ARE LEFTISTS ALL THE SAME?

I do from time to time get emails from Leftists -- mostly consisting of screams of rage and abuse. I am sure that most conservative bloggers will know what I mean. Amid the abuse and insults, however, there is the odd glimmer of intelligent comment and the chief such comment seems to be that Leftists are not all the same. American "liberals" in particular sometimes claim not to be Leftists at all! ("If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then ..."). It is certainly my view that the motivations for Leftism vary widely and I have a large article on the net which goes through those various possible motivations. And the article emphasizes that the motivations and thinking of those who vote for Left-leaning political parties at election time can be very different from the motivations and thinking of Leftist intellectuals. And it is overwhelmingly the thinking of Leftist intellectuals and preachers of Leftism that interests me. They are the ones who get their hands on the levers of power if they win an election. Even among leftist intellectuals, however, there seems to be a variety of motivations -- from the naively idealistic at one extreme to the elitist haters who want all power, success and fame for themselves at the other extreme.

To understand Leftism, however, it seems essential to me that one NOT accept the Leftist's own account of what his/her motivation is. In the case of the naive idealist, the account may be fair and accurate but in the case of the ruthless lovers of power (Stalin and the Communists anyone?) it would clearly be foolish to do so. Lies and dishonesty are a necessary subterfuge for the power-seeking haters so we have to judge them by deeds, not words. The problem, is, of course, that one can not usually know what sort of Leftist one is dealing with. To judge from what one can see of history and current events, hiding the most dismal motivations behind a mask of "compassion" seems to be only too commonly Leftist. So claims of humane motivations must in my view always be treated skeptically. And I do just that, of course. I assume that the Leftist I am dealing with is one of the dismally motivated kind. Sometimes I will be wrong of course. Some Leftists do move rightwards as they get older (Ronald Reagan for example) and it is my view that all of the idealistically motivated Leftists will eventually make that journey given sufficient information about the world.

So I don't think that Leftists are all the same but they have done so much evil and destruction in the world that I think we have to assume the worst of them until proved otherwise. We CERTAINLY cannot believe their own account of their thinking. And coming to realize that is an important thing for conservatives to do -- which is why I spell it out repeatedly. If you assume that the Leftist is motivated primarily by a desire to make himself look good rather than by a desire to do anybody else any good, all the shallow thinking that they come out with will become a lot more understandable. I have an extended discussion here of what Leftism is and what Leftists have in common with one-another.

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SECULARISM AND CONSERVATISM

The "church of secularism": "In the controversies surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance and the L.A. County seal, what we're seeing is an unacknowledged interreligious civil war. Centuries ago in Europe and the Middle East, intolerant faiths sought to suppress one another, erasing symbols of their rivals wherever possible. Churches were converted to mosques, their crosses removed. Synagogues were converted into churches, their Jewish symbols effaced. Today the church of secularism agitates against its rival, the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the interest of honest debate, at the very least it would be of benefit to recognize secularism for what it is: an aggressive religion competing for converts, a faith lacking the candor to speak openly of its aims."

I think the above article makes a lot of sense in that it accurately identifies the non-religious (secular) world as what Christians feel most threatened by. And in the USA the allegedly non-religious world is in fact often quite religious -- worshipping the addled creeds of Leftism. I myself am however REALLY secular in that I am a complete atheist and worship neither Jesus Christ nor Karl Marx (and many of my former academic colleagues in sociology clearly DID assign almost godlike status to old Karl). So I think it needs to be added that while some secularists (the more insecure ones in my view) do actively menace Christianity, not all secularists do and some -- such as myself -- think highly of Christianity. And secular people can CERTAINLY be conservative. For more on that see here

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ELSEWHERE

I have had Booker Rising on my blogroll for a little while now but I think it deserves special mention. It is a site by and for conservative American blacks. From its authors: "We began Booker Rising to counteract negativity, victimology, and defeatism, which is too often thrust upon black Americans by the media, schools, and so-called leaders. We're concerned about eroded values, hopes, and dreams, even though overall we're living better than ever. Booker Rising wants to help stop the sacrilegious assault of our grandparents' (and ancestors') legacy, as if little to no progress has been made and the civil rights movement was almost for naught. Inspired by Booker T. Washington's work, our website promotes self-help, education, enterprise, democracy, and society as the seeds for Black America's future. We won the civil rights movement. It's now time for Stage II: further propelling black American success in this increasingly globalized era, via our "seeds.""

Jeff Jacoby has a roundup of the good news from Iraq

Medicines are worth the price we pay: "Like other products resulting from research and creativity, medicines are really made of knowledge -- a kind of intellectual property capable of preventing and curing diseases as well as relieving the pain of a headache or hip transplant. This knowledge does not come cheap. Discovering, developing, testing, and gaining regulatory approval for new medicines is expensive, time-consuming, and risky."

Drug Prohibition: "None of these officials was able to cite any study that demonstrated the beneficial effects of drug prohibition when weighed against its costs. The leaders of the war on drugs are apparently unable to defend on rational cost-benefit grounds their 70-year-old policy, which costs nearly $10 billion per year (out of pocket), imprisons 75,000 Americans, and fills our cities with violent crime.... the period of greatest availability in the United States was the 19th century. For most of the century, opium, morphine, and cocaine were legally and cheaply available without a prescription at drugstores and grocery stores and through the mail. And yet, far from being marked by drug-crazed criminals and drug-paralyzed workers, that period was a time of unprecedented economic growth and productivity".

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights

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