We free spirits, we conservatives, like to wail about the authors of today's left: Antonio Gramsci for his march through the institutions, Herbert Marcuse for his intolerant intolerance -- or is it tolerant intolerance? And then there is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to teach lefties how to create mayhem in the eevil capitalist bourgeois world and teach the smug middle class a lesson.
Today's left is no doubt the product of all these evil geniuses. In fact, I would suggest that it is the helpless product of their ideas, in the sense that no lefty really knows why they believe what they believe: they just do. Because Activism 101.
And one thing more. I reckon that leftism is more a tactic than a strategy, more a cult than a philosophy, more an insurgency than a blueprint for government. Maybe that is why it has left such chaos in its wake.
The point, after all, of every lefty activist from Marx to Obama is the excuse for political power. He looks around for a warrant for revolution. Are the workers exploited? Yay, demolish the capitalists? Are women complaining? Castrate the sexists! Are blacks sitting in the back of the bus? Whack the racists! And the funny thing is that the more that we sufferers, we middle-class suckers, accede to the non-negotiable demands of the left the more that the left amps up the demands. I mean. We bourgeois started giving the workers their neo-feudal welfare state over a century ago. But are the workers content? We gave women the vote a century ago. Do they care? We did civil rights half a century ago. Are African Americans happy yet?
No. And the reason is that grievance is the whole point. If the whole point of your political movement is grievance, then you never want to let go of your grievance. Otherwise what is the meaning of life?
Hey kids! However dark and dreary things were back in the day, you sure wouldn't know it from the non-stop rhetoric from the left. Which suggests that the point is not the individual issues or the glorious Promised Land, but the pursuit of power.
But I ask: what's the point? See, when Martin Luther King Jr. expresses his faith in the arc of history bending towards justice and when Barack Obama bends this faith towards the lefty effort to actually help the arc of history and do a bit of bending with the help of their activist mobs, there is a curious agenda behind it all.
The agenda is that the noble and selfless lefty activists already know what Heaven on Earth should look like, and are deputized and empowered by the arc of history to make it happen.
Of course this sort of thing is really religion. It is religion that attempts to divine the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Government and politics and even justice are, as they used to say, sublunary activities. That is pompous philosophical talk for the ordinary day-to-day existence on this Earth. Because, as I say, government is force; politics is division, and there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. But the left wants to make the grubby day-to-day work of government, of force, into an incandescent source of meaning, the royal road to justice.
Only there is no such thing as justice, especially when the other guys are in power. There is only injustice.
Yep. That is why the Founders, slaveholders and patriarchs all, thought it would be a good idea to put a bit of daylight between religion and government, church and state. They thought of government in hydraulic terms, thinking how to to limit its power and thus limit the damage it could do if it accidentally broke its bounds and flooded the world. And the basis of that sort of racist sexist thinking by the Founders is that it could be -- perish the thought -- that the last word on justice and salvation and the meaning of life, the universe, and everything has not yet been thought and said.
Especially by the chap that was born 200 years ago in Trier, in the Rhineland-Palatinate hard by the Hunsrück where the German TV series Heimat written and directed by Edgar Reitz was based.
And this is the key. If we moderns have not yet thought the last word on peace and justice, then how much force is justified in implementing our incomplete and human-flawed notions-of-the-day?
The assumption of a Gramsci, and his march through the institutions, is that we already know what needs to be done. It only remains to occupy the territory and implement the vision. The assumption of a Marcuse, in the implementation of his intolerant tolerance, is that we already know that we lefties are good and the fascists are bad, and therefore the only thing to do is to sicc the activists on the remaining fascists and mop them up. But didn't Nietzsche say that God is Dead and that means we are Beyond Good and Evil? Whaddya think of that, Herbie?
And then there is good ole Saul Alinsky. His whole work is tactics, making life miserable for the capitalists and the bourgeoisie by actually turning up outside their houses. Cool idea Saul! Make those capitalists squirm! (But don't you try that, and show up outside the house of some State Attorney General recently exposed for sexual harassment. Oh no. Activism is not for the likes of you.
But I tell you what. Suppose that after a century of so of this lefty activism the aforesaid bourgeoisie got fed up to the back teeth with assuming the good faith of your local lefty activist? Supposing we deplorables eventually get around to realizing that, hey, this is war, and we ain't gonna take it anymore?
See, I reckon that the common assumption of the lefties is that the bourgeoisie is too nice, too civilized to trade blow for blow. And up to now they have been right. That is, of course, because middle-class people are socialized to operate in the market economy where you trust and deal fairly with everyone, and because, as I say, the bourgeoisie is not that interested in power.
But I tell you. At some point it becomes time to say: enough. I don't know about you, but I have a feeling that that moment might come somewhere in between America electing its First Black President and its First Woman President.
