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[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]
“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
—A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.
The quintessential leftist, no matter how much blood eventually spatters his hands, starts off by caring a great deal about other people. His heart bleeds for the oppressed, the workers and the peasants, for racial and sexual minorities, and for all the oppressed peoples of the world.
The ideological fashions may change but the story is always told the same way.
Somewhere there is an oppressed group to be liberated. And he, she or they is the one to fight for their liberation. Along the way that exquisite sensitivity which may lead an upper class Ivy Leaguer to learn all about the customs and suffering of black transgender men in Detroit or Hamas terrorists in Gaza congeals into an equal insensitivity for the suffering of his targets.
And then people die. Sometimes it’s those he considers the oppressed or the oppressors. Usually both. The humanitarians become terrorists and their revolutions lead to tyranny.
The opposite of tyranny isn’t revolution just as the opposite of empathy isn’t a lack of caring. They are both circles. Revolutions make tyrannies and empathy leads to cruelty. While there is a small subset of humanity that genuinely lacks empathy, most of the ideological bloodshed of the last century and this one was committed by men and women who cared far too much.
Those who care too much will eventually care enough to kill.
That is the argument that has been made in defense of every murderous leftist cause and is currently being made for Hamas. If you really care about the suffering in Gaza, you too would set yourself on fire or burn Israeli families alive in their homes. If you really care, you won’t care.
Genuine humanitarians can exhaust themselves caring too much. But those are the types of people who stay up nights helping others. Some of this type can be recruited into leftist movements, but the average leftist is a deeply insincere humanitarian who cares about others only as a vehicle for developing an identity and asserting it on a public stage.
Leftists genuinely do care a lot. They care about rising oceans, polar bears, women in hijabs, men in dresses, drug dealers in the ghetto and eco-terrorists in prison, racist highways and dead terrorists, and if you think of something that they don’t care about yet, they will soon.
As long as it fits the larger agenda of asserting their will over society from a moral high ground.
That is why they also don’t care about the horrifying death toll among young black men from crime, how many Muslims are being killed by Muslim governments or the state of the gay rights movement in Marxist dictatorships. If the state of oppression does not conform to the narrative of external social oppression to be overthrown by a liberation movement it is useless to the political movement and to the individual ego of the aspiring freedom fighter.
To a genuine humanitarian, the oppressed are an end, but to a leftist they are a means. A leftist cares a great deal about a coal miner until he votes for Trump or a black man until he runs as a Republican. Or until, even through no fault of his own, like the coal miners and steelworkers for whom leftists once bled, he is replaced by a new pathway to the ultimate revolution.
It is not truly the workers and peasants, the transgenders and the terrorists, whom the leftist cares about. They humanize, articulate and personalize the revolutionary mandate whose purpose is not to save, but to destroy everything about a world that doesn’t care as much.
The more the leftist cares, the worse the atrocities he can justify with his boundless caring.
That the caring rarely leads to anything useful is the entire point. Empathy for the leftist is a narrative point. Really fixing anything robs him of his motivation. That is why the standard leftist position is that black people are as oppressed today as they were under segregation. If they were to admit that black people were equal and free, what would they do with their time?
Successful leftist movements seize power. They fix nothing and repair nothing because caring is a means for the individual ego and the collective one. Every leftist is a heroic freedom fighter who wants to be the king. He pretends he wants to save the world when he’s out to rule it.
Leftist violence is not the outcry of the oppressed, but the mandate of the oppressors.
That is why every leftist cause begins as humanitarianism and ends in terrorism. Humanitarianism and terrorism don’t contradict each other, they complement one another. There could be no terrorism without humanitarianism. Terrorism is not an accidental sidetrack, but the next phase of a three step process that then ends with tyranny or defeat.
When a leftist starts caring about something, it will, given enough time, end in mass murder.
It’s not because he can’t feel your pain, it’s because he’s too busy feeling someone else’s pain so he doesn’t feel yours when he comes after you. Much as the best way to drown out a signal is with noise, the best way to drown out empathy is with lots more empathy.
The leftist cares about so many people and things that he can’t feel anything when it comes to his real targets. Human suffering has become so much noise that he picks and chooses which strands to isolate and listen to based on ideological grounds. Leftist empathy doesn’t sensitize, it desensitizes by design. Given a large enough palette, the leftist can vandalize art, bomb events and assault people because he’s trying to save millions, billions and the entire planet.
But the only one he’s really trying to save is himself from his own boring mediocrity.
The upper class leftist revolutionary, unable to accomplish anything of worth or become anyone of note, sets out to subjugate the world. His empathy for people whom he has never met instantly makes him a wiser and deeper person. And before you know it, he’s cheering Hamas.
