Browsing the Leftist Mindset
Is there such a thing as a good left, a “decent left,” to quote Ernest Sternberg from his controversial Orbis article, “Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For”? Sternberg doesn’t think so. For him, the left’s “grand historical vision” of human renovation, in which “diverse communities can harmoniously share an earth that has been saved from destruction,” is nothing less than a toxic nightmare. Nonetheless, leftists continue to invest in the noble yet disastrous fiction of “world purification,” doing their utmost to pursue the corpse candle of “a global network of beneficent culture” and “a new era of global social justice and sustainable development.” Is such a vision merely a predatory chimera or does it represent a feasible project?
The issue is earnestly debated by many leading intellectuals. For example, in Left in Dark Times, Bernard-Henri Lévy seems to believe there is — or was — a good left and that “there are still reasons to remain on the left,” namely, its opposition to violence, oppression, and prejudice, predicated on what he calls images, visions, and reflexes (anti-authoritarianism, anti-colonialism, etc.). Yet Lévy reveals a palpable uneasiness with the left, or what it has allowed itself to become, that is, a revolutionary utopianism “that brings out the worst and that transforms men into beasts.” The adherence he rather bizarrely professes appears to shuttle between two uncomfortable psychological states, ambivalence and nostalgia.
We see the same ambiguity on display in Christopher Hitchens’ memoir Hitch-22. Speaking of losing his old left-loyalties, he confesses that “on some days this is like the phantom pain of a missing limb. On others, it’s more like the sensation of having taken off a needlessly heavy overcoat.” He continues:
I suspect that the hardest thing for the idealist is to surrender the teleological, or the sense that there is some feasible, lovelier future that can be brought nearer by exertions in the present, and for which “sacrifices” are justified. With some part of myself, I still “feel,” but no longer really think, that humanity would be poorer without this fantastically potent illusion.
I am reminded of Aesop’s fable of the duck trying to stay out of the impending war between the birds and the beasts. When recruited by the birds, the duck claims he is a land animal waddling about the barnyard; when solicited by the beasts, he flaps his wings to demonstrate his counter-nature. But fittingly enough, when peace is declared, he is not invited to the celebration.
Similarly, in Power and the Idealists, Paul Berman has yet to decide whether he is bird or beast. Although critical of the modern left’s perversions, he still holds to the left-oriented “vision of a borderless, federal, peaceful, technocratic Europe,” a transpolitical scheme which has “turned out to be solid and lasting.” At the same time, he repudiates utterly “the defining quality of all totalitarian movements and systems — role-playing by totalitarian militants who feel entirely justified in liquidating everyone who fails to have a proper role in the grand tableau of the reigning mythology.” Berman’s condemnation applies, obviously, to the excesses of both the right and the left, to fascism as well as to communism. The scenes enacted on the “grand tableau” today, however, derive mainly from the theoretical platform of the left, whether we are looking at Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela, Castro’s Cuba, Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea, or Hu Jintao’s China (among others).
Of course, the theocratic despotisms in Iran, Gaza, Sudan, Somalia, or Hezbollah’s Lebanon do not emerge from a leftist ideology, but the Western left has not scrupled to form an ideological alliance with the centers of radical Islam. As Nick Cohen points out in What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way (re-subtitled How The Left Lost Its Way), this mentality is really a quasi-revolutionary daydream that allows its proponents “to pretend to themselves that they were covertly building up the radical left rather than riding the Islamic tiger.” Although it is moot whether the left has been punk’d by Muslim window-dressing or is, in fact, fully aware of its ideological commitment against the weal of the democratic West, there is little question that it has come to behave like the junior branch of Islam. Jamie Glazov gets it right in his United in Hate: “The common denominator between the left and Islamism: Ground Zero must be engendered everywhere so that the earthly paradise can be built on its ashes.” (Indeed, the plan to build an Islamic center and mosque, called Cordoba House, near Ground Zero is a physical expression of this aspiration.)
Leftists are convinced, writes Sternberg, that the planet can be “remade pristine,” rescued from the depredations of a world system “known as Empire.” The Babelian hubris of the project is evident in the claptrap idiolect of that manifesto and war manual of the new left, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s scarcely intelligible Empire, from which the word and the concept was launched into widespread circulation. “The mythology of the languages of the multitude,” the authors write, “interprets the telos of the earthly city, torn away by the power of its own destiny from any belonging or subjection to a city of God, which has lost all honor and legitimacy.” The revolutionary violence these authors promote has been tried before in the various social gulags of the Communist backwaters, leading to the suffering, disempowerment, and impoverishment of hundreds of millions. But no matter. As the old saying goes, eggs must be broken to make an omelette — even if, as Isaiah Berlin commented in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, “The eggs are broken, and the habit of breaking them grows, but the omelette remains invisible.”
What the left has simply not understood is that in this world Paradise is not an option. The quest for political transcendence can lead only to eventual banishment from the imagined garden and to the flaming sword which turns every way. History has shown that when the paradigm of the City of God is imposed without humility or nuance upon the earthly city, whatever imperial modification that beau ideal may assume, or when the earthly city replaces in its self-sufficiency the heavenly city, some sort of political deformation invariably ensues.
“but it’s not fair!”
“You just HATE the planet!”
“If we can’t PURIFY the world, it’s BUSH’S fault!!”
The cultural anthropology (if you will) of the “progressives” is complex. And mainly consists of “complexes” which afflict its adherents.
First and foremost, they hate our civilization. Never mind that it sheltered them, nurtured them, and catered to their every whim from birth. They hate it with a vicious passion that defies rational explanation. Their greatest dream is to destroy it, root and branch.
