Klavan on the Culture — of Pharisees
An interview with Andrew Klavan I found very interesting:http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/11/andrew-klavan-my-way-into-and-out-of-the-left-by-jamie-glazov/print/
Klavan: If I were still capable of being appalled by them, I’d be appalled, but as it is… well, I don’t know how you shrug in print but picture me shrugging. So desperate are they to display their tolerance, to claim virtue and open-mindedness for themselves, so secretly ashamed and guilt-ridden and self-hating are they, I guess, that they will give aid and comfort to a philosophy that turns everything they’re supposed to stand for on its head. Anti-female, anti-gay, anti-religious liberty, anti-humanity, radical Islam is a cancer on the face of the earth. Ignoring it, pretending it isn’t there, moral equivalence, relativism – all the various forms of false piety in which the left specializes – are as helpful with radical Islam as they are with other cancers. It’s like having your doctor say, “Yes, there’s a spot on your x-ray, but let’s not do anything about it, in case we make it angry or seem biased!” Academics, entertainers, wealthy elites like Michael Moore who think Islamists are going to like them, spare them and their limousines and their millions, because they’re such ever-so-good people… well, they’re like the intellectuals who lined the streets of Vienna to welcome Hitler. The next day, they were gone.
[…]
FP: You mentioned that leftists are “secretly ashamed and guilt-ridden and self-hating.” Can you expand a bit on this? What is it, in the end, that is at the core of the leftist mindset and belief system?
My comment: I had always thought that the reason why Leftist use the swearword "hypocrisy" as the catch-all phrase to accuse everyone they can accuse (those not accused of racism, that is) was merely that it was a nonjudgmental condemnation. "I do not and cannot live up to your standard, so I am fine: but you do not live up to your standard, so you are a HYPOCRITE!!"
This has several benefits:
One need not enter into a discussion of the merits or demerits of the standard — that would require honest intellectual effort — instead one wrenches the conversation into a discussion of the personality flaws of the opponent, and leaves the argument supporting one’s opponent’s position untouched.
Since hypocrisy is a hidden crime, one that takes place only in the heart, and since no one has firm evidence one way or the other about it, the argument about personality flaws can be expended endlessly: the accused can be accused of anything.
His protestations of innocence (should he be so naive as to make any) are merely taken as confirmation of his guilt. After all, hypocrites deny being hypocrites, do they not? So if a man denies an accusation of hypocrisy, that proves he is one!
The accusation is pro forma and automatic. In a recent discussion in this space that turned quite ugly , someone wrote me privately, but then was outraged that I uttered nothing but kindness and charity toward her. She thought it was hypocrisy that my public statements would harshly condemn an act of hers that I privately forgive and accept. So she called me a hypocrite. I did not have the heart to tell her that a hypocrite is one who does the opposite, i.e. wears a mask of kindness in public that he doffs in private. (Forgive me for using myself as an example, but I am the only person whose private behavior I am cognizant of, whose private behavior I am at liberty to discuss.)
Also, Leftism takes its thinking (among others) from Marx, whose elaborate word-fetishes and rationalizations boil down to what is basically a conspiracy theory. The investors have all one unity of interests (so Marx argues) and they secretly conspire for the progressive immiseration of the masses, driven to this same by the iron law of wages, etc, etc. The so-called Proletarian class (Marx is here misusing a term from Civic Law) are the victims, if not of a conspiracy of investors, then of a conspiracy of blind historical forces. Economists who disagree with Marx are, according to Marxist theory, the unwitting parrots of an ideological superstructure of false ideas used by the exploiters to justify their exploiting-ness. Their class determine their loyalties and hence their theories, which are always hypocrisy. Unless the person disagreeing with Marx is a workingman. In THAT case, class does not determine loyalty, but rather a false consciousness has been programmed into the dissenter by false education, and he acts against his class interests, and he is unwittingly deceived by false ideas used by the exploiters to justify his exploitation at their hands, and therefore he is once again a hypocrite.
See? Hypocrisy is built into the foundation stones of leftist thinking at least since the days of Marx. It is part of their theory of political economics.
The advantage of assuming every disagreement is do to UNWITTING falsehoods is (1) you can pat yourself on the back that you have secret, Gnostic, inner knowledge denied the Hoi Polloi and (2) you can back out of every argument when you are losing. Indeed, you need never learn the art of logic and rhetoric at all.
