"Unless one understands that leftist ideals function as a religion, one cannot understand the Left."
Precisely. I've said the same thing at great length that you just composed in so few words. My compliments to you!
Slavery was LEGAL, that didn't make it any less wrong.
Doesn't seem to line up with the liberal tendency to push the federal government to extra-Constitutional limits with cries of "It's for the children!".
bump for reading later
The Left worships ETHICS (except DNC party leaders)
The Right : MORALITY
Prager is brilliant as usual.
The man makes his point.
Since when did the left EVER RESPECT THE LAW ???? Breaking the law is how they get their agenda working...they can't do it legally.
Big Prager Bump.
If you are a member of Dennis' web site (dennisprager.com) you can download his shows and play them at your own convenience. It's the best deal on the web.
Gort
Of course this does not explain how the left argues that the Founding Fathers wrote a racist constitution biased toward landed gentry than the "people". At the time, these men were writing law, so they should venerate this group.
Likewise, the second ammendment is "law". That means very little to the left if they can get courts to over rule it.
I believe the left is arrogant and elitist and believe what ever they think should be given the force of the rule of law. In other words, they would gladly use the force of law to rule over society. Socialism and communism come to mind.
Also, that the U.S. Constitution supersedes the UN Charter.
The title's not quite accurate. It should be that the left is "legalistic." As for the law, they only respect laws to the extent that they serve to impede their political opponents.
btt
Great post Mister Sam, it explains quite a lot.
Best Regards
Sergio
"You have read it?" said Winston.
"I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it. No book is produced individually, as you know "
"Is it true, what it says?"
"A description, yes. The programme it sets forth is nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge--a gradual spread of enlightenment--ultimately a proletarian rebellion--the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that that was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletarians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know it already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent insurrection, you must abandon them. There is no way in which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.
He came closer to the bed. "For ever !" he repeated. "And now let us get back to the question of "how" and "why". You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?
Go on, speak," he added as Winston remained silent.
Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of theirs. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
"You are ruling over us for our own good", he said feebly. "You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore -"
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
"That was stupid, Winston, stupid!" he said. "You should know better than to say a thing like that."
He pulled the lever back and continued :
"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness : only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer.
"You are thinking", he said, "that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?"
He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and down again, one hand in his pocket.
"We are the priests of power", he said. "God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery ". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible ? Slavery is freedom. Alone--free--the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter--external reality, as you would call it--is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute."
For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.
"But how can you control matter?" he burst out. "You don't even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death -"
O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation--anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it.
You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."
"But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them yet."
"Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make ? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world."
"But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny helpless ! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited."
"Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness."
"But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals--mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of."
"Have you ever seen those bones, Winston ? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing."
"But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever."
"What are the stars?" said O'Brien indifferently." They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it."
Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:
"For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?"
Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false ? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.
"I told you, Winston", he said," that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression", he added in a different tone." The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"
Winston thought. "By making him suffer ", he said.
"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.
Everything else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
--1984, George Orwell
This author did a great analysis, but there are any number of laws that liberals disdain and disregard, particularly when they achieve governmental power. The 2nd amendment to the US constitution in it's entirety, and the free exercise clause of the 1st.
Except the left doesn't think the law applies to it.