“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” Albert Einstein
A lot of great explanations on the Left’s mental state made it to print in the last few weeks. Much of it advanced themes that have probably been known for some time, but there’s a real concentration of this sort of analysis going on right now by Conservative writers. They are rallying to explain the Left, each in their own way, and in doing so are exposing Leftist Man like never before. If the Left could shift their attention away from crafting political narratives to sway public opinion for a few moments and take a breather to look around, they might get a feel for how the reasoning world sees them.
In an essay today entitled Hate is the Force that Gives the Left Meaning, Daniel Greenfield asks the question, “The Left finally has its Un-American tyranny. So why is it [still] so angry?” Greenfield then answers the question in his typical definitive, dispositive, fashion. He explains that since the Left cannot rely upon their solutions to ground their political offense, all that remains available to them are the negatives they can frame about their opposition. Those negatives get drawn any number of ways. The only necessary element is that they’re negative. How, why, based on what, none of that really matters. It’s the negative conclusion that keeps them going and gives them something to build on to advance their cause.
In The Poison of Postmodern Lying, Victor David Hanson explained how good intentions are the only truth that matters – how democratic laws and objective truth must give way to the more powerful truth of social justice [which the Left will define for us.]
In Progressives Without Progress, Daniel Greenfield discusses how the Left see scarce resources as an unsolvable problem. [Forget that markets do this without any controls.] He shows how the Left’s rationing makes things more scarce and more technologically backward, and how their planning causes a conformity of unimaginative redistribution that solves nothing. He shows how the Left’s utopian police-state economics deny progress and kill off the human creative spirit.
In The Kindergarden Of Eden, Evan Sayet illustrated how the Left demonizes and makes enemies out of the those individuals in society who don’t follow the Left’s utopian plan, notwithstanding how those same people create real solutions to real problems.
In The Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom shows how the Left removed all of the traditional cultural standards that used to moderate and frame the appetites of free Americans, and replaced them with a sterile orthodoxy obsessed over the avoidance of politically incorrect taboo outcomes. In other words, Bloom asks, and answers, the question of whether a Left life is a life worth living.
Recently Thomas Sowell put his spotlight on the Left’s narcissistic personality disorder in a column entitled Visceral Hatred Has Always Set Left From Right. The thinking goes that the Left’s good intentions, by themselves and without outcome evidence, give them all the self-esteem they need. To mention how the Left’s solutions don’t actually get to the outcomes they intend is not merely a scientific judgment, it’s a vile attack on their self-worth. The Left has always had trouble separating the person from the idea, which perhaps explains why they so readily resort to ad hominem attack. Sowell points out, in other words, how the Left’s penchant for ad hominem attack hoists them on their own petard. Criticize their good intentions and you criticize them. There’s a certain consistency of error here, but still wrong whether applied to themselves or against those they disagree with.
With all of this good, free, substantive analysis a mouse click away, you’d think some on the Left might risk noticing, or might even offer a substantive rebuttal. But not only do the Left seem disinterested in understanding themselves, they don’t seem too interested in understanding Conservatives either. We know all the flavors of hate, all the special names the Left reserve for Conservatives, but we have very little evidence that the Left have any deeper understanding of us.