As to what they wish to replace it with, most have a vision of a sort of “benign tyranny” with themselves as the “loving tyrants”. They desire a return to a sort of feudal state in which they are the nobles, and the rest of mankind (that which they permit to survive, that is) are the serfs. Kept in line by the usual small group of heavily armed, ruthless enforcers which all such states require (from medieval France’s men-at-arms to Cromwell’s New Model Army to “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s Tonton Macoute). It helps if the enforcers share the tyrants’ psychotic hatred of the masses. (They generally do- consider the likes of the New Black Panthers, the old SDS, etc.)
What do not want a feudal state often dream of a non-state; i.e., a completely primitive culture at tribal/village level. The fact that such a culture could never support a world population the size of Earth’s is not a problem for them; as the old saying goes, they consider that a feature, not a bug. If you hate people to begin with, logically anything which causes mass dieoffs of same is a good thing. The sort of starvation and pestilence this approach would result in is, from that POV, a very good thing indeed.
Then of course there are the most extreme examples. They don’t seek Utopia; they seek Armageddon. Their desire is to be able to kill and destroy, solely for the sake of killing and destruction. They dream of a world in ruins, with themselves the only ones left. Exactly what they would do then, they really haven’t thought about. My guess is destroy themselves, to achieve the sort of nihilistic apotheosis characteristic of cults like the People’s Temple or Heaven’s Gate. The point is, they want to take the rest of us with them, whether we want to go or not.
As for the left’s infatuation with Islamism, I would point out that they have made common cause with every anti-Western, anti-civilization “movement” that has come out of the East, going back to their beginnings with Plato’s “Republic”. I’m sure his early disciples were angry that the Greeks defeated the Persians at Plataea. The left is essentially mystical in mindset, and hates the world of facts which the Greeks first noticed and the Persians denied the existence of. The left has been acting like the Persians ever since, desperately trying to force everyone else to reject reality and live in their fantasy world.
(Yesterday, the National Weather Service stated that the 2010 hurricane season was “inexplicable” because instead of the 20+ major hurricanes their computer models called for, we got three tropical depressions that barely qualified as storms. Their take was that their models simply could not be wrong, so somehow the weather was double-crossing them. The “models”, of course, are based on the AGW “theory”. When reality disobeys the models, well, reality must be punished… somehow.)
Another of their delusions is that once the “superior”, “mystical” Islamists have destroyed our civilization, those same Islamists will somehow realize that they are too stupid to run the Brave New World. And will then fall on their knees and beg the “enlightened” leftists (who will of course survive the destruction of the rest of us) to rule over them as philosopher-kings. The innate contradiction in this is obvious to anyone with more than three synapses that are firing, which obviously does not include the typical leftist.
In “From Bauhaus to Our House”, Tom Wolfe described the mindset of the “Compound Architects” of the International Style (Gropius, Oud, Van der Rohe, etc.) as “starting from zero”- they saw themselves as standing limned against the ruins of the Old World (courtesy of World War One) in the sunrise of the New World they would create- and make everyone else live in. The “modern architects”, BTW, were leftist/socialist/Marxist to the marrow of their bones (Gropius and the Bauhaus group had to leave Germany rather hurriedly when Fascism came into vogue over there). The modern-day left has the same basic worldview- they mean to rebuild the world the way they think it should always have been- authoritarian, non-democratic, and ruled by those “fit to rule”, i.e., themselves.
But to achieve the full “romantic” effect their delusions demand, they first need those ruins to pose in front of, silhouetted against that sunrise. So the serfs will know, beyond a doubt, who the new overlords are.
clear ether
eon
I bow to your intellect, sir (or ma’am).
Hopefully someday you are promoted from writing exquisite comments to writing exquisite feature length stories.
I second this.
My good deed for the day:
Yesterday, the National Weather Service stated that the 2010 hurricane season was “inexplicable” because instead of the 20+ major hurricanes their computer models called for, we got three tropical depressions that barely qualified as storms…
That’s a noteworthy statement by ‘eon’, given that the Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November and the peak period is August-October. I wonder if ‘eon’ can back it up with a hyperlink to NWS.
…Their take was that their models simply could not be wrong, so somehow the weather was double-crossing them. The “models”, of course, are based on the AGW “theory”…
Really? Models of atmospheric circulation are based on AGW? Who knew?
…When reality disobeys the models, well, reality must be punished… somehow.
No comment.
Try this one on for size;
The 13-14 Feb 2000 tornado outbreak over NW Florida and southern Georgia was noted by NOAA, but the alert was not sent for nearly two hours in spite of a full crew being on duty at the Tallahassee weather radar monitoring station.
The reason the alert was delayed was that the new computerized monitoring system, just installed a week earlier, was the unit receiving telemetry from the field stations. Those stations were reporting conditions consistent with a supercell storm system developing. However, the computer’s internal program which looks for matches with pre-determined weather patterns to postulate the outcome of incoming data was based on the AGW scenario, specifically Mann’s and Holdren’s work. In consulting the model, the computer found that it did not allow for the existence of such a weather system, in that place, in that timeframe.
Accordingly, it began running diagnostic programs on the remote stations instead of sounding the alarm. Since the incoming data conflicted with its base program of conditions, therefore the data had to be erroneous.
The two-hour delay cost lives in Florida and Georgia. Because the reality did not agree with the duly-approved construct.
There is no more classic illustration of the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle IMHO.
The AGW based models, instituted during the Clinton years, were quietly discarded when the Bush Administration came into office, albeit not without considerable gnashing of teeth by the “true believers”. They were just as quietly restored when The One came into power.
This probably explains why the predictions on Katrina were at least accurate- even if the local authorities in New Orleans chose not to actually do anything about them until it was too late. (Unlike Mississippi.)
The next time, we probably won’t be so fortunate.
clear ether
eon
From an official report about the Feb 2000 GA tornadoes:
And your source for your version of events is, eon? And your source regarding the 2010 hurricane season?
