"not a point of view but virtue itself"

Melanie Phillips is a brilliant, intellectually honest, British journalist and author. I've been following her blog for years. Being British and middle age, Ms. Phillips has a unique perspective. She's experienced the Left's conquest of Britain. She recognizes what is happening and about to happen in the United States. She writes about it rationally and analytically.

Today Ms. Phillips published an article on her website titled "The New Intolerance." The article is worth reading in its entirety. It cogently describes the "war of religion" which is currently raging in both Britain and the United States. The article expertly dissects this war and lays bare its philosophical and psychological roots. What I found especially revealing was her description of the individuals who are waging this war. Of course, I am referring to those on the philosophical Left.

Ms. Phillips writes:

Medieval Christianity — like contemporary Islamism — stamped out dissent by killing or conversion; Western liberals do it by social and professional ostracism and legal discrimination. It is a kind of secular Inquisition. And the grand inquisitors are to be found within the intelligentsia — the universities, the media, the law and the political and professional classes — who not only have systematically undermined the foundations of Western society but are heavily engaged in attempting to suppress any challenge or protest.

It is hard to overstate the influence of these left-wing doctrines on our culture. They form the unchallengeable orthodoxy within academia, from which base-camp they have set forth on their "long march through the institutions" which they have colonised with stunning success. They have managed, furthermore, to shift the centre of political gravity so that anyone who does not share these values is defined as extreme.

For the Left believes that its secular, materialistic, individualistic and utilitarian values represent not a point of view but virtue itself. No decent person can therefore oppose them. Anyone who does so is automatically "right-wing". In fact, such opponents may have no ideological position. But the Left cannot acknowledge such a possibility. In Manichean fashion it divides the world into two opposing and exclusive camps, good and evil; and so it creates as the sole alternative to itself a demonic political camp, to which everyone who challenges it is automatically consigned. Since anything that is not the Left is therefore "the Right", and since "the Right" is by definition evil, to challenge any left-wing shibboleth is to be labelled "right-wing" and put oneself totally beyond the moral pale.

So there can be no dissent or argument at all. Only one world-view is to be permitted and all other views are to be suppressed or destroyed. And because all that is evil is "right-wing" and all that is "right-wing" is evil, anyone who supports Israel or the Americans in Iraq, is sceptical of anthropogenic global warming, opposes multiculturalism or utilitarianism, supports capitalism or is a believing Christian is not only evil but also "right-wing". [Emphasis mine]

Ms. Phillips has put her finger on an issue that has troubled me for quite some time: Why are leftists and progressives so intransigent in their beliefs even when they are presented with a logical argument or empirical evidence that exposes the absurdity of their position?

We've all seen it. We've all experienced it. Gone are the days in academia or in polite society when logic and evidence hold sway in an argument and those with intellectual integrity recognize their error and accept the truth. Leftists today barely engage anymore in argument. When presented with one, they respond with timeworn and disproved memes. When the memes are challenged, they are likely to immediately respond with an arrogant indifference and, if pressed, with an ad hominem attack. I could never quite understand this nasty habit.

Yesterday, Erick Erickson at Redstate posted an article called "The Second Coming of American Liberal Fascism?" The article describes what happens when leftists gain political power. They no longer have to bother with making ad hominem attacks on their opponents because they have beaten their opponents, not by force of reason, but by the political force of majority rule. So they become righteous and absolutely intolerant of dissent. They ostracize those who persist in dissent and even imprison them. Erickson points out that this is not new. It's happened before in the era of Woodrow Wilson's presidency.

Melanie Phillips explains the nature of this vicious behavior. Leftist ideology is not a political idea but a belief, as religion is a belief. Leftists are exactly the same as medieval Christians and modern day Islamists: There mission is to stamp out evil, i.e., opposing opinion, by any means possible. Forced conversion of the evil dissenters or killing them is impossible in polite society, so leftists resort to the next most effective means, coerced participation, enforced silence or imprisonment.

Politics in America today is no longer a sport in which both sides agree to engage in friendly governance once the election is over. Politics today is a blood sport. The stakes are high. Not only are the livelihoods of politicians threatened by an adverse, electoral outcome, but individuals on the losing political side are at risk of being literally and legally pillaged and plundered or incarcerated for their dissent. Principles upon which this country was founded are at stake in our modern elections, principles like the rule of law, individual liberty and private property. Modern day politics has literally become a life and death proposition.

