The Pathology of the Left

The mindset of the Left has always been of interest to me.  I suppose it is natural to try and understand someone or something that is so different from yourself.  I am sure liberals do the same with conservatives.  It is often attempted on CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post, along with plenty of fodder for late night television hosts.  I think they are completely wrong, by the way.  Still, I am fascinated by Left's thinking and their subsequent positions on policies, concepts, events, and much more.  I often wonder, "How can they believe that?" or "Can't they see how illogical that is?"  This feeling has been even more prevalent during the pandemic and what appears to be the cultural revolution of 2020.  I engage with the news and social media and I find myself trying to comprehend the madness.  And it is madness.  There are many components to it, most of which are interconnected. Alas, I present to you the mind of the Left, but not in terms of what they believe.  The substance of their belief, to me, is more symptomatic than it is causal.  In other words, what they believe is down stream from the why.  I find it more useful to focus on the why, or I as call it, the pathology of their ideas. Here, we will focus on the pathology of the Left's beliefs.

Before we get started, let me clearly define who I am speaking of when I mention the Left.  For our purposes the Left will specifically refer to those who are liberal and progressive and take an active roll in pushing left wing causes.  By active, I mean people who take time to engage with the public, to try and influence, who are involved in activism, and who use their voice in whatever fashion to these ends.  This operational definition casts a large enough net to include the "elites" and "non-elites" alike.  However, it doesn't include the left leaning folks who do little more than vote or hit the "like" button social media.

Also, the question often is asked about predisposition.  The age old "nature" versus "nurture" debate is relevant to ideology as well as it is to other aspects for human behavior.  There is plenty of evidence that ideology is often influenced by nurturing mechanisms such as the family, religion, and experience.  However, that does not mean nature has no role and I tend to think there are some predispositions that make certain ideologies more attractive.  We all know the black sheep that grew up in a conservative house and was the lone liberal and vice versa.  We also know the guy who was liberal until some event happened which caused him to reconsider and vice versa.  It is hard to discern how much of our ideology is a result of our nurturing experiences or natural dispositions.  However, I do believe that our ideological positions are result of both "nature" and "nurture".  Together they produce a soil that will be apt to propagate ideological seeds, or a soil that is hostile.  

One of the predispositions of the Left that is at the center of who they are, what they believe, and why they believe is their inclination towards power and control.  I am not talking about the specific individuals or politicians.  Both conservative and liberals have plenty of politicians who crave power and influence for their own sake.  I am talking about in the more general philosophical leanings.  Liberals tend to be suspect of individual liberty and gravitate more towards a system that exerts power over the individual.  Centralized power offers the liberal the opportunity to fix the problems that society or "individual liberty" has caused.  It is precisely why the Left's answer to every problem is more government.  

 

Moral Superiority Complex

To say the Left thinks they are right is not profound by any means.  The Right thinks they are right as well.  In fact, most people think they are right.  I make it a rule not to hold opinions I think are wrong.  There certainly is nothing wrong with thinking you are right, that is how we come.  However, to the Left, being "right"  has less to do with facts, evidence, or logic and more to do with emotion and symbolism.  The Left doesn't have to be "right" as most understand it, they just have to feel that they are right, and mostly their feelings are a result of carefully selected anecdotes, trivial symbolism, and shallow generalizations. Their belief in their moral superiority lies in their perspective that they are the ones who are seeking to end oppression, injustice, and inequality.  They have convinced themselves that they are the savior of the helpless, the abandoned, and the abused.  They turn almost every issue into a high stakes moral dilemma where one can either be on the "right side" of history or can be on the side of evil.  It is the reason why racism and misogyny are often at the center of almost all of the Left's positions, because it creates a moral high ground from which they hope to stand.  Furthermore, because the situation is often dire, they need to act immediately.  Because they are pursuing such noble and lofty goals, almost any type of method to bending the moral arc of justice is at their disposal.  It is the kind of superiority complex that says, "We are the one's we have been waiting for." 

