Where Do Leftists Come From?
For a very long time now, I have been turning over this question in my mind: What is it that makes a leftist? Where do leftists come from? How is it possible that sentient human beings, endowed with reason, memory, and foresight by their Creator, or by the evolutionary demiurge, can zealously adopt a political position so contrary to both good sense and common sense — and what is more, remain glued to its premises in the face of all contradictory evidence? For despite the miserable failure of socialist experiments the world over and from time immemorial, the determined leftist does not budge from his ideological sanctum and will invent every conceivable, or rather inconceivable, excuse to validate the soundness of his principles and justify every subsequent social and political miscarriage these principles bring about.
Of course, there is the argument from nurture, but this only begs the question and moves the cause one notch back in an endless antecedent series. Who nurtured the nurturers? Then there is the argument from desire or what the ancients called conatus, often based on a faulty reading of the world. One recalls the philosophical debate that raged for centuries between Duns Scotus and his followers on the one side and the school of Thomas Aquinas on the other. Scotus postulated that the will conditions the reason, in other words, desire seeks its goal first and the mind subsequently proceeds to vindicate its decision. Aquinas contended that reason commands the will, that is, the faculty of purified intellect posits the good, and desire afterwards strives to achieve it. Leftists and liberals are, on this interpretation, earnest Scotists, wanting something very badly and then abusing their mental powers to defend their error.
Only slightly more convincing is the argument from nature. Researchers have discovered a “liberal gene,” a dopamine receptor tagged DRD4, that predisposes people to the left-liberal side of the ideological continuum. A study of 2000 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health showed that under certain favorable conditions “people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults.” As this thesis is advanced by scientists from the University of California (San Diego) and Harvard University, a saving degree of skepticism would be in order, especially as these scientists correlate the liberal gene with a predilection for openness and novelty, two factors not markedly associated with the leftist mindset.
The answer to the enigma, however, may lie in the realm of molecular biology. A recent groundbreaking discovery suggests that there may well be a “second genesis” for life on earth, predicated on a microbe that has replaced the element of phosphorus necessary for life with the lethal element of arsenic in its structure, thus “break[ing] the unity of biochemistry.” Moreover, according to NASA astrobiologist Mary Voytek, the microbes “have the arsenic in the basic building blocks of their makeup,” implying the existence of a “shadow biosphere” on the planet.
I remember reading the old testament, specifically the story of the 10 commandments.
I used to be skeptical about the children of Israel turning to Calf Worship after everything they’d been through.
No more. I’ve seen liberals and I know exactly who they were in the 12 tribes of Israel during that period.
You may have something there, jd.
“(They) sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”
This essay had promise as satire but devolved rather quickly. For the record, Titan is a moon of Saturn, not Jupiter. Let’s keep our satellites straight.
One need not delve into shadow biospheres to explain the existence of leftists. As long as people are insecure, ignorant, and desperately eager to be accepted by the hip-and-with-it, there will be leftists. One need look no further than high school or the monkey exhibit at the zoo to observe this particular characteristic of primates.
“As long as people are insecure, ignorant, and desperately eager to be accepted by the hip-and-with-it, there will be leftists.”
Hey! I resembled that remark.
My very self-confident, 11 year old, Reagan-loving son who didn’t give a crap what anyone thought of him, awakened me to the stupidity of my leftist views about 20 years ago.
And a child shall lead them.
Only an alien would know that.
“Of course, there is the argument from nurture, but this only begs the question and moves the cause one notch back in an endless antecedent series. Who nurtured the nurturers?”
Amazing: a correct use of the phrase “begs the question” as an issue of logical structure. Thank you David Solway. Perhaps this useful phrase can be reclaimed from those who use it casually and incorrectly to mean “raises the question.”
I second r.r.’s thanks!
Me three!
Now THIS is an absolutely brilliant theory and explains so much.
So does:
a dopamine receptor
Even nature thinks their a bunch of rocks.
Since they don’t seem to want to leave perhaps we should encourage them to “phone home.” Or perhaps we could leave a trail of Skittles from here to Sirius B.
Where do leftists come from? I think they all come from France. Liberals in America have always been in love with the European Socialist nanny state. That was their model and their holy grail since the end of World War II. They saw how it was “working” in Europe, even though it was nothing more than a giant ponzi scheme that was bound to eventually fail. But no, the liberals thought that was the way all “civilized” people had to live. So they fought for all of it, universal health care, “free” education, “free” housing, unlimited unemployment, blah, blah, blah, all the things that drive a country into bankruptcy. What they never seemed to admit was that there was no such thing as a “free” lunch and that somebody in some generation would get stuck with the bill. Well, one look at Greece, Britain, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy have shown that the check is now due and there is nobody left to pay it. Doesn’t matter, the left in this country wants what the Europeans had even if it means going bankrupt. Facts mean little to liberals. They are selfish little children who want what the other kids have, regardless of the consequences.
Liberals make me sick.
Hi Liberty.
And the reason Europe was able to pull out of the ashes after WW2? The Marshall Plan. Without that everyone except the germans would still be living in squalor. I exempt the germans because they had/have a remnant work ethic unlike the rest of Europe, especially the lazy, smelly French.
Still waiting for a simple “Thank you” from our european “friends.”
Basturds.
Ah, you will be waiting a long time, because with a sense of entitlement,
comes an air of arrogance.
Don’t be too sure about that German work ethic. While this was once very strong in Germans, I think those days are way behind us now.
1. My friend’s brother-in-law, whose parents were German themselves, went to Germany on a work-related trip 30 years back and returned quite surprised by how wrong the much vaunted German work ethic failed to live up to expectations. He was a manager in a factory here (in Canada) and said the people in his factory worked much harder than the people in the German factories he visited.
2. A German-born friend of mine was visiting Germany about twenty years back and was surprised to find that her sister-in-law, who worked in a toy factory making cap guns and the like on a small machine, got a full HOUR at the end of each shift to “clean up” her work area – which apparently amounted to a quick sweep with a broom – while comparable jobs here allowed for, perhaps, 3 minutes for the same job.
In short, all those decades of post-war socialism and strong unions have done a lot to destroy the German work ethic.
FAIL!
One of the stupidest articles I’ve read on Pajamas Media.
You have a defective satire gene. Please don’t have any children.
I agree with FAIL…
He lost me with ” ….openness and novelty, two factors not markedly associated with the leftist mindset”
HELLO?
Openness NOT not associated with leftists?
Every “open” trenchcoat I’ve ever encountered on a streetcorner was from a dirty a liberal leftist to be sure. Excessive “openness” to the point of vomit at their exhibitionist activities is the HALMARK of a leftist. Where have YOU been for 45 years?
Heres some perspective…search for:
Leftist NAMBLA supporters, then RIGHT WING PORN, tell me which is more prevelant in the world
Novelty?
You mean something cute and new, superfluous, topical, distracting?
Novelty… Novelty NOT a lefist trait?
Gee, what IS the latest political fashion, I’m getting old.
Che’ T-shirts?
Veganism?
Global Warming?
Terrorism Appologetics?
Jullian Assange worship?
FAIL
There’s teams of us who’ve hopped from left to right & look back in horror at what we ‘knew’. I knew that the Khmer Rouge were bad but not that bad because overall it was worth it to not live under right wing dictatorship. How, oh how could I possibly believe such a thing? It’s really not so far from, well, believing Judenrein had it’s points.
