Posted on 11/21/2005 10:21:45 PM PST by goldstategop
If you want to understand the Left, most of what you need to know can be summarized thus: The Left hates inequality, not evil.
As one raised as a New York Jew (who, moreover, attended an Ivy League university) and therefore liberal -- it took me a while to recognize this fatal moral characteristic of the Left. But the moment I realized it, it became immoral not to oppose leftist values.
It is neither possible nor virtuous to be devoid of hatred. Even those who think it is always wrong to hate must hate hatred. The question therefore is not whether one hates but what (or whom) one hates.
For example, on the basis of the value system that I hold -- the Judeo-Christian -- I try to confine my hating to evil. By evil I mean the deliberate infliction of unjust suffering on the undeserving; cruelty is the best example of such evil.
Those who hate evil hated the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, after all, was a made-up country, created by a band of gangsters called Bolsheviks and Communists. They murdered between 20 million and 40 million innocent people, spread their totalitarianism around the world, and thereby rendered hundreds of millions of people slaves and automatons.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, liberals and social democrats vigorously opposed communism. But the rest of the world's Left, especially its intellectuals and artists, not only did not oppose communist governments, they were the greatest defenders of communism.
By the end of the Vietnam War (begun and prosecuted by liberals), however, most liberals abandoned anti-tyranny, anti-evil liberalism and joined the rest of the Left. Since the late 1960s, with almost very few exceptions (one is Sen. Joseph Lieberman), "liberal" and "Left" have become synonyms. (That is why The New York Times characterizes the Nation, a far-left journal, as "liberal.")
Thus, when President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world condemned him. The Cold War, once regarded as an epochal battle between freedom and tyranny, came to be regarded by liberals as an amoral battle between "two superpowers."
Likewise liberals almost universally mocked President George W. Bush when he labeled Saddam Hussein's Iraq, North Korea and Iran an "axis of evil." It takes a mind that either has little comprehension of evil or little desire to confront it to object to characterizing three of the worst regimes in modern history as "evil."
How else can one explain the Left's enchantment with Fidel Castro, the totalitarian ruler of Cuba? Clearly his evil is of little consequence. What matters to people on the Left is that there is free health care and almost universal literacy in Cuba. Whereas non-leftists believe that it is far better to be illiterate but free, leftists believe that it is better to be a literate slave.
Today, this inability to either recognize or to hate evil is manifested in the liberal opposition to the war in Iraq. As I pointed out in a previous column, opponents of the war should be asked to at least acknowledge that America is fighting evil people and an evil doctrine in Iraq. But even that is difficult, if not impossible, for most people on the Left.
As noted above, everyone hates someone, and that includes people on the Left. The problem is that because they don't hate evil, they hate those who oppose evil. That is how liberals went from anti-communist to anti-anti-communist. To paraphrase one of the greatest moral insights of the Talmud, those who show mercy to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful. So, George W. Bush, not the Islamic terror world, is the Left's villain; life-embracing Israel is the Left's villain, not their death-loving enemies; and religious Christians who note moral weaknesses within the Islamic world are the real danger, not the moral weaknesses within the Islamic world.
To be fair, it should be noted that confusion over evil and insufficiently hating it are not confined to the Left. There are religious people who conflate sexual sin with evil and/or advocate automatic forgiveness of all evildoers, even when no repentance has taken place.
But the inability to acknowledge the greatest evils, let alone to join in fighting them, is the defining characteristic of the Left. That is why former Vice President Al Gore just announced that global warming was a worse threat to humanity than terrorism. He really believes that. As do the great many people on the Left whose moral passion focuses more on gasoline prices, drug prices, health care prices, and other expressions of material inequality than on people and movements dedicated to murder. That is why Robert Redford and friends from Hollywood can celebrate Fidel Castro. Castro may imprison political opponents, and most Cubans may have no right of dissent, but they are economically equal.