And it’s all because he cares so much.
Brilliant insights
The world is a mix of good and evil.
One has to discriminate carefully.
crime and punishment, who is allowed to decide .justice?
great article about this.
Mr. Greenfield is talking Objectivism. He is talking about the evil of altruism versus the beneficence of rational selfishness.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy will win the day IF and when men choose to live on earth instead of wishing to escape life on earth for a non-existing utopia after death, or a non-existing utopia in a future that never arrives.
No moron. He isn’t talking objectivism or rational selfishness. He is talking about the evils of Leftism Marxism and Islamism….something we all have to fight against and defeat.
Except for you. You get to sit around with your books and just talk about it theoretically. You have little Sunday night get togethers in Manhatten with like minded fools. You congratulate yourselves on how much you are accomplishing with your three or four loser followers. And best of all, you don’t have to do anything substantive, except attend an occasional ARI seminar.
But God forbid you have pick up a gun and have to fight for your life. You are a selfish little prick.
*I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country. I recognize a moral responsibility to my freedom and liberty and the freedom and liberty of those I love.* — THX
You are a disgusting potty mouth. Why don’t you form a duet with Jaamal Bowman?
I don’t because I am a conservative and Bowman is progressive. But hey, I support Israel and THX doesn’t. How about you?
I take it you like Objectivists. That’s too bad. It’s an anti-Jewish Philosophy that has always been going nowhere.
Have a nice Shabbat tonite.
Win the day? In what galaxy?
Tell you what dippy-doo. You live on earth, and when you die no one will care. Fortunately for us you have no idea if there is an after life utopia because it cannot be seen by mere mortals. That is why we have faith. You have nothing.
What I do know is that your persistent God mocking has earned you a place where Morlocks live. We will be fine without you.
All you do is try to spread your own misery to everyone. As for me I’ll take a pass on your depressing life extinguishing constant B.S.
I thought this bears repeating:
Daniel Greenfield says
September 29, 2023 at 9:14 pm
The idea that you and your particular belief system, for which you are an absolutely terrible representative, represent ‘reason’, is as much of a fallacy as the idea that Fauci represents science.
My belief is in God. It does represent reason.
Name a single reason for morality without it.
name a single reason for not changing my gender at 11
name a reason for DNA or the atom without it.
So do I. THX does not.
Yes, this is one where Rand’s argument (what I understand of it) does resonate. I knew THX would weigh in, but he was remarkably brief, this time.
Good point. I also reacted that way when I first read the article, thinking “THX will weigh in” 🙂
Is THX another way to spell AI?
THX, you demonstrate irrational devotion to your enslaved condition. You have allowed yourself to be programmed by the Randian collective and you will not submit your triggered feelings to cool, reasonable contemplation as any free, rational man should do. You are wretched – the would-be naked king that a child plainly sees is not clothed.
At least see how you are twisting this topic into one of favored categories of your little collective. That little step might be a good start. But kudos that at least you have not labored our patience with long quotes from the Randians.
Altruism is an evolved quality of socially developed species and the dynamics of the group verses the individual are both complex and fascinating. Ayan Rand was a very one dimensional philosopher.
Mr. Greenfield is talking about the psychopathy of the revolutionary mind. Recommend his book; Domestic Enemies
Absolutely right, Algo. Mr. Greenfield is a rare treasure. I hope his audience increases every day. He is a true son of Issachar. He knows the times and what men should do. 1 Chronicles 12:32.
Thanks KH!!!!!!
Biden and his corrupt criminal administration is bringing ruin to America and US citizens.
Invasion of millions of illegal aliens, punishing inflation, and rampant crime,
and failures in foreign policy and conducting or supporting a suicidal war in Ukraine against Russia,
and a national debt and deficit that, by itself, will ruin and bankrupt America and US citizens.
Biden and his administration are deliberately bringing ruin to America and US citizens.
Biden and his family are corrupt influence peddlers who should be in prison.
If America and US citizens cannot get rid of the corrupt Biden family and his depraved, America hating administration, then America is finished.
The clock is ticking …..
I find it ironic how the working classes have shifted to the right and the upper classes have become leftist. Even amongst my friends I see it.
Daniel describes some of the reasoning behind it, my experience shows that the elitism comes with over-education.
And a large dose of arrogant self-regard.
What these leftists like to call “white privilege” which they actually all have! Ha!
Thanks Mo, something similar happened in Ancient Rome, that I have been reading about, not that I understand it (with classes shifting positions, etc.)