Issues like health care, immigration, climate change, and transgenderism cannot be merely discussed as policy issues.  Economic, logical, logistical, and political realities are not considered worthy of discussion when the rightness of your belief is morally superior.  To be against the Left's healthcare reform is to be a heartless, devoid of compassion, and uncaring.  To be against climate change is to be a greedy, selfish, nature hater whose choices will result in the deaths of millions.  To be against immigration, is to be a xenophobic, racist, hate-filled ignoramus.  Once the Left has established the severity of the moral imperative, along with a healthy dose of self-righteous indignation for any who oppose their ideas, they embark on an ends justifies the means approach.  Armed with their moral superiority, they make almost all issues or events drastic, allowing them to employ drastic measures.  Many times the Left seeks to ridicule, marginalize, and silence voices and conversations that wish to push back against the logic of their ideas.  

It is not just that the Left wants to be right or morally superior, they want feel morally superior and have others recognize their moral superiority.  This is a key distinction.  The Left typically is motivated by feelings as opposed to evidence, reason, or experience.  The logic of a position or its inevitable outcome are not as important as the feeling of being morally better than others.  The pandemic is great evidence of this complex.  If you attempt to have a discussion about the lock-down's real costs, in dollars, in emotional impact, and in long term effects, the Left will turn the argument into you not caring if people die, or that you are actually putting a dollar figure on lives.  The reality is these are the discussions societies have to have in times such as these because all choices come with a cost.  Adults understand that there are many layers to this issue and both the costs and the benefits need to be accurately discussed and weighed.  When one attempts to reduce it to an, "Either you are for saving lives or you're not," moral dilemma, they do so only to feel morally superior, and win an argument.  When they advocate for an issue, the issue is often secondary to the advocacy.  The advocacy makes them feel they are morally superior.  

Much of the Left's moral superiority complex comes from the void of a religious center that humans have typically used to fill our need for standards and structures to guide our lives.  Religion often provides explicit concepts and behaviors as to what is moral and immoral, not just to individuals, but also for society.  Humans are predisposed to wanting a moral code or standard to help govern the behavior of the individual and community.  Consequently, there has never been a society in which this did not happen.  One does not have to be active in the faith or a devout member to adopt the moral suppositions that coincide with a faith or religion.  I know many Americans who are not particularly religious, but follow much of moral tenets found in the Bible.  However, I am not saying the Left is not religious, in fact they are very religious, they just have abandon the traditional American faiths of Christianity and Judaism in favor of a secular spirituality or humanistic creed. The Left's religious void is filled with a collection of ideology, intellectualism, science, and environmentalism.  They are often unaware that they have turned to these idols as religion, but they have.   Whereas traditional religions provides one the opportunity to interact with a moral code, through the obedience to a faith, the Left's lack of such engagement forces them to look else where.  To the Left, following a moral code is no longer attached to an organized religion, rather, it is attached to constructing a system to which they can engage to elicit the same feelings that religious followers feel when they have obeyed the teachings of the faith.  The Left's religion is a aggregate mixture of social, political, and economic philosophies. Ultimately, much of their religious endeavors are tied up into pursuits of abstract concepts such as social justice, environmental justice, equality, equity, and the like. Armed with the feeling of their moral imperative, the Left worships with much zeal and fervor. 

The Left's lack of a traditional religious beliefs leads them to create an alternative system that exhibits piety and demands conformity.  They are very similar to a religious sect that Jesus had more than just a few conflicts, the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were the object of Jesus disdain because they were people who were more concerned with making religious displays to the public than they were about living  according to the standard.  Moreover, they developed a system of rules and regulations by which they could create a sense of their moral superiority to the community.  Not content with that, they also attempted to push their system of religion onto others.  Their religion was no longer centered around God and scripture, but they were worshiping their religious rites that made them feel superior.  I guess one could say that they were the first virtue signalers (Read Matthew Chapters 6 and 23).  A great example of this is how many on the Left respond to social events and issues.  They put statements on Twitter or other social media that declares their solidarity to a movement or idea.  Hashtags, banners, and statements are all designed to show the world that they are on the right side of history.  The need to display their moral superiority is a true sickness.  It reminds me of this great episode of Seinfeld:

