It’s sometimes difficult to understand why progressives will often be so unamenable to persuasion, even when they don’t seem to work for the state or have a direct interest in it.
It’s easy to understand a dogmatically left-wing primary school teacher. Their interests and their political beliefs are entirely in alignment. It’s a little harder to understand someone who is both left-wing and is at least indirectly harmed by left-wing policies — like, say, a small business owner, or even a high-earning employee at some firm or another. Why would he be happy to have half his income taxed, and then his free time further ‘taxed’ on paying attention to the latest developments in politics and cultural degeneration?
The easier way to understand it all is that leftists all work for the state, even when they’re not on the payroll. They’re also, to some extent, the eyes and ears of the state — or at least some of its lower-order nerve receptors. The state has certain needs of its people, and most people are more than happy to perform the functions that it requires of them.
So, why is this? It’s because the modern state is totalitarian. There’s a tension between totalitarian and liberal tendencies in the modern West that has become increasingly undone as there is no alternative pole for the West to distinguish itself against. When the Soviet sphere was still strong, Western leaders found it useful to emphasize classical liberal limits on state power over society and to some extent over economic society.
Now that the contrast is gone, the logic of the total state progresses without serious impediments. The characteristic ‘informer culture’ common to totalitarian states is now something that we all have to deal with, with some special empowerments thanks to easy-to-use internet tools like social media which ’empowers’ everyone to become deputy commisars, on the lookout for unacceptable speech and deviationist tendencies.
The destruction of liberal political norms does cause some consternation on both the left and the right. Plenty of leftists understand that without liberalism, modern democratic societies tend to degenerate into civil conflict rather quickly, as the leading party faction proceeds to liquidate all of its rivals. So, they feel uneasy, and tend to complain about violations of liberal norms in areas like privacy and restrictions of speech. These complaints have no force (they’re backed by feelings rather than weapons most of the time), so amplifying those complaints is mostly useless. Complaints about the NSA’s mass spying, for example, are the whimpers of a dying animal — not an expression of authentically vigorous resistance.
This is where the liberal remnant tends to go badly wrong: they think that they can persuade people dedicated to eradicating the liberal remnant can be persuaded through debate to either not eradicate their liberal opponents or to slow-roll the eradication. It’s important not to mistake a fight for a debate. The two types of conflict have entirely different rules and results.
Instead, we need to reconsider the political construct of liberalism, think more about why it has failed, and what alternative supports can be developed for the maintenance of the good life under civilized conditions. Civilization predates liberalism: one isn’t a requirement for the other to exist.
The liberal remnant’s effective position is that they will, even in the face of people determined to eradicate them, never let go of their liberal beliefs and restrictions on their behaviors. Liberals have tended to be brakes on the excesses of the left, which has a tendency to engulf entire continents in fire & destruction.
If you understand leftists as people who are fascinated by the flames — who authentically want to bring about the apocalypse — it starts to make sense as to why they would want to eliminate the liberals first, because of their moderating effects on the rest of the population. They wouldn’t give prizes to photos of rebels chucking molotov cocktails if they didn’t love the fire.
The mental model that people tend to have about leftists tends to be fundamentally rationalistic and utilitarian. It’s perhaps more useful to conceive of them like one of the many species of animal with an instinctive urge towards self-destruction and mass death. That’s what they shoot for, and how they ought to be understood as political opponents. They have to be contained rather than bargained with.
I cannot stand the Madame Defarges of the world. I had a friend whose son was convicted of brandishing a TOY gun. A cheap, plastic, toy gun that he was twirling in the car as his dad drove him home. Some bitch called the cops. And the head cop insisted on prosecution even when it was discovered that it was a toy gun.
And the Madame Defarges who sic CYS on families who do things they don’t approve of, like homeschooling or letting them walk home from a nearby park? Nasty, nasty people who would break up families and traumatize children because they don’t fit their preconceived notions of childrearing.
Nasty filthy little busybodies.
Yeah, she has many historical analogues.
Here’s an example of leftist insanity: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-mcdonalds-oakbrook-protest-0521-biz-20150520-story.html
The money quote is when Mary Kay Henry, president of the SEIU, calls on McDonald’s to negotiate, and then says, “Even when we get $15 and a union we will keep fighting.”
In other words, give us everything we want, and we’ll fight for more. Who, besides Israel, would ever give an inch under such conditions?
> the many species of animal with an instinctive urge towards self-destruction and mass death.
I wasn’t aware that there are multiple species where this common. That may point towards some evolutionary explanation of the behavior. That explanation might even be adapted to cover destructive leftist tendencies in humans.
Squid would be a big example.
Oh really? All I know is that they are indiscriminate, unable of friend-or-foe (or more accurately friend-or-fodder) recognition. Your rhetoric is lacking.
IDGI
Ok, Henry. I am sort of been watching this recent NRx drama from afar, often bailing out of any essays that spoke of it. It sort of seems to me to be a clashing of egos as much as anything real. I have been subject to this stuff in other communities in the past and it sucks. Things that have no real basis in reality tend to get repeated and repeated until they become their own “truth”.
So explains to me this particular phrase that seems to be the consistent theme that is being repeated:
“NeoRX suffers from a tragedy of the commons.”
