LEFTIST LOGIC

An email from a reader

Regarding "that good old Leftist inconsistency and opportunism" that you mentioned in your post on Darwin [November 29th.], another great example is their inconsistent stance on the "Race doesn't exist" issue. I learned this the hard way in my personal life, and it wasn't pretty.

I'm sure you're aware of the leftist claim that racial categories are nothing but social constructs with no basis in fact. Well, over a year ago I posted an essay at work that argued that race *does* exist ("Race Is a Myth?"). The next day I came to work and found that the essay had been literally torn off the wall. The minute my butt hit the seat, my boss, who is ultra-leftist, walked over to my cube and said in a quavering voice, "You want to step into my office for a minute?" He then proceeded to tell me that he'd taken down my essay because it was *racist* and violated company policy prohibiting "racial harassment"! I pointed out that merely arguing that race exists is not racist.

He countered: "Yes, but it's the first step to arguing racial superiority. First you claim that people are different and put them in separate categories. From there it's just a short step to saying this category is better or smarter than this other one, and so on..." He also claimed that the source of the essay, a Web site called *American Renaissance*, was registered as a "hate" Web site and edited by an admitted white supremacist.

I said, "But without race, how can you have 'diversity' and multiculturalism and all the other goals cherished by the left that actually *require* the existence of racial differences?" To my astonishment, he said, "Well, it's obviously situational." Situational! He continued: "For example, in the case of the California proposition that would ban recording racial information on government job applications, which we would want to oppose, clearly we would not want to say that race doesn't exist. But in other cases..." In other words, he was trying to take his *logical inconsistency* and turn it into a virtue. Basically he was saying, "When it suits our ends, we argue that race doesn't exist. Otherwise, we admit that race exists." Usually leftists are more crafty about blowing hot and cold, but in this case my boss apparently was feeling no shame. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever posted an essay at my workplace.

Another example of leftist opportunism: States' rights. If the state government is doing something they don't like, such as banning sodomy in Texas, they want the federal government to step in and declare it unconstitutional. No surprise there -- leftists love centralized control in the federal government. But if the Feds want to interfere with a state program the leftists *like* -- such as a recent environmental program in California -- look out! Suddenly the leftists are crying out in favor of "states' rights," talking like some hotblooded Southern Confederate warrior from 1861.

BTW, their overall entire ethical philosophy is built this kind of opportunistic inconsistency. They believe that morality is "relative," that there are no objective standards by which to criticize other cultures, that ethical views are matters of personal preference that cannot be decided by reasoned debate. And yet they are quick to tell you that capitalism is "evil" -- and anyone who disagrees is stupid, irrational, and backward!

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ELSEWHERE

There is a strange article by "Spengler" that chronicles the history of American Protestantism. He makes the interesting point that the descendants of the original Puritans very rapidly lapsed into secularism -- giving of course the very secular (irreligious) "Blue staters" of the North-East today. He points out that most American evangelical Protestants got that way through conversion rather than through family or community tradition. The only common cause he can find for such evangelical upwellings is the power of the Biblical story itself. With that I agree. I think that New testament Christianity is an immensely powerful and persuasive system of thought that has always burst through whatever shackles are placed upon it. It is a system of thought that has produced people who willingly suffer and die for their faith in every age. But instead of seeing American Christianity as a tribute to Biblical thought, the author arrives at the totally absurd conclusion that American Christianity is "religionless Christianity". How he leaps to that strange conclusion totally escapes me, I am afraid. I don't even know what he means by such strange language.

The real story of Nazi's Harvard visit: "At a conference on the Holocaust at Boston University last Sunday, Stephen H. Norwood, a historian at the University of Oklahoma, claimed that Harvard University was 'complicit in enhancing the prestige of the Nazi regime' and cited the 'welcome' given to the Nazi publicist Ernst Hanfstaengl when he attended his 25th reunion in 1934. But a close examination of the Hanfstaengl affair reveals that the university and its president, James Bryant Conant, rejected Hanfstaengl's advances; it was Harvard students and alumni who embraced him. The real story is more shocking than Norwood's flawed reconstruction in revealing the common anti-Semitism of the time. ... On the charge of coddling Nazis, Harvard University has nothing to apologize for. The blindness of many of its students and alumni to the Nazi threat unfortunately reflected general American attitudes."

Father's rights making some progress: "Bolstered by their recent ballot-initiative victory, Holstein and others are filing a bill next week in the State House calling on judges to begin with the presumption of shared custody. ''I walked into court believing we were a society that had worked hard toward gender equality," Holstein said, recalling his divorce proceedings. ''Then I began to see all these attitudes running counter to that.""

Charles Kupchan was member of the National Security Council under the Clinton administration. He says: "one side's terrorist is another side's freedom fighter, and it's difficult in reality to distinguish one type of event from another, because one has sympathy for the causes" [Sympathy for people who behead welfare workers? Sympathy for people who blow up children attending a Bar Mitzvah? Is there no end to Leftist moral corruption?]

Interesting that Fox TV accepted a pro-homosexual advertisement but CBS and NBC would not. So who is "homophobic" now?

Nathan Tabor has written an article advocating that English should be declared the sole official language of the USA.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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