Intellectually Superior Complex

Similar to the moral superiority complex, the intellectual superiority complex is based on the need to feel smarter than others.  Also, these two concepts are inextricably linked as they both feed off of the other in a circular dynamic. The Left's relationship with intellectual superiority began with the classical liberalism of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.  Both movements exposed the world to a new, secular way of understanding both the physical and social worlds.  They had uncovered a new way to approach problems and find solutions that were no longer left to the dictates of the church.  These ideas were indeed revolutionary and were a major contributing factor to the American and French Revolutions.  However, as the French Revolution clearly displayed, when man's arrogance in their intellect overcome the realities of  human behavior, chaos and tyranny are in short order.  As the French Revolution was taking over by the Jacobins, their belief in their intellectual superiority sent many to face the guillotine.  Today's Left can display many of those same qualities and this has clearly been on display as of late. 

By the turn of the 20th century, this arrogance in intellectual superiority began to make itself known in American politics.  The Progressive movement was an attempt to reform the political, social, and economic problems of the time.  These reforms were based on "scientific" approaches to understanding the problems and providing solutions.  The Progressive movement solidified the association with liberals and science. From that point forward, the Left has promoted the idea that they are the ideology of science, reason, and progress.  The intellectual prowess of the Left often fails to produce the outcomes they had so self righteously calculated.  More recently, the Left sees the conservative continued embrace of religion and their reluctance to accept Climate change as evidence of their intellectual hegemony.

The Left's feeling of intellectual superiority is partly due to the fact that they control the two most important institutions of information: education and the media.  Education, from K-12 to the university, is dominated by the Left.  I am certain of this as I have been in public education for nearly 20 years.  From teacher training schools, to teacher unions, to the approved curriculum,  and even in administration, the Left has complete control of public education.  Why do you think the Left constantly condemns charter schools or home schools?  Simply, they are a threat.   The Left's control of higher education is well documented and the protests, riots, destruction of property, and the silencing of opponents is the result of an indoctrinated campus culture migrating to the larger society.  Curiously and somewhat damning, the Left's control of education has yielded little in true progress, besides indoctrinating young minds.

The Left's control of education influences how people process and contextualize information.  Much of what student's learn these days are Marxist interpretations of social, political and economical histories and ideas, combined with a heavy dose of Post Modern relativism that erodes the belief in Western values.  Marxist interpretation basically sees the world as competing entities fighting for political, social, and economic power.  Essentially, the world is reduced to a power struggle between the haves and have nots, labor and capital, oppressor and the oppressed, the weak and the strong. Within this framework, the Marxist views the group that has less power as the more worthy, honorable, and noble and those with power are viewed as corrupt.  There is little attention given to the complexities and nuance that exist within these relationships and therefore much of the interpretations become oversimplified generalizations that do little more than appeal to the emotions.  This intellectual approach contributes to the morally superiority complex , thus increasing the Left's feeling of superiority exponentially.  Moreover, Marxist interpretations make villains out of Americans, white people, Christians, upper class, and men while elevating non-Americans, people of color, women, and non-heterosexuals. The vilification does little to help society, much like all of the previous Marxist revolutions failed to bring about the progress they promised.

Post Modernism is an interesting and paradoxical development in the West that the Left has embraced.  Post Modernism is the rejection of absolute truth and an acceptance of relative truth.  The paradox lies in the fact that Western modes of thinking evolved from a belief in the ability to ascertain truth to a cannibalistic rejection of such an idea.  The problem with Post Modernism is that it erodes, erases, and eliminates the traditional standards and criteria that helped provide clear distinctions of truth.  With no clear distinctions, truth is now in the eye of the beholder or in the narrative of the storyteller.  Post Modernism removes the need for factual evidence and logical reasoning and promotes "personal truth" to exist equally in the face of conflicting evidence.  Moreover,  a member of one of the "oppressed" groups from a Marxist interpretation hold truths that are seen as more valid merely because they are oppressed.  Consequently, the lack of standards and criteria for truth leads to many confusing, conflicting, and contradicting  applications of standards that seem to shift with the whims of intelligentsia.  This constantly moving targets can become exhausting to understand.