I understand the base idea of the common grazing ground being overgrazed, a competition ensuing where those that use the most gain the most. It is most obviously exampled by something like underground aquifers or oil.
So then explain the use of it in this situation.
I had thought on of the key tenets of this community was “meritocracy” and that the good writer got the readership and respect, hence the voice, that the content he provided warranted. And that there was a deliberative nature among the community to judging content and offering. So where is all this “demotic” tendency that is being tossed about as some epidemic in this community. I tend to find stories from the two big aggregators: Curiaregis and Neorxn.com. I assume it is popularity and readership that gets a writer linked into those two. And hence, the “crowd” of NeoRx has “voted” to note value. I assume that was how you rose to prominence as did any writer.
I also assume there is “core” accepted set of writers in any sort of community that weld influence within that community and give thumbs up and thumbs down to any new entry.
But this also presents, to me, the fundamental issues with Monarchy: (A) What if the people in control are assholes or generally incapable (B) The transition is violent (C) Often those in power are consumed with protection of it.
I am new compared to others and for the most part, I find the experience humbling in that the thought and content I have found for the most part to be far more thought provoking then anything I could create. I limit myself to the occasional comment and maintain a receptive stance. But I do find these spats and power struggles among any community to be petty and distasteful. And I think that any fellow traveler with closely related viewpoints should never be outright vilified because there are far more at war with us then are with us.
So explain this “Tragedy of the Commons” that was so pressing.
>”But this also presents, to me, the fundamental issues with Monarchy: (A) What if the people in control are assholes or generally incapable (B) The transition is violent (C) Often those in power are consumed with protection of it.”
Certainly, (A) and (C) are endemic to all forms of government, so to cite them as problems of monarchy is accurate, but to single out monarchy is unfair. As even the founding fathers of this republic understood, the most tyrannical and incapable king of them all is King Mob. That’s why they set up a limited republic based on severely restricted franchise. They simply forgot that limited republics never stay that way – some demagogue or another will always come around and offer to expand the franchise to some new group of people in exchange for an implicit understanding that the new voters will vote for him or his party. As for being consumed with the protection of power – you don’t *really* think that the northern armies invaded the south to keep it in a political union against its will because it was greatly concerned with the quality of life of black people, do you? No, that’s a historical retcon of the first order. Also, this very blog comment is going to a big NSA-owned data center in Utah to be stored forever. Why is that?
As for violent transitions, that is a problem with monarchies, but not an insurmountable one. Besides which, battles for the throne in medieval and early modern times tended to be limited affairs with relatively low body counts – mostly a bunch of knights hacking away at each other in some open field somewhere. It is the age of “people’s wars” that has brought us real bloodbaths of the kind we’ve seen since 1789.
One difference between modern monarchists and leftists is that leftists will promise you utopia, just around the corner. We won’t. Government is a necessary evil. We cannot lose sight of either side of that equation – that it is necessary, and that it is evil. All I claim is that my favored form of government is the least awful of the available alternatives, all the others of which (including having no government at all) are worse.
Leftism is a fanatical utopian cult. It can properly be understood no other way. For them, it is victory or death – either their utopia will come, or let the whole world burn! It is insanity, but that is the way that cultists and fanatics think.
As for liberals – and all of mainstream politics in America, even its “conservative” branch, is liberal – they seem to have forgotten something in their worship of the Constitution and the system it established: that these are means, not ends. Political systems exist to uphold civilizations, not the other way around. Constitutions (and by extension, the courts that “interpret constitutions) exist to codify the customs and philosophies of a civilization, not to establish them. They are tools, and when they cease to function effectively at the tasks for which they were designed, they should be thrown out and something else tried instead.
I once saw someone (I forget who) say that it is insanity to allow a civilization to be destroyed for the sake of a constitution. Just so – it’s ass backwards, like walking around barefoot in the snow because you don’t want to get your shoes dirty. But most people can’t see that, because as a “proposition nation” America is, as Gregory Hood once said, not a people, a culture, and a history – it’s a flag and a piece of paper. In America, the nation and the government are the same. In other countries, not so. When Germany was a monarchy, a democracy, a fascist state, a Communist state, and a democracy again, it was still always Germany, because “German” describes a nation, not a government. So its government could change form over and over again, but the nation remained what it was.
Not so in America. America is nothing without that flag and that piece of paper. America is nothing without its government, which is why Americans are natural statists. Here, anyone who hates the government hates the nation as well. When this government falls, when that piece of paper ceases to have even ceremonial force, America as a nation will cease to exist.
Bad governance is the rule, and good governance is the rare exception, throughout history and across all civilizations. So how do civilizations survive bad governance? Through a strong and coherent culture. A strong culture causes people to get up and do what is necessary for the prospering of their family and community. People don’t consult a law book when making decisions about life. It matters little to them what the distant emperor or king or president says or does. They till the land, manufacture the goods, marry and raise their children according to longstanding cultural norms.
That’s been destroyed in the west. The citizens have no cultural norms. They are flailing about and now the generation rising to adulthood is in serious trouble. Without a strong culture, we will not survive our bad governance.
On the whole your talking about the totalitarians among us Mr Dampier?
Good little ones that will whistle past the graveyard of this republic until they themselves become the graveyard?
Yes