Dialog in Cloudcuckooland

Let me apologize at the outset for the length of this article, but I ran out of time during the trying-to-shorten-it phase.

QUESTION OF CONSENT

I had a thought-provoking dialogwith a commenter earlier this week in this space, on the topic of what, aside from the mere consent of the parties, made behavior licit. The conversation began as a debate about the definition of marriage, but addressed the more general question of the nature of liberty in society.

Mike Flynn is distinguishing between a purely formal rule and a substantive rule of licit. The argument that consent is enough is an argument that the form is the only factor (does consent exist, yes or no? If yes, the act is licit. If not, the act is not licit). The contrary argument is that the substance of the decision (to what are we consenting?) must also be taken into account. This requires a value judgment.

An example of a formal rule might be: any measure parliament passes with a majority vote while in lawful session, becomes law upon signature of the King. This rule says nothing about the content of the bill, merely the form that must be followed. Contrast a substantive rule: Congress shall pass no law infringing the right to bear arms. Even if passed according to the proper formalities of vote-counting and executive signature, such a law is arguably unconstitutional. An arguably neutral law, such as a tax law, if it is held to apply to pistol ball sales, has to be subjected to a judgment call. Some arbiter must weigh and decide whether the tax on pistol balls constitutes “infringement” — whereupon something other than the mere formality of the vote and signature is considered.

Modern jurists prefer, where possible, formal laws to normative laws, because moderns are wary of allowing any officer of the state the paternal discretion to enforce norms. The reason why bureaucrats act in the maddening fashion they do is because the modern habit, when a case of the abuse of discretion is brought up, is to reduce the discretion. When the courts of law are too lenient, for example, impatient legislatures pass a “three strikes”, in effect removing from the judge the discretion to be lenient on a case by case basis.

A similar state of mind prevails in moral reasoning. Indeed, a whole philosophical movement which we might call “normative agnosticism” haunts the modern mind, where it is considered to be in bad taste, if not downright unscientific, to make statements other than purely formal ones when it comes to human behavior. Such judgments are condemned as akin to tyranny, or perhaps the cause of war and tyranny. The motto seems to be: if only we all believed in Nothing, we would have nothing to fight over, ergo would all get along. The idea is so contemptible as to need no further refutation aside from itself (it is itself a belief, after all) and the behavior of its partisans (who are the mere opposite of peaceful.) However, most “agnostics of norms” will admit, upon questioning, that there are certain cases where a value judgment is needed.

Attempting the Socratic approach, I asked Wealtheow a series of questions to let her discover where (if anywhere) she would put the limits on consent, and where (if anywhere) she would make a value judgment.

ANSWERS GOOD BAD AND UGLY

Allow me to report some of her answers. I am not doing this out of malice toward her, or to hold her in particular up to mockery (I love the thinker even if I hate the thoughts, so to speak) but because I suspect the answers represent the Left; if not the Left as a whole, then at least a main stream of thought in it, and I mean the process of thought rather than the specific conclusions.

Some of the answers were what one might expect from a logically consistent libertarian: Suicide was upheld as an absolute right. If someone asks you to help him commit suicide, and he is of age and of sound mind, nothing aside from his consent need be consulted. It is his body, his life. Whether he will be abandoning his wife and children to widowhood and orphanhood is of no consequence. (The legal argument that assisting a suicide might be homicide was one I did not think to ask.)

Sniffing cocaine? Nothing aside from the consent of the drug addict need be consulted.

Other answers started from a libertarian premise and reached a statist conclusion: Unlike suicide (which is an absolute right) smoking in public is a limited right, since not one particle of secondhand smoke should be allowed to escape and annoy another. The premise here is that your liberty does not allow you to impose on the liberties of others, not even by so much as a single smoke puff. (The difference between Libertarian and Left is on display in this answer. A Libertarian would leave it to the landowner, not the bystander and certainly not the state, to say whether smoking were allowed in his shop or home.)

Copulating in public is held to be a limited right, if not all onlookers consented to view this display. (So public decency laws would seem to be in order? I did not think to ask.)

Other answers had the common sense of legal tradition behind them: Infirmity due to mental illness or minority of age invalidated consent, hence madmen and children cannot give legally sufficient consent. Consent given under duress is not valid.

Other answers where within a liberal interpretation of legal tradition: Contracts between rich employers and poor workers could be held to lack the element of consent on the grounds that the poor man does not have equal bargaining power. Likewise, hiring a whore was suspect (not because the act itself was unchaste) but only because the whore might be poor and wretched, and therefore her consent might be legally invalid, or compelled by poverty as if by duress.

