The Left and the Near Enemy
from Chicago Boyz by Shannon Love
An anonymous reader of Instapundit, in writing about the Left and Libya says:
I’ve really been enjoying your take on things since the bombing in Libya started this weekend, even more than I normally do. For eight long years, well-meaning people on the right have been accused of all manner of hate, dishonesty, stupidity, and wickedness, from a bunch of people who believe their own neighbors are the primary cause of suffering in the world.[emp added]
That is Leftism in a nutshell. Leftism is nothing but a continuously shifting series of excuses for why Leftist should have the right to use the violence-based coercive power of the state to dominate and control their own neighbors. For the Leftists there are no true external enemies, every problem in the world is ultimately caused or controlled by someone within our own society. For Leftists, there is only the near enemy, the people they see everyday.
No where is that more clear than in foreign policy. Every event in the world is turned into some kind of internal criticism. To hear the Left tell it, the US has never had a legitimate external threat since WWII. The entire Cold War and the nuclear arms race, Vietnam, Afghanistan, both Iraq wars, 9/11 etc all utterly unnecessary and all ultimately caused by Western, and usually American, non-Leftists. Leftists will claim (at one time of the other) that all the chaos, blood and death in the last 60+ was utterly avoidable if only the American Left had been able to control the evil American non-Leftists!
Their psychological motive is quite clear. If all the major problems in the world are caused by American non-Leftists, then the only people who can actually solve all the major problems in the world are American Leftists. After all, they are the only people in the world who have a hope of controlling the dastardly deeds of the American non-Left. If only they can get enough political power, they can fix everything! That means that the American Leftists are the most important people in the entire world!
And that is why they see their neighbors and fellow Americans as evil, because if non-Leftists Americans aren’t evil and don’t cause all the trouble in the world then American Leftists just aren’t very important to anybody or anything. They stop being the most important and influential people in the world and become just ordinary individuals with no special influence or capabilities. The world will roll along and great events will occur and the Leftists will not be a part of them.
That is the pattern we see today with the Left and Libya. The Left’s only possible role in these events, the only way they can insert themselves into these events, is to try and interfere with the Western military operations against Gaddafi. They don’t like or support Gaddafi nor do they have any special feelings for or against the Libyan people but since the rest of the West is out to get Gaddafi, the only role remaining to Left is to advance Gaddafi’s interest under some humanitarian guise. Only by helping Gaddafi can they inject themselves into events in which otherwise they are not needed and have nothing to contribute.
Just as they have for the last 60+ years, the Left will chose to advance the interest of the most brutal and murderous dictators rather than admit to themselves that Leftists just aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Cambodia proved that is nothing else did.
Trying to argue with Leftists over issues like Libya and Israel is pointless because they are driven by ego emotion instead of any concern for facts or reasonable consequence. All they care about is exploiting such events to make themselves seem important. Nothing can convince them they are wrong because they are not motivated in the least to actual fix the problems. Instead of trying to argue facts, I suggest we just start pointing out the selfish pattern in their behavior. Of course, they will deny it but if we just keep bringing up the pattern over and over again, many non-Lefitsts will see the truth of the matter and Leftists will lose influence.
Reducing their influence is all we can do. Leftists themselves will never change unless that have individual personal awakenings of their own emotional awareness. Until that happens, they will always view their neighbors with hatred and contempt and try to saddle the rest of us with the blame for all the troubles of the world. |
