On 4/15/07, Anthony D'Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The Roy posts were illuminating. They illustrate how difficult it is to position yourself on the left if you are materially and professionally successful. In fact virtually all academics would fit this bill and academics are most prone to such attacks.
I guess we all struggle with it to some extent (not that as a humble grad student I make any claims to material or professional success). Isn't this where the stereotype of "self-hating liberal" comes from? (What makes a person a liberal, psychologically speaking?) I did a google search on the phrase "self-hating liberal" and ended up with this pseudo-Freudian psychobabble on a conservative blog. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/post_1.html --------------------------snip *Being middle class is something to be slightly ashamed of. Being working class on the other hand - or better still affecting to be working class - makes you seem more heroic......As long as you are 'left wing' you are not only a nicer person but you are also 'radical' and therefore not boring. If on the other hand you are 'right wing', well that means you are 'reactionary' and mean......Business enterprise is essentially disreputable whereas getting a living off the public purse or in the arts and media is highly civilised. Being an engineer or a scientist is OK too, up to a point - for boring people anyway.....And of course all the problems of people in the rest of the world are the fault, not of those people themselves but of the prosperous West. More specifically, the blame lies with 'the capitalist system'; not you personally of course. You show how much you care by going to Live Aid concerts and that makes you feel much better about yourself.* ------------------------snip -raghu.