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David Solway, if you’re getting multiple submissions of the paragraph above, my apologies. I might have been clicking ‘Submit Comment’ instead of ‘Preview’. My fault for typing on a very empty stomach.
I agree with your post but wish you had emphasized that the Right has recently tried to create its own compassionately conservative Heavenly City, and thereby paved the way for Obama/Pelosi in this center-right nation.
IMO the Right is focusing too much on Obama’s blundering; they are counting on Obama’s incompetence to win elections for them. If anything can pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, it is the refusal to confront the misgovernance of the Bush/Rove/DeLay/Lott era. Not to mention indulgence in extremely improbable (to put it diplomatically) conspiracy theories.
I agree about the second part of your post. The Republicans can certainly campaign on “we are not as bad as Obama and the Democrats” if they wish, but is that going to be enough?
“Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss” as Roger sang for The Who. The time has come for another real revolution, but I doubt that the Republicans are capable. I am cynical about very little in life except for politics, where my cynicism has no limits. The more powerful government becomes, the greater the spoils for the brats and criminals attracted to the golden cesspool.
In fact that reminds me of another reference to a piece of British pop culture – The Magic Christian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQxL0O1lYvg
The scene shows people willing to jump into filth to extract “free” money – too close to reality for our politicians, although they only muck about in moral filth.
johnnyo, thanks for the references to modern culture. In exchange, I offer Yeats’ The Great Day.
David Solway, my previous comment remarked, wrt the American scene, that the Right also designs Heavenly Cities. In the UK Margaret Thatcher’s politics has been displaced by that of David Cameron, who calls himself a Conservative. (The first photo I ever saw of Cameron showed him in impeccably clean stonewashed jeans, kneeling to plant a planet-saving tree. What I’ve learned thereafter reinforces that unfavorable first impression.) I suspect that other, similar examples could be found.
Between your and Mr. Solway’s work, you’ve given us a chilling view of those who are almost within reach of the goal of absolute power. Beyond doubt, something very bad is afoot.
People don’t want to see it, don’t want to believe it, and don’t want to even acknowledge that it exists. What exactly is it that we’re talking about? It’s the rise of those who crave absolute power for no other reason save that of wielding it. It is a drug, an addiction, a geas, an appetite that we can scarcely comprehend. They are monsters, all of them. And for quite a while, virtually no one wanted to even admit the possibility their existence, their intentions and the horror that they will without a doubt perpetrate.
They will be quite content to live in a world lit only by fire, ruling from atop a stinking pile of rubble and corpses as long as they think that THEY will be the ones doing so. Millions of us dead. The rest of us in chains. That’s their goal, their vision, their unholy cause.
There will be only one way to stop them.
Then of course there are the most extreme examples. They don’t seek Utopia; they seek Armageddon. Their desire is to be able to kill and destroy, solely for the sake of killing and destruction. They dream of a world in ruins, with themselves the only ones left.
That’s the logical and necessary outcome of the triumph of the will to power. Millions of us dead. The rest of us in chains.
Wasn’t it George Orwell who wrote in 1984, “We are the priests of power-do not forget this, Winston. Always there will be the intoxication of power…If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-forever.” . That’s who these people are. It’s fascism with a smilery face – until we begin to resist.
Those who would rule us now are monsters – all of them. Killers without conscience.
Much the “left” has not understood. But they have understood what are for them the most important things : how to gull masses with promises of paradise on earth without price tag, AND how to get themselves into power to enable their “utopian” destructiveness. While the intelligentsia and scholars do their jobs of analysing and studying these leftist utopianists and their mind-sets, these utopianista are barreling ahead to destruction of established societies and nations. Even, especially ?, the one/ones that have benefited their and through that, other populations.
Once destruction done to their satisfaction, they rebuild to their desired ends. Which it seems must begin, as revolutions do, except for the American Revolution of the 18th century, with a reign of terror to the end of total control of populations of the world, e.g. the soi -disant United Nations and the European Union. Unless they’re stopped. But how, why? If it’s true that what goes around comes around, why bother? Carpe the day !
Your so-labeled “Leftists” (which is how right wingers generally label people who are not, right wingers, including moderates) mostly want to see the world a better, nicer place and tend to have values that reflect that. Drooling right wingers (pretty much anyone who doesn’t fit a right winger’s definition of a leftist), think that people get what they deserve or take, and tend to have values that reflect that.
no, many of those who want to see the world a better place – even some of those who are thoroughly indocrinated and buy into the impossible utopian goal – are “moderates”.
Those who want to bludgeon everyone else into dust in an attempt to create that ill-conceived hell-on-earth (the unintended consequences should they actually get what they want) are “leftists.”
Nice to know that killing 100+ million people in the past 100 years was just an attempt “to see the world a better, nicer place”.
You are truly a clueless moron…the very definition of a “useful idiot”.
BC,
Going from the eloquence and powerful resonance of this article to your knee-jerk infantile response is like having Kobe Filet Mignon in a Cabernet Shitake reduction sauce on Friday to a bowl of stale Alpo on Saturday. Keep up the droning, mon ami, your Utopia is just around the corner!
My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen:
Please, do not feed the troll. It only encourages him/her/it.
To ConservativeWanderer: 99% of the time, when a right winger uses the word “troll,” you can take the true meaning to be “person who is not a right wing nutcase — that is, not one of us.”
To donttreadonme: So you equate a series of idiotic straw man ad hominems with eloquence and powerful resonance? Actually I already know the answer, but I feel like being infantile at the moment.
Wow! Bitchie Creep gets wordy!