This is what so many who are immersed in politics today do not understand. They view politics as a panacea. They naively expect their political opponents to graciously concede political defeat and work with them in the future in common cause. They expect all will be well and good provided the right candidate -- the wise and conciliatory leader -- is elected to office. This was possible in times past when political differences were honest and principled, when political argument turned upon alternate means to attain the same end. Today, most on the left do not share the goals of their political opponents. They consider politics a war in which the spoils belong to the victors and in which the defeated have no rights at all.

The truth is that a society that relies on this kind of politics to resolve disputes cannot long survive. The end game will not be pretty.

The only peaceful means I see of preserving our Constitutional republic is to turn over the rock under which these vermin on the left and the right are hiding. That rock is an ideology that is impervious to logic and evidence. As Ms. Phillips suggests, the left-wing especially has taken cover under an "unchallengeable orthodoxy within academia," which shelters it from truth. The solution is to speak that truth relentlessly and fearlessly, and to remind these vermin of the fate that awaits them should they not discard their anti-cooperative religious ideology.

The other day legal expert Professor Alan Dershowitz appeared on the Glenn Beck show. Prof. Dershowitz and Mr. Beck represent opposite sides of the political spectrum. Prof. Dershowitz is a moderate leftist. Despite his political ideology, Prof. Dershowitz courageously stood up against the left's demagoguery of the Trayvon Martin murder case in Florida.

All rational people recognize that it was their ideology that drove leftists, like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rep. Bobby Rush, President Obama and others to rush to judgement in this unfortunate incident. They were quick to accuse Mr. Martin's admitted killer, George Zimmerman, of "racism." They made the accusation comfortably and forcefully before hardly any evidence had come to light. The leftist media mindlessly publicized their accusations. The Florida prosecutors, apparently, knuckled under to public pressure and produced charges against Mr. Zimmerman that the evidence does not support. Prof. Dershowitz condemned the prosecutor's action as "unethical" and possibly "criminal." He calmly explained the legal principles involved and how the prosecution had violated them.

This is the way to crack the dome of orthodox ideology that protects the left. Not only did Prof. Dershowitz expose that orthodoxy for what it is, he courageously disavowed it by his appearance on Beck's program.

It's useless to argue with leftists. Our job is not to persuade them by means of logic and evidence. Such a thing is impossible. Our mission should be to expose them as fervent ideologues and challenge those among them who have any remnant of intellectual honesty and integrity to disavow their cultish belief system.

As I said, if these ideologues persist in their quest for dominating power, the consequences will not be pretty. Their victims will eventually act to defend themselves and the fundamental principles that enable a cooperative society to exist in the first place. 

     

Wanted: Common Sense And Moral Courage

More wisdom from Ludwig von Mises' Planned Chaos:

The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people. However, there is no such thing as a scientific ought. Science is competent to establish what is. It can never dictate what ought to be and what ends people should aim at. It is a fact that men disagree in their value judgments. It is insolent to arrogate to oneself the right to overrule the plans of other people and to force them to submit to the plan of the planner. Whose plan should be executed? The plan of the CIO or those of any other group? The plan of Trotsky or that of Stalin? The plan of Hitler or that of Strasser?

When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

Does anyone disagree that what Mises says is just plain common sense?

Would grocery shopping remain a peaceful activity if government were to mandate that individuals could no longer shop for themselves and their families, but that all grocery shopping would henceforth have to be done by neighborhood bureaucrats acting collectively through a neighborhood shopping authority? Suddenly food shopping would become a highly argumentative, political and controversial activity. Individuals would argue among themselves about which particular foods the neighborhood authority should buy and about how these foods should be fairly distributed among neighborhood residents.

Americans would have to be absolute idiots to endorse such a foolish plan. Yet, Americans long ago adopted such a plan with regard to educating their children. Now we argue over which textbooks our official neighborhood schools should mandate, what subjects their unionized public teachers should teach, what extra-curricular activities their official sociologists should allow, whether they should allow boys and girls to compete in the same athletic contest, what holidays the school administration should allow our children to observe... The list is endless and it will remain endless and contentious so long as we insist that our society's educational system be organized on a dictatorial, one-size-fits-all, public basis.