The state has the right to force motorcyclists to wear helmets on the grounds that the taxpayers underwrite his medical expenses if he is injured. The consent of the taxpayers or the lack thereof is of no consequence. The consent of the motorcyclist is of no consequence.

Other answers departed from a liberal interpretation of legal tradition and grew increasingly odd and unrealistic. For example, it was answered that the state has no right to enforce rules of chastity and marriage (even though the taxpayers fund medical expenses for venereal disease, not to mention provide assistance to childrearing bastards) on the grounds that some scientific study or other demonstrated abstinence education to be statistically insignificant at reducing teen sex. Despite that such rules have been enforced by every period of history but the present in every nation but ours, the idea of enforcing norms of chastity was dismissed as ineffective and unworkable. (In this case only, practicality of enforcement was raised as a consideration.)

Some answers were more than a little odd and unrealistic: Gambling away the rent money and leaving your children destitute was held to be an absolute right. If you left your children penniless and homeless, then the state had an obligation to feed, clothe, house and raise them for you.

The idea that funding the childrearing of a guy with a gambling addiction might act as an incentive to produce the gambling behavior was dismissed without explanation.

This obligation is absolute. When I asked about provisions to prevent waste, or recoup the losses to the taxpayer for the care of these public wastrels and ragamuffins, my question was greeted with shock and scorn. The consent of the taxpayers or the lack thereof is of no consequence.

Then again, if expert opinion held the gambler’s habit to be an addiction or an illness, then the state was obligated to provide cure and counseling to help him through the problem. The consent of the taxpayers to fund this counseling service or the lack thereof is of no consequence.

That state should raise the children of gamblers and indoctrinate them to think of gambling as a vice was acceptable, but outlawing or curtailing the gambling itself was unacceptable. On the other hand, prospective parents should be forced to take classes in childrearing and nutrition. [The condescension here was appalling: as if the citizens were merely unwashed yahoos, who needed to be brought to the feet of the Great Leader, the Teacher-in-Chief, to learn how to diaper a baby.]

The answers drifted further and further from reality, past the island of Laputa where the intellectuals live, past Utopia, and eventually we found ourselves afloat in Cloudcuckooland. When I asked about bestiality, I was answered that copulating with a dog in public was unacceptable on the grounds that the lack of consent from the dog was a bar.

Cloudcuckooland, like Oz or Narnia, is evidently a country where animals talk, walk on their hind legs, and sign contracts. (I did not think to ask if stud-fees for show dogs should be outlawed as procuring, or if dogbreeders could be prosecuted for taking dogs across state lines for immoral purposes.)

So I asked her how actors training a dog to copulate in a doggy porn film was different from a shepherd training a sheepdog to herd sheep?

Here follow her exact words: I think it’s best to interfere with other life forms’ way of life as little as possible. Using our power over animals to make them do our work, or to test our products, or to be our sex toys, is wrong. Now, there are many situations where the animal’s well-being and the human’s must be weighed–if it’s a choice between starvation and a dog herding sheep, life wins out.

Hence, using dogs as sheepdogs was unacceptable except in cases of dire need, such as when the shepherd was faced with starvation.

At this point, we agreed that something other than consent was to be factored into moral and legal decisions, so I pursued no further the conversation.

PROVOKING THOUGHTS OF SCORN, or, THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF KEYNESIANISM

I called this conversation thought-provoking when it was a farrago of nonsense. And yet it did provoke in me some thoughts about the thought process involved, and perhaps an insight into the nature of Leftism as a whole.

I noticed only one recurring pattern in the otherwise inconsistent responses. (1) When a hypothetical was raised where a person had an opportunity to behave in an irresponsible, childish, vicious, profligate or self-destructive fashion, or in a fashion destructive of his family or his honor, in that case the free will of the person was sacrosanct, and, as if by the touch of a divine Tribune, rendered immune to the normal law. (2) When a hypothetical was raised where a person had an opportunity to behave in an adult way, such as, for example, by shouldering his own responsibility to raise his own children, there and there alone the sovereign state would come bustling and waddling in, taking charge, making pushy demands, shouting down any scruples, fussing over this and that and settling all the details.

As I said above, while I am mocking the conclusions of Wealhtheow, I have no enmity for her personally. A smart person can think a stupid thought; a good person can be deceived by an evil philosophy, particularly a person who is innocent and good-natured. But I do mock the ideas and conclusions, at least when they venture away from reality and drift into the land of talking dogs.

