Shut Up, He Explained
In case you needed a reminder of what the Culture War is about: when the Frankfurt School of Marxist was driven out of Europe by the Nazis, they came and made Columbia University their nest, and immediately set about trying to destroy the very people who had just saved their lives.
Marxism as an economic theory had failed and failed spectacularly. The attempt to pit the employees in America against the employers found little traction where the employees, after World War II, were driving the handsome and wellmade cars (with tailfins!) of the 1950s.
So Marxist was revived as a social theory rather than an economic one, a way to destroy and recreate society, not a way to destroy and recreate the market place.
The social theory had two parts: one was a weapon of attack, called Critical Theory, an the other was the defensive shield to fend off all counterattack, called Political Correctness.
Critical Theory is the theory that Judeo-Christian faith, Anglo-Saxon law, and Greco-Roman philosophy must be attacked at all times and in all ways, not for the purpose of improvement, but merely to accuse, and accuse, and accuse. The main problem was that the West, compared to all other possibilities, was a garden of pleasure and a tower of wealth and a fortress of liberty. So what was there to complain about?
The answer was to find whoever had less of the abundance of the garden, and call him a victim, and call his group a victim. Thus, the attacks can be leveled in the name of any alleged victim group.
Such groups do not really need to exist in any real sense (are homosexuals a community in the sense as Irishmen are?), but they could be granted the mantle and sanctity of victimhood, and hence the moral superiority to level accusations that it would be unacceptable and uncouth to answer or deny.
The sanctified victims were never to attack each other. Instead the dispossessed and unhappy were always and everywhere to attack the successful and happy.
Black were not to attack gays, but join in the obviously false proposition that America is the most intolerant nation of all time; Women were not to attack Blacks, but were to join in the obviously false proposition that America is the most racist nation of all time; Gay were not to attack feminists, but were to join in the obviously false proposition that American was the most misogynist nation of all time.
And, oddly enough, the hyperrich of Wall Street and Hollywood, set about allying with the poor to savage the Middle Class. As GK Chesterton pointed out long ago in his book UTOPIA OF USURERS, the rich have always been the radicals, hating the faith and the virtues of the Middle Class, and despising their traditions. (In America, for most of our history, the scourge of the rich was avoided in the old days by there being few or no legal barriers preventing new rich from arising with each generation, and no laws in place to prop up failing rich men from losing their fortunes. That changed with Bush and Oboma and the new doctrine that certain rich men to ‘too big to fail.’)
So we have in America the peculiar spectacle of rich Wall Street leftists egging on Occupy Movement protesters and calling for more government takeovers, extortion, expropriation, regulation, and random meddling with the banking, housing, and student loan industry.
We see insurance companies demonizing themselves in hopes that the federal government will for the entire population into a servile “you must buy our product at the rates we set” monopoly beneath their heel.
Do not be deceived. It is not the productive and successful rich who yearn for fascism and corporatism and government-market combines and trusts. It is the rich who wish no more rich to arise, and no new fortunes made. It is those who rightly know that the more corrupt and bribe-driven the system is, that better it is for the corruptors.
The top and the bottom are against the middle, just as all outsiders are against the middle.
The middle is the enemy. That is Critical Theory and the whole of it.
The decent, law-abiding, churchgoing male, the father and breadwinner, was the enemy, the only enemy, the total enemy.
This mindset was so obsessive, that when, in the Carter years and later, the American public slowly was growing aware of the threat of Islam, that is, real racist slave-owning misogynist theocrats entirely ruthless and barbaric, the Left automatically downplayed the threat, redoubled the attacks on the one enemy their philosophy can admit (white Christian males), and, with mounting fervor and dishonesty, came to the defense of Islam, protected its atrocities, and started savaging anyone who spoke truthfully about the threat.
The word ‘Islamophobia’ joined ‘racist, sexist, homophobe’ as the autonomic verbal reflex of the Left.
For while Critical Theory is the sword of Cultural Marxism, Political Correctness is the shield. Political Correctness deflects all counterargument and questioning by the single counter-accusation that no one who opposes Critical Theory, that is, no one who opposes the downfall of Western Civilization, has an honest motive.
The whole of political correctness is on ad hominem character assassination: it is the claim that if you do not speak and think according to what the Mandarins of Mind Control have this day decreed, you are racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, Cisnormofascist Flying Purple People Eater, and therefore you must shut up.
Shut up. That is the whole argument.
Andrew Klavan explains in detail:
On a related question, why do Leftists advocate an open borders policy during wartime, inviting in terrorists along with refugees, and welcoming refugees of military age, fully knowing that the chance that their children will be radical Islamic jihadists eager to commit acts of terror; and at the same time the Left lashes out at Trump and everyone else expressing reservations about an open borders open door policy during wartime?
Why?
Addiction to a false sense of moral superiority.
Note that moving a refugee to some safe place in the Middle East costs one twelfth the price of moving a refugee to America, one thousand dollar per head versus twelve thousand dollars per head.
The Leftist, however, gets an endorphin rush of unearned moral superiority when he advocates moving military-age Muslim jihadists next door to Mrs Grundy here in America, but he gets no such rush using reason, and saving twelve refugees rather than one.
They are addicted to self righteousness, which has a physical biochemical ‘kick’ to it. Thinking about the practical results of their actions, however, does not involve and addictive rush of brain chemicals, and no sense of unearned moral superiority.
They don’t care about being altruistic, that is, actually helping real people in reality, only about thinking of themselves as altruistic, that is, giving themselves a pat on the back as someone more moral hence better than his father. Since make believe moral superiority works just as well to produce the brain chemical as real moral superiority, and since real moral superiority involves work, they retreat entirely from reality into makebelieveland.
The believe thought is a thoughtcrime. The only way to avoid thought is to avoid judgment.
They believe that by avoiding judgment, they avoid all the causes for conflict hence for war and turmoil. Their theory is that no crusades and no jihads exist in an agnostic world; no conflict between capitalists and communists exist exists if no one thinks about economics and has no opinion hence no preference between liberty and tyranny.
The only way to avoid judgment is to elevate whatever is evil or useless and to undermine whatever is good and useful.
So they always, always, always side with the evil and hate the good.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