And then what would be the point of the Gramscis and the Marcuses and the Alinskys if, in the end, they just pushed us too far?
Today's left is no doubt the product of all these evil geniuses. In fact, I would suggest that it is the helpless product of their ideas, in the sense that no lefty really knows why they believe what they believe: they just do. Because Activism 101.
And one thing more. I reckon that leftism is more a tactic than a strategy, more a cult than a philosophy, more an insurgency than a blueprint for government. Maybe that is why it has left such chaos in its wake.
The point, after all, of every lefty activist from Marx to Obama is the excuse for political power. He looks around for a warrant for revolution. Are the workers exploited? Yay, demolish the capitalists? Are women complaining? Castrate the sexists! Are blacks sitting in the back of the bus? Whack the racists! And the funny thing is that the more that we sufferers, we middle-class suckers, accede to the non-negotiable demands of the left the more that the left amps up the demands. I mean. We bourgeois started giving the workers their neo-feudal welfare state over a century ago. But are the workers content? We gave women the vote a century ago. Do they care? We did civil rights half a century ago. Are African Americans happy yet?
No. And the reason is that grievance is the whole point. If the whole point of your political movement is grievance, then you never want to let go of your grievance. Otherwise what is the meaning of life?
Hey kids! However dark and dreary things were back in the day, you sure wouldn't know it from the non-stop rhetoric from the left. Which suggests that the point is not the individual issues or the glorious Promised Land, but the pursuit of power.
But I ask: what's the point? See, when Martin Luther King Jr. expresses his faith in the arc of history bending towards justice and when Barack Obama bends this faith towards the lefty effort to actually help the arc of history and do a bit of bending with the help of their activist mobs, there is a curious agenda behind it all.
The agenda is that the noble and selfless lefty activists already know what Heaven on Earth should look like, and are deputized and empowered by the arc of history to make it happen.
Of course this sort of thing is really religion. It is religion that attempts to divine the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Government and politics and even justice are, as they used to say, sublunary activities. That is pompous philosophical talk for the ordinary day-to-day existence on this Earth. Because, as I say, government is force; politics is division, and there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. But the left wants to make the grubby day-to-day work of government, of force, into an incandescent source of meaning, the royal road to justice.
Only there is no such thing as justice, especially when the other guys are in power. There is only injustice.
Yep. That is why the Founders, slaveholders and patriarchs all, thought it would be a good idea to put a bit of daylight between religion and government, church and state. They thought of government in hydraulic terms, thinking how to to limit its power and thus limit the damage it could do if it accidentally broke its bounds and flooded the world. And the basis of that sort of racist sexist thinking by the Founders is that it could be -- perish the thought -- that the last word on justice and salvation and the meaning of life, the universe, and everything has not yet been thought and said.
Especially by the chap that was born 200 years ago in Trier, in the Rhineland-Palatinate hard by the Hunsrück where the German TV series Heimat written and directed by Edgar Reitz was based.
And this is the key. If we moderns have not yet thought the last word on peace and justice, then how much force is justified in implementing our incomplete and human-flawed notions-of-the-day?
The assumption of a Gramsci, and his march through the institutions, is that we already know what needs to be done. It only remains to occupy the territory and implement the vision. The assumption of a Marcuse, in the implementation of his intolerant tolerance, is that we already know that we lefties are good and the fascists are bad, and therefore the only thing to do is to sicc the activists on the remaining fascists and mop them up. But didn't Nietzsche say that God is Dead and that means we are Beyond Good and Evil? Whaddya think of that, Herbie?
And then there is good ole Saul Alinsky. His whole work is tactics, making life miserable for the capitalists and the bourgeoisie by actually turning up outside their houses. Cool idea Saul! Make those capitalists squirm! (But don't you try that, and show up outside the house of some State Attorney General recently exposed for sexual harassment. Oh no. Activism is not for the likes of you.
But I tell you what. Suppose that after a century of so of this lefty activism the aforesaid bourgeoisie got fed up to the back teeth with assuming the good faith of your local lefty activist? Supposing we deplorables eventually get around to realizing that, hey, this is war, and we ain't gonna take it anymore?
See, I reckon that the common assumption of the lefties is that the bourgeoisie is too nice, too civilized to trade blow for blow. And up to now they have been right. That is, of course, because middle-class people are socialized to operate in the market economy where you trust and deal fairly with everyone, and because, as I say, the bourgeoisie is not that interested in power.
But I tell you. At some point it becomes time to say: enough. I don't know about you, but I have a feeling that that moment might come somewhere in between America electing its First Black President and its First Woman President.
And then what would be the point of the Gramscis and the Marcuses and the Alinskys if, in the end, they just pushed us too far?
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