But even in a charitable heart, I can hate these ideas because I have seen where they have led and where they will lead.

If taken to its logical conclusion, a society based on these ideas would end up with somewhere in the vicinity of Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, where the children are objects of the state and wards of the state, and having lost their human natures, are free to indulge in drugs and meaningless recreational sex, but not free fall in love, raise families, and so on. Freed from responsibility. Freed from repercussions. Freed from reality. Not free to be human, in other words.

I should hasten to add that mutagenic plans to alter human nature to fit us into utopia schemes involves a blatant paradox. How does one, like the reverse of Doctor Moreau, remove the humanity from humans?

Aldous Huxley was if anything optimistic. He assumed all his alphas, betas, gammas, and so on of his dystopia would fit into the organized pattern of the world-state without crime, insanity, rebellion, or even discontent. He assumed class jealousy could be cured by subliminal hypnosis. He assumed men would not compete for resources, for sexual mates, or just cause trouble out of pride, fear, wrath, boredom. There were no philosophers among the alphas and no thugs among the deltas. Hatfields did not feud with McCoys, nor Sharks with Jets, nor Ford with GM, nor Star Wars fans with Star Trek fans. The story in effect asks us to pretend the seven deadly sins can be cured by world-government-run mental health care. Unrealistic does not begin to describe it: and yet this was a description of an anti-utopia, the horror we would suffer if a scientifically planned state could actually function as designed!

Disturbingly enough, I have come across at least two people who see no drawbacks to the world-state of Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD. What (these two asked) is wrong with an endless dalliance of government-supplied intoxicants and whores, a blither of mindless public entertainment, babies born in test tubes and conditioned like BF Skinners’ lab rats to consume what the state-run industries provide? If the mind-control techniques of futuristic conditioning/indoctrination/brainwashing actually would work, why not let the state run every life to its finest level of detail? Who wants to be human anyway? I want my soma!

Caesar could then abolish poverty by fiat, such as by ordering larks to drop out of the sky, bake themselves into meat pies, and fly into our open mouths.

If the law of cause and effect would only stop bothering us, the plan would work beautifully.

Aside from the spiritual death involved, there are of course insurmountable logical drawbacks to the plan, most obviously discovered by that most dismal of sciences, economics. These are the drawbacks that afflict likewise the grandiose plans of Huxley’s transhumanist world-state, and Wealhtheow’s humbler plans to legalize and underwrite all victimless-crime-type vices and support some or all children of irresponsible child-men on welfare.

If the law of cause and effect would only stop bothering us, the plan would work beautifully.

Now, this pattern also fits the weird blindness when it comes to cause and effect, supply and demand, scarcity of resources one notices as a leitmotif in Leftist conversations. In Cloudcuckooland, we never ask where the money comes from, who owns it, or what to do when it runs out. The stork brings the fairy gold and drops it down the chimney at the White House every February 31st on odd-numbered leap years. As Ayn Rand would say “tax money comes from BLANK OUT—money come from nowhere for no reason.” And it seems that to raise question as to the responsible limits of public spending is wrong and shocking. Following Karl Marx, the Left believe in the Tinkerbell theory of economics. If we all justclap our hands and believe, we will no longer live in a universe where resources are scarce and must be economized.

(Those who know the death tolls of communist regimes—the word “democide” was coined just to describe mass death of this magnitude—know in what horrid way its victims no longer live in a universe where resources are scarce.)

In Cloudcuckooland, the cost-benefit of underwriting a gambler who loses his rent money, raising and feeding, clothing and housing his children, while providing him cure and counseling, while also providing classes in nutrition to all parents, is simply not ever compared with the cost-benefit of regulating or outlawing gambling. If I the Taxgatherer of Utopia compels me to break open my child’s college fund piggybank to pay for my neighbor’s rent because he lost it all in a sucker bet to Nathan Detroit, my consent is not asked; but at the Utopia town hall meeting, I am not allowed to introduce a bill to curtail or outlaw gambling as a public nuisance, so that I can spend my hard earned money where I want to spend it—on the grounds that the private choices of my neighbor are sacrosanct.

Again, I am not saying all Leftists, or even most of them, will agree on the specific answers of whether we outlaw gambling or raise destitute children. I am saying it is a particular mental blindness of the Left to analyze legal issues in this way, in the shallowest possible way, looking only at immediate concrete cases, with blithe disregard, even contempt, for long-run results or ramifications.

