House of Eratosthenes

Leftism provides many of the same comforts that religion does without the expectation of personal sacrifice. Its adherents can feel that they’re caring for the “least of these” because they vote for policies that empower the government to offer more welfare to the poor. It is a lazy form of compassion, and it is appealing to those who want to pat themselves on the back without having to voluntarily spend of their own time, energy or money.
:
While leftism may not require personal responsibility, generosity or morality, it does demand everything of its devotees. It aims to conform the mind, the heart and the soul fully to its agenda. There is no room in leftism for disagreement on abortion, gender, sexuality, immigration, race or economics. All reasoning must be guided by intersectionality. All thoughts must be centered on some vague notion of social justice. There is no tolerance for defection.
:
Leftism is not just against traditional religion; it has replaced it. It is its own religion. And, like all religions, it excludes adherence to any competing value system. It is its religious nature that has made its believers so fiercely defensive. It is why they cannot stand disagreement.

Someone is trolling the leftists on Quora — again — probably because it’s easy to do. (It’s not me.) “Why are democrats and liberals considered leftists?” Interesting perspectives are to be found here.

In political science, leftism is the disposition to optimize for thriving in safe environments, where rightists are disposed to optimize for survival in dangerous environments. Planting perfectly edible corn in the ground is a leftist undertaking (it will grow and increase a hundredfold!) while the rightist urge is to eat it now and be on the lookout for tigers lurking in the foliage.

Of course, ‘left’ and ‘right’ are relative terms, not absolute ones. Left of what? Right of whom? The American corporate/Clintonite left is, by and large, to the economic right of most of the rightists in Europe, and economically to the right of even the mainstream Republicans of the 1980s.

There’s some truth to this, but it’s easy to see how wrong this is because overall, we grow corn and other staples in our red states. Where leftism thrives, nothing is produced except crackpot psychology theories, and high-tech gadgets for playing games and looking at porn. The gadgetry, as I’ve speculated previously, had to have been built by someone who didn’t think like a lib — at the very least, suspending the dead-end daydreaming while there was work that had to be done.

The part I find to have merit is the part that fixates on building the perfect environment. Leftists maintain a maniacal obsession over this. They’re not quite so keen on fulfilling the dead-tree definition of liberalism, their favorite part of it that has to do with welcoming change and embracing the future. Quite to the contrary, they’re constantly bellowing at us “Not yet, not yet, we don’t have the perfect environment yet. No one can go forward because we found someone still left behind.”

When The Real God blesses you with a lifespan approaching a full century, and you burn it all away on “Keep waiting, and force everyone else to keep waiting, until my imaginary oppressed people manage to catch up with us”; you can’t claim to be in favor of progress. Well you CAN. But only falsely.

Leftism’s god is a jealous god.

Cut the Flow Today being the day of mourning for George H. W. Bush, I’m hearing and seeing lamentations about our bygone era of civility, and wondering what we can do to get it back. “Stop arguing about politics!” seems to be the favored answer. Seems to me we tried that already; generations and generations of kids raised in schools and households where politics, sports and religion were not to be discussed. Because it leads to fighting, doncha know…

But then a funny thing happened. Kids my age, and younger, were also raised to recognize BadThink when & where we found it, and not sit by in silence, but instead rise up, call it out, confront it. Pardon me for saying so, but the people who taught us that were idiots. They envisioned a false-reality that never, or very seldom, existed. We’d be out walking on our peregrinations and overhear someone say “Black people steal a lot of stuff” or “Those ni**ers are no good” and we would confront the person engaging in this BadThink, shunning bigotry and intolerance into non-existence. We-ell…what happened was that we had to embiggen the definitions of bigotry. Today “I’m not quite so sure about same sex marriage” qualifies. “Kavanaugh is telling the truth” qualifies. “Don’t wreck health insurance for everybody else” qualifies.

Us grown-up children, good-thinkers, are to confront this BadThink where we find it. And play the “This argument’s not over until it’s over the way I like” game.

But so many among us were never taught how to argue. So many among us grew up in “Stop talking about politics, there’s cheesecake!” households. And simply do not know how to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting it. Desperately want to go through the experience of freely and sincerely exchanging ideas in a true dialogue, while maintaining respect for the opposing view and the person holding it — but don’t know how.

That’s the real reason we’re so contentious lately. It’s real. But it’s artificial. We created this, over time. We didn’t know where it would ultimately lead, but we were conscious of each step we took.

The jealous god of leftism is a hormonal rush. It isn’t thought at all. It’s the rush the liberal feels from confronting. We compound the existing sin when we acquiesce, offering up without resistance the apology or policy change demanded, just to avoid a little temporary awkwardness. If you resist, there is awkwardness, but it’s the responsible thing to do. And there follows a bit of enlightenment. The virtue-signaler stumbles around for a bit, not knowing what to do, like the dog that caught the car. I recommend anyone who has never tried it, do so at the earliest opportunity, partly to go through the experience. But mostly because, if the resistance doesn’t happen, there’s so much harm done, the effects of which may not be felt for years, but may last an entire lifetime.

Don’t apologize when there’s no apology due. Don’t feed the monsters. It makes bigger monsters.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Religion of LeftismWednesday, December 5th, 2018

The Religion of Leftism
Wednesday, December 5th, 2018