An interesting response given that the language for the political, social discourse in the last half of the 20th, and first years of the 21st centuries, has been determined by the stylists in media, entertainment,and universities / educational establishemnts. By persons who have proudly declared themselves “of the LEFT”. THE “right-wing” merely passively accepting and propagating that designation : going along to get along, as has been their wont. As in “vast right – wing conspiracy” of “it’s the economy, stupid” Hillary Clinton fame.
Oh, dear – I see you’ve managed to slip the surly bonds of your parents basement once again. They just can’t have a decent evening out, can they? Look, if I were you, I’d clean up that keyboard and head back downstairs. You know how your folks get when they find their system smeared with cheetos, melted chocolate and spittle.
that’s why we need to stay in the middle not to far east not to far west right
The most basic divergence of the left from its opponents is at its core religious.
Leftists refuse to admit that they are zealous adherents to a secular religion all their own. As opposed to the conservative’s Judeo-Christian ethos in which only God is perfect, the left believes that humanity can and must be perfected. In one sense, the left hates the Creator but worships the creation.
Perfection starts with the purity of leftist intentions, most importantly that of equality in all results. Equality of results can be pursued only by treating people, cultures, religions and societies unequally. The left must drag down anything deemed “unfairly” successful, and elevate that which it views as “oppressed”. This is the origin of the leftist double standard; it is Marxism, both cultural and economic. However, leftists refuse to acknowledge that this is not good, because they have purity of intent. Leftists know that only they are good because only they have such pure intent; they know that conservatives are evil because the left pretends to (perhaps telepathically?) presume/surmise/intuit the intentions of their opponents. The language to describe and support leftist motivations cannot be sustained by objective definitions of reality, which is where moral relativism, deconstructionism, and the like comes in. Instead of a tool for rational discourse, language for the left is a semantic weapon used to obfuscate and thereby further its agenda.
Leftist intentions are made manifest by a top-down system, since each individual person cannot be trusted to better themselves. The top-down approach can only be implemented within the purview of an all-encompassing government. Thus the way is clear for the cognoscenti to institute controls that cannot be questioned, cannot be replaced, and cannot be evaded. If you are at first resistant, then incessant propaganda, re-education, hate crimes legislation, and political correctness will force you back into line. The government is the only final authority that can be acknowledged. In point of fact it is there to be worshiped, since it knows what is best for you whether you like it or not. This leaves the little people free of worrisome decisions, other than to immerse themselves in rampant sex and slavering over the latest celebrity.
To start the exodus to the promised land, the left must demonize all aspects of traditionalist society wherever and whenever possible. Cherry-picked outliers are trumpeted to prove that the free market (as one example) is a cesspool of corruption and greed, and therefore the whole thing must be replaced.
The left sees any dynamic, self-correcting system as imperfect and therefore evil; perfection resides in the stasis of equal outcomes manifested everywhere at once. The left views everything as a zero-sum game. There is one perfect goal (equality), and one perfect way to achieve it (all-encompassing government); if it is currently not working completely, then simply re-apply the one solution.
In like manner, the underpinnings of traditionalist government must be destroyed, i.e., the Constitution. As examples, the left hates something that is provided for by the Constitution (defense of the nation by the military), and craves that which the Constitution explicitly refuses to mandate (the “right” to universal healthcare). But with the strategy of a “living Constitution” this doesn’t pose any obstacles, and the end-run around representative democracy is complete.
Progressives are reptiles, and Obama is the Lizard King.
Fantastic essay, David!
Thank you.
Forty years ago the South Bronx was a zoo of criminal activity. Today it is a livable area where there is a semblance of safety, though nothing Middle America would find acceptable. Why, you may well ask? The bad folks are in jail. Tough law enforcement led to improved real estate values that led to working people who are able to raise their families without leaving the ‘hood’.
The Left does not take the one route that would permit its vision to hatch. They insist upon believing that everyone is good, so jail is a waste of time and humanity. The Left needs to adopt the vision of a middle-class small town in the mid-West in order to achieve its goals. In this sense, its rejection of Israel is the most twisted path it could take, since Israel’s ability to integrate ‘others’ is superior to that of the surrounding countries.
Values are a subset of all ideas. Some ideas are simply better than others. That is a critical error in thinking from which the Left cannot recover.
Another prime example of where the ‘left’ isn’t just wrong, they are EXACTLY WRONG.
Another prime example of where the ‘left’ isn’t just wrong, they are EXACTLY WRONG.
The left will tell you — Poverty causes crime.
Yet your South Bronx example shows clearly — Crime causes Poverty.
Therefore the Mean Spirited method of dealing with crime eredicates poverty for some reason.
It’s more of a cycle – crime-poverty-crime-poverty, etc. The trick is to break the cycle somewhere. Liberals want to break it at the “poverty” link by throwing money at it. Conservatives, I think, tend to aim for the “crime” link by arresting criminals and throwing them in jail. Sort of reflects the different outlooks: liberals are trying to “change the world” (i.e., human nature) by redistributing resources, while conservatives are just trying to keep honest people safe from criminals. One side tries to engineer a top-down, fundamental change; the other side tries to make the best of an imperfect situation (i.e., human nature) that’s not subject to fundamental change.
It is not really a cycle; its a semi-cycle. In the 70s and 80s there was a large amount of money being thrown at the problems in the South Bronx. The money only developed traction when the gang members and thugs were removed from positions of power.
Bingo! To me, it all became clear on and just after 9/11. It came like a bolt from the blue. I left the left that day.
As long as Antonio Gramsci continues to hold sway over the lefties, they will have rendered themselves to be dinosaurs in dealing with the challenges of the day.
So, which lefty will bell the cat? After all, look at where Gramsci has lead swathes of people.
It has been my vision for some time to muse over the thought of what Hades (That’s right Aich Eee Double Hockey Stick) will be like for the liberal.