“In the long run we are all dead” — these are the words of Keynes, who established the permanent institution of inflation in our economy as a matter of social engineering, and whose effects we in this generation suffer, now that he is long dead. He was not an uneducated man, not an unintelligent one, but his profound contempt for the ramifications of his policies, his contempt, in other words, for the use of the intellect (since it is by the intellect that we deduce the ramifications of things) sits perfectly well with the general mistrust the Left has for things of the intellect, and contradicts awkwardly the continuous clamor of self-congratulation by which these anti-intellectuals praise their own intelligence and dismiss the intelligence of any opposition.

It never seems to occur to them that the system itself will create incentives to encourage the behaviors causing the problems the system is meant to cure. In this sense, they are the opposite of social engineers, because a real engineer of any kind examines the raw materials of his construction when drawing up his blueprints. If your raw material is mankind, it would behoove you to study how humans actually behave, both in the market place, in the halls of power, on the battlefields, and in the courts of law, before dictating laws governing their behaviors there. Economics is one approach to that study; history is another. Theorizing from the abstract is not such an approach.

Read the Keynes quote again, and ponder. How can the Left be at once so proud of their intellectual superiority, and embrace a philosophy that rejects things of the intellect? In Cloudcuckooland, there is no distinction between mine and thine, no sense of cause and effect, no grasp of economics, no real understanding of the moral and practical limits of state power, no sense of why things happen. No sense of reality.

Is this is a philosophical error or a mental illness or both? Is it a mere mental disorder known as narcissism? I have my doubts.

What is the thing that animates the Left? What is its nature?

ON THE NATURE OF THE LEFT 

The first thing to notice about this thing is that it has no name. All the labels used to describe it hide rather than reveal its nature. They call themselves liberals, but they oppose liberty in every respect except for liberty of the groin (and extramarital groin-liberty: they are not fans of normal sex, only abnormal). They call themselves progressive, but they oppose scientific and industrial progress. I assume the progress they intend is progress toward socialism, which is progress in the sense that the collapse back into preliterate Cargo Cult notions of economics are progress. They call themselves Democrats, but they despise democracy and fawn on tyranny.

Even the word “Leftist” is misleading, because the Left-Right spectrum was designed to mislead: socialism is placed on the Left, and everything not socialism, including Anarcho-Capitalism, Libertarinianism, Democratic-Republicanism, Limited Government Republicanism, National Socialism, Fascism, Imperialism, and Monarchy of every sort are all placed on the Right. A king, and the republican who dethrones and beheads that king are both “on the Right”; the Pope, and the Puritan who burns the Latin books of the Pope are both “on the Right”; the radical national-socialists of the Nazi Party, their genocidal Furhers and Duces and Police-state stooges and the Free World soldiers and freely-elected leaders who with such heroic sacrifice destroyed them are both “on the Right.”

The word “Radical” is misleading because it merely means someone who wishes to go to the root or origin, a fundamentalist. By that definition, anyone, including an Objectivist or a Christian who yearns for foundational change in the world is a “radical.” And these radicals do not wish for radical changes in Cuba or China or Russia; they wish to conserve the system of lying, corrupt megadeath socialism as much as is feasible, sitting atop the Berlin Wall and shouting “stop.”

The word “Socialism” implies that society, rather than a cadre of tyrants, runs the state and owns the means of production, and “Communism” implies all goods are owned in common; neither of these last two is true or anywhere close to the truth. A more accurate term would be “Oligarchist” or “Nomenklatura-ist” or “Jackboot-Stamping-On-A-Human-Face-Forever-ist.”

One is tempted to call them “Utopians” except that the real Utopia (if I may be permitted that expression) as described by Thomas Moore was a commonwealth of Spartan simplicity, dignity, chastity, thrift, where all goods were owned in common, and gold was scorned.

But since what they really work toward does not seem to be what they really talk about, no name will ever fit.

In any case, the Left has a habit of despising labels and names. The art of Political Correctness is indeed the art of removing the meaning from names, to place all speakers into a position where they are forced to utter what they know full well is shameful, embarrassing nonsense. Even as God is said by speaking the words of creation to bring froth the distinctions between light and dark, sky and sea, land and water, fish and fowl and beast and man, the Left bends all its effort to abolishing distinctions by abolishing names for things. They are anti-namers.