But theres plenty of not so elite who imbibe propaganda without any filter. . Media is to blame for spreading emotion based propaganda. Women are especially susceptible and easily become empathetic even when it makes little logical sense. And once empathetic, they get enraged if you’re not.
Greenfield is correct. Believing Gaza is starving Boo Hoo plays on people’s sympathy. Cheering Hamas takes that false sympathy to the level of bloodthirsty mass murder of Jews.
Thanks Cat, excellent points.
Yes. It’s a hop, skip and a jump from humanitarianism to genocide in the world’s world of sociopathic terrorists.
As always Daniel makes puts into words the deceptive nature of man. The cause of the leftist is never to fix the target of his good will. It is always to hurt others with the blame they cannot defend themselves from. They work together and take delight in the hate that they harbor. Refer to Proverbs 2:12-15. There is never anything new under the sun.
There is no inherently deceptive nature of man. The nature of man is that he is the rational animal, but rationality is not automatic but a choice to be made at every moment of man’s life.
Man is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but he can be moral and heroic, in the rational sense of those words, if and when he chooses to be.
“Rationality is man’s basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man’s means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life….
A rational process is a MORAL process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest—but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.” – Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand knew about as much of life as you do…..nothing. You don’t live any kind of life at all. You simply pick at nits.
What is missing from Greenfield’s writing is a reference to the insensitive way talking,, in which speakers don’t listen to themselves while they speak – which I call Disembodied Language (DL),,which is is just as dominant on the Left as on the Right. This group-behavior is the stand-in-the-way to Embodied Language (EL), the sensitive way of talking in which speakers listen to themselves while they speak, which is the language of individual freedom
No significant response to my post indicates how much in denial we are about the importance of how we sound!!
I agree with the larger point of the article but empathy is not what drives the humanitarian, it’s sympathy. Sympathy is an emotional process, empathy is objective or analytical.
It’s the emotion that drives the humanitarian Leftist to violence.
I am reminded of the French revolution and Robespierre’s Republic of Virtue, which had to be imposed by the terror, followed by the great terror and sent so many thousands to the guillotine, himself being among the last.
“Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.”
No, Mr. Greenfield, every leftist cause is founded on ALTRUISM!
Do not confuse altruism with empathy, or sympathy, or kindness, or compassion, or charity.
Altruism is the moral code that claims that man has no right to live for his own sake but must sacrifice himself for others — like Jesus Christ did.
If a man believes that it is his highest virtue and duty to sacrifice himself for others, then he also believes that others must sacrifice themselves for others and he will FORCE them to practice the highest virtue and duty of self-sacrifice.
“The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the “selfishness” of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason—no reason that a mystic moralist could name—why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets—for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat’s latest five-year plan. There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity. The value of a man’s life? His right to exist? His right to pursue his own happiness? These are concepts that belong to [rational selfishness], individualism and capitalism—to the antithesis of the altruist morality.” – Ayn Rand
“Why Altruism Is Evil” – Ayn Rand
Oh oh, the THX Beer Drinking Game is up early today. I guess you saw your bug chance. With a full on push against altruism mentioned three times! Your tombstone, should you get one, should say THX went insane because of altruism. I see you were inspired. Alas to no avail. Of course your Objectivist girl friend was basically insane as well.
3 Kilt Lifters for me. 3 for everyone.
But I’m not doing your stupid homework assignment with the little lamb pic
BTW some people actually have a career writing in magazines and websites. You simply play word games on a comment board. Sucks to be you.
I’ll give him credit for recognizing that Stalin did not corrupt the Bolshevik ideal, rather the Bolshevik ideal made a Stalin inevitable. In contrast, Trotsky was a true believer in those ideals, which justified in his own mind his evil deeds. Or so it seems to me after the torture of reading his books.
Stalin was a master criminal, the leftist movements cry out for master criminals to lead and exploit them.
You give him credit at your own risk. I believe, had Rand lived longer, she would have become the same kind of master criminal.
Daniel is right around the corner from the source. The people that are these sociopaths are sociopaths! From puberty onward they have been socially ostracized for being unattractive, un-athletic, socially unaware or lacking in intelligence. That is the ultimate primordial fear, standing alone away from the safety of the tribe. They have formed a new tribe and defend it to the edge of personal danger. Then they run away. Their hatred will never be satiated. They do not fit it. Governmental or academic employment is their only group. This 20% will never forgive you for being more acceptable than they are.
I remember one of my Catholic grade school nuns warning the class that Communists would enter a country under the guise of helping the underprivileged, but their ultimate objective was total control.
Ironically, the religious hierarchy is now aligned with the groups it once condemned.
Not ironically at all, but logically.