In the last two years Americans, through their governmental representatives, decided that health care and health insurance in America be organized as a dictatorial, one-size-fits-all public authority. Is it any wonder that every second since this controversial decision was made political infighting, rancor and vitriol has ruled the day? Now the government mandates not only that we must purchase health insurance, it also mandates which procedures are essential and which are not, which procedures are "covered" and which are not, who is eligible to receive treatment and who is not. And the politicization of the medical industry which we have experienced so far is only the tip of the iceberg. Yet, for various stupid, dictatorial or selfish reasons, a good portion of Americans want the government to continue its massive intervention in the medical market.

Government planners and politicians tell us that education and medicine are unique fields of human endeavor, that the problems and issues in these fields are scientific in nature and are best solved by technological experts. They say the same thing about environmental and nutritional issues. The risk to the planet of global warming is far too great to entrust to the personal whims of common individuals in the marketplace. Scientists and technical experts must decide for us what type of energy is best to produce, which kinds of cars are best to drive, what kinds of crops are best to grow. "Best" is not a subjective value judgement but an objective, scientific fact.

By this logic what is "best" for us to eat cannot be an issue of personal taste. Professional experts and dieticians know which foods are healthy for us to consume and which are not. They lobby for Congress to ban sugar, salt, fast foods, candies and a whole spectrum of forbidden fruit. Will it be long until the long arm of the federal government DOES mandate that our food shopping be done by neighborhood experts rather than individuals?

Have we lost our common sense?

Mises continues:

The problems of society's economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly.

The socialist propaganda never encountered any decided opposition. The devastating critique by which the economists exploded the futility and impracticability of the socialist schemes and doctrines did not reach the moulders of public opinion. The universities were mostly dominated by socialist or interventionist pedants not only in continental Europe, where they were owned and operated by the governments, but even in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The politicians and the statesmen, anxious not to lose popularity, were lukewarm in their defence of freedom. The policy of appeasement, so much criticized when applied in the case of the Nazis and the Fascists, was practised universally for many decades with regard to all other brands of socialism. It was this defeatism that made the rising generation believe that the victory of socialism is inevitable.

It is not true that the masses are vehemently asking for socialism and that there is no means to resist them. The masses favour socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are moulding public opinion. It is a lame excuse of the intellectuals that they must yield to the masses. They themselves have generated the socialist ideas and indoctrinated the masses with them. No proletarian or son of a proletarian has contributed to the elaboration of the interventionist and socialist programmes. Their authors were all of bourgeois background. The esoteric writings of dialectical materialism, of Hegel, the father both of Marxism and of German aggressive nationalism, the books of Georges Sorel, of Gentile and of Spengler were not read by the average man; they did not move the masses directly. It was the intellectuals who popularized them.

The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization. The intellectuals alone are responsible for the mass slaughters which are the characteristic mark of our century. They alone can reverse the trend and pave the way for a resurrection of freedom.

Not mythical "material productive forces," but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend towards socialism and despotism is common sense and moral courage.

Despite Mises' warning, individual Americans seem perfectly at ease allowing their future to be mapped out for them by powerful, intellectual elites planning what is best for all at Washington cocktail parties and in smoke-filled rooms at political conventions. Individual Americans would rather cede authority to the intellectuals, the politicians and the scientists than fend for themselves.

Who is left among us with the "common sense and moral courage" needed to resist this "trend towards socialism and despotism?"

Certainly not the young. Most young people are empty-headed products of the very public school system mandated by decades of educational "experts." They are self-absorbed, celebrity-enthralled sycophants with the attention span of a gnat. They don't think, they chant. They are chronic complainers who spend their time and resources soothing their paranoia and satisfying their ego with sex, drugs, and social idolatry. Those under 65 overwhelmingly voted for Obama's dictatorial, one-size-fits-all agenda in 2008.

Certainly not the old who either have learned too late or have given up the fight.

Certainly not "single moms" who are probably the individuals in America most dependent on federal government largesse.

Certainly not those privileged by government subsidies and grants. Certainly not the thirty-somethings who flock to law schools and then to Washington to become part of the elite and those who cling to those in power. Certainly not the Wall Street financiers and corporate insiders who sleep with federal power in order to wield it and, in the process, enrich themselves and their snot-nosed, silver-spooned progeny.

Who then? Who then is left with the necessary "common sense and moral courage" to carry on the resistance against tyranny?

You?