.640 Supervised consumption sites, decriminalization of hard drugs,
00:01:51.560 and a permissive environment for open drug consumption has caused overdoses to explode in cities.
00:01:57.020 Portland, Oregon saw overdoses more than double under their progressive approach.
00:02:00.300 Not to be outdone, Vancouver legalized hard drugs and is handing out safe supply.
00:02:06.480 The fruit of that effort has led Vancouver to break records in daily recorded overdoses.
00:02:11.180 Still, progressives insist if we just enabled the addicts a little more,
00:02:14.900 if we enabled it a little harder,
00:02:16.800 they'd somehow kick that habit and become functional members of society.
00:02:20.100 Look, addicts need treatment, and they need mental health supports.
00:02:23.000 But they don't need free drugs, and there's no such thing as a safe supply of meth.
00:02:28.240 The addiction epidemic is complicated, and there's many factors attached to it.
00:02:35.240 One factor is the progressive trend of deinstitutionalization over the last few decades.
00:02:40.260 It's a mouthful.
00:02:41.340 Well-meaning but misguided governments closed down mental health facilities
00:02:44.260 and moved towards community living initiatives.
00:02:47.140 Unfortunately, that initiative has led to people with mental health challenges
00:02:50.260 finding themselves either on the streets, in jail, or dead.
00:02:53.520 We don't like the idea of incarcerating people due to their having a mental health issue
00:02:57.240 through no fault of their own.
00:02:58.840 But it doesn't matter what you like or don't like.
00:03:00.940 A reality has to be faced that some people simply have to be kept in a secure environment
00:03:04.620 for their own protection and for the protection of others.
00:03:07.300 Are they maintaining dignity on the streets?
00:03:08.900 That's what they like, saying, we've got to allow their dignity.
00:03:11.440 Really?
00:03:12.080 When they're passed out and having lost bowel control in a bus stop,
00:03:15.300 there's no dignity left anymore, guys.
00:03:16.880 A growing addiction problem, of course, also leads to the growing gang problem
00:03:21.140 as criminals compete to supply the drugs to these addicts.
00:03:23.980 Now, those gangs often go to war and we see spikes in shootings in city centers
00:03:27.800 and progressives love to demand simple solutions to complex problems as usual.
00:03:31.900 Rather than dealing with the complicated and sticky issues of often ethnic-based gangs
00:03:35.720 and illegally imported handguns,
00:03:37.820 they demand the illegalization and seizure of firearms from law-abiding citizens, hunters, such.
00:03:43.380 There's no evidence such seizures will make anybody feel safer.
00:03:45.580 But progressives aren't bound by evidence, only impulses and knee-jerk reactions.
00:03:50.680 Likewise, as we see the cost of living skyrocketing,
00:03:53.200 progressives are accusing food producers and retailers of greed and gouging,
00:03:57.300 despite readily available data indicating narrow profit margins in those industries.
00:04:01.860 Meanwhile, progressives refuse to accept the impact government actions
00:04:04.920 such as carbon taxes or chemical fertilizer bans might have on food production costs.
00:04:09.900 Cognitive dissonance can get expensive, guys.
00:04:12.100 The protests and even eco-terrorism against petrochemical production in Canada
00:04:17.380 continue to expand as progressives continue with an ongoing tantrum against petrochemicals.
00:04:22.260 They refuse to accept the reality that we don't have a feasible alternative to it yet.
00:04:27.100 Intransitantly digging in their heels,
00:04:28.580 they demand we transition out of oil and gas,
00:04:31.020 but can't explain what we'll be transitioning into.
00:04:33.220 Germany learned this lesson the hard way rather recently,
00:04:36.020 and they've gone back to burning coal,
00:04:37.900 but our local progressives have planted their fingers in their ears whenever that's mentioned.
00:04:41.780 Like most in Cal State children,
00:04:43.760 progressives scream loudest when their demands are blunted.
00:04:46.340 It's like a kid who gets denied ice cream.
00:04:48.580 Just listen to them if somebody dares to point out that
00:04:50.280 no matter how hard one might wish it,
00:04:52.480 no matter how hard you try,
00:04:53.700 no matter how hard you screw your eyes shut and scream it,
00:04:56.920 you can't change a boy into a girl or a girl into a boy.
00:04:59.980 People can make every effort to transition,
00:05:02.520 and I have no problem with respecting how they want to identify.
00:05:05.400 I refuse to indulge in claims contrary to biological reality, though,
00:05:08.900 and that's what progressives are asking us to do now.
00:05:11.660 Conservatives aren't heartless, though that's what we're often accused of.
00:05:14.420 We're bound by reality, even when the reality stinks.
00:05:17.860 It doesn't matter if a policy feels good,
00:05:20.220 and it doesn't matter how good the intentions are behind it.
00:05:22.260 If a policy doesn't work, it needs to be abandoned.
00:05:25.100 Conservatives aren't this way because we don't care. 0.94
00:05:27.040 It's quite the opposite.
00:05:27.820 We care enough to set aside our sentiment,
00:05:30.680 even when it feels bad,
00:05:31.660 in order to find solutions to problems that actually work.
00:05:34.580 If we didn't care,
00:05:35.920 we just let ourselves sink into the fuzzy world of delusion
00:05:38.900 enjoyed by modern progressives.
00:05:40.560 Canadian Shooting Sports Association,
00:05:42.520 without the CSSA,
00:05:43.800 our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.
00:05:47.100 These guys are on the front lines,
00:05:48.840 helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms,
00:05:52.300 regulations and legislation in Canada,
00:05:54.320 and more importantly, educating the public
00:05:56.840 about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
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00:06:10.600 This is the Sn göz. 1.00
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