Upon leaving the indoctrination incubators, these students begin digesting information  from a media that shares the same ideological perspective and understanding.  With really no one left to challenge their perspective or way of thinking, arrogance and smugness are readily available.  The media provides an echo chamber that only emboldens them to hold more steadfastly to their view of the world.  The media's role as gatekeeper, allows them to determine the news that Americans consume.  Often, the news chooses stories that promote the Left's narrative and many of these stories are anecdotal or are completely fabricated (think of UV Rape, Covington, Police brutality)  Not content with having a monopoly on the news, the media often resorts to mocking, ridiculing, and marginalizing any media source that provides alternative points of view.  Such is their sensitivity to their fragile belief in their intellectual superiority, that anyone who challenges their dominance, must be discredited and demeaned. 

Another characteristic of the Left's perceived intellectual acumen is their rejection of "conventional wisdom",  common sense, and traditional understandings.  When one believes they are smarter than the "average" person in society, they must construct a point of view that is decidedly different, otherwise they share the same intellectual space as the "average person" and that is not acceptable.  This rejection of established ideas and concepts began in earnest in the Sixties and has evolved rather quickly, especially as more and more Americans entered college.  One area where this is particularly true was the Marxist revisionist history of America.  Attempts to make America and its capitalistic tradition the evil boogeyman of every event has been academic fare for the last fifty years.  This "new" version of history and understanding can be very appealing to young, idealistic, and naive minds who suppose that college professors are providing them with an objective and biased free knowledge.  Armed with this "new knowledge", many young people develop an intellectual understanding of the world that is anti-American and anti-capitalist.

The idea that the Left holds the knowledge that the rest of America does not is not just confined to history or economics.  The Left has developed an intellectual paradigm that often rests on a hierarchy of attacking perceived power structures.  When an idea criticizes things like the "patriarchy", an industrial complex, sexual norms, or any other traditional understandings, then it is deemed credible and valid, regardless of the evidence, facts, or logic.  The mere fact that it argues against the norm, makes it true and right.  Often these ideas are disguised with academic terms and phrases but contain very little in the way of substance.  This is little more than intellectual masturbation that basically stimulates oneself into feeling they are smarter than the average person.  There is something orgasmic to holding onto opinions that have the trappings of intellectual jargon.  

A particular component of the Left's intellectual superiority is engaging in self flagellation as means to prove one's intellectual purity.  When one criticizes or argues against their own, they are often seen as having immediate credibility and intellectual integrity.  This position is often a tempting dynamic because it often brings celebration and applause from media and social media.  This type of thinking promotes ideas like, "real patriots are those who criticize their country."  The examples of this type of thinking are numerous: White people criticizing their white privilege, rich  people condemning wealth disparities, men attacking misogyny, and carbon guzzlers lamenting climate change, and on and on.  The Left also loves when a conservative is critical of their own.  However, you rarely hear the Left attacking the Left.

Envy

Hidden beneath much of the Left's policy preferences and ideological positions is one of the seven deadly sins: envy.  Envy is an emotion of anger or frustration directed towards others based on the mere fact they have some resource you don't.  Whereas greed is wanting to selfishly collect and hold onto resources, envy is a desire to take resources away from others.  Envy produces resentment of others and typically a false narrative as to how the other came into possession of a coveted resource.  For example, the envious will make claims that someone or some group of people don't "deserve" some resource based on some contrived standard of fairness.  This line of thinking often leads to demands for some sort of restitution in which those who have are forced to give up their resource to those who do not have.  Envy is a byproduct of both the moral and intellectual superiority complexes.  If you are better, more righteous, and smarter, then you deserve to have the resources as opposed to the morally reprehensible or intellectually limited.  Karl Marx's championing of the laborer was not so much about the plight of labor as it was about his disdain for the capitalists and their growing influence.  He envied the bourgeoisie  but disguised it as empathy for the laborer.  It is this envy that the left views the world.  

