So, Elves are liberals?

~OR maybe they're just metrosexual.

RH Junior had this quote at the beginning of his Dec. 11 post:

One of the driving themes in all the stories I write about the Eldritch is how their society is crumbling for lack of manual laborers or people who deal strictly with the laws of nature: engineers, farmers, architects, people who work in construction, on the land, in factories. This was born of my observation that elves all seem to be poets, singers, kings or bon vivants, with nary a grease monkey in sight. I wondered what would happen if that was literally true, and the answer was (of course) disaster.
From this posting of haikujaguar on 'manual labor'.

RH puts his finger right on what I believe is the big difference between Liberals and conservatives. I guess that's why I never could have much empathy for modern literary elves and the "little people". The old school Elves of Celtic myth, on the other hand, knew what it was like to work with their hands. At least until they departed to New York City Tirra Noc Nog, and forgot what dirt and calluses were.

I'm stealing this post from RHJunior because He says it best:

That is a frickin' brilliant observation, and it makes me feel an utter dunce that I never put my finger on it myself... It's probably the biggest part of what makes typical fantasy elves so stinkin' annoying--- the unconscious awareness that these pointy-eared nancy boys never get their hands dirty.You see them sitting there in ornate palatial homes eating delicacies from silver and crystal dishes... you never see them FARMING to GROW those delicacies. Or sweating in the kitchen, cooking that food or washing those dishes. They show an elven king reforging an epic sword in "Return of the King"--- fine; so where's the elven miner that dug up the ore? The elven stonemason that made the furnace? Or, for that matter, the calluses on King PineSol's pretty hands?

Upon reflection, it's probably why so many professors, performers, artists, and other people who work with their mind rather than their hands tend to be liberals, subjectivists, postmodernists. When you work with your hands, you don't just know objectivism, you feel it in the material world. You can't argue philosophy with a bar of iron or a block of wood--- you either work it, shape it, hammer it and cut it just so, or you FAIL to get the results you want. Sometimes dramatically. A field of beans doesn't give a damn what your theories about socialist agriculture say, they'll grow as they damn well ought to, and you'd best water the plants and pull the weeds or they'll make things difficult come harvest time. A man who has to drive nails into wood and build a house knows, often from painful thumb-mashed experience, that there IS such a thing as a right way and a wrong way, and there isn't much give in either direction.
The material world doesn't suffer fools lightly.

When you're an artist or a theoretician or a pundit, though-- -when you work with your mind instead of your hands, when you do things where success is largely measured by popularity and other men's approval--- when your day to day existence does not depend on dealing skilfully with wood or stone or metal or earth in any consistent way--- the real world can seem vague and mushy, hard to grasp, full of uncertainties. And any old theory can stand on its own, no matter how shoddily constructed...

If I add any more, I'd probably spoil it.

You should go check out both of their blogs.


(UPDATE)
As long as we're talking about people out of touch with the real world, don't be surprised to see a variation of this quote from Sony next time taxes are going to might be cut:

“We will stay competitive but we won’t do anything that damages the industry long term,” said Vandenbree, who added that Sony has a “responsibility” not to accelerate price declines in a way that could hurt the industry.

“We decided that we had to be competitive, but we didn’t want to send a signal that there is not value in the products,” he said. “We didn’t think a permanent price cut was in order.” Source: News.com

Sony- overpriced, unnnecissary toys that include a FREE root kit, and pyro electric batteries. Nothing but quality here, boys.
Hurry~ buy our cr@p before it self destructs.