I go along with Paul Berman’s explanation because it’s such an acute description of how I and generations of my family felt. PB says that capitalism/liberalism brought the great escape from poverty, child death & political misery. It was loved until it’s leaders wiped out the youth of a generation in World War One. The legacy of WW1 is a rock solid belief that the leaders of the capitalist world can kill your children if they’re in the mood, just like in WW1. This feeling, this belief has been passed down like mother’s milk. I certainly knew it to be true, absolutely true right up to September 11th. Then I was cured. Oy, what I used to think!
Interesting idea. I’m not familiar with Berman – I’ll have to read up a bit. It certainly explains Europe’s infatuation with anti-capitalism. The impulse itself predates WWII, but it seems like the 1920s were when it really took off. Helped along, of course, by the adolescent enthusiasm of the USSR.
Seems like the US and Europe were on a parallel path to socialism until the end of WWII. Europe was devastated, but we actually came out stronger and more prosperous. So Europe kept on down the socialist path while we hesitated. I remember reading about the British welfare state and how most of their reasons for implementing it seemed somewhat practical, not purely ideological. Over here, reading about the Progressives, it all seems like pie-in-the-sky theorizing.
Nothing so complicated. They have RDD, reason deficit disorder. A inability to properly reason. I am hopeful that drugs can provide some solution to their problem.
The upshot: it’s not their fault.
So we need set up national bureaucracy with treatment programs and massive research into their unfortunate malady to CHANGE their biochemistry, genetics in the HOPE they’ll stop being leftists. Of course with “head” quarters in Washington.
Sounds right. Sounds just like Obama/Hillary Care. A lot of jobs for the lefties, the only experts to treat deranged leftists because they know what it’s like, they’ve been there. These Experts who then have a job for life with generous pensions and medical care and sundry other benefits to ensure human rights because unfortunate victims of biochemistry.
But whats the penalty /reparations from the satanic, unsympathetic to their misfortune, vast right wing conspiracy ?
Very plausible. In fact, the only reason I can come up with to explain a leftist/socialist mindset is either insanity or that they are part of an alien invasion begun millions of years ago.
Have you checked out Jesus as one source?
Righties (who say they believe in Jesus) have had a revelation that there is a clear line between what Jesus calls for and what the government should try to do (“by force” is a favored line.) Lefties may not even believe in God, but have had a revelation that the government should try to do what Jesus says (and be “sensitive,” except around righties.) God’s revelations come in strange ways, eh?
Dwight:
Huh? The right believes in a charitable nature by choice. The left believes in a charitable nature by force (i.e. government coercion).
Which is why the right is far more generous with its own money.
I doubt Jesus, who I do study, would have approved of that whole abortion thingy that is the alpha and the omega of the left. Especially since He said he knew us before we were formed in our mother’s womb.
Quote: Huh? The right believes in a charitable nature by choice. The left believes in a charitable nature by force (i.e. government coercion).
While I agree with your assessment of the difference in the Right and Left in regard to charity, I would contend that charitable giving by force is not charity. If I donate to a homeless shelter regularly of my own free will because I sympathize with the plight of the homeless and wish to help them better their lives, then I am a moral and charitable person who deserves to be commended for my donations. If, on the other hand, a portion of my monthly earnings are withheld and distributed to homeless shelters by the government (with a sizable percentage eaten up by the bureaucracy) with me having no say, then in what way does that make me a moral or charitable person?
The Right is repeatedly accused of legislating morality, but when many of the Left’s socialist policies are questioned – they resort to an appeal to morality and charity as their defense. New social programs are described as moral imperatives while cutbacks in spending are invariably decried as moral lapses. Most recently the governor of Washington State described the proposed budget (that included severe cuts to avoid enormous deficits) as immoral. She then proceeded to demonize the state citizens by accusing them of putting their personal financial concerns above those who would be affected by the cuts as the voters have repeatedly voted down or repealed the tax increases foisted on them by the state legislator.
The Left doesn’t seems to understand that true charity comes from the “heart” — what a person’s personal convictions, conscience, ethics or religious convictions compel him or her to do. The Epistle of James in the Christian Bible chapter 2, verses 14-16 says this:
What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?
The implication here is that a Christian (or a moral person in a more general sense) is one who willingly contributes their own time, finances, etc to help those in need around them. The underlining point is that if I see a fellow human being in need, helping them to the best of my ability and what my resources allow should be my responsibility and on my initiative. This is a tenet that is common to most major religions.
Hmmmm, let’s see –
Charity at gunpoint (us knuckle-dragging conservative types call that ‘theft’)
vs
Charity as a function of individual conscience.
What would Jesus do?
Funny. Good read.
Yes the ‘mystery of iniquity’ has puzzled decent human beings for a long time now. To see so many regular folks now in these days swallowed up in this shadow world makes one wonder if indeed the Last Day is drawing near. Obviously evil stalks the earth more and more pervasively. At present it is ‘normal’ to trash millions of the unborn to suit our hunger for recreational sex. People regularly tattoo themselves like heathen. Marriage is becoming quaint and unnecessary. Our republic crumbles because fools continue to vote themselves free money for nothing.
I don’t think this can be altered.
Thanks for an amusing article…If you look at recent science news, however, you will find the arsenic study in disrepute, its faulty chemistry questioned by several leading micro-biologists…. Keep on trying to explain the mindset; you might even get a Pulitzer someday.
I think there is no common denominator except they are anti-establishment. I am amazed at the dichotomies:
Animal Activist are Pro Abortion
Strong welfare staters personally give little to charity
Feminists support only liberal women
Outspoken protectors of Islam demean and insult Christianity
I think the only commonly held belief is that “life isn’t fair and it should be.”
Socialism is basic; greed for power and money by the ruling elite.
agreed, it is far simpler than this cute article would lead us to think…greed. hearts as black as my own…lacking, perhaps, only the confession of it.
Another attempt at humor via dehumanization. Not very funny, really.
The reality is that this country was founded by leftists, and all of the greatest accomplishments the USA can boast of belong to the socialist impulse.
Conservatism achieves nothing worthy of emulation, while progressives have given the world representative government and all the benefits of scientific thought.
If you like breathing clean air, having the right to vote, and enjoy the concept of the weekend – thank a leftist.
Peace.
DS
Since when does “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” belong to the “socialist impulse”? The USA was predicated on the supremacy of the individual, anathema to the socialism you extol here.
Psst, don’t tell this guy, but he’s who the author was talking about.
Even though that’s true that this article was wriiten about this guy, this guy doesn’t actually read the articles he just comes here to spout nonsense
David S:
Dude, I’d ask if you’re nuts, but that would be rhetorical. So what you’re saying is the likes of Code Pink were the backbone of the militia and Continental Army?
Sure, GW was a flaming lefty.
You are a product of a broken public education system and text books written by Bill Ayers. Wake up, dummy.
Don’t forget Howard Zinn and his ‘contributions’ to the Anerican public school system. The day I found teaching materials and posters based on his vile “A Peoples’ History of America” in one of our kids classrooms was the day we pulled them out of the Puget Sound area school system.
We moved that summer, and at least the sins of the public school system we encountered in our new location were sins of omission. It’s far easier to fill in the blanks than it is to correct outright lies and distortions.
“The reality is that this country was founded by leftists…”
That could well be the most idiotic assertion of this century. And, there’s some pretty stiff competition.
Other than some of the slaveowners, none of the founders of this country would pass as leftists.
Big government was not part of their agenda.
David S,
I would like to invite you to explain your comment in more than a few sentences. If your opinions have anything worth considering I am sure we will see them.
I also ask all the haters to let the man talk…if he will. All the name calling is really unhelpful.
Thanks for being more diplomatic than your fellows here, nate.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness used to be subject to the whims of royalty. They were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as principles that people could protect for themselves through a representative government of, by and for the people. At the time, this was a very radical position, and clearly far to the left of the Tory factions that supported the divine right of kings.
Conservatives in the time of the revolution believed in supporting the King, and fought against the revolutionaries that sought to overthrow British rule in favor of American independence.
The USA is predicated on the equality of men – rather than the supremacy of one individual that was advocated by the royalists. This is the fundamental root of socialism – the idea that we are all equal, and should have an equal voice in a system of self-government.
The revolutionaries never would have taken up arms against the conservative factions of the day if they did not believe in a radically different means of organizing themselves, specifically a leftist alternative to the right wing authoritarianism of the day.
Perhaps GW would not qualify as a leftist by the standards of today – but at the time, he was part of a very radical and progressive movement of left wing intellectuals who decided to try something new. There was nothing conservative about the American revolution.
Peace.
DS
Your problem, david, is that you have an invalid and incorrect definition of ‘left’ and ‘right’ political ideology. These ideologies refer to the relative freedom of the individual within a society.
Leftism is a political ideology focused around the constraint of the individual will – within the infrastructure of the collective. The collective Will is dominant.
Right- is a political ideology focused around the freedom of the individual Will, expressing this freedom within the constraint of a limited government.
Your non-verbalized definitions are all mixed up; you seem to think that the left is about freedom (no it isn’t)..and the right is an authoritarian restraint. You’ve mixed up ‘republic’ vs’ monarchy’ with the ideologies of ‘left and right’. Wrong.
Your comments are absolute proof that Liberalsim is a mental disorder. Mental illness is where Liberals and Leftists come from.
The socialist/market intellectual divide can be traced two human faults, envy and greed. The socialist is driven by envy. If he can’t have it nobody else can either. Societies that are underpinned by greed eventually end up murdering large numbers of people. Market oriented people are greedy. Greedy people are self centered and don’t care what you have only what they have. When a greedy person goes bad he only commits a crime against individuals without backing from the state. Unlike envious people under socialism, who have the reigns of power, they often go to jail.
I think you mean that societies based on envy end up killing people.
The curious thing is that in our society (unlike those of the past) you attain wealth (the goal presumably of greedy folk) by providing service to others. (In the past you attained wealth by conquering it) The more service that others want, the more you get.
In other words, in our society, greed is harnessed to providing service to the community.
In a socialist state on the other hand, the greedy can attain relative wealth only by cheating and stealing. In the Soviet Union, for example, setting up a business to provide service to others was a capital offense, sometimes punished by execution. The top echelons of society on the other hand, who wielded power, lived in an apartheid world with their own stores, hospitals etc, that were off limits to the masses.
The strange thing was that despite all pious dogma about equality, the difference between life among the powerful and life among the lowly was greater in the Soviet Union than in Western Europe or the United States.
As a Liberal I am insulted by this article. I guess that’s what it was supposed to do. Chin up son, just a little satire. The problem I have is that it ends with the claim that Liberals are not really human. Ha Ha. Very Funny. What condescending tripe!
You can dress it up with some fancy words but hate is hate and you Mr. Solway have earned yourself the Sweet Jumping Jesus I Hate Victor Davis Hanson* Award of the Month. (kind of a catch-all PJM award)Congratulations!
*Credit to Nitpicker
Psst, here’s another one. He still lives in the third grade, thinking that if you disagree with someone, you just hate them.
Your blasphemy proves your antagonists point.
Oh so now get righteous indingation ( sorry if that’s misspelled), and a holier than thou attitude…do you, cher(e) liberal commentator ever read or listen to the left side of the blog-o-sphere? While I was growing up all I ever heard about is real men nedd to learn to cry, be more in touch with their feelings, Madame Barbara Walters was slamming the new republican speaker as a man with emotional issues…
I don’t think that you are being honest with yourself, ok it’s insulting, yes it’s sacarstic, but you are over the top yourself…
Nate, I suspect you may not be a Christian, so wanted to let you know that your “sweet Jumping Jesus” expression is not appreciated by many who are Christian. Your comment showed you didn’t care to be insulted as a Liberal, so I know you want to show the same respect to those who worship Jesus.
Dear Don Dixon, many thanks for your correction. “Saturn” is in my handwritten manuscript but for some reason that escapes me entirely I typed “Jupiter” when transferring to screen. Deeply embarrassing. My wife jokes that I must have been thinking of myself. I’m grateful for your pointing out the error.
And dear emmaliza, yes, you’re right, the science has been questioned, which is why I use the word “theory” at the conclusion, but I think it works as the basis of what is clearly a satire. Or at least, I hope it does.
David
Well, the lefties are definitely full of something, but it ain’t arsenic. (Good taste forbids extrapolating, or saying, “More’s the pity.”)
Too important a problem (or enigma) for satire so superficial to succeed at being humorous.
Today’s “liberals” are dogmatists of a narrow vein of social theory; anything but liberal in the original sense.
I think it (“leftism”} amounts to a form of blindness–willful blindness manifest as obsessive concern with the imperfections of others so as to block out the inconvenient truth of one’s own imperfection.
Jesus framed it as a beam in your eye, but there is obviously a drive or desire to not see oneself as one sees others. (A liberal I know recently judged the tea party as “those people who objectify ‘the other’” without a glimmer of the irony.}
I believe it can be understood as a form of basic narcissism: loving one’s own self image and preserving it at any cost.
My old high school teacher (Father Fusco) had the most succinct explanation ever: “rank immaturity, gentlemen. rank immaturity.”
Heh – fun. I think that you misread Duns Scotus who is far more ‘subtle’ than Aquinas and whose discussion of Will (modern ‘anticipation’) is actually closer to scientific validation than the purely rational view of Aquinas.
http://www.scottmsullivan.com/articles/scotus.pdf
At any rate, I’d suggest two other reasons for the existence of the left. First, – a definition. The ‘left’ is embedded within a view of society that privileges the group, the commune, over the individual. The ‘right’ is the opposite.
The view that society is organized around the commune is the most ancient system of organization of our species. Tribalism. Why?
Because of our unique approach to knowledge. We are the only species born ignorant; we do not have any genetically stored knowledge of ‘how to live’. It’s all developed and stored externally to our biological nature. In words. We are the only species with the capacity for symbolization or language. We store and develop our knowledge within symbols. Words.
And, this knowledge is developed and stored within a community, who share the same language. It takes generations to develop knowledge and no individual ever ‘knows it all’. So, we are necessarily, always, a communal people. We live within societies and share a knowledge base.
Words. The left exists within ‘fancy’, within words. The problem of the left is that they live ONLY within words, within fancies, and this leads them to the emotional security of a rejection of doubt. Leftists have no doubts. They KNOW what will be The Best Society. They can talk about it, write about, preach it. And they are upset with anyone who tries to remove them from their secure world-of-words. So, they denigrate and reject the individual who questions, who dissents, who rejects the secure fanciful world-of-words.
A key problem with this approach, emotionally satisfying as it is, is that it removes doubt. It abstracts its users from testing whether these words-about-life will actually function in the real world. No questions, no tests….and the result is that this lifestyle becomes unable to adapt, to innovate, to develop new methods of interacting with the real empirical, non-word, world of material reality.
