Cretino-Leftism (Long but insightful philosophical treatise)

The author @ University of Edinburgh ^ | 6/27/05 | Jeffrey Ketland

[TFFKAMM]

1. The Enlightenment Left and its Enemies

 

Throughout the twentieth century, certain segments of the Left have either downplayed the horrendous crimes of, or made common cause with, totalitarian tyrannies run by the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Milosevic, Saddam, et al. In such cases, Enlightenment principles of freedom, democracy and human rights were abandoned under some sort of delusion that the regimes in question represented “anti-imperialism”, a “new civilization”, a “political spirituality”, etc. The story is, or at least should be, well-known.

 

The pages here provide a survey of how a segment of the contemporary Left has similarly lost its way, morally and intellectually. I do not mean all of the Left, by any means; and not all of those who have succumbed in one way or another to the cretinized Leftism described here have descended to the full depths of extremity. Nonetheless, Clive James is right to say that the Western intelligentsia “has gone haywire”. For how can Amnesty International, a leading human rights organization, justify its recent description of Guantanamo Bay (where the human rights of suspected terrorist detainees have not been properly respected by the United States) as the “gulag of our times”? What can one make of delusional comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany? How can people who might count themselves as being on the Left come to downplay, or ignore, the terrible human rights abuses in North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Iran and elsewhere, while magnifying and even gloating over “our” wickedness? What can one make of the likes of George Galloway, John Pilger, Tariq Ali and Arundhati Roy backing the Iraqi “resistance”, who are a stream of jihadi fascists, organized by Ba’athists? What can one make of Noam Chomsky’s description of the recent democratic elections in Iraq (in which more than eight million Iraqis participated) as a “poor joke”? [See here.]

 

To behave or think in these ways is clearly not a balanced insistence that universal principles of freedom, justice and human rights be applied to all nations, groups and individuals in equal measure. It is something more insidious.

 

There is a different, but in some ways related, phenomenon. For many decades, certain segments of the Academic Left, under a variety of radical anti-liberal influences (notably Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault) have declared war against Enlightenment rationalism and reason: science, rational inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Under a variety of banners--such as “postmodernism”, “social constructivism”, the “Strong Programme”, “the social construction of reality”, “Theory”, etc.--a legion of academic Leftists have poured outrage and scorn on the epistemological outlook of the Enlightenment, and instead defended versions of cultural and epistemological relativism. Many humanities and social science departments in our universities-- cultural studies, English and modern languages, sociology, anthropology, music, geography, teacher training, etc.--are now populated by “radicals” of one flavour or another, who appear to be united in their hatred of science, reason, logic and analytical thinking. Just five or six years ago, after Alan Sokal’s celebrated hoax and the related literature analysing and debunking these fashions, one might have expected to see these fads fade. But, if anything, the situation seems to get worse with each passing year.

 

What are we to make of all this?

More here

[E Rocc]

Isn't that name kind of redundant?

-Eric

[Regulator]

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Ayatollah Khomeini, Milosevic, Saddam,

He forgot the new kid on the block - Mugabe

[Restorer]

Kind of like "sinister leftism," eh?

[RegulatorCountry]

Kind of brings to mind the word "cretinisation," that you'll frequently find in the press, in certain European countries. France, in particular. It's funny how well they recognize the end-product of decades of leftist indoctrination in the US, but don't want it to contaminate their own cultures, leftist though they are.

[ecomcon]

All that the left has opposed since the Enlightenment becomes acceptable, as long as the obscurantists, theocrats and fascists are anti-Americans and as long as their victims aren’t Western liberals. (Nick Cohen, February 20 2005, The Observer).

Hammer, meet Nail.  

[Zero Sum]

I noticed that Alan Sokal was appropriately mentioned in the article. For those who are unfamiliar with his parody on postmodernism, it can be found, along with related material, on his website at NYU.

Papers by Alan Sokal on the "Social Text Affair"

It's certainly worth a look.

[RegulatorCountry]

LOL, the "Postmodernism Generator," check it out:

http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern

Be sure to hit refresh a few times.

[chb]

Bookmark for later.

[headsonpikes]

Thanks for the link - an excellent overview.

[A_perfect_lady]

Ayn Rand was saying this back in 1970.

[Dumb_Ox]

Just read the first three sections, and judging from that it's not worth reading the rest. I was surprised to learn he has his doctorate, since this strikes me as more as an summary by an advanced undergrad or a beginning master's student.

Convenient how he tries to classify Hobbes and Rousseau as non-Enlightenment thinkers. Totalitarianism is modernity par excellence, and many undeniably Enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltarie, were sycophants of the absolutist regimes generated by Modern philosophy, the rejection of religious authority, and the enthronement of religious tolerance this author praises. Democracy itself has retained all the absolutism of a post-medieval monarchy, only there are more people putatively in power.

A much better essay is Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism.

A key paragraph:

But to [Russell] Kirk and to the American traditionalists he inspired, liberals ultimately fail to understand the partiality of their principle. Their account of human nature excludes too much of what can be known, and is known, about the human good. Because their principle is “simple” or “reductionist,” liberals possess no “other” principle which can authoritatively limit the eventual application of their principle to all spheres of human life — this, despite their proud boast that liberalism differs in kind from all other political theories in refusing for itself a “comprehensive conception of the good.” Because, for liberalism, the public sphere is limited only by rights, which are the possession only of those great abstractions, “individuals,” the public sphere in fact extends to all human relations. The homogenization of the whole of the human world on the basis of the contract theory is the dehumanizing threat we ultimately face, made all the more dangerous by the fact that America’s political discourse has lacked any terms which would enable us to recognize the ideological or dogmatic character of liberalism.

Also, I think one must be wary of Jacobinism, an ideology for which I suspect this writer would have approving words. Jacobinism is a focus of this review of Claes G. Ryn's America the Virtuous

[Dumb_Ox]

Oh, one more recommendation: Alisdair MacIntyre's _Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry_, a collection of his Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh University, is an excellent introduction to those who think that there are fatal flaws in the Enlightenment project yet don't succumb to flimsy "postmodern" irrationalism.

[TFFKAMM]

I think there may be a distinction between Anglo-American Enlightenment thinkers (Locke, Jefferson, et al) and the Europeans, with the former being the fount of classical liberalism, and the latter being the philosophical sources of modern totalitarianism.

[Dumb_Ox]

That handy division still doesn't explain Hobbes, whose influence is everywhere even in Anglo-American Liberalism. Are you familiar with the Straussian contention that Locke himself was a closet Hobbesian?

Hume, it seems to me, is also a forerunner of the pomo relativism the author decries.

[Tribune7]

bump