Is the World Dangerous?
The strange aura of speaking to a sleepwalker hangs around any attempt to discuss the various tragic mass shootings and terrorist attacks by faithful Mohammedans obeying the Koran and its traditions with any Leftists. Their voices are dull and their eyes are blank when speaking of precautions to be taken or wars to be wages to abate the threat, and they seem congenitally unable to name the enemy by name. It is as if there is no category ‘Jihadist’ anywhere in their thinking, so that when a Jihadist attack occurs, they must scurry to find another category in which to box it, perhaps ‘lone wolf with mental problems’ or ‘example of religious intolerance’ or ‘understandable reaction to Western oppression’ and on and on.
When the conversation turns to what is wrong with Christians, or Republicans, or Conservatives, or the Patriarchy, however, now their eyes light up, a battle fury fills them, and their voices take on power and become mellifluous, resonant, and charged with emotion.
You may have noticed it in President Obama’s speeches. His denunciations of Islamic Terrorists …. oh, wait. Has he ever denounced Islamic terrorists? Or does he just denounce ‘acts of terror’ which could mean any scary act, so that Candy Crowley can later, during presidential debates, interrupt and coldcock the GOP candidate to prevent him from denouncing the administrations concert of lies surrounding the Benghazi massacre?
In what sick and surrealist view of the world is George W Bush considered a greater threat than Saddam, than Hamas, than ISIS ?
The answer is that to the Left, no external threat is pertinent. The only threat comes from the Establishment, whether that is called the Capitalist class, or the Patriarchy, or White Privilege, or the Jews. The Left are in a continual posture of rebellion, even when there is no one left to rebel against because the Left runs everything. And so make believe things allegedly somehow in charge of the universe have to be invented to justify the continued rebellion.
An ex-leftist once boiled down the Leftist world view to me. I asked her what, had she been asked back when she was Leftist, what constitutes a prudent and proper precaution to take against enemies? What would she have answered?
She said her answer would have been simple: A wide eyed stare of innocence and surprise, a look of confusion, and
“Enemy? What enemy?”
When you have heard some Leftist using the term ‘othering’ or similar neologisms, what they are trying to explain to themselves is why sane people regard enemies as enemies. Since, by their first article of faith, there can be no enemies aside from the domestic oppressor class, any discussion of external foes or threats must be a mental disorder: xenophobia, race-hatred, hallucination. To a Leftist, funding and fielding an army to protect American interests abroad look like mad captain Ahab hiring harpoonists to warn off sea serpents and kragen: it is a fight against make-believe.
To the Leftist, noting threatens America. Even the Soviets were merely good hearted idealists provoked by Reagan. To fear those who have vowed our destruction is no prudence, but paranoia. It is “othering”.
The reason why I am no longer a Libertarian is that after 9/11 one too many libertarians blamed our government, not the enemy. That is because the way Libertarianism is structured as a political philosophy, the practical things one must do to preserve the commonwealth, including such measures as a draft, or condemning private property to erect fortresses, arsenals, and so on, not to mention the collection of taxes and tariffs to pay soldiers, are either de-emphasized or are ignored.
For Libertarianism, there is only one human problem to be addressed, and that is the conflict between liberty and tyranny. For them, the solution is to shrink the authority of the state to its absolute logical minimal limits: the state is authorized to retaliate against whomever initiates force or fraud against an unconsenting victim.
Likewise here: Leftism is a mental disorder, or a religion, or both, which seeks to quell the nagging of a provoked and inflamed conscience by eliminating notion of right and wrong, by eliminating authority figures, fatherhood, family, or any center of opposition to the state. It is the mirror opposite of Libertarianism.
Likewise, for Leftism, there is only one human problem to be addressed, and that is the conflict between tyranny and liberty. Liberty produces all the evils of exploitation, hate speech, inequality of incomes, lack of diversity, and no human being can be trusted with liberty. Therefore they wish to expand the state to it absolute maximum limits of totalitarianism, control not only of deeds and words, but also thoughts.
The reason why I left Libertarianism, and the reason why Leftism must be obliterated, is because neither can see the enemy.
To the Libertarian, the enemy is the state, and nothing but the state. While some admit the necessity of a standing army, most prefer a volunteer militia, and funding the soldier’s pay through taxes or tariffs introduces difficulties and exceptions into an otherwise perfect theoretical conception of a society free from aggression.
To the Leftist, the enemy is the aristocracy of oppression, and the state is the sole hero, savior, and defense. The identity of the aristocracy of oppression changes with the fashion season, at first being capitalist, then colonialists, then the patriarchy, then the whites, but always the Catholic Church. The formula is simple enough that even a Leftist, chemically lobotomized by a college indoctrination, can follow it: badthink produces hate, hate produces violence, ergo in order to halt violence, we must halt badthink.
The advantage of this formula is that it is so monstrously and overwhelmingly stupid that it can be applied to anything. The Little Sisters of the Poor, who are gray haired old nuns that tend and care for dying old people, can be forced by jackbooted thugs and faceless bureaucrats to fund baby killing in the womb, despite explicit provisions in the First Amendment stating otherwise, on the grounds that failing to provide funds for baby-killing is the same as throwing female patients out of hospital beds into the gutters to die, and only badthink could possible be the cause of such misogyny, therefore the Little Sisters of the Poor must disobey the Christian teaching on contraception and abortion. Because badthink. And Milo Yiannopoulos can be shouted down at college lectures on the grounds that silencing the shouters violates their right of free speech: the silencer’s right to silence the speaker, not the speaker’s right to speak. Because he might utter badthink, and that might provoke violence, and…
So, for the Left, there is no conflict worthy of note aside from the conflict between liberty and tyranny, and, in conflict, the tyrant is always right.
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.