One of the Left's most fervent concerns is the equitable distribution of resources. The Left is always looking at and analyzing who has what, how much more do they have, why do they have so much more than others.  Implicit in this line of thinking is that the belief that the distribution of resources is unfair.  Thus, calls for some sort of mechanism to ensure the inequities are corrected on behalf of the "have-nots", are championed. And, because the Left has the market cornered on moral positions and intellectual understanding, it is obvious that they should be the ones in charge of such an effort.  However, the Left aims to be the arbiters and distributors of resources, not out of compassion, but out of spite. Vladimir Lenin's desire to overthrow the Tsar had little to do with wanting to make Russia more equitable, but instead was centered around Lenin's craving for power.  The same could be said for Mao, Castro, Khomeini, Chavez, and others.    

The envious Left's hyper-focus on distribution of resources promotes a cynical and negative view of capitalism.  Capitalism's reliance on the market to sort out the distribution of resources is not acceptable to the Left.  Although the market is essentially the free interactions of buyers and sellers within the framework of pursuing one's own economic self-interest, it is seen by the Left as an evil an unfair system that rewards the undeserving.  So, the Left often wants to insert itself in the market and make corrections that typically come with huge unintended consequences.  Once again, because the Left is so right and so smart, it seems plausible to them that their manipulations of the market will result in better outcomes.  But in doing so, the outcomes are usually only better for those who are manipulating the market and definitely not for most of society.  In other words, the Left is the beneficiary of their attempts at creating more equitable outcomes.  The cost is paid by the rest of society.  Ask Venezuela...

Free markets do produce inequalities but those inequalities are seen as fair outcomes because people are free to make economic choices.  In contrast to the Left's view of the market, the market does not arbitrarily award winners and losers.  Rather, winners and losers are decided through a highly complex interactions of free peoples with many different motives, preferences, and needs. When the government intercedes in the market on behalf of some groups of people, they, ironically and unknowingly (or maybe knowingly), make the market less fair, and thus less equitable.  But their real goal is to ensure that others don't have more of something than others.  It reminds me of my daughters when they were young.  If one had a toy that she was not playing with or interested in at a particular time, and she saw her sister playing with the said toy and having fun, she would demand the return of the toy.  This demand was not done in hopes of finding utility in the said toy, but done to prevent the other from enjoying the utility from the toy.

Collective

One of the more complicated concepts that Western democracies have to struggle with is the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community.  For both liberals and conservatives, there are certain situations and contexts that put them on either side of the debate.  But, usually and increasingly, the Left looks takes the side of the community over the individual while conservatives tend to promote the individual over the collective.  To be fair, I think the Left's disposition to the community is not without merit and can be an honorable position.  I think most conservatives would share the sentiment that sacrificing an individual's desire for the betterment of others is a worthy endeavor.  As a Christian, one could and should argue that the entirety of the Gospel is based on this idea.  In fact, Christianity has a special word for this idea- love.  It is the highest of all virtues. Conflict emerges, however, when trying to specify the details as to how the rights of the individual versus those of the community are to be adjudicated.  Who makes the decision?  What is the criteria used in making the decision? How is it enforced?  As they say, the devil is in the details.

The Left's collective bent is intricately tied to their moral superiority complex.  When you are advocating the whole over the individual, it is easy to arrive at that conclusion.  It is hard to argue against such a proposition.  As humans, we come pre-wired to value sacrifice for the betterment of many.  However, sacrifice via compulsion is much different from voluntarily sacrificing.  Much is lost when the sacrifice is made at the end of a bayonet.  The crucifixion of Jesus would be much different if he had fought against it all the way from the beginning through its completion.  What makes Jesus' sacrifice compelling is he was submissive from beginning to end.  Unfortunately, when a conflict between the individual and the community arises, the Left's default position is coercion through threat of governmental force or through the tyranny of the mob.  Either way, the method to bring about the Left's desired outcome is rationalized as the morally appropriate action.

