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Introduction - What is the left?
The lesson of the 20th century |
The left's support for tyranny
The left's support for terrorism The left's support for Islamic Fascism
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The left has a proud history on some issues (notably social issues) and a less proud history on others (notably foreign policy). The left pioneered rights for women, blacks, gays, atheists and other minorities. It opposed religious and sexual censorship, and enabled sexual freedom. This is the greatest part of its heritage. But this is history now. All this is uncontroversial now. Most of the modern right agrees with this basic agenda. Certainly I do. So what defines "the left"?
I would submit that the main thing that defines the left in the modern world is its approach to foreign policy - with the economy and crime being lesser issues that distinguish them. And while I basically agree with the left on civil liberties, on the issues of the economy, crime and foreign policy I think the left is simply wrong. Its ideas will lead to a less, not more, prosperous society. Its ideas will lead to more, not less, crime. And its ideas will lead to a more, not less, dangerous world.
The moderate peacenik leftist's foreign policy is the most dangerous of all his ideas. He does not explictly love tyranny and hate democracy. But he talks as if he does. He is disgusted by the West (especially leadership and front-line countries like America and Israel), does not admire it, mocks its leaders, spits on its military and on any soldier fool enough to die for it, and in general (whether he likes it or not) gives support and encouragement to the barbarians outside the gates who wish to destroy the West and everything we love.
The mind of the left is very familiar to me. He does not really believe in the existence of barbarians outside the gates. He thinks violent communist or third-world or Islamic revolutionaries must have logical reasons for what they do. They must be responding to rational grievances, rather than be driven, say, by demons inside their heads. He believes that if the West - and in particular America - was weaker, it would be a less (rather than infinitely more) violent and dangerous world. In short, he is someone whose foreign policy ideas will lead to the triumph of tyranny abroad and ultimately at home too.
Modern leftists (on foreign policy and economics at least) are the counter-Enlightenment - those who refuse to believe that we basically solved these problems in the 18th century, and instead look to some imaginary utopia that won't actually work. Safe in the bosom of capitalist democracies, they attack their protector, and praise foreign tyrannies, without fear of consequences. But their ideas do have consequences. Western leftist intellectuals have spread endless misery to the third world, leading to the death of millions. And there is always a threat at home too. So far, their ideas have not been successful at home. If they ever were, Israel, and Europe, and the West itself, would fall.
And yet the western left seems to have learned nothing from the 20th century. Here they are again, those siren voices, unashamed and free of guilt, still insulting the West, still looking for alternatives. If we listen to them, 100 million more will die in the 21st century.
Read the Communism page first. Understand the butchery that has already taken place first, before you follow the siren voices of any new revolutions. Revolutions do not necessarily liberate. Historically, revolutions have enslaved as often as they have liberated.
"That wasn't real socialism"
is a meme.
Hitler did not invent the modern industrialised killing of the genocidal totalitarian state. Lenin did. Hitler just copied what the Bolsheviks were already doing. The Bolsheviks had already killed about 20 million people before Hitler even got going.
Lenin and Stalin showed what the future looked like - the "scientific" state organising the people. Hitler added his own variants to the basic theme. This is how many 1930s intellectuals saw it. They saw fascism as a development of modern state socialism.
These dreams take many forms, from the comical (Russell Brand) to the sinister (alliance with violent right-wing Islam). But these dreams are not ending, and will threaten us for generations to come.
The Marxist version does it to entire countries:
"This place could use some communism! ... That wasn't real communism."
Each generation of Marxist believers needs to do the experiment again.
And again.
And again.
"Communism is not a reaction against the failure of the nineteenth century to organize optimal economic output.
It is a reaction against its comparative success."
- John Maynard Keynes, 1934.
"I do think
America is a great idea. I think
the American revolution is the only
one which has lasted, the only one left. It still has a dynamic. It is
the only one capable of a universal application."
-
Christopher Hitchens
with the last word on the end of
the
murderous utopian century of the left.
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"Perhaps the greatest trick the Left ever managed to play was to successfully sell
the ancient and ubiquitous ideas of collectivism, lightly checked political power, and a permanent technocratic class
as being "new," and the radical notions of individual liberty, limited government, and distributed power as being "reactionary.""
- Charles C. W. Cooke, July 2014.
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