What to say to socialists
Been away from the computer all day, which was nice. Spent several hours catching up with Adriana Lukas and Perry de Havilland, later joined by Antoine, plotting to spread genuine liberalism across this dirty planet. I used to spend 100+ hours a week with Perry and Adriana, and I miss so much the lengthy, funny, and often enlightening conversations we had on a daily basis.
Tonight, for example, I was telling Adriana that I have no idea how she can put up with the pro-socialist, pro-communist rubbish spouted by many of the people in the media/marketing world, having grown up herself as the child of dissidents in the nightmare of communist Czechoslovakia. “Then again, you went to Oxford, so you’re probably used to dealing with assholes,” I said. What I meant was that as she went right from Bratislava to post-revolution Western university with revisionists who would tell her with a smirk that she’d actually had it quite good under communism, it should be easier for her to deal with garden variety ignoramuses who don’t have the cheek to get that stupid with her. She sure deals with them a lot better than I would.
Perry then told a great story: In 1991, he was walking on the Rutgers campus with a Croatian friend when they happened upon some dude hawking socialist propaganda. Perry’s friend suggested to the socialist that he was clueless. The socialist responded, “You should have been so lucky as to grow up under socialism!” Perry’s friend replied, “Actually, I did. In fact, I’ve just been killing socialists like you in Croatia. And you’re lucky we’re in America and not over there, because if we were, I’d put you against a wall and fucking kill you, too.”
Yes, I’d say that was a pretty good comeback.
Filed under: Life
I think there’s real value in talking with smart people who see the world differently. The London party crowd were all fantastic people, but all people who thought the same way. Be careful about swimming too deeply in a monoculture!
Well, Ben, you should have hung out with us for longer than a few hours - then you could have witnessed all the arguments! Honestly, a shared liberalism does not mean everyone agrees on everything. (And “the London party crowd” is actually full of people whose views couldn’t be further from, say, mine or Perry’s. We even get actual socialists from time to time!)
Honestly, a monoculture would be preferable to the moronculture of London. I should be so lucky.