Still, the devil is still in the details regarding the mediation of the conflict between the individual and the community.  Who should be the arbiters of such a decision?  Well, if you are the Left, because you feel your morally better and intellectually superior, the obvious choice is...you.  The Left is happily willing to make these decisions.  They have no problem sacrificing the liberties of others to promote some collective outcome.  More often than not, they are more than willing to exempt themselves from such individual sacrifices.  One of the most readily available examples is the Left's approach to climate change.  The Left can fly in private planes, own multiple homes, and increase the costs of living meanwhile asking the average person to sacrifice all sorts of daily conveniences.  I am almost certain that my carbon footprint is tiny compared to Bill Nye, Bernie Sanders, and Bill Maher.  

The criteria used by the Left to determine when the individual must yield to the community is a haphazard collection of logical contortions, double standards, and confusing outcomes.  Unfortunately, the Left rarely relies on the American document that attempted to create a logical and thorough understanding of the rights of the individual- the Bill of Rights.  I would not be surprised if in the near future, the Left will criticize the Bill of Rights as oppressive, violent, and thus needs to be discarded.  The Left creates even more confusion when they create and cater to different sets of collectives.  Thus, the Left carves up society into different groups, usually based on their status as an oppressed or victimized group.  The short list is people of color, women, and sexual orientation.  Within these groups, different standards exist and individuals of these groups will have greater freedom to exercise their individual rights at the sacrifice of the community.  For example, transgender people represent a very small portion of the population, yet their "rights" are seen as sacred and untouchable.  If you make a case that a biological male should not be able to compete against biological females, you are made out to be a hate-filled and oppressive rube.  Conversely, white males are told to check their privilege and keep their mouths shut.  In approaching the individual and community dynamic in this way, the Left creates more confusion which necessitates more laws, more coercion.

Activist

For many religious groups, participation in ritual and tradition provides the follower with a sense of connection to an idea that is larger than themselves. Attending services, performing a rite, and fellowshipping with the body serves to solidify the relationship between what one believes and what one does.  To merely say you believe in something without following the prescribed method living up to that belief, is empty and meaningless.  The apostle James says "Faith without works is dead," meaning that merely saying you believe in something is useless if that belief does not manifest itself with the appropriate action of said belief.    For the Left, this kind of thinking applies to their pseudo-religious ideology.  As I have already mentioned, the Left fills their need for religious connection through their political ideology and this religion requires them to be participants through some sort of activism.  Sure, the right does have an activist wing, but it is a small, unorganized, and sporadic group that lives on the edges of conservatism.  The closest thing to any major activism on the right was the Tea Party movement from ten years ago.  The Left, however, is a much more involved group that is constantly involved in some sort of activism.  Being an activist is like being a member of the clergy.  The fact that President Obama's line of work before becoming a senator, was community activist, is a glaring example of how the position is exalted.  

The Left cultivates the belief that participation in politics is part and parcel of being a true believer in the faith.  The Left offers a number of ways for the adherents to express their belief in action with increasing levels of devotion to the cause.  It starts out with symbolic gestures of hashtagging a statement of faith or publicly declaring an accepted view.  It can also consist of small, personal commitments like going vegan (vegan isn't bad but is a way to participate in the belief), donating money to a specific cause, or using  correct pronouns.  It progresses to promoting boycotts and calling for various resignations and firings of the unholy.  The next stage involves going to a march or rally to gather with other believers in an almost revival atmosphere.  For the truly committed, being involved in a protest that lands you in jail will most likely lead to sainthood.