Second, this is not a political theory. Politics deals with the art of governing. It regards certain ends, and contemplates certain means, not merely from the viewpoint of practicality, but also from the viewpoint of justice. Saying that if men can vote for their leader, the leader will be more responsive to the public will than if the leader is born to the purple —that is a political theory. Saying that all men are born equal is a political theory, or an axiom of one. Saying that corruption due to faction will be hindered if the chambers of a bicameral legislature are drawn from different electorates in different years is a political theory. Saying it would be nice if everyone could do whatever they like, and somehow the Wizard of Oz will pay for it all with gold manufactured from lead, and that it would be nice if all children were raised free from disease and want — that is not a political theory. That is a rejection of the limits on the use of state power, and also a rejection of classical notions of authority and patriotism. It is anti-politics.

Third, it is not an economic theory. Saying that if only the sky fell, we could all feast on larks is not an economic theory. Marx is not an economic theory. Economic theory deals with the expected changes in human behavior due to changes in incentives, particularly in regarded to bartering, buying and selling scarce resources, goods, and services. Pretending that there would be no scarce resources, goods and services if only the state so ordained is merely pretending that economics can be disregarded. The fatal conceit of Marx is that economics is politics by other means. He imagines the Free Market is merely a political mechanism run by a cabal of investors for their sole benefit. He imagines that by obtaining absolute power over the people, the omnipotent state could then rewrite the laws of cause and effect, supply and demand, in the same way it can rewrite traffic laws or tariff laws. Modern Leftist are distant from the pure form of Marx, but his basic method of analysis (Marx reduces everything to power struggle, and disregards any aspect of human existence unrelated to power) and his basic ideas (that wealth is illegitimate, that economic scarcity is caused by a cabal of investors, that prices and wages can be set by fiat) are ones Leftists accept, even if they cannot articulate them. The anger of Marx, the righteous indignation, is certainly present. But what Marx articulated, and what the Left follows, is a rebellion against economics. It is an anti-economic theory.

Fourth, it is not, despite that it looks so much like one, a mental illness. Leftists are oriented as to time, place and person. They know the difference between right and wrong and can control their impulses. By both the legal and the medical definition, they are sane.

Fifth, it is not a philosophy. Philosophy (at least an honest one) regards intellectual arguments that refute themselves as false. Leftist philosophy is always self-refuting: if nothing exists but matter in motion, then there is no mind present, including yours, to deduce that nothing exists but matter in motion. If all economic theories are disguised class interests therefore false, the economic theory that all economic theories are disguised class interests is itself a disguised class interest therefore false. If morality consists of promoting the self-replication of a selfish gene, then telling the truth about what morality consists of is immoral, as it does not promote the self-replication of the selfish gene. Multiculturalism must respect cultures that do not respect multiculturalism. Subjectivism holds it to be an absolutely the case that there are no absolutes. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false. Examples could be multiplied endlessly.

While there are people like Sartre and Nietzsche and Hegel whose works might be considered philosophy by a generous definition, the primary appeal of non-rational philosophy is not an attempt to understand reality by means of the intellect—for if it were, these writers would be dismissed at their first self-contradiction. Instead, their paradoxes and mysteries seem to be part of their appeal, perhaps their main appeal. Non-rational philosophy serves something other than the intellect. What all these examples have in common is that if any of their conclusions were true, both their own and all other philosophies would be moot. It is an anti-philosophical philosophy.

Sixth, it is not a mere fad or fashion, despite that it has many of the same elements thereof, including the peer pressure, the conformity, the little in-jokes, the sense of an inner circle opposing the dull outside world of outsiders. No, it is too serious and is taken too seriously to be merely a fad.

So if the nameless and unnamable thing is not an economic theory, not a political theory, and not a philosophy, not a fad, what is it?

I propose that this is a heresy.

Yes, I mean specifically a Christian heresy. It is built on certain notions unique to Christendom (such as the equality of all souls before God, the need for charity to support for the poor, the role of romantic love in marriage) but it rejects the central dogmas of Christianity and replaces them with Antichristianity.

The heresy rejects God, it rejects authority or anything authoritative (including, in more extreme cases, rejection notions of objective good, the meaningfulness of words, the universality of logic, and so on).

The heresy rejects nature. The Left live in a universe where gays can get married and men can get raped and any neurological difference between the brains of women and men cannot be discussed, since it is thoughtcrime to say men differ from women (except for cultural myths concocted as part of a sinister worldwide conspiracy to oppress women). Children have the rights and sexual nature of adults, and adults are children. Animals are people and people are animals. Unless people are merely meat robots or units in a social engineering experiment.