So, rather than interact with material reality, try to figure out what actually works…leftists rely on words. God, the government, hope, will solve all problems. A communal approach, a socialist approach, based on this mythic belief that Some Abstract Force will solve it all, and that There Is Utopia – loses all ability to adapt. This failure to adapt means that communal groups..are frozen.
Adaptation comes only via individuals. Who question, reject current knowledge, empirically interact with the real world. This is the world of the ‘right’. The left rejects this world because they reject the necessity of doubt and uncertainty.
The Founders of the US focused on this absolute necessity for individual freedom, they embedded it into the basic operation of America – and it was the first society to ever move away from the stultifying privileging of group repressive cohesion and give the individual the freedom to doubt. This is the basis of American exceptionalism. The Founders acknowledge that knowledge is communal – and thus, acknowledged the necessity for a common government. BUT, they limited and confined this governance – to privlege the individual. Remarkable.
Yes! Please keep writing or link me to some of your other stuff.
I’ve been on the same track, reasoning that these people can not handle the inherent uncertainies of individual freedom and capitalism.
I reject words like envy, greed, power, etc., when describing the mental roots of leftism. I really don’t think they’re that sinister. I think leftists are, in fact, intensely moral people. They really do want to help – to “make the world a better place.” Solving problems, improving things, is simply part of their mental makeup. I have no idea where that comes from.
What the leftist believes he needs to make things better is: CONTROL. That’s the keyword in leftist thought. The more CONTROL a moral person has over the world, the more GOOD he can do in the world. If he had total control, he believes, he could make the world damn near PERFECT!
Basically, a leftist is someone who wants to re-make the world in his own image – the image dripping with reason, justice, compassion, and goodwill. He wants to look outside of his brain and see his image looking back at him. Because he’s RIGHT. And to achieve this vision, he needs CONTROL. The more the better…
Greed, Envy and other vices are part of the human condition. To reject those concepts is to reject humanity.
Exactly – the leftist rejects risk. He wants to live within certainty, within the continuity of ‘no change’, within the ultimate utopian perfection.
At least, that’s what he imagines, which is why I claim that the left is embedded with the realm of ‘fancy’ or fiction, the imaginary. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t reject the vital role of the imagination in our species. We are the only species who can imagine: ‘What if I did such and such..would this and that happen’?
So, our species can imagine rerouting water to irrigate fields, imagine making a metal plough to till the fields rather than sticks and feet, imagine..the plane, the car; imagine what causes disease and..so on.
The problem for the left is that they live only within words, within the imaginary. They refuse the risks of testing those imaginary worlds within hard material reality. That’s one reason why the left is found safely tenured within academia, within the bubble of politics and Washington, within the isolate bubble of the UN. These imaginary bubbles float on words, isolated from the risk of the real world.
Heck- put the UN into the real world and they cause cholera in Haiti, watch genocide in Rwanda, enable Saddam Hussein to bilk millions in oil-for-food fraud..and so on.
No academic leftist will take the risk of moving himself out of the heady utopia of words into the doubts and failures of testing his theories in the real world.
Capitalism is the economic system, par excellence, that is based on an acknowledgment and acceptance of the real material world. Goods and services are developed by and performed by private individuals. These must take the risk of failure. Failure means – that it’s not wanted by the rest of the population! And that’s a risk that one must take!
Consider Obama’s so-called health care which isn’t about health care but is the insertion of a statist (leftist) universal governing infrastructure that denies individual free will. Obama’s health care is risk-free. You MUST purchase it or go to jail. That’s leftist statism. No risk…and no consideration whether the goods/services are any good!
Fine analysis, Mr. ETAB (which stands for what. pray tell?). I am relieved that we really did have a wave election, and resistance has real legs. I was getting pretty glum, but now have hope when people like you keep turning up.
This is not privileged information: “Mr. ETAB” is a Canadian, female academic.
And, yes, her analyses are usually very fine . . . on occasion, very rarely, I disagree!
The letters, “ET” are her initials. I don’t know what AB stands for. (ET, what do they stand for?)
Please tell Ms. ETAB she should have a facebook page so we can directly access here fine analysis without this hit or miss process, sir.
It may just be a co-incidence but “AB” is the common abbreviation for Alberta, one of the provinces here in Canada. Perhaps ETAB resides in Alberta? For what it’s worth, Alberta is widely recognized – for better or worse – as the province that most likes conservative ideas in this country.
Hope springs eternal. I typically get blocked from this site.
Mr. Solway,
You have written a satire, presumably one penned in a pique that you decided to overcome with humor.
These questions do have answers, though. One can trace the regression to Leftism both rationally and psychologically.
Here is my essay on political typologies: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/Website–Sybaritic%20Leftism%20and%20Cultural%20Sadeism.pdf
Here is my essay on Deconstructing Deconstruction. Yes, the title is a bit obvious, in retrospect, but I reread it yesterday, and have to say you might particularly value it as a poet: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/Website–Sybaritic%20Leftism%20and%20Cultural%20Sadeism.pdf
Socialism is on the level of a polity or nation the persistent manifestation of three enduring impulses, two evil, one originally good but subsequently misplaced. Envy and resentment provide the active motors, while the desire to have civil society and the state operate like a family provide the passive conduit. The first two engender the militant revolutionaries and tyrants of the socialist regime. The last, consisting of millions of ordinary people who were needful children once but then do not want to grow up, acquiesce in the hard-core communist countries or provide the votes in the democracies. So socialism is actually comprised of three of the seven deadly sins–envy, greed for what one has not produced or bargained for, and the yawning passivity of sloth. ‘Tis a devil’s brew that is likely to last as long as the devil himself. (Which is no reason not to fight against it; we need the exercise.)
OK, I am putting down my coffee, thinking about a Bagel and with each passing second becoming more amazed
with your thought process. I just have to ask: 1; Is your bed against a wall?, 2; How much caffeine do you consume in a day, 3; Are you a Bills or Browns seasons ticket holder, 4; are you going to give Roger his hat back?
I am further amazed you wrote this article for Pajamas Media (my favorite site!) and did not ONCE! mention Sarah Palin either in the affirmative or the negative. Congratulations – may you have green lights and blue skies wherever you go. You do not need to check your six, ever! Just amazed.
Redball “6″
Flouridation of their drinking water.
Next question…
There are really only 3 types of lefties:
- Power mad (i.e., politicians)
- Thiefs (i.e., the base)
- Lunatics (a miniscule percentage of kumbaya true believers)
Everyone thinks the last category is most of them. Actually, it’s almost none of them. The only purpose ideology serves for 99% of them is as a cover-story.
This article is far too glib about a subject that needs to be addressed seriously. The short answer to “where do Leftists come from” (which encapsulates many on the Right as well) is a mind making choices that subordinates reason to whim, morality to the arbitrary, reality to fantasy, self-interest to the tribe and self-esteem to power-lust–the desire of a mind that flees from the responsibility of facing existence as it is, that attempts to shape reality in contradiction to its nature, and in contradiction to the nature of Man: a being of self-made soul who must survive by his grasp of reality, according to his own individual judgment, and achieve happiness by his own productive effort and virtue. Men require Rights to exist, and all this is what the Left — and once again, too many on the Right — choose to reject. Where do such creatures come from? Their own belligerant defiance of reality and their naked cowardice to face it.
OK ROB I am picking my coffee back up now. So how are those Bills tickets working out for yah! and please immediately take your valium and then check your six. Come on Rob its that time of the year! Do you speak this way around Mrs. Rob? Cheers!
Redball “6″
Some people, when facts contradict their opinions, choose to side with their opinions. While this may be most obvious from what we call the left, I’m not entirely sure it matters which side of the political spectrum one places oneself.
The attempt to understand leftist minds is important. Humor is good, though what happens on this site and many others too often is demonization. Make no mistake, lefties are more dangerous than righties, but all of this masks a more pressing reality: the Left/Right Divide and all the self-satisfied posturing that goes on around it blocks other realities. And blocks understanding as well.
Bush’s ‘democratization’ program for the Islamic ME is not a rightist position, but essentially an outgrowth of a liberal mindset, and an effort to ‘messianize’ American constitutional concepts – even while many aspects of the WoT have reduced freedoms in the US.
Of course, that assumes that ‘spreading democracy’ is really what Iraq and Afghanistan are about, when in fact they are about many things. Beyond that, the justifications for both campaigns rest on conventional assumptions about 9-11 which can not be proven because ‘free speech’ in fact exists nowhere in the world. Except ‘off the grid’, as it wre.
The media-corporate-gov’t nexii (?sp) are not a function of Left and Right, though many of the most powerful people in the world do enjoy the spectacles of all the Internet sword-fighting, I’m sure.
Are people like Soros and Van Jones power-hungry socialists? Well, socialist hypocrites perhaps, and in that way the conservative oligarchs are more honest. But make no mistake, it is about power, first and foremost, and that includes ramping up Big Brother.
The more this site goes the FPM route and raises Conservatism to the level of Theological Belief, the less justice it does itself.
Most political ideologues in fact are practicing politics are religion and metaphysics. Which is exactly where they go off track…
I disagree with your view of the Bush doctrine of democratization of the ME. It has nothing to do with ‘messianic’ promotion of American constitutional concepts but with a clear understanding of the origin of Islamic fascism.
Islamic fascism is rooted in tribalism, an ancient mode of governance that sets up one sect/clan as authoritative over the rest of the population who have no economic or political power. This mode privileges the group continuity of old ways and constrains individual questions and deviation. It is well-suited to a no-change, no-growth, non-industrial small rural population, but it is disastrous in a multi-million industrial urban society that must enable growth and change. The fact that the ME nations have tried to maintain this mode, denying the emergence of a middle class – is the root cause of Islamic fascism.
Bush’s agenda, which he defines as ‘the freedom agenda’ is discussed extensively in his book ‘Decision Points’. Its goal is to free people from these repressive infrastructures, enable a middle class to have economic and political power – which he feels will end and marginalize Islamic fascism and secure the safety of peoples.
Nothing to do with ‘messianism’ but with a hard, cold observation of political and economic infrastructures.
Hate to break the news to you, but that arsenic microbe thing has already been pretty thoroughly debunked.
you hate vdh because he has your number
he knows you guys better than you know yourselves
and he is unafraid to tell you the whole – ugly – truth about things
i’d love to see a list of ALL of the people – that have read and can understand hanson – that hate him
that would be enlightening
i am sure that you guys would burn him at the stake if you could – only proving what he points out
O dear God, you’re wading into George Lakoff territory. Get the tin foil! Ascribing politics to genetics is bad enough when the Left does it; let’s not repeat their idiocy.
If you really want to know where socialists come from, read “Heaven On Earth” by Joshua Muravchik.
Openness is one of the five personality factors. It correlates with schizotypy, traits similar to schizophrenia. These are:
perceptual illusions, vague and metaphorical speech,
paranoia and seeing connections between unrelated things,
artistic creativity, new religous movements (green, new-age),
magical thinking, suspectablity to cults, poor grasp of reality.
So this liberal DRD4 gene is an indicator of mental illness (personality disorders, all the more serious disorders).
Scripture explains this dilemma. At Jn.3.19-20 we read:”And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their works were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the Light, and cometh not to the Light, lest his works should be reproved.”
Liberals love evil and hate good. They rejoice in chaos and destruction and despise logic and sound evidence. False pride and their affinity for wrongdoing preclude their repentance. They will not cease and desist from their insane charades because they have become inherently evil by persevering in the doing of evil over long periods of time. The greek word, PHUSIS can refer to an inherent state or to an acquired state of being. Context tells us which, and in the political context the latter is to be preferred. Liberalism is exemplified in pride, anger, greed, gluttony, envy, lust and sloth; selfishness in synopsis. When the need for instant gratification is coordinated with the inability to acknowledge ones fallibility,(inadequate self-image), we get Hitlers, Stalins and Obamas; antisocial personalities, ie, sociopaths; psychopaths.
Liberals are aptly labelled antisocial personalities because their programs and proposals are, in fact, anti social.Kill babies. Promote sex perversion. Facilitate destruction of the family unit. Ruin the economy and plunge succeeding generations into poverty and a national debt which can never be repaid. Reduce our defense capabilities while enhancing the military power of our sworn enemies. Promoting that international criminal conspiracy called Islam, the leaders of which have long loudly proclaimed their intentions to destroy both Israel and the United States by force and/or artifice. Open our borders to hordes of America haters and their social dependents. Ignore the Rule of Law and do as they please, imposing controls of many sorts on the citizenry. Turn this planet into a physical Hell for all but their own elite. And lie. Liberals are constitutionally incapable of fixing their mouths to tell the truth.To them facts mean nothing. They will invent their own, thank you! Logic defeats their scrambled “thinking”, so it must be discarded in favor of, “I feel that…”.Early on they evacuate from their minds the notion that one day they must answer for their conduct to an omnipotent, omniscient God. Then, as self-identified chance collocations of subatomic particles, they have no inherent value or purpose and are freed to , like crazed children, smash all the toys they may find. And we let them vote.
Where did Is it right to be mean spirited greedy and uncaring about the follow humans that live in the same country that you do? is that really a leftist. or maybe we have a new Nazi party that’s as EVIL AND THE ONE GERMANY HAD IN THE 1930s.
Arnold, you are a victim of the false notion that Hitlerism was a right wing phenomenon.
The word Nazi comes from the name of his party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Does that sound conservative to you?
The Nazi’s fought in the streets with the Communists and Socialists for control of the ‘proletariat’. They were at the extreme end of big government parties, and believed that government had the right to deprive citizens of all rights and even kill them. What party in our country today is the big government party?
Stalin and Hitler together started the Second World War, and in fact both were national socialists.
Both Stalin and Hitler were anti-Semites, and murdered Jews. Which party today in this country harbors outright anti-Semites?
Even in the thirties, a most violent hater of big business who was planning to run for president in 1936 was Senator Huey Long, certainly a man of the left. And who were his allies? Gerald L K Smith and Father Coughlin, both noted anti-Semites.
Yet you consider small government conservatives to be a Nazi like threat.
Wake up!
WTF? Really David? Really? REALLY?
After linking liberals to aliens, you put up a picture of E.T! When there were so many *evil* aliens to choose from – Jabba the Hutt, a Klingon, a Borg, the alien from Alien, the little kids from Village of the Damned, the Twilight Zone “It’s A Cook Book!” aliens, the War of the Worlds octopii aliens – and you put up nice gentle human friendly E.T!
Point illustration FAIL!
Where do leftists come from?
David, surely you are of the age where this was taught in “health class”, right?
A leftist man (putz) meets up with a leftist woman who has a vagenda.
He burns the American flag, she burns her bra, and by the light of that fire they hop into bed and admire The View.
Nine months later a little leftist lets out his first screams and doesn’t stop for over seven decades.
Might as well just say … Canada!
Well done! Actually, they usually stop screaming a whole lot sooner when the they get their way. Because they’re usually the first to get their ‘nine grams’ in the back of the head in some dank basement. Those they empower have absolutely no use for them.
Sinful conduct is a matter of choice; not genetic. If not, we are wrong to punish criminal conduct. If men are born totally depraved,(they are not), they cannot help themselves and it is not fair to execute or imprison them for their depredations, no matter how terrible.
But men are able to choose; and so responsible for their conduct.
Liberals, who construe morality a human invention, cannot concur.
Sin latent in the human heart –> rebellion + greed + pride + ignoring the evil that needs restraint and that is locked within humankind –> assuming God’s place in trying to perfect human society and the human being –> socialism, communism and liberalism –> enforcement of the big lie that socialism, communism and liberalism actually work –> death
The Apostle Paul (“the wages of sin is death”) and Solzhenitsyn (the “big lie” of Communism) are each worth 100 molecular biologists in understanding this one.
@Dwight – you seem to be in the “big lie” stage. Where did Jesus say that government is the means to put his program in place? The motto, “Change the world, start with yourself!” is much closer to what he said. And, I might add, “… with your own money first.”
Basically, it boils down to the fundamental basis of man – is he basically good or basically evil. The Bible tells us man is a fallen creature, that only by the grace of God does he do good. Socialism, on the other hand, believes that man is basically good and in the collective, we will do good things together. Bad deeds are aberrations that are smoothed out by the collective ethos.
Of course, history has born out the inherent evil time and again. This is why Christianity is singled out from all religions for special attack. The concepts of moral sin and personal responsibility- hallmarks of Christianity are anathema to Socialism, where the only sin is sin against the people (state).
The reason liberals continue to believe in liberalism iks because they have rejected the
Judeo-Christian paradigm. To them there is no other explanation, so all contrary evidence is reasoned away.
This is exactly what they would accuse the Right of thinking. That’s one thing I can’t figure about the Left. For all their supposed intellectual curiosity, they really have very little introspection.
Mr Solway,
As a former (21 years) resident of San Francisco, I have had extensive experience with these folks and all satire aside, I would invite you to explore the world of Barbara Marciniak, at http://www.pleiadians
.com. Barbara channels the messages of “ascended masters” located in the pleiades galaxy, and at first I thought this may be the source of the meteor shower you hypothesize, but no…in her schema, the life forms that descend are lizard-like forms and they actually create the conservative movement, resisting the efforts of the “masters” she channels to bring earth into the New Age. Ms Marciniak is quite popular in San Francisco and lectures there often. My wife and I have a friend that augments her ideological points with references to the pleiadians. The acceptance of this sort of thing is a testimony to the
corrosive effect of post-modernism in academia. If all values are relative, and one narrative is as good as the next, you are ready to
open yourself to the “truth” of the ascended masters and you don’t need a degree in cosmobiology to explain it. Barbara will explain it all to you…they know what they want, they just have to figure how to do it.
The “Left” are the heirs of Maximilian Robespierre, who sat on the far left of the National Assembly during the French Revolution. See the speech he gave in February 1794 justifying the use of terror to enforce virtue.
I’ve argued things over and over with a lefty friend. I began thinking he just sees things differently. Finally I realized: He sees things with different eyes.
Rather than despair, I’ve redoubled my determination to do whatever I reasonably can to keep these people out of power.
Precisely my experience. Mine claimed he was fiscally conservative but socially liberal until I pointed out he was trying to have his cake and eat it too. Nice enough guy and well-educated but one whose years as a government bureaucrat isolated him from the way an economy actually works. For every database or fact I’d present, he’d parry with a remark like, “They have no benefits.” (for twenty-somethings). Another told me, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” When I showed this latter there was no chance she’d have ended up homeless, she looked gobsmacked.
It is their conceit to imagine that we are all the same and that the lucky ones must look out for those who are unlucky – as though luck has any substantive explanatory role.
Killers Without Conscience and Their Enablers
So how do the worst get on top? How do these killers, these monsters, acquire what they should never in a million years get their hands on – the apparatus of the state? They’ve got help, and lots of it. They are Antonio Gramsci’s heirs and disciples. The are the Left and Left’s “useful idiots”. Here’s a little bit of their background:
1. Wishful thinkers – don’t these people just wish that the world was a nicer place? If only everyone were just as smart, just as clever, just as enlightened as they think they are, it surely would be, wouldn’t it? Wishful thinkers and those like them aren’t really up to doing the heavy lifting to achieve their utopia, but they surely do vote and applaud into power those whom they believe will usher in the New Age. The trouble is, those they empower typically have an agenda that doesn’t quite match that of our dreamers. And no one is more surprised than they are when it all goes bad and the body count – their body count – mounts up.
2. Coercive utopians – they have a lot in common with our wishful thinkers, but they just know that no one is going to do what it takes to usher in the new millennium, the New Man or that immanent eschaton. But there’s a problem: put the sort of totalitarian regime necessary to achieve those goals – that is, socialism / communism and all of its imperatives and consequences – right out on the table in front of everyone, and no sane individual would buy it. Who would actively and openly cheer for the impoverishment and enslavement of humankind and the mass murder of those who won’t go along with it? The hard Left, that’s who, and they’ve said as much – but we’ll get to that shortly.
Here’s where we the practiacl application of Gramsci’s doctrine of the ‘long march through the intuitions.’ The hallmark of coercive types is that they tend to be fairly bloody-minded. For example, Billy Ayers and his wrecking crew thought that once they achieved power would have to slaughter over 25 million Americans too stubborn to toe their utopian socialist line – that was back in the 1970’s so we’re actually giving 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 been worth it in order to achieve socialism. So – is a little slaughter and a ‘re-education camp’ or two not too much a price to pay for heaven on Earth? Not for the coercive utopians.
3. Lord of the flies – now we’re at the top of the pyramid of power, and those driven by that insatiable will to 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 one to prove it. Now, let’s say that again – 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. Communism, socialism, the immanent eschaton – who cares? Ideology as such is only the particular horse they ride in pursuit of absolute control of mankind.
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,’ or immanentizing that eschaton or ushering in that New Age, 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 most 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 our modern so-called ‘progressives’ in all of this? Here’s my question for a proud ‘progressive’: 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, in which camp do you suppose you belong? Are you a cynical but clever elitist intoxicated by the will to power? Are you on to the deception but support it out of pathological spite and/or self-hatred? 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?
Finally, here’s a purely practical consideration for those on the Left: you may want to re-think your premises, because you are not likely to survive the consequences of the very bad ideas you’re advocating. History is my witness.
Dear David Solway,
I’m glad you asked the question where leftist come from. I have long know the answer. Leftists, along with attorneys, used cars salesmen, insurance salesmen, and politicians are the result of anal sex. No more need be said.
Homosexual anal sex. Thats about the only thing that can explain Nasty Piglosi, Obama and the Ds in Congress today. No wonder there so hard up to get rid of DODT.
It is simpler than all that. Socialism is our nature, the nature of primitive man: “A solitary man would soon have been a dead man”, saw Hayek. Civilization represents our learned ability to step beyond our instincts. Civilization can be learned only slowly, and unlearned quickly–instincts cannot disappear. So socialism is always in wait. It requires not a bit of thought, or experience. Experience is anathema to it.
Socialism is a meme. Like some virus infections it is especially virulent and so jumps easily to another host. Unlike the free-market meme, it therefore has not been forced to adapt to its host in order to survive. The meme is found in high levels in the young, because it is especially prevelant among educators, who are artificially protected from the deleterious effects of the meme. Similarly other governmental institutions act as protective insulators, and allow the meme to grow and spread. But we know what the final result of highly virulent diseases that kill thier hosts. Eventually the population is wiped out.
Very droll, DS. But seriously, the key to understanding the left is to understand Gnosticism. The left does not belong to an alternative biosphere; but it desperately *wants* to belong to an alternative biosphere. In other words, Utopian leftism is the inability to come to terms with certain hard existential truths, a fear or denial of a necessarily conflict-ridden human reality that is so fierce that it dreams endlessly of decapitating the false deity who rules this world, so as to return to the True Creation that is out there, somewhere.
Is socialism/communism what life is like on their home planet?
I think some distinction between liberals and leftists should be made. A substantial portion of the liberals I know are kind people, truly grieved by fellow human suffering; they are just mistaken as to how to go about solving the problems. The benefit of having an adequate number of them on the other side of the scale is that of helping us conservatives stay closer to reasonable moderation at our end of the balance; every good in man is subject to the weakness of its strengths.
Giving the hard right total political power for long enough would give rise – on its extreme edge – to the emergence of robber barons, the sort that once paid people $3.00 a week to work 12 hour days under hideous conditions while the barons built palaces like Biltmore Estate here in North Carolina.
The follies of liberals I don’t need to describe; our post ’60s culture reflects those a-plenty. Whereas leftism… that road leads to Lenin-world. Leftism is the extreme opposite of capitalist robber barons. They may tempt with the carnal aspects of ‘Brave New World’, but what we’d end up with would be ’1984′. The elites would, of course, live in secret palaces.
(This is all a general sort of diagnosis, mind you. I make no claims as to knowing what I’m talking about.)
Some very good analysis here in the comments. All theorizing and deconstruction aside however the fact remains that sooner or late we just have to kill a bunch of them. They will force us to it. Either that or we surrender to their chains. One or the other is inevitable. The time draws neigh.
Sun Tzu tells us that we must know both ourselves and our enemies. The discussion here is gratifying, because it’s evident that no few of us have given this considerable thought.
But you are correct. The path of the Left is the road to slaughter, enslavement and misery. History bears incontrovertible witness to that fact.
The other great lesson of modern history is that there is usually only one way to stop these monsters. And that is to kill many, many of them. They enjoy it; we will do so only because we want to live as we wish, to prosper in peace and to pass this legacy of liberty on to our children.
If only the truth were so simple. Einstein once said, “A theory should be simple, but not simplER…” Anyways, to dispel the ignorance of our Rightosphere, Newton and I have already determined that Leftists are made of something the physicsts call ‘anti-matter’. That explains their. Just like matter/anti-matter connundrum, usual matter is prevalent, while anti-matter occurs only in the most expensive of the government-sponsored labyrinths of ‘accelerator physics’, and still is VERY damaging to the regular matter—it actually annihilates the regular matter, leaving only a spray of very toxic radiation. Similarly, the anti-human (the scientific name of Leftists) are always in minority, and specialize in annihilating any humans and life they touch(anti-life being the other name for a Leftist popular in scientific literature), and unlike truth and reason, the usual tools of humans, these anti-humans use falsehood and anti-reason (also called lunacy in common parlance). There is only one way to get rid of this anti-human contingent—by directly interacting with them and annihilating them. Surely some humans will be annihilated too, but the remaining humans can then go on living life without the danger of perennially having to put up with them. Now, as one commentator has observed, an unusually large number of Leftists, seem to come from France or thereabouts … Indeed, the first true known occurrence of Leftists on record hails from france—they were the famous Jacobins and the Conspiracy of the Equals. However, there is also another theory about their origins, and this time it is ethnic — it seems an inordinately large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews were among the intellectual vanguard that brought Leftism of age (in Europe). It has been suggested that this is because the 2000 years of persecution of the Jews by europeans, and the consequent “Existential Angst” that these specific Jewish gentlemen grew up with, which caused them to become inherently anti-life, anti-human, anti-reality, anti-truth, and, in the final analysis, just big fat ANTI … Now, there seems to be some historical evidence to support this theory, but it does not explain, for example, the evil ones such a Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Stalin, Obama, Hitler (yep, despite all semantic acrobatics of the Leftists, this gentleman was a quintessential Leftist)… There are other hypotheses, too. For example, it was once suggested that Leftists devolved from [spineless] molluscs such as jellyfish or slugs etc., or from cockroaches or scorpions or some such arthropods … While the former would explain utter lack of spine (!), or utter lack of comprehension of real dimensions of the world, or their legendary persistence or their dark visciousness resepctively, no single hypothesis seems to explain ALL the characteristics of Leftist. So, again, as i and Newton have already determined, the Leftists are made up of anti-matter, and hence are all those sterling things that characterize them — in essence, they are the annihilator of regular things … life, humans, humanity, culture, reason, truth, facts, history, economies, countries, spirituality, literature, philosophy … everything. Annihilation of things is a Leftist’s primary raison d’etre, his essence. Of course most garden variety ‘liberals’ are just deluded fools who can’t tell their mouth from their more obscure orifice, and adopt Leftism merely out of fashion, prestige, and/or giving themselves *some* allgedly lofty reason to exist, e.g., save the planet, or save humanity, or ‘brave new world’, or ‘compassion’, or ‘goody-two-shoes’ or ‘bleeding heart’ and other such semantic paradoxes they attach themselves to … These clueless constitute some 95% of the “liberals”, the remaining 5% being the true anti-matter, anti-human freaks of nature … If you want to defeat the Left, decapitate it, separate it from this medusa-head 5%, and you will be done.
you write: “However, there is also another theory about their origins, and this time it is ethnic — it seems an inordinately large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews were among the intellectual vanguard that brought Leftism of age (in Europe). It has been suggested that this is because the 2000 years of persecution of the Jews by europeans, and the consequent “Existential Angst” that these specific Jewish gentlemen grew up with, which caused them to become inherently anti-life, anti-human, anti-reality, anti-truth, and, in the final analysis, just big fat ANTI”
-first, you will find Jews disproportionately represented in many intellectual (even conservatives ones) and commercial fields; the reason for this is that the Jewish experience produced people who were well suited to adapting to modern demands for uprooted, entrepreneurial thinkers and doers. IN some sense, in the modern world, we all become more “Jewish” (i.e. middlemen in an expanded commerce in things and signs), as do most political ideologies.
-second, many Jews from the old Pale of Settlement did of course become leftists. But the poorest among them were probably the least likely to do so. The poorest were most likely to go to America (as opposed to becoming urban Eastern Europeans or Zionists) and work hard. It was the children and grandchildren who thus grew up in relative comfort who were more likely to become serious leftists.
-third, many secular “Jews” rose to prominence in the Soviet state because after the old middle class and aristocracy was violently eliminated, there were few people left with the intellectual skills to fill the jobs the new state needed filled. Jews were disproportionately likely to have those skills.
-fourth, leftism provided a meeting place where secularizing Jews could interact with non-Jews, as did Freemasonry in the ninteenth century. Leftism was a modernizing force, for better or worse. Where Jews could find a place serving the old order, as in the Austro-Hungarian state, they did that too; but such opportunities were relatively few.