The need to participate in the religion of the Left requires that the Left has things to participate in.  This is an important aspect to understand because it requires the Left to be vigilantly looking for opportunities to perform their religious rites.  Simply put, the Left is in constant need of a cause to fight, a sin to atone, a way to put their faith into action.  Obviously, this activist component is very closely related and dependent on the moral superiority complex.  The moral superiority is simply the faith of the left.  Activism is its ritual ceremony that separates the sheep from the goats.  We will discuss the methodology of how the Left does this later, but just understand that for the Left to continue to exist as a living ideological movement, they need to have an oppression to crush, an injustice to conquer, an inequity to capsize.  When one oppression or injustice falls, the Left looks for the next battleground.  In this way, the Left is much like the militarist nations of German and Japan during WWII.  A victory in one battle necessitates the next battle.  For without a battle to fight, their purpose and meaning become lost and its adherents are left without a temple from which to worship.  

The activist mindset provides the Left with a pseudo-religious experience that often fails to actually solve the problem for which the Left was called to action.  In other words, the efficacy of the Left's activism is often found wanting.  Unless, however, the actual activism was not so much about solving an issue as it was another opportunity to show their virtuosity or exert power and force over a perceived enemy.  Most marches, rallies, boycotts, and social media campaigns do very little in the way of ending the oppression and injustice the Left is so righteously campaigning against.  They do, however, work very well at getting weak and fearful corporations and institutions to cower to their demands.  But again, beyond the vapid symbolism, the mere participation, or the successful use of force, these victories have done very little in accomplishing the stated purpose for the activism.  What did Occupy Wall St. solve?  What did the women's marches after Trumps election do, besides become a mockery with genitalia themed hats?   Has anything Al Sharpton led, done much besides providing him a PR opportunity and a way to extort some cash that he will later hide from the IRS?  What have the environmental protests, summits, and events achieved besides expending more carbon to make the claim that carbon is killing the planet?  Most recently, our current protests about systemic racism and police brutality have led to toppling of all sorts of statues that range from former confederates to anti-slavery abolitionists.  Many movies, TV shows, and even food products have met the fate of a guillotine.  And again I ask, what real, effective policies have been enacted or even suggested?  There are none, because the reality is much of the Left's engagement in political and social issues is much more about exerting force and power than making substantive changes.  The Left is constantly looking for windmills at which to tilt.

Idealism

One of the key distinctions between conservatives and liberals is the amount of idealism plays a role in their view on society.  It is not that conservatives are not without their own idealistic notions.  However, conservatives tend to see the ten thousand years of the history of man as evidence that there are established patterns of how men, society and governments tend to behave, interact, or implode.  In other words, conservatives tend to be realists, understanding that there are laws that govern men, nature and society that can't be wished away.  Idealism, on the other hand, is the belief of how things should be.  The important word being should, implies much and requires peeling back a number of layers.  Should is a longing to bring into existence a situation, regardless of the realities that exist to prevent it from occurring.  It is like a square peg in a round hole.  Both the peg and hole suffer as more effort is exerted to make it fit, and ultimately both will be destroyed.

Idealism does, however, provide our political discourse important balance to the harshness of the conservative realism.  Idealism offers a sense of hope and can inspire creativity and innovation.  Where realism can help develop guard rails for idealism's grandiose perspective, idealism can expand realism's narrow and rigid understanding.  Together, they can make policy better.  Left alone, they often fall short.  This is why more discourse, conversations, and open debate are needed as opposed to our current system of canceling and silencing others. 

Idealism is tempting.  It sounds so good and appeals to our better selves.  We want to believe in a world where good wins and evil is defeated once and for all.  Pursuing the ideal makes us feel like we are making the world better.  However, idealism neglects important factors which are often ugly realities that we would rather not face.  I have seen young parents set out to raise their kids with a sense of idealistic optimism that they will be able to raise their child with little or no need for strict discipline.  In the end, both the parent and child suffer.  I was a young idealist teacher many years ago who believed that I would be Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society only to feel like Ben Stein in Ferris Beuller's Day Off.  Idealism offers us a false hope that we can suspend the negative consequences of our actions, merely because those actions are done with good intentions.  To put it differently, it's a road to hell.  To the Left, intentions done in hopes of achieving an idealistic outcome, is all that matters, regardless of the many unintended consequences that often lead to the very thing they were trying to prevent.  The "defunding" police movement is going to have the very same outcome- an idealistic and symbolic notion, that denies reality, and in the end leads to more problems.  The Proverb, "There is a way that seems right to man but in the end, leads to death," is a very wise understanding of the failure of unchecked idealism. 

