We conservatives just don't have the liberals rich capacity for fantasy:
--------------------------
The Virtues of a Lack of “Imagination” Posted by Shannon Love on July 27th, 2011 (All posts by Shannon Love)
TraditionalGuy makes a tongue-in-cheek comment on this Althouse post [h/t Instapundit] on the damage the Wisconsin Democrats’ budget would have done the state:
Wisconsin can always balance the budget for needed re-distribution spending by immediately withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And think of the Bullet Train, windmill and solar panel jobs sprouting like weeds everywhere for free after the coal industry has been fully deemed illegal by King Obama I.
The GOP just lacks the necessary fantasy life to govern.
One constant refrain from leftists is that non-leftists just don’t have the “courage” to imagine a better world. Leftists actively credit themselves not for actually making the world a better place but for making intense emotional investments in delusional, fantasy utopias such as the communist utopia predicted by Marxism.
It’s childish. Leftists congratulating themselves on their “courage” to fantasize is akin to a geek like me congratulating myself back in the day for the exploits of one of my Dungeons & Dragons characters.
Marxism is just an elaborate roleplaying fantasy for pseudo-intellectuals. It constructs a fantasy about a world in which material equality and the eradication of social classes leads to a society in which only “intellectuals”, i.e., individuals skilled at persuasive communications, would stand out from the individually undifferentiated ”masses”. As Marx himself said, in the future communist utopia, men would be differentiated only by their “innate intellects”. It’s clear what Marx and all his educated followers since thought about their own intellects relative to the rest of population.
For anyone with intellectual pretensions, embracing Marxism doesn’t take courage any more than it takes courage for anyone else to fantasize about winning the lottery and marrying a movie star.
It doesn’t take courage to fantasize about a world where we end up on top. Self-aggrandizing fantasies don’t take courage. Instead, they feed all that is selfish and craven in us. It is those types fantasies which feed the great evils of the world.
It is no accident that Marxism, communism and fascism appealed to “intellectuals” everywhere whereas free-market philosophies appealed to virtually none. In a free-market society, self-styled intellectuals are reduced to the role of teachers and authors. The ability to manipulate people to vote this or that way grants little influence in a society in which the vast majority of decisions are made by individuals who must assume immediate responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. It’s easier to persuade someone to spend someone else’s money collected at the point of a state gun than it is to persuade them to spend their own money voluntarily.
In a society and polity based around state coercion, “intellectuals” have more power and status so intellectuals fantasize about changing contemporary society to one in which state coercion plays a much greater role. That is why leftists always argue for greater state involvement in every facet of life (except sex). The greater the power of the state, the greater the power of those who manipulate the state. All leftist ideology has been an ever-shifting set of rationalizations intended to persuade non-intellectuals to invest more power in the state and thereby elevate the power and status of the intellectuals.
Modern leftists lack the courage to imagine and work towards a world in which they are not particularly important. Instead, they are moral cowards like Milton’s Lucifer who would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. They would rather live as the highest status members of an impoverished and authoritarian society than live as ordinary members of a wealthy and free society.
So, if you’re a non-leftist, be proud of your lack of “imagination”. Failing to have the “courage” to imagine a world were pseudo-intellectuals rule the rest of us is a moral and mental “failing” we can all live with.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/23550.html |