-fifth, leftism no doubt appeals to those with resentments. But we all have resentments in spades (much of the left, including the Jewish left, was antisemitic because it opposed what it saw as the growth of Jewish commercial values in the modern world: leftism, in a perverse confusion, can also appeal to “conservative” anti-modernists who romanticize a primitive communism). Anyway, leftism also appealsed to those who were looking for a secular application of a Jewish world view that privileges a religion of works. The imperative to “repair the world” led many to the left. But this, we now know, was the easy way out and wasn’t really a way out because it didn’t often repair the world but made things worse. IF you want to pose resentment of 2000 years of persecution as an explanation for Jewish leftism, you need also ask if that persecution would not have also produced those who refused to take the easy way out. And if you find that many who clung to a more conservative or realistic understanding of Jewish religious imperatives also strongly resented 2000 years of persecution, you might have to conclude that those who took the easy way out were the relatively better off who had not been so marked by truly hard experiences that might have been more likely to lead one to affirm a more Orthodox Jewish messianism over a false and fanciful Marxist one. But that’s just a hypothesis.
In any case, my point is that you are hardly unpacking the resentments and loves that constitute modernity in repeating that resenful allegation, if only to question it. To my mind, leftist Utopianism looks relatively more Christian than Jewish in its basic forms. There are many reasons to complain about Jews who chose the false religion of Marxism over real Christianity or real Judaism. But when you blame Marxism on Jewishness, you are really just continuing the antisemitic tradition of finding something wrong with the Jew no matter what he tries to do to fit in. For two millennia Christians called on Jews to leave their fathers’ faith and assimilate. Leftist Jews went further than most Jews ever did to try to assimilate to a (residually) Christian world view. Unfortunately, it was a false variant of that religion for the most part and so it failed historically. The Communists themselves soon enough turned openly antisemitic. And so today we have neoconservatives. Does this mean post-leftist neoconservative Jews are just responding to 2000 years of persecution in becoming neoconservatives? Or can we give them credit for actually thinking that their new philosophy might better serve what is hopeful and loving in man and not resentful? No doubt many COmmunist Jews thought they were serving the forces of love and not of resentment. It just didn’t turn out that way in the end.
a rel patriot doesn’t declare war on his own people and government unless it is corrupt like the last presidents way
Isaiah 5:20
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Isaiah 5:20 captures the heart and mind of progressives. They have turned the world as we know it on its head. Abortion on demand, sodomite marriage, worshipping the creation while denying the Creator, destruction of the family through government intervention and social engineering, devolution of the public school system, no moral absolutes, United States (bad) vs. totalitarian regimes of all stripes (good), personal responsibility (bad) vs. eat and drink for tomorrow we die (good), protect the criminal and toss the victim to the wolves…
I won’t say I hate progressives. I will say I will never understand their penchant for non-stop hatred for, and the destruction of, all things American. Goodness, if you hate your country that much, MOVE. It isn’t until they live under another flag will they learn how great America is, warts and all.
Leftists have their own religion, based on the principles of supereme cowardice and indolence with messengers who are likes of Gandhi who had three deaf, blind and mute monkeys as ideals. Despite of several failures, they live in a delusion of evangelizing all the inherently “wild beasts” to so called, their idea of “secular” principles, fantasizing lofty hypothesis ignoring all ground reality. They follow what is more of “perverted-secularism” or “Sickularism”, as their careers rely upon nothing more than appeasing the Red-Green Alliance(Islamo-Communist Alliance), to convince them of being “secular” till suicide. This ends up in benefit of Red-Green Alliance coz they know how to use Leftists in-Democracy against-Democracy well. The Red-Green Alliance knows how to handle each other well as in Pak1stan and China. (Good Fences make good Neighbors). Secularists might have apparent boundaries with communists coz its a clear political ideology. But they go confused in front of Islam which is more of Political Ideology at fundamentals, sugar coated into a religion – peaceful till Majority or till in-compliant to its fundamentals.
I rather lean toward the genetic explanation. In my view, intellectual mendacity, deconstructionist antinomianism, aggressiveness and generalized hostility to the precepts of civil society are merely tactical behaviors that support what is the essential characteristic of the Left — obsessive desire for control. If ever a gene be isolated to explain the phenomenon, I think it should be named — borrowing from Augustine — libido dominandi.
How about a multi-million-year-spanning evolutionary trait common to all mammals commonly referred to as the “pack” in which members looked out for each other and provided for each other for the sake of the survival of the entire pack, even going so far as to ostracize those members that did not contribute to the common good?
Oh, right, I forgot. You guys don’t believe in evolution.
Actually, its not that hard. At birth, God removed there brains and replaced them with dead 9 volt batteries, constantly leaking acid. Take Howard Dean , for instance. One look at weird Howard and the doctor slapped Howies momma for producing a defective product.
A tempting explanation – but beware that liberals may still be far weirder than halomonadaceae: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i50/8850news6.html
I am my college professor’s favorite pupil. He calls himself a “philosophical progressive” (whatever that means) and he tells wonderful stories about Mao Zedong and how deeply spirtual it is to become a Progressive. He told us not to pay any attention to those horrible rumors that the Conservatives preach to us about Brother Mao’s murder of 60 million. I know it’s a lie, that’s what a girl on Facebook said. After all, President Obama had a Mao ornamate hanging fron the White House Christmas tree, right on cool. After learning all of these new political ideas, I went out and got the latest Che Guevara t-shirt. It is so rad. My professor went to Harvard like Obama did so I know he loves Che too. My professor said Hollywood helped to revive another leftist martyr but my uncle (who was in the Army) said Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean and that I should read to try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer. What ever that means, later dude.
Beyond Politics: Removing the Progressive Drag on America
This fight requires much more than a few moments in a voting booth.
September 11, 2010 – by Jeff Perren
[TEXT DELETED] Roy–You’re welcome to link to articles and posts that reinforce a point you’d like to make in the comments, or to do a brief blockquote of a key paragraph or so, but pasting in that huge of a portion from an article could well be a copyright violation, and isn’t fair to journalist who wrote the piece. Thanks–Ed Driscoll
A Conservative and a Democrat were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. The Conservative gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his business for a job. He then took twenty dollars out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.
The Democrat was very impressed, and when they came to another homeless person, he decided to help. He walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. He then reached into the Conservative’s pocket and got out twenty dollars. He kept $15 for administrative fees and gave the homeless person five.
Now you understand the difference between Conservatives & Democrats.
Top 10 Things Overheard in the White House During Obama’s First Term
10. “What should I do next, Senior Chavez?”
9. “Does a royal cape come with the title “Anointed One”?
8.”Honestly, Barack! A teleprompter in the bedroom?”
7. “I’m not sure a Che Guevara wall flag in the Oval Office is a good idea, Mr. President.”
6. “Heads, we take over the auto industry. Tails, we nationalize the oil industry.”
5. “Apology list: Iraq –check. Saudi Arabia – check. Palestine – check. Syria…”
4. “Canada’s health care system is a perpetual money-sucking vortex that has resulted in bloated bureaucracy, demanding unions, longer wait times, and a steady exodus of their best and brightest professionals out of the country. Finally we’ve found the perfect template for Obamacare!”
3. “Sean Penn, line two.”
2. “Have they chosen someone to play me in the movie yet?”
1. “Did CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Pravda America (MSNBS) and David Letterman get our “secret” message?