I envision the liberal being given the “privilege” of living in the exact society that they have labored so hard to produce for the rest of us. (Not as an elite mind you, they will have to live as an – average – citizen.)
Then, to make the despair complete, they will have only one place to complain to regarding all of the shortcomings ther accomadations in eternety are providing them – Themselves. They will have to put up with answers from thier own selves knowing who they are trying to convince, yet having the same success we do in speaking sense to them.
I know, it is a recursive nightmare trying to figure out this vision, but I think God is quite capable of pulling something like that off.
To give “progressives” Dis on Earth, you give them a state in which they can run everything exactly the way they want to, with no backtalk from the hoi polloi. There are just two provisions that will be guaranteed to ruin it for them;
1. They have to pull their own weight doing their fair share of the actual work (digging ditches, say, as opposed to standing around supervising other people doing it); and
2. Anyone who does not want to live under their “perfect state”, and wants to leave, must be allowed to do so.
The later provision is the one that will make them scream like wounded panthers. After all, the Berlin Wall wasn’t built to keep West Berliners out of East Berlin, and the barbed wire and watch towers along the old Warsaw Pact borders, or between North Korea and the DMZ, were hardly intended as an “invasion defense”. Barbed wire, dogs, and machine gun posts are barely a speed bump to armored divisions; they are, however, highly effective against fleeing “peasants” on foot.
The fact that “progressives” who rule countries invariably invest in barbed wire and guard towers at their borders tells you a lot more about them than it does about their neighbors.
cheers
eon
Progressives are reptiles, and Obama is the Lizard King.
Like the Lizard King himself, they’re all waddling through a tinder box while tossing matches as fast as they can strike them. I wonder if any of these critters who are so anxious to finally bring their vision to fruition are aware that they’re not pissing off fellow reptiles who “actualize” themselves verbally but are instead dealing with a huge mass of people who actualize themselves through actions, not words.
Since when is trying to fulfill the teachings of Jesus Christ to aid the poor, oppressed, women, Samaritans, and children a “predatory chimera” or “starting from zero?”
I don’t think any lefties are under the mistaken impression that world can be made pristine, after all, there will always be a few heartless, sociopathic conservatives around to poison the well for the sake of a few dollars.
But giving up hope in the face of a few rotten apples is something the left will never do.
Progressives such as yourself are simply unable to understand the difference between such concepts as welfare and charity. With your sanctimonious posturings about Christianity as social justice, you have not only totally misplaced Jesus Christ as the only savior of each INDIVIDUAL having FREE WILL, but you have also relegated God to be a servant of the almighty state.
Only when it is too late will you ever discover how misguided your thinking has been, and how destructive it is to any society based on God’s gift of life and free will to each of His children.
Progressives believe in “charity” at gunpoint. For any sane individual, that’s theft.
My charity is local, personal and highly judemental. And it is therefore highly effective.
…fulfill the teachings of Jesus Christ to aid the poor, oppressed, women, Samaritans, and children a “predatory chimera” or “starting from zero?”…
Please cite the Bible passages where Jesus taught redistribution of wealth, Social Justice as understood by Marxists like you or even murdering millions of people to enforce your understanding of Social Justice. I’ll be waiting.
I beg to differ,James. Show me in the Bible where God in the Old Testament or Jesus in the New Testament commanded that to help the poor,the widows, the oppressed and others, people must be taxed or be forced to give in order to help the least of us by government fiat? Read up on Luke 21:1-4 or Mark 12:41-44 about the widow’s mite and get back to me.
Jesus spoke to the individual and instructed them in how to live. The STATE is not an indivicual and has no soul. Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
Oh, and if people were perfectable in this world then there would have been no reason for Jesus to come here at all.
So, James –
Where do you fall on this spectrum?
1. Wishful thinker – don’t you just wish that the world was a nicer place? If only everyone were just as smart, just as clever, just as enlightened as you, it surely would be, wouldn’t it? You, and those like you aren’t really up to doing the heavy lifting, but you sure do vote and applaud into power those who will. Trouble is, those folks typically have an agenda that doesn’t quite match yours.
2. Coercive utopian – you just know that no one is going to do what it takes to usher in the new millenium, the New Man, that immanent eschaton that’s just aroudn the corner. Billy Ayers and his wrecking crew thought that once they achieved power would have to slaughter over 25 million Americans too stubborn to toe thier utopian socialist line – that was back i n1the 1970′s so we’re actually gibving him a bit of a discount on that 25 million figure. But what’s a few million here and there? Eric Hobsbawm, Marxist historian (now there’s an oxymoron) has also said as much in a BBC interview where he allowed as to how the ‘sacrifice’ of millions would have bee nworth it in order to achieve socialism. So, James, is that you? A little slaughter, a ‘re-education camp’ or two not too much a price to pay for heaven on Earth?
3. Will-to-power driven Lord-of-the-flies types – now we’re at the top of the pyramid of power. These are the ones who, once they achieve absolute power, really make things happen. And we’ve got over 260 million dead in this century and the last to prove it. Now, James – pay attention – that’s 260 million unarmed civilian non-combatants killed by their own governments. They were murdered by those exercising the power of the state. They were starved, gassed, tortured, shot, impaled, burned alive, drowned, frozen to death, hacked apart with hoes, axes and machetes – a litany of brutality and atrocity beyond human imagination. Hundreds of millions more lived their lives enslaved, impoverished and in despair.
Those who are driven by the will to power typically disguise their intentions under the guise of ‘achieving the greatest good for the greatest number’ or under the rubrics of social or economic justice. They may claim that they are ‘doing the business of the people’ or that they are acting according to ‘the will of the people’. The statement, ‘It’s for the children,’ should inspire instant disbelief and skepticism. When it has come to creating the ‘New Socialist Man,’ those who advance such arguments remain untroubled by the oceans of blood they would have to spill and the mountains of corpses they would have to pile up in order to realize their dreams. They are all animated by the unrestrained and unappeasable ‘will to power’. The Will to Power plays itself out at all levels. From the malice or indifference of the petty bureaucrat to the savage and demonic mass murderers of recent times. As we have seen, power and the exercise of that power is more addictive than any drug.