Did not the Roman Catholic Church Theocracy have totalitarian control of the West during the 1,000 years of the Christian Dark and Middle Ages. Of course it did.
When two groups share the same fundamental moral premise the most consistent one wins.
Christianity’s fundamental moral code is altruism and self-sacrifice for others just like Marxism.
Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism. Marxism is religion pretending to be secular science.
The Roman Catholic Church is the most important denomination and branch of Christianity because it is the most philosophically serious and consistent of all of them. All other denominations if and when they become as philosophically serious and consistent as the Roman Catholic Church will simply become like the Roman Catholic Church or they will join it.
You are a pompous a$$ and an idiot
The fundamental moral code of Christianity are the 10 Commandments in Christian ethics. They provide the guidance and principles for believers to live by. It has always been that way.
You jealous small minded Objectivist morons can rant all you want but it doesn’t change the moral principles of Christianity. It doesn’t matter what a fool like Lenny Puk-off says or Ayn Rand says or what they think about Marxism or Islam preparing the ground. you can blindly follow them to your hearts content. Objectivism is barely a movement let alone a philosophy
Objectivism is so dogmatic and rigid I have no doubt that it alone would prepare the ground for Marxist totalitarianism.
It must be tough for you to have to keep pushing the rock up the hill every day and get nowhere, but this is the prison you have built for yourself. Good luck trying to rewrite history.
Your “history” of Christianity is wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. Christianity’s moral code is NOT altruism.
Altruism is the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others, meaning other humans.
Christians practice kindness, charity, charity, and compassion towards others because to do so glorifies the Creator – the Creator who loves his creation in spite of our innumerable transgressions. We don’t practice these virtues simply out of “concern for others.”
If the faith has a moral code. it’s Jesus’ two commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and the second is like unto it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There was a time when almost all Americans thought that this was the moral code which should be obeyed. Some believed it even if or when they violated it.
Ayn Rand had zero love, compassion, humility, or kindness for others. She was a malignant narcissist self-anointed demi-god whose heart was made of STONE. She’s DEAD.
Jesus lives!
“If you want to know why, I refer you to the published first drafts of the [1986] pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops, men who are much more consistent and philosophical than anyone in the New Right. The bishops recommended a giant step in the direction of socialism. They ask for a vast new government presence in our economic life, overseeing a vast new redistribution of wealth in order to aid the poor, at home and abroad. They ask for it on a single basic ground: consistency with the teachings of Christianity.
Some of you may wonder here: “But if the bishops are concerned with the poor, why don’t they praise and recommend capitalism, the great historical engine of productivity, which makes everyone richer?” If you think about it, however, you will see that, valid as this point may be, the bishops cannot accept it.
Can they praise the profit motive — while extolling selflessness? Can they commend the passion to own material property — while declaring that worldly possessions are not important? Can they urge men to practice the virtues of productiveness and long-range planning — while upholding as the human model the lilies of the field? Can they celebrate the self-assertive risk-taking of the entrepreneur — while teaching that the meek shall inherit the earth? Can they glorify and liberate the creative ingenuity of the human mind, which is the real source of material wealth — while elevating faith above reason? The answers are obvious. Regardless of the unthinking pretenses of the New Right, no religion, by its nature can appeal to or admire the capitalist system; not if the religion is true to itself. Nor can any religion liberate man’s power to create new wealth. If, therefore, the faithful are concerned about poverty — as the Bible demands they be — they have no alternative but to counsel redistribution of whatever wealth already happens to have been produced. The goods, they have to say, are here. How did they get here? God, they reply, has seen to that; now let men make sure that His largess is distributed fairly. Or, as the bishops put it: “The goods of this earth are common property and . . . men and women are summoned to faithful stewardship rather than to selfish appropriation or exploitation of what was destined for all.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
Here’s a hint about your Lenny Phuk-off hero. He was as desperate as you are to destroy Western Civilization but he failed, as will you.
No one cares a whit about what he has to say except the usual malcontents.
Epic fail again. But don’t worry, loser. No one will be asking you to help when the Jihadis begin their domestic attack. You are such an obvious traitor I bet you would join them.
Your Nun was smarter then Justice ACB, Kavanaugh and Justice Roberts. Please no more Catholics on the Supreme Court. As PaT Buchanan use to say. The Catholic Church has a streak of Socialism in it.
I say that as a Catholic.
Great article Mr Greenfield.
sort of maybe because of the feudal nature of its hierarchy
socialism or not still the good guys
AND THEY’RE ALL BEING BRED BY “PEACEMAKERS”???
ALWAYS trace this back to the Communist Party USA teaming up the SOVIET KGB and their World Peace Council which then led the Peