......It IS that barbarism that so many “intellectuals” lay at the free market’s door.".........Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means.
And that is why they hate conservatives. They hate you because you are killers of their dream. Because you are defenders of a Constitution that thwarts their cause. They hate you because your "reactionary" commitment to individual rights, to a single standard and to a neutral and limited state obstructs their progressive designs. They hate you because you are believers in property and its rights as the cornerstones of prosperity and human freedom; because you do not see the market economy as a mere instrument for acquiring personal wealth and political war chests, to be overcome in the end by bureaucratic schemes.
Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints.
Conservatives are caught by surprise because they see progressives as merely misguided, when in fact they are fundamentally misdirected. They are the messianists of a religious faith. But it is a false faith and a self-serving religion. Since the redeemed future that justifies their existence and rationalizes their hypocrisy can never be realized, what really motivates progressives is a modern idolatry: their limitless passion for the continuance of Them." - "Hillary Clinton and the Third Way" - By David Horowitz, June 2000
You are perfectly right, we are not dealing with an honest intellectual process such as the employment of the scientific method, rather we are dealing with a pathology. Sometimes we describe it as a religion and there are elements of religion in this commitment to communism and socialism. I prefer to think of it as a cult in which the acolyte is psychically transformed by his submission to the ethos of the cult.
The acolyte is not drawn into the cult by an intellectual process but by a psychological, I almost said an emotional, process. When there is submission to the cult one is wonderfully transformed and usually empowered. When one considers the greatest transformation in history, the apostle Paul, one begins to understand the dimension of the empowerment which results. One also begins to understand the importance of virtue or the lack of virtue in the thing to which one surrenders. The Christian in clinging to the cross submits himself to a virtuous reality. A beaten and humiliated nation such as Germany which surrenders itself to evil incarnate, Adolf Hitler, is destroyed.
But consider the depths of the commitment of the German people to their Fuehrer. They died in their millions until the very end sacrificing themselves to is will. Similarly, when Stalin died, millions mourned.
What I am describing here is a process beyond rationality and one which cannot be undone by appeals to reason or experience. David Horowitz is describing an intellectual who is impervious to historical experience. In Germany's case, the nation had to be literally bludgeoned into submission because it would not surrender. Ex-communists are not to be brought to enlightenment by reason.
As Mae West said when complimented on her diamond ring, "goodness, what a beautiful ring!" Ms. West replied, "goodness had nothing to do with it." And reason has nothing to do with this.
The human mind is an endlessly fascinating and facile organ with almost infinite capacity for rationalization. For these cultists it does not matter what history tells us of the tens of millions murdered by communism, it does not matter.
If you do not think this has application to modern American politics go to the comments in The New York Times one after the other of which mindlessly rationalize the fiasco and cover up in Benghazi to begin to see how facile liberals are asked spinning, projecting, deflecting, excusing and rationalizing.
