David Horowitz:
“...........Ever since abandoning the utopian illusions of the progressive cause, I have been struck by how little the world outside the left seems to actually understand it. How little those who have not been inside the progressive mind are able to grasp the cynicism behind its idealistic mask or the malice that drives its hypocritical passion for “social justice.”
No matter how great the crimes progressives commit, no matter how terrible the futures they labor to create, no matter how devastating the human catastrophes they leave behind, the world outside the faith seems ready to forgive their “mistakes” and to grant them the grace of “good intentions.” .......
............But they are lying. When they defend racial preferences now, for example, a principle they denounced as “racist” and fought against as “civil rights” activists then, even they must know it.
The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity, and often, therefore, without realizing that they are. The necessity for lying arises because it is the political lie that gives their cause its life.
Why, if you were one of them, for example, would you tell the truth? If you were serious about your role as part of humanity’s vanguard, if you had the knowledge (which others did not), that would lead them to a better world, why would you tell them a truth they could not “understand” and that would only servie to hold them back?
If you believed that others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as part of a “vanguard.” You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the same horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the army of the saints.
That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a redeemer. To feel anointed. To be among the elect. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism of all.
That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in the process. That is why they don’t care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than any injustice they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their “mistakes,” why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth............”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Progressive%20Narcissism.htm
Great article, and so true. Thanks!
Marking thanks.