Posted on 11/21/2004 1:56:30 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
***...........The intoxicating vision of a social redemption achieved by Them - this is what creates the left, and makes the believers so self-righteous.
And it did so long before Karl Marx. It is the vision of this redemption that continues to inspire and animate them despite the still-fresh ruins of their Communist dreams.
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.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.
No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.
Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. ........***
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39611fde5615.htm
Yep, can't get anymore sissy than that!
An honest Liberal? Definitely the last of a dying breed.
Pity, that.
Liberals believe they are smarter, smarter than history. Perhaps the greatest element to to being today's liberal is conceit.
Sissified code words for "I'm a Communist...."
I wonder if the writer wants his kids being educated by openly homosexual Marxists who will teach them to grow up and throw Molotov cocktails at SUVs? Does the writer want his taxes to be increased for tax incentives for same sex partners to join in state-sponsored unions and expensive divorce procedings involving the redefinition of marriage? Does the writer want immigration based on deviant unions between Americans and their foreign tryst partners? Does the writer really believe that our support for Holocaust survivors to have their own 37,000 square kilometer state in Israel is responsible for the bitter, genocidal hatred of their oil-wealthy neighbors? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but liberals need to reevaluate what they mean by liberal.
So, by his own words has the author labeled himself as the enemy.
You want socialism? Move to France!
***....Liberalism is a proud tradition, and I believe it represents the bedrock principles upon which this country is founded. It is the leavening which softens the stark harshness of a pure capitalistic society and makes it palatable to those of us who care for people who, for whatever reason, cannot always successfully navigate life completely on their own. ...***
LIBERALS don't believe in individual ability and achievement. They believe they must guide and transform lives. It is an arrogance they thrive on.
Yep. Pride, too. Along the lines of "I WILL be like unto the Most High". Sound familiar? (Oh and while we're at it let's kill unborn children and fool around with cloning and pretend we're ,oh I don't know, A Creator like God?!?!)
How can the original author label redistribution of wealth as a bedrock principal this country was founded on?
Where is this from: "I WILL be like unto the Most High". ??
They believe no one is capable of making it on their own. And even when people do need a helping hand, liberals don't want to let people decide what help they need - they want to decide what help people need.
LIBERAL elite need dumb, depressed, dependent people to rule. They champion misery so they can feel that pain and become caretakers of lives. They need to sell dependence, unaccountability and discontent.
It's an impossible dream. Humanity withers and dies without hope, education and independence. LIBERALISM fails everywhere it is tried.
Lucifer (aka the Devil, Satan etc) wanted to sit on God's throne and be worshipped like these liberals do.
It's not America's bedrock.
LIBERALS lie.
You're right!
***.....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....*** [LINK in Post #2]
I also think the term liberal meant more when our founding fathers and their muses, the Enlightenment era thinkers used it. These days I think traditional liberals need to be loaded for bear if they want to survive. The communists, Arabists, and gender benders are taking over the word. It's time for a fierce battle for what we had before the flower power people usurped the ideas of tolerance and progress that our Greatest Generation used (and sometimes misused).
"If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you don't become a conservative by the time you're 40, YOU HAVE NO BRAIN." - Winston Churchill
Brainless wonder alert!
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