Read it in full, and supply your comment. I'll be grading your responses ;-) I expect C.E. and Tibbsy to sound the trumpet for the Right and Ken L. and tri-Larry to stick up for the Left. Of course V-man and S.G. will find a spot in the Center from which to throw bombs at both sides ;-)) -----------Tony
I of course, being a product of Jesuit and Redemptorist religious teaching, agree with the good Father's view :-)) (hee-hee)
LEFTIST PATHOLOGY: ANOTHER VIEW
Father Mike Walsh of the Maryknoll organization writes:
Piqued somewhat by your own observations, and for whatever it's worth, I have been trying for some time to analyze the pathology of leftism. Local conditions may account for some variations; I speak for what I have observed in the U.S., among American liberals, and this is just a preliminary assay, subject to later modification. Several characteristics are prominent:
It is elitist. There may be some patronizing superficial regard for working-class people, but basically, for people who have 'traditional' values, liberals feel nothing but contempt. And in the case where an approved minority supports those values, they just ignore that uncomfortable fact, and promote leaders among that minority who are more like themselves. "Flyover country" -that's where people like me live, in spirit, if not in fact. Liberalism is egalitarian in theory, but not in any way that would challenge the status of liberals. For example, almost no liberal who could afford not to would send his kid to a public school.
Liberalism is moralistic. But liberals are also highly selective in their moralizing, opposing only things that would not require change on their part. Liberals are generally opposed to hunting, for example. Personal morality, for which they mostly no longer have a religious basis, is nevertheless still a source of pain and struggle, which is another reason they transfer their self-righteous anger to things that require of them no pain or personal struggle. Movie stars are particularly egregious examples of this. They regard themselves as gods, above petty human morality, but concerned with larger matters of war and peace, the security of nature, etc
It is statist. Liberals believe in government, except when it comes to doing what government does best, or does most legitimately, e.g., defense. Why this is so is something that might be worth exploring at greater length sometime. Perhaps it stems from the fact that warfare entails real moral consequences rather than comfortable symbolic ones. Liberals believe in redistributing wealth, but not in any way that would increase people's real freedom (securing property rights, school choice), but only in ways that would create larger and larger classes of government dependents. They are careful to reject all aspects of "ownership society" such as privatization of social security or health care savings accounts.
It is anti-intellectual. This claim may seem odd, in light of the fact that leftists dominate the universities and mass-media. But they are rapidly abandoning the intellectual traditions that gave rise to those institutions, and their intellectuality is increasingly a sham. This is one reason why they frequently dismiss the work of 'dead white males', for these are the foundations of which they are increasingly ignorant, and from which the strongest critique of their views may come.
The roots of modern liberalism are several. On one level, modern American liberalism is simply the last and most desiccated form of Protestantism. They are what remains of the Puritans in America. You can chart the progress, or devolution, from Calvinism to Puritanism, and eventually to Unitarianism, to Transcendentalism, to liberalism. The subjectivity is key: it is a progression from justification by faith to justification by self-regard. And as the Puritans would look for a sign of election, so modern liberals seek validation by ratifying the PC stance on whatever crusade is current; a strong (symbolic) moral stance they can take with the assurance that comes from solidarity with the like-minded. And that is why they get so angry when you disagree with them: with their egos so strongly rooted in their opinions, any disagreement is experienced as a personal threat. Theirs is not merely a presumption of moral superiority, but a profound need.
Another root is of course, the 'Enlightenment'. Having lost any God-centeredness, it becomes the source of the morality that is central to Liberals' self-image. Freedom and equality are the main tenets, but these contraries are reconciled in the modern liberal imagination by reducing the first to autonomy and the latter to arithmetic. For them, freedom is personal 'lifestyle' choice (what a more classical view would regard as at best characteristic of adolescence); the highest, indeed the only real virtue for the liberal, is tolerance; tolerance specifically of other peoples' choices. And equality, for the liberal, does not mean equality before the law, but equality of results. The liberal exists in a state of anxiety and will likely never rest until all differences have been reduced to a flat, grey, androgynous mean This also accounts for their affection for government, which alone can exert the force necessary to achieve this Procrustean goal.
I think it is significant that while there are many notable examples of people who were leftists and moved rightward, one only rarely encounters the reverse. The rightward shift usually happens when egalitarianism costs them something, or when they can no longer endure the contradictions that liberalism leads them into.
Liberal Catholics -- my personal betes-noire -- have bought the progressivist agenda tout court. They love the title of "prophet", but are incapable of bringing any critique to bear upon the Left, and their enthusiasm for sugar-coating every leftist outrage, or ignoring those they can't do this with, shamefully belies their promise to preach the Gospel "in season and out of season."
The publishing wing of my own religious order once put out a book entitled "Love and Struggle in Mao's Thought." It should not even be necessary to point out that it was not written by a Chinese. What is it about Western liberals that compels them to canonize even the most vicious anti-Western demagogue? Perhaps an example from the schoolyard may be illustrative: that of the cowardly child who sucks up to a bully in order to mollify him. It is beyond my ability to mock; it is pointless to lampoon what is already utterly absurd. Which is why I use the term "pathology" for this little exercise.