The Conspiracy theory of political economics is also useful for explaining away the inevitable failures of the theory. When Communist systems do not produce wealth, and capitalist systems do not produce poverty, and when race-quotas and speech-codes and endless lies and Orwellian political correctness do not produce toleration and honesty and happiness, someone has to take the blame. Since their theories can never work in reality (see, for example, the theory of spending yourself out of debt), it is convenient to have someone to blame. Since no one is perfect and all men are sinners, anyone can be accused of falling short of some standard of some sort, and therefore be accused of hypocrisy.
It also justifies any crimes. Stalin butchering Jews and Kulaks is excused, because, in the Hegelian world of the Left, where there are no rules and no right and wrong (whenever it is convenient there be no right and wrong, that is) merely Stalin’s sincerity is a sufficient warrant to justify his behavior. He did what was right for him according to his reality. At least he was not a hypocrite!
The tyrannophilia of the Left heavily inclines them to come up with specious justifications for the crimes of totalitarians. Chiding hypocrisy in men who balances two of more conflicting interests while leaving zealous monomaniacs and murderers unaccused serves this function well.
But what Klavan here suggests is a point I never imagined. It never occurred to me that many on the Left feel guilty, and they know they are hypocrites, and they have to accuse everyone around them of something they are oh so too well aware-of in their own souls.
I have wondered why none of my childhood idols from back when I was loyal to the ideals of the sexual revolution, has come forward to apologize in public for the unmitigated disaster it brought forth: the divorces, the single moms, the teen pregnancies, the ghastly flood of prenatal infanticide called "pro-choice", the broken hearts and broken homes, the deluge of pornography, the encouragement of sexual perversion under the name "experimentation", the falsehoods spread by so called scientific sex education aimed at ever-younger children, the lives wasted and ruined in pursuit of sexual thrills, the deaths due to venereal disease (Not just AIDS. Many new strains of molds and infections are happily seeking out your genitalia, and including drug-resistant strains) and in short, the sheer unhappiness caused by the seductively yet notoriously naive and stupid idea that anarchy in the moral realm would somehow turn out to be less destructive than anarchy in the political realm. It is as clear as the subject matter admits of, that the sexual revolution was a disaster, and has bred disaster upon disaster — and yet none of those who persuaded an innocent and trusting generation in its youth, now that time has rendered its verdict, has come forth to apologize.
To me, the dissolution of all rules and customs in the moral realm has the same effect as if a city disbanded its government, merely in the hope that each man by sweet reason would forbear from all evil acts and discourtesies. Plato points out the anarchy turns into tyranny, as the mobs, horrified by the chaos, seek a strong hand with a rod of iron to re-impose order.
That is exactly what has happened in the moral realm since the Summer of Love. The delicate and organic tissue of laws and customs, responsibilities and virtues, which once governed everything from the wooing and wedding to the tipping of hats to ladies, was reviled and disintegrated. Romance was abolished, replaced by unisex.
To recoil from the anarchy, we now have instead of living customs, dead political correctness, speech codes, and hate crime laws. PC is the rod of iron to break us, now that the older and gentler regime of inward decency has passed away. Like every tyrant, it serves its own promulgation, not the interests of the common good.
No apologies, no regrets.
No, quite the opposite. Alan Moore recently penned a book of child pornography called LOST GIRLS, where Alice from Wonderland, Dorothy Gale of Oz, and Wendy Darling of Never-neverland gather for sexual escapades and to swap childhood stories of sexual exploits. Captain Hook has a duel with his penis, and the Tin Woodman engages in some machine-meat sex. When asked in an interview about his motive, the Witch King of the Cartoon world announced, with the nonchalance of someone whose brain still lives in 1959, that we all were all too repressed, and that porn was good for us, and we needed more of it. It was time to shake off our psychologically-damaging Victorian morality! It was time to break free of our hypocrisy!
Meanwhile, a recent scientific study was trying to discover the effect of porn on children and youths between 10-20, but they could not complete the study because they could not find a control group of youths unexposed to porn.
No apologies. No regrets. Instead, a redoubling of efforts.
How can this be?
I wonder if Klavan has guessed correctly. Perhaps the Leftists feel a gnawing guilt, at least those who still have a trace of conscience remaining. The strategy they use to deal with the guilt is to accuse others of their own besetting sin.
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.
