Insults, Stupid Arguments, and Lies August 8, 2011 - 7:00 am - by Andrew Klavan
As the 9/11 massacre underscored the failure of the left’s multicultural worldview, so the current debt crisis highlights the failure of leftist redistributionism.
In fact, leftism has failed utterly. It has failed everywhere and it has never done anything else but fail. From the murderous, leftist tyrannies of the Soviet Union and China to the soft but nonetheless oppressive and stagnant socialism of a moribund Europe, the relativist, wealth-crushing, overweening state has revealed itself to be an engine of misery and collapse.
This is a disappointment to many. To those who feel they are entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor, to those who feel their good intentions can be brought to fruition by the government, and to those, most of all, who fancy themselves elite, who fancy themselves better able to make moral and economic decisions on your behalf from on high than you, the citizen, can do on your own — to all of these, the failure of leftism is a trauma so great it has yet to be accepted. Rather, in order to distract both their followers and their opponents — and maybe themselves — from the gathering facts on the ground, leftists routinely rely on three well-worn techniques: insults, stupid arguments and lies.
The insults we all know. Disagree with the left and you’re a racist, a sexist, an Islamophobe — whatever. What do such insults even mean, really? Let’s say you oppose Barack Obama — and let’s say you really are a racist — does that mean his share-the-wealth ideology works? Of course not. If you’re a sexist, does that make women less interested in babies or more interested in trucks? If you’re Islamophobic, does that change the odds that the man who murders you will be named Mohammad? We are what we are and the world is what it is regardless of our personal merits and failings. The insults — for the information of all you teabagging terrorists out there — are just the sound of the left indulging in base intimidation, hoping they can keep you from spreading the word that their philosophy has failed — failed always and everywhere.
As for the stupid arguments, they usually involve citing bad individual actions in order to obscure bad underlying principles. Thus when you note the disaster wrought on our economy by Obama’s governing philosophy, leftists counter that, well, George W. Bush spent too much money too. Yes, he did — because, in those moments, W. was operating under the same misguided redistributionist principles as Obama. It’s the principles that are wrong, no matter who holds them.
Likewise, when you point out that Islamism is an evil and oppressive idea, leftists counter that Americans have done many bad things as well. And yes, we have — all nations have — but the liberty we stand for is a good, just as shariah law is a bad, not for some people in some places but for everyone all over.
No group or philosophy is free of its madmen, villains, saints and clowns, but it matters, in the end, what you stand for. In fact, that’s what matters most — and the left stands for a philosophy that has failed.
Finally, the lies. For me, the worst of them are those that misrepresent the true nature of our disagreements — because these lies are intended to turn us against one another. No one, for instance, is arguing about whether the poor and aged should be cared for. We are arguing whether they should be cared for by a federal government that, by its very nature, is prone to power hunger and corruption. No one of good will disagrees about the immorality of institutional racism, but we are arguing about whether the past can be corrected by reverse racism now.
And we are not arguing about whether the United States is perfect. We are arguing whether our problems can be addressed within the framework of constitutional law, small government, unhindered markets, and the resultant liberty these provide.
To address our problems without crippling individual free will or confiscating private property (which amounts to the same thing) — this is the useful and noble enterprise that stands beyond the ruin of the moment. But before the left can join in that enterprise, it must first admit that its own enterprise has failed.