The need is insatiable. The result is horror.
So – where are you, James? If you’re a follower or apologist for today’s political and social multiculturalism, an adherent of liberal democracy, or believe that our culture can continue without a basis in moral absolutes, which camp do you suppose you belong in? Are you a cynical but clever elitist intoxicated on the will to power? Are you on to the deception but support it out of pathological spite? Or are you simply ignorant of your role in the intentional destruction of your culture, even if you think you stand in the relative right?
You may want to re-think your premises, because you are not likely to survive the consequences of the ones you’ve shown us. History is my witness.
History illustrates – time and again – that the Left believes in power over the people (all for their own good of course!) But then again, that would require Leftist to know more about real history than “America/slavery/Nazis/Republicans bad!”
A few ruminations from the Lefty “elite” throughout the ages:
Wow…what a great collection of caring, compassionate, unselfish “progressives”.
But hey…they freed us all from the stodgy, puritanical “morality” of those nutty Christian fundies, right? After all, you brought us the “sexual revolution” of the 60′s, right? Too bad no ones seems to recall that the so-called “revolution” was advanced primarily by citing the “research” of a far Left radical named Alfred Kinsey, a man who shared his wife with his co-workers (talk about unselfish!) and whose “research” found that children – including babies – enjoyed sex.
What was the basis of that outrageous claim? Interviews with pedophiles.
But hey, what about the miraculous turn around we’ve seen in America’s black community?
- In the 1960s, out-of-wedlock births for black Americans was around 20%. Today, the number is above 70%.
- In the 1960s, black Americans enjoyed one of the the highest employment percentages amonst ethnic groups. Today, they “enjoy” the lowest.
- In the 1960s, black Americans had relatively low criminal stats. Today, the highest amongst ethnnic groups.
Yay!
Feminism and abortion-rights? Another example of the amazing “progressive” enlightenment that sprang forth from the heady days of the 60’s, right?
Hardly. Gloria Steinham — godmother of 60’s feminism — listed as one of her primary influences a woman named Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and advocate for the “reproductive rights” of women. Know what else she was an advocate of? Eugenics – the policy of sterlizing the mentally handicapped and “undesirable” populations…like blacks.
Yeah…I bet you didn’t, Marge! How “unprogressive” of you! Just how far-reaching were the consequences of Sanger’s advocacy of eugenics? She was a close associate of one Dr. Paul Popenoe, a leader in the American eugenics movement who conducted one of the largest experiments in eugenics in California. Want to know who eventually based their own eugenics program on Dr. Popenoe’s study? The Nazis.
Currently, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. It would seem that Sanger’s dream is alive and well, eh?
The Left is poison to civilization.
Please, there is but one lizard King, buried in France. Let him rest in peace.
There must be gnashing of teeth, ashes tossed upon heads, chests beaten with cries of anguish by some of the people posting here. It must literally physically manifest itself that someone who doesn’t share political beliefs with the right occupies the oval office, or any seat of government for that matter.
What will happen in 30 years when “minorities” overwhelm the Nation..? Will the right take a grand final stand..?
The loss of economic power didn’t happen yesterday, it happened over last 40 years, in GOP and DEMO administrations alike…where were you then..?? NO protests when President Nixon took us off the gold Standard and replaced it with PETRO DOLLARS..?? nobody whined when their Social Security was tied to COLA allowances….or Medicare was added in..??
This is what is killing the Nations economy, crack open a history book fer heavens sake, and stop stewing in anger / resentment.
50% of the nation does NOT PAY TAX….what exactly did anyone think would happen when HALF the country doesn’t contribute?
I’m not sure there is a point to be gotten from your comment, Alex, unless it is that since 1970 things have become all messed up and it is everybody’s fault, especially the people here. Is that about it?
Ah, now I see… this conflict has nothing to do with a clash of philosophies or even cultures, no instead it is simply about finances, with maybe a dash of racialism thrown in. Keep up your myopia, my friend… regardless of what happened during the Nixon years, you and others like you certainly have nothing to offer in the here and now.
A wonderful essay, Mr. Solway.
I think what befuddles the Right is the sheer irrationality of the Left. The contradictions are so apparent, the history is so definitive why is the dream of the Left so attractive to so many?
Human psychology is strange. I don’t get the mix of altruism, blind faith, superiority and moral preening and empathic indifference the Left requires. I really don’t understand the Left’s blindness to it’s own history, particularly where whenever they get real power they eat their own.
There are those who hold progressive ideals, there are those who are the loyal opposition, there are those who work for social justice, and there are those who hide behind and fortify those ideals to work their own agendas.
Methinks the writer Tom Clancey had it well espoused in his book, “Rainbow Six”. The power elites wanted to eliminate 80% of the global population for the benefit of the planet. Guess who would have sanctuary, and guess which useful idiots would have been included in the rubble?
A Nazi and a Republican were talking. The Nazi told the Republican “Most of the people in the world are worthless. We should cut the world population down to 800 million just keeping the most skilled and highly productive.” By his facial expression the Republican agreed, but suddenly the Republican had a revelation and said “No. No we can’t do that, it would be horrible for real-estate values.”
Gee, your “Nazi” sounds very much like a radical Green Party member. Both leftist fringes with profoundly anti-human values. Your “Republican” is of course just a figment of your imagination.
I certainly don’t live in dreamland. We have been in a downward spiral for decades, and its only in the last few years people seem to be waking up, albeit still foggy about the cause.
