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David Horowitz June 2000 ".......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—often without even realizing that they are. Because they also lie to themselves. It is the political lie that gives their cause its life.
Why, for example, if you were one of them, would you tell the truth? If you were serious about your role in humanity's vanguard, if you had the knowledge (which others did not), that you were certain would lead them to a better world, why would you tell them a truth that they could not "understand" and that would hold them back?
If others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as 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 promised horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the vanguard 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 social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism.
That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in their wake. That is why they don't care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than all the injustices they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their "mistakes." That is why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth. .....
......Naturally, today's leftists are smart enough to distance themselves from Soviet Communism. But the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev was already a critic of Stalin forty years ago. Did his concessions make him less of a Communist? Or more?
On the other hand, conservative misunderstanding of the left is only in part a product of the left's own deceits. It also reflects conservatives' inability to understand the religious nature of the progressive faith and the power of its redemptive idea. For instance, I'm often asked by conservatives about the continuing role and influence of the Communist Party, since they observe quite correctly the pervasive presence of so many familiar totalitarian ideas in our academic and political culture. Though still around and sometimes influential in the left, the Communist Party has been a minor player for nearly fifty years. How can there be a communist left (small "c" of course) without a Communist Party?
The short answer is that it was not the Communist Party that made the left, but the (small 'c') communist Idea. It is the idea, as old as the Tower of Babel, that humanity can build a highway to Heaven. It is the idea of returning to an Earthly Paradise, a garden of social harmony and justice. It is the idea that inspires Jewish radicals and liberals of a tikkun olam, a healing of the cosmic order. It is the Enlightenment illusion of the perfectibility of man. And it is the siren song of the serpent in Eden: "Eat of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you shall be as God."...............
.........It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady. It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal—"social justice"—is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself..........."
Sadly, the STUPID PEOPLE that VOTED for this LIAR don’t give a DAMN!!!
It’s the democrat base that’s stupid. It consists of just about every low-IQ group you can think of.
When it comes to Democrats, the MSM just laughs at their lies!
Back when this was all being debated and millions of us marched on Versailles on the Potomac, I offered Mike Castle, my Congress critter at the time, a simple way to stop the bill in its tracks.
An unanimous motion to dispense with the reading of the bill should have been objected to. If they had, they would STILL be reading the bill. Of course, Castle scoffed at the idea.
So, don’t just blame Pelousy and her pack of rats. The Whigs were just as compliant. More proof that we have one party with two branches ruining our country.
Indeed, one might even go so far as to say that it rivals Witness by Whittaker Chambers as an insider's explanation of what makes leftists what they are and what makes them behave the way they do. Both Chambers and Horowitz are insiders, recovering leftists, who have figuratively been reborn and their descriptions and explanations carry the weight of their own experiences. As such they are invaluable because they are credible.
No one here except the occasional troll, ever doubted it.
The ironic truth here is that if Americans needed the stinkin’ Gruber tapes to prove Obama is a liar, then he is right...those Americans are STOOOPID.
Of Course Obola is a liar!
I pegged him as a slick con man for the get go!
I would like to thank Herr Gruber for the one public service he has GENUINELY provided. He has revealed the contempt the political class has in general , and Democrats in particular , have for the common man. He has shined the light of truth on just how important it is for his ilk to lie to us to get what they want. Outsiders and have been saying this forever but were ignored because they were just being ‘selfish’. To have this elite insider bragging about it , who has made millions of dollars doing so, and was so eager to teach a new generation of elites to do likewise that he blatantly posted videos on the Internet for the future indoctrination of elites was his one true , if unintended gift.
Yep - progessivism is just another denomination of gnosticism. Good article.