Thanks muchly for the OP (Prager article) and the
Kolakowski reference. Another writer on a subject
akin to this topic (inequality) was Murray Rothbard,
whose " Freedom Inequality and Primitivism " was
very diffilcult to find, even in NYC, before the 'Net
became popular. It's now an e-book at mises.org, alas
it's an .asp but one can't expect everything all at once.
"To paraphrase one of the greatest moral insights of the Talmud, those who show mercy to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful."
A profound statement. Leftists do not want equality. They want to destroy society to the extent that they can take over and install themselves as "God," therefore, declaring themselves to be the judges of what is "good" and what is "evil" and of who lives and who dies. They must do this by force. So far, the courts and not the ballot box, have been that force. This is why we see such viciousness coming from the left over conservative Supreme Court appointments. Equality is only a political correct tool they are using to achieve their goals.
The homogenization of man is wrong. To be a literate slave is to be an automaton.
When God created everything, He could have made a human race of automatons. Then everything would have been peaceful and everybody would have served Him. But He's smarter than that. He knew that the worship of automatons would be meaningless.
Forseeing all the evil to come in the world, and even His son's crucifixion, he opted for "free will" instead of automated robots. Why? Meaning, significance and worth are near the core of value. Value beyond gold and diamonds.
The left doesn't love dictators because dictators are champions of "equality." They love dictators because they want to be just like Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro ... able to have the best of everything for themselves and the few they favor, while having the power of life and death over everyone within reach.
I think Prager's background has left him mushy-minded on this point. Maybe he needs to spend his declining years enjoying the "equal" health care in Cuba, to clear his head? The left loves power and hates freedom, and if we forget that, we've swallowed the Big Lie.
Should have read further before I posted ... you beat me to this absolutely essential point.
The left is deathly afraid of making ANY type of value or moral judgement at all. There are paralyzed by it.
No, what the left hates is accountabilty for themselves. They love inequality, as long as they are on top.
Too early for all those big words, Steve. I think I'll have a cup of tea and then read that again.
No, you see a few 'JFK' style democrats around still, although they are few and far between. They actually believe in good and evil and believe that goverment social programs can promote good. They are validly noble in intent, but totally wrong in practice. They shouldn't be shouted down, but respectfully voted against and given a calm rebuttal. You can detect them by their ability to carry on reasoned discussions.
The reason that there are so few of them today, is that many have either realized that these programs won't work or have a serious problem with long-term dependency, while maintaining their commitment to good. Once they have internalized this criticism of social programs, they become conservatives. Others couldn't shake their attachment to goverment power and went left by giving up their committment to good.
This is slightly different than 'compassionate conservatism' which realizes the importance of nuturing self-reliance, but doesn't reject the possibility of goverment programs. Your 'JFK' liberal doesn't recognize the serious danger of long-term goverment dependence. A leftist recognizes it and either doesn't care or is counting on it. A 'True Conservative' says nothing good can come of goverment programs that do not relate to the military or standard 'law enforcement'.
Years of experience have made honest 'liberals' a very rare breed, since the bad assumptions are just too obvious for most honest people to not realize. Their numbers will keep dwindling.
Okay, now I get it! Excellent points!
And by definition, doesn't that mean liberals hate the good?
And by definition, doesn't that mean liberals hate the good?
Yes, wealthy Hollywood elites like to gaze upon economic equality... but they don't seem much interested in participating in it.
Good point.
Are you channeling Sowell again? Did you mean to say cosmic "justice"?
That did sound very Sowell-ish :-). Maybe Steve's just feeling generally Cosmic, today.
Yep...and in the greatest irony of all for liberals the sun rises and sets with money.
And yet, they always say we are the one's obsessed with it.
Absolutely. Cosmic equality is a natural corollary of cosmic justice. Actually, Sowell does address the myth of equality, but the correlation to cosmic justice is my own conclusion. Do you like it?
Yes, very nicely done old chap!
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