The heresy rejects the conscience. The heresy believes the Christian teaching of the Garden of Eden, but rejects the teaching that Cherubim with flaming swords bar the way to it. Like Milton’s Lucifer, the heresy says we must storm heaven, overturn the laws and customs of the world, and, if only we fight hard enough, and torture and kill enough innocent people — especially babies in the womb! — then we can create Eden on Earth.

The heresy believes in the mutability and perfectibility of man. Like the insects in HG Wells’ nightmarish FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, mankind can be bred to his occupations, or bred like cattle for the benefit of the ruling castes. Oddly enough, when the National Socialists (who were as Leftwing as you can get—they were even vegetarians, fer chrissake) tried to implement the heresy’s eugenics program, the world recoiled in shock and revulsion. But even more oddly, when the Soviets (who were also Leftwing) tried to implement communal ownership of the means of production, killing countless millions of people, enslaving countless millions, ruining countless millions of lives, and leaving behind piles of skulls taller than any monument to barbarism Ghenjis Khan ever contemplated—in this case the world reacted with fond nostalgia, doting like an uncle on a big-eyed toddler, and wistfully wishing we could all live in a Cuban slave-camp or Red Chinese gulag.

To be fair, the milder strain of this heresy, such as we see in Western Europe, merely wishes to redistribute the wealth and control the minds and speech and morals of the people, rather than to liquidate them. But the loathing for Christendom is the same, merely the means of slow suicide rather than rapid state-run starvation, differ. The Eurosocialist barbarians are still busily termiting the foundations of philosophy, art, civilization, morality, and law, but they are peaceful, and adhere to the formalities of law. Aside from the racism, their political-economic theory differs in no significant respect from that of the Nazis, or of Bismarck.

The heresy rejects logic. The heresy believes in feeling rather than thinking. Ironically, the heresy feels that science holds all the answers to life’s mystery and life’s sorrows. Science will wipe away all tears, and make the lion lay down with the lamb.

Now, obviously no scientist actually believes that: real science means investigating physical phenomena and the material causes thereof. For the Left, science (or, rather, SCIENCE!) is merely a convenient idol to which the wealth, decency and liberty of the world must be sacrificed. Anyone against euthanasia, eugenics, and experimenting on unborn babies is against SCIENCE! In reality, what the Left likes is not real science (which runs the risk of coming to unpopular conclusions about human sexuality, neurological differences between men and women, intelligence scores between races, and so on) what the Left really and truly likes is junk science: Eugenics, DDT, Alar, Holes in the Ozone Layer, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Nuclear Winter, cellphones causing cancer, and the list goes on. What they like is scare stories.

The heresy rejects metaphysics. The heresy believes in indignation rather than ratiocination. But even though they live in a universe with no foundation for thought, no objective moral code, no natural ends or means, no justice nor injustice, no minds, no souls, no human nature, no basis of right and wrong, whenever reality makes it so they cannot get what they want, suddenly everything is SO UNFAIR! And everyone who disagrees with them is SO STUPID!

The heresy, like orthodoxy, holds to articles of faith that cannot be questioned. They are filled with zeal and holier-than-thou wrath and scorn. One who disagrees, no matter how courteously, with the Faith of the True Believers is not someone who merely prefers pie to cake (or perverse to straight), or who honestly comes to a different judgment, perhaps after examining different evidence, or having a different life experience or background. Dissenters are “deniers” and evil and stupid. There is no honest and no respectable dissent from the True Belief.

And, like a heresy, what they propose is actually hellish, destructive of the very ends the say they pursue. In places where their programs have been carried out (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Red China, Postchristian England) the result has been the slow corruption or the swift destruction of freedom, beauty, truth, honor and eventually life itself.

Failure is not an option for them because reality for them is optional. I do not mean they cannot fail: I mean when they fail, it does not register.

They promise wealth and deliver starvation; they promise liberty and deliver totalitarianism; they promise health and delivery death panels. And when the program fails, they blame someone and redouble their efforts. This is the behavior of true believers.

This behavior is not a madness, nor power lust, not politics, and not economics: It is a religious behavior, fanaticism, magical thinking, the faith that moves mountains, but in this case turned against religion rather than toward it.

But which heresy is it? I am not the first one to say this, and the answer, in hindsight, seems obvious.

Which heresy proposes that the entire world-system is false, and that all spirituality and purity reside within an Elect of special all-knowing esoteric initiates? Which heresy proposes that words have no meaning, and that reason is a trap, and that normative and positive law is the oppression of Iadalboath, the evil demiurge?

Leftism is Gnosticism.

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.

February 18, 2010 @ 5:55 pm

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