I of course, being a product of Jesuit and Redemptorist religious teaching, agree with the good Father's view :-)) (hee-hee)
LEFTIST PATHOLOGY: ANOTHER VIEW
Father Mike Walsh of the Maryknoll organization writes:
Piqued somewhat by your own observations, and for whatever it's worth, I have been trying for some time to analyze the pathology of leftism. Local conditions may account for some variations; I speak for what I have observed in the U.S., among American liberals, and this is just a preliminary assay, subject to later modification. Several characteristics are prominent:
It is elitist. There may be some patronizing superficial regard for working-class people, but basically, for people who have 'traditional' values, liberals feel nothing but contempt. And in the case where an approved minority supports those values, they just ignore that uncomfortable fact, and promote leaders among that minority who are more like themselves. "Flyover country" -that's where people like me live, in spirit, if not in fact. Liberalism is egalitarian in theory, but not in any way that would challenge the status of liberals. For example, almost no liberal who could afford not to would send his kid to a public school.
Liberalism is moralistic. But liberals are also highly selective in their moralizing, opposing only things that would not require change on their part. Liberals are generally opposed to hunting, for example. Personal morality, for which they mostly no longer have a religious basis, is nevertheless still a source of pain and struggle, which is another reason they transfer their self-righteous anger to things that require of them no pain or personal struggle. Movie stars are particularly egregious examples of this. They regard themselves as gods, above petty human morality, but concerned with larger matters of war and peace, the security of nature, etc
It is statist. Liberals believe in government, except when it comes to doing what government does best, or does most legitimately, e.g., defense. Why this is so is something that might be worth exploring at greater length sometime. Perhaps it stems from the fact that warfare entails real moral consequences rather than comfortable symbolic ones. Liberals believe in redistributing wealth, but not in any way that would increase people's real freedom (securing property rights, school choice), but only in ways that would create larger and larger classes of government dependents. They are careful to reject all aspects of "ownership society" such as privatization of social security or health care savings accounts.
It is anti-intellectual. This claim may seem odd, in light of the fact that leftists dominate the universities and mass-media. But they are rapidly abandoning the intellectual traditions that gave rise to those institutions, and their intellectuality is increasingly a sham. This is one reason why they frequently dismiss the work of 'dead white males', for these are the foundations of which they are increasingly ignorant, and from which the strongest critique of their views may come.
The roots of modern liberalism are several. On one level, modern American liberalism is simply the last and most desiccated form of Protestantism. They are what remains of the Puritans in America. You can chart the progress, or devolution, from Calvinism to Puritanism, and eventually to Unitarianism, to Transcendentalism, to liberalism. The subjectivity is key: it is a progression from justification by faith to justification by self-regard. And as the Puritans would look for a sign of election, so modern liberals seek validation by ratifying the PC stance on whatever crusade is current; a strong (symbolic) moral stance they can take with the assurance that comes from solidarity with the like-minded. And that is why they get so angry when you disagree with them: with their egos so strongly rooted in their opinions, any disagreement is experienced as a personal threat. Theirs is not merely a presumption of moral superiority, but a profound need.
Another root is of course, the 'Enlightenment'. Having lost any God-centeredness, it becomes the source of the morality that is central to Liberals' self-image. Freedom and equality are the main tenets, but these contraries are reconciled in the modern liberal imagination by reducing the first to autonomy and the latter to arithmetic. For them, freedom is personal 'lifestyle' choice (what a more classical view would regard as at best characteristic of adolescence); the highest, indeed the only real virtue for the liberal, is tolerance; tolerance specifically of other peoples' choices. And equality, for the liberal, does not mean equality before the law, but equality of results. The liberal exists in a state of anxiety and will likely never rest until all differences have been reduced to a flat, grey, androgynous mean This also accounts for their affection for government, which alone can exert the force necessary to achieve this Procrustean goal.
I think it is significant that while there are many notable examples of people who were leftists and moved rightward, one only rarely encounters the reverse. The rightward shift usually happens when egalitarianism costs them something, or when they can no longer endure the contradictions that liberalism leads them into.
Liberal Catholics -- my personal betes-noire -- have bought the progressivist agenda tout court. They love the title of "prophet", but are incapable of bringing any critique to bear upon the Left, and their enthusiasm for sugar-coating every leftist outrage, or ignoring those they can't do this with, shamefully belies their promise to preach the Gospel "in season and out of season."
The publishing wing of my own religious order once put out a book entitled "Love and Struggle in Mao's Thought." It should not even be necessary to point out that it was not written by a Chinese. What is it about Western liberals that compels them to canonize even the most vicious anti-Western demagogue? Perhaps an example from the schoolyard may be illustrative: that of the cowardly child who sucks up to a bully in order to mollify him. It is beyond my ability to mock; it is pointless to lampoon what is already utterly absurd. Which is why I use the term "pathology" for this little exercise.
Last edited by:
big kahuna: Nov 20, 04 0:40