Charles Stevens; If you don’t think the cause of our nations ill’s are economic, then by all means; keep spending more than comes in, leverage the banking system until it crashes, eat drink and be merry, for electing someone in the GOP will magically overrule basic economic principles.
Or we could research and understand rescinding Glass Stegall in 1999 was cause of this mess and reinstate it, and force banks to operate in a regulated environment as they did in the 1940′-90s.
Next force the Federal Reserve to open its books and justify itself before the american people. Two Trillion to Europe in 2007-2008 ? who received it and when it is being repaid.
Fred Beloit; what is the point of the ranting here, any solutions presented, discussed, explored, or just incessant whining about the left ? Anyone can whine about the “other side”. It takes no intelligence, reasoning, preparation, nothing more than anger and resentment.
Solutions are in reconstructing the American Economy. For some reason it seems to be escaping attention.
There is no doubt a fair amount of fog around here and much of it emanates from your remarks.
“Or we could research and understand rescinding Glass Stegall in 1999 was cause of this mess and reinstate it, and force banks to operate in a regulated environment as they did in the 1940′-90s.”
So Glass Stegall was to blame? Because we allowed corporate combinations of investment and commercial banks we suffered the financial meltdown of 2008? You don’t believe it had anything to do with government policy to provide relaxed underwriting standards to home-owner wannabes by providing no money down mortgages, unleashing new demand for private home ownership resulting in real estate price increases, and then packaging and selling those mortgages as AAA rated securities that could be held in bank portfolios with only 3 and 1/3% capital requirements?
Government policy and regulatory malfeasance produced a market bubble that self corrected and in its wake, left mountains of bad paper that is still on the books of Fannie and Freddie and that we have yet to see the full extent of damage rendered. That, Alex is what the regulators permitted and in the case of issuing those poorly conceived loans in the first place, mandated as the lenders were required to lend money to politically favored groups. Remind me again what is the basis for your faith in regulators?
And speaking of regulators, how is it that Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme operation was brought to the attention of the regulators on multiple occasions over periods of years, and yet somehow failed to diagnose correctly what was actually going on there.
Financial markets are among and have been among the most heavily regulated industries there are. To suggest that banks were operating in an unregulated market post repeal of Glass Stegall is breath-takingly ignorant.
The real problem is that when politics intrudes into the prudent decision making process of the financial markets by requiring outcomes (ie loans to favored constituents) over rationale prudential private decisions, then you end up with market distortions that reality ultimately corrects. Faith in regulation presumes a misplaced and historically ignorant trust in the regulatory overlords to be impervious to political influence, righteous in the conduct of their power, and clairvoyant in their ability to foresee the consequences of their decisions. None of those conditions exist in the real world so perhaps you need to rethink your affection for them.
The almost complete imperviousness to fact, to reality, is what’s truly striking about the (often quite intelligent) leftist mind. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: You’re entitled to your own beliefs, but not your own facts. (And it’s worth remembering that at one point he was drummed out of the left for focusing on inconvenient facts.) Facts are the lefty’s greatest foe, so he banishes them and is left with nothing but beliefs — no matter how ill-founded. These beliefs are part and parcel, as Mr. Solway says, of the left’s basic project: the revocation or canceling of reality.
That’s related to another salient thing Mr. Solway touches on. At what stage of human development do we all routinely rail against reality? Anyone who’s tried to deal with a four-year-old can tell you: early childhood. The child just wants what it wants, NOW!, and is prone to holding its breath and throwing tantrums (not to mention hitting, biting and kicking) to get it. Leftists tend to be people who never fully mature, who never really internalize the “adult” idea of personal responsibility. Thus leftism’s concentration in fields, such as the arts, media and academe, that feature a combination of high IQs/talent and low “EQs” (emotional quotients). It’s no wonder that faculty lounges, concerts and newsrooms are approximations of NeverLand, where you only have to clap hands to make it so. And when thwarted by reality, the lefty always wants to blame someone or throw a tantrum rather than face the fact that his beliefs are naive and foolish.
What we call “the left” or “the new liberalism” is only the social reification of delusion and hypocrisy, a peculiar amalgam of orphaned intelligence and prolonged emotional adolescence. Aside from those who exploit the movement for their own personal profit — the plutocrats and the power-mongers — it comprises an army of rote myrmidons led by a class of intellectual prodigies who, regrettably, have never grown up.
That paragraph sums everything up beautifully. Many, if not all, on the left are just that: emotional adolescents. They never graduated from their days of sitting around smoking pot with their friends fantasizing about how the world should be, and if they could only be in power, they could solve the world’s ills through peace, love, understanding & contentment, where everyone lives in a commune, sharing their spirituality, food, residence & flesh. Oh, yes, they’ve moved on: graduated from college, secured jobs, and started families, but their fantastical vision of a utopian world lives on inside them. The problem for us realists now is that many of them now ARE in power, all the way from the White House to colleges/universities to elementary schools.
The best example of a power-monger I can think of is OwlGore, trying to shove the myth of global warming down our throats, all the while making millions off the useful idiots and incurring a $10K+/month utility & carbon-fuel transportation bill. Not to mention the groping & fondling of his so-called massage therapists, along with cheating on his wife of 30+ years.
But the left has never cared much for reality. It is wedded to theory in the name of which a failed experiment, an invisible omelette, must constantly be refried.
This explains why the left can easily: 1. Ignore facts; 2. Simultaneously hold conflicting beliefs; and 3. Prevaricate without guilt. Their constant changing of the language (swamps to ‘wetlands’, bums to ‘homeless’, timber cutting & replanting to ‘deforestation’, and global warming to ‘climate change’), and moving from one failed experiment to another, with no contrition whatsoever over the expense, disasters and ruined lives caused by the previous experiment, is standard operating procedure.
WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Overwhelm the system
Barrack Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent, at least not politically. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
For insight into his motivations, look no further than what his own past. Barack Obama taught ‘Rules for Radicals’ at Harvard and Columbia Universities, (He was a ‘guest lecturer, btw, not a ‘law professor’, as liberals like to claim).
As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University . They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival … and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it. They will always be on the receiving end, & will never be asked contribute anything other than their continual agitation for MORE ‘social justice’/redistribution, & their consistent vote to grant MORE power to the bureaucratic/government machine.
Witness:
– Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn’t care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
– Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming (or it’s current & more flexible nomenclature, ‘climate change’. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”
– Making Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government. The Puerto Rico strategy in a nutshell.
– Legalize 12-20 million illegal immigrants (criminal foreign nationals). Just giving these 12-20 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12-20 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical care, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security. Accelerate the collapse.
– Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions — including billions of dollars to save or create jobs for unionized government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues) & some $45 billion more to other uncountable bureaucrats, federal, state, and local. All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that WILL bankrupt America. The country goes broke, future generations face bleak prospects worse than anything to come before, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.
– Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition. Expect him to use the current tax cut debate to advocate that an even higher percentage of Americans be purged from federal tax rolls. Disconnect the vast majority of Americans from any fiscal responsibility for their votes.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system. If people are sufficiently desperate Obama believes they will DEMAND that he and his fellow statists be given enough authority and discretion to ‘save’ them.
Add it up and you’ve got the perfect Marxist strategy to overthrow our Constitutional Republic – all devised by Columbia University Professors Richard Cloward and Frances Piven. & fanatically advocated by Obama’s sociopolitical hero Saul Alinsky.
But the most glaring problem with dogmatic collectivist governance has always been that it justifies literally ANY abuse, degradation, or depravity to be visited on the governed, in the name of ‘progress’, so long as it advances the goals of the Party. Witness the old Soviet Union, the National Socialists, the Khmer Rouge, the Red Chinese. Now witness what Obama is doing to America today.
Remember, the most important date of the past ten years and of the next 26 months is this: Tuesday, November 2, 2010. It’s not enough just to vote. Get everyone you know, everyone you can possibly influence, & get them to the polls.
88 days.
What commentary! Splendid!
Excellent piece. You have helped me to understand the minds of my leftist acquaintances.
As far as I can tell, all this essay seeks to do is associate the progressive movement in the United States with radical leftist–and a few hard right–movements around the globe. It is a strawman of gigantic proportions constructed with a few incomprehensible quotes lifted from pop-psychological evaluations by conservative “thinkers”.
“The common denominator between the left and Islamism: Ground Zero must be engendered everywhere so that the earthly paradise can be built on its ashes.”
WTF does that mean? Of course it doesn’t mean–it suggests. It suggests that liberals are terrorists, which, of course, will be lapped up by the readers here.
Saying that all leftists want an earthy paradise is bizarre given the left’s recent programs (stimulus, universal health care, cap and trade) are based on Utilitarian rather than ideological principles. In fact, it is the conservative response to these utilitarian projects that lapses into nonsensical appeals to vague emotions. (An example: The free rider problem in UHC is solved by an insurance mandate, yet the right has complained that this is a restriction of freedom, ignoring the problem that is solved and, in effect, arguing that being a free rider n social programs is some sort of “right.” As long as you are not “illegal”, that is.)
The best part (worst for conservatives) is that the sources used in this essay have completely misconstrued the nature of the conservative movement’s political enemies in the USA. Combined with a lack of ideas for solving problems, a dominant radical wing and unfavorable demographic trends, the right is ensured a decline in the long term.
This is great work David. Browsing the leftist mindset always provides valuable lessons.
Unfortunately, browsing is all most folks ever seem to do and, unfortunately, doesn’t lead to the treatment of causes, just symptoms.
There are a few, however, who’ve actually analyzed the leftist mindset. One of them is a Jewish atheist leftist academic. The left, generally, has been pretty upset with his intellectual honesty.
Amazing, you’ve managed to shoehorn Haidt’s theory onto your hobby horse.
So basically the idea that one should approach others viewpoints with a sense of moral humility has been eschewed for your belief that liberals are just immature.
I don’t know goy. Seems you’re missing his point.
- you’ve managed to shoehorn Haidt’s theory onto your hobby horse.
You have it backward and inside out. Haidt’s clinical findings (not a theory) were what started me thinking about this whole thing in the first place. I formed my observations around his research. If you’d actually bothered to read anything he’s written, you’d probably have figured that out.
- So basically the idea that one should approach others viewpoints with a sense of moral humility has been eschewed for your belief that liberals are just immature.
None of this has anything to do with “humility” or “other viewpoints”. It has to do with identifying the characteristics of the mindset that is most susceptible to falling for the inherently irrational premise of collectivism. So you’re just projecting if you’re going to try to pretend I’ve missed the point.
Wow! This is one of the most well-written and thought-provoking articles I have ever read on PajamasMedia. Thanks!
Neil
“Wow! This is one of the most well-written and thought-provoking articles I have ever read on PajamasMedia. Thanks!”
Ain’t that the truth. This is required reading for everyone I know and I’ve sent it around accordingly.
Everything Solway says goes double for me.
What a load of nonsense. You care about the poor, you care about a toxic environment, the next thing you know, you are ON The LEFT, and trying to destroy the Empire.
Get Real
You sound as idiotic as the commies when they take credit for the 5 day work week.
What’s to browse?
They hate, and are mass-murderers. That’s it.
There is much to agree with in Mr. Solway’s article, except he is as confused as most, if he puts fascism on the right of the political spectrum. When is this common mistake going to be generally realized?