Idealism's offense is exacerbated when combined with righteous, moral, pretension and multiplied when there is healthy dose of intellectual hubris.  The belief that the ideal is the only moral alternative that is acceptable, emboldens the Left to pursue it at all costs.  And usually the costs can be quite high.  For example, the belief that people from all of over the world should be able to come to the US and live without following the legal process, leads to many ills and the price is paid in so many ways.  Idealism can even be more alarming when the Left believes that they are smart enough to triumph over reality.  it is the kind of arrogance that promotes the Green New Deal, which every objective adult realizes is a farce.      

The Left is very adept at pushing an idealistic myth of what society should be through its propaganda machine via music, screen, and stage.  John Lennon's "Imagine", the Left's anthem, is a prime example of idealism on parade.  It is vapid, insipid, tripe filled, and truly imaginary.  The Left's true medium is film and TV, where they can construct a world through a script that depicts people, events, and consequences in the manner they choose.  Aaron Sorkin is the master of creating show that promotes liberal perspectives, archetype characters, and happy liberal conclusions.  The problem is that none of it depicts reality.  When you are able to arbitrarily control all the variables, it is easy to create an illusory world. But here's the deal...it's pretty damn effective.  I can't tell you how many liberals I have talked to that wished for Jed Bartlett to be president.  The Left's effectiveness at pushing these idealistic narratives increases exponentially with the fact that America is a star-obsessed culture and has a hard time separating life from art.  It is interesting to note how much attention authoritarian dictators and regimes have paid to music, film and media as a means to promote their idealized version of society.

Although much of what the Left pushes is all idealistic, there are a number of specific idealistic notions that need to be addressed.  Perhaps the most prominent is their economic idealism.  We have discussed already the Left's Marxist roots, but some deeper analysis is important here.  The Left suffers from a faulty understanding of how humans behave economically.  They believe that the individual has sufficient incentive to provide resources to the public based on the goodness of their heart.  They don't really think that, because they understand the need of having a large government apparatus to effectively confiscate resources from individuals.  What they really don't understand is that the confiscation creates less incentive to be productive.  Just ask Venezuela.  When the market is free to interact, create, and innovate because people can reap the rewards of their labor, then all of society is enriched. Moreover, the Left erroneously believes that they manage scarcity more efficiently than the market.  Obama Care is an example of the hubris of Left wing bureaucrats and technocrats believing in their intellectual prowess can place the market under their will.  It just doesn't work like that.  The Left attempts to violate the sacred laws of economics: there is no such thing as free lunch; you cannot have your cake and eat it too; and wants will always be greater than resources.  The Left also incorrectly believes that they can change variables upstream while simultaneously keeping the downstream unchanged.  For example, they will talk of how much wealth was created in a year, and how a large portion of that wealth should have been collected through taxes, assuming that the wealth created would have been the same with a higher tax rate.  

The Left's foreign policy is also wildly misguided by idealistic preconceptions.  This was on display for eight years of the Obama presidency.  It is the belief that evil, hostile, and adversarial nations and their leaders can be managed through diplomacy that often negotiates from an inferior position.  Much of this comes from the Left's natural inclination that America is either the bad guy, or equal to the bad guy.  The Left believes that when America concedes that we are responsible for tragedies around the world, the world will like us more, and thus there will be peace.  It is this Chamberlainesque capitulation that leads to wars rather than prevents them.  The Left's idealistic naivete makes America weak.

The full extent of the consequences of the Left's ideological pathology is fully on display.  Unfortunately, the Left's methods are extremely effective and prolific, which makes it difficult to contain.  The pessimist in me thinks that there is no way to control the contagion, regardless of social distancing and mask-wearing.  The optimist thinks that it will get much worse before it gets better.