The Unstoppable Left?

This is a perceptive and disturbing reflection from Robin of Berkeley, who clearly has a wealth of experience dealing with the psychology of evil and its resultant pathologies.

One caveat: there is a risk in ascribing evil intent to one's political adversaries merely because their opposition is largely of a political nature. Progressives routinely do this to conservatives, assuming that our beliefs cannot be motivated by anything other than unthinking evil. The reason they tend to do so in almost lockstep fashion is due to the collectivist character of their world view: they see others only in terms of their group affiliations and tend to project uniform characteristics upon them.

Conservatives, being individualists by nature, tend to do the opposite. That is why we as conservatives must be careful not to assume that all liberals and Progressives are motivated by impulses that are not merely uniform but evil, even if some clearly are. Not all have been so thoroughly absorbed and debased by the collectivist ideology that they are irredeemable. Quite the contrary, those of us who maintain faith in God believe that people are entirely redeemable if they can be made to turn from evil by force of reason, will and ultimately, by faith and love.

As an example, I fully expect there were some curious Progressives who turned up at Glenn Beck's rally in Washington last week, expecting to find an angry racist rabble, but who instead encountered a sea of caring, decent and kind people whose hearts were open to them as to any other. Miracles still do happen. Wherever possible, I think we ought to help them along.

andy58-in-nh said: "That is why we as conservatives must be careful not to assume that all liberals and Progressives are motivated by impulses that are not merely uniform but evil, even if some clearly are. "

I just finished John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged. I think Rand would disagree with you.

Here's a quote which I found quite perceptive:
"... you conceded it was evil to live for yourself,
but moral to live for the sake of your children.
Then you conceded that is was selfish to live for your
children, but moral to live for your community.
Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your
community, but moral to live for your country.
Now, you are letting this greatest of countries
be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth,
while you concede that it is selfish to live for your
country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe."

Rand defines it as EVIL to sacrifice self-interest which is the ultimate expression of the right to life.

What is very interesting about the above quote is that Rand recognized that liberal incrementalism required the constant adjustment of the scope of sacrifice that one must make. No matter how successfully one sacrifices, it must never me enough so that further governmental control is necessary to achieve utopia.

I could not help but notice that liberalism has moved several steps beyond where they were in Rand's time.

We have even moved through the point where humans must sacrifice all to save the animals, to the stage where even the air, water, rocks, and sand of the inert earth now have a claim to human sacrifice. One hundred million deaths is not too great a sacrifice to avoid the scourge of DDT. No amount of human safety, health, or comfort can justify even a single tarball washing up onto the beaches of the Gulf Coast.

I recommend highly the reading of Atlas Shrugged, even for those who have already read it. The relevance today is remarkably higher than even ten or fifteen years ago when I first read it.

Good post - thank you. I first read Atlas Shrugged over 30 years ago, have re-read it since, and refer to it regularly on this site, as well as The Fountainhead, both of which are nestled in the bookcase immediately behind me.

I have great admiration for Ms. Rand's work, though I do disagree with her in some areas, chiefly her rejection of all religious faith as mindless "mysticism", but also her insistence on constricting human motivation and desire in a formulaic way that sometimes caused her to overlook the richness and complexity of human life.

Nonetheless, she was exactly right about those who make self-sacrifice rather than rational self-interest their purpose and collective obedience rather than individual liberty their highest value. Many of today's "Progressives" might have stepped right out of the pages of her novels; their professed hatred of "greed" and "selfishness" is often a mask for a desire to destroy the very concept of value and thereby claim credit for what they themselves have not earned by productive effort.

I am aware however, that most people are complex creatures who act out of mixed motives: some good, some not so wonderful. Few are all one way or the other. Many are confused, especially today, given the pitiful state of public education. Additionally, I believe that faith, properly understood and practiced can and has served the cause of human freedom, as it did for nearly all of our nation's founders.

Viewed in that light, I believe that human beings all have a right to their own lives and property; and that whether our freedom is a gift from God or naturally appropriate to the lives of rational beings, it is our duty to safeguard it on behalf of ourselves and those we love.

Many on the Left today are serving a cause and a purpose they do not themselves understand. Increasingly, they deny both reason and faith in favor of a solipsistic ideology that (ironically) commits itself not to the perpetuation of the self, but to its intentional immolation through sacrificial offering. They love humanity and so hate people.

I’m not counting on Jesus ever returning. I really don’t think that any loving God actually exists. Maybe a creator of some sort but none who care about us.

The evil of the leftists, the muslims, and other assorted vermin will triumph over the world. Humanity will very slowly and painfully drive itself extinct. There is no chance of victory.

The only thing we can do is torture and exterminate as many of these vermin as we possibly can. If they are going to win then it should at least not be easy for them.

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