Monday, September 28, 2009

Thanatos, Not Eros

From a comment to this article:

Leftists persist in trying to divide Americans any way they can, by race, sex, ethnic background, social class, etc. Americans prefer to be united as Americans, no hyphens, no class warfare, no civil strife, ideologically manufactured resentments, etc.

The Left is the party of division, strife, conflict, struggle and malice. Leftists define themselves by who and what they are against much more than what they are for. One sometimes almost suspects that the only reason Leftists are or claim to be for something, e.g. social and economic justice, etc., is so that they can feel justified in being against those they desire to be against. The Left is the party of NO! if one realizes that the NO! is the clinched fist against everything now existing on earth and heaven too.

Leftists bring hate and personal malice with them wherever they go. They smear and defame and try to harm and silence all who express opinions they do not like. They accuse opponents of every vice, fault, defect and even crime without the slightest hesitation or need to prove their case. They are not interested in proving their case, merely intimidating, delegitimizing, and silencing all opposition. The Left is dogmatic, intolerant, malicious and bent on acquiring total power and complete control in order to impose its quasi-religious utilitarian rationalism upon others whether they want it or not.

Leftist fanaticism has a lot in common with Islam if one regards the structure and dynamics of the ideology rather than the specific content. Leftism believes itself under an obligation to conquer the world and divides humanity into the faithful and the unbelievers. It regards any tactic against unbelievers justified if it leads to world domination by the faux-religion of Leftism. One does not reason with Leftists any more than one reasons with committed adherents to any religious faith, including but certainly not limited to Islam. The dogmatic certitude of Leftists is indicaive of revealed rather than acquired truth.

Radical and militant Leftists have much in common with Islamic jihadists. In some cases this extends to terrorist bombings such as those perpetrated by Distinguished Professor of Education William Ayers and friends. Such believers are not only strangers but active enemies of reason and all existing institutions and norms when these oppose their personal ideology.

Looking somewhat afar from the antics of militant Leftists and Islamists one might be forgiven for concluding that both groups are driven by hatred of what actually exists and a ruthless desire to tear down and destroy society in its present form. The excuse both sets of fanatics give for such manifest and wanton murderous destructiveness is that they desire to clear away the evil to make way for the good. This has long been the justification of Marxist haters for their sustained attacks on everything that actually exists.

But suppose they are kidding themselves? Suppose what really motivates all such people is not the love they claim to feel for humanity and the heartfelt desire they claim to attain the better world for all, but just the malice, hatred and urge to destroy and murder that we have no trouble observing in their actual behaviors?

It would simplify matters and explain much if one concluded that the raison d'etre of the Left was hate and nothing else. Individuals who for whatever reason are hateful and in need of a community of like-minded haters are naturally attracted to malicious Leftism with its cartoon gallery cast of designated and approved targets for their collective hate.

Wouldn't it be something if the Left's true dynamic was sadism and its true aim therefore not the greatest happiness but the greatest harm to the greatest number? Could the Left be the party of Thanatos rather than the Eros it claims to champion? Is there anything in the actual history or observable behavior of radical Leftism that conclusively falsifies such a strange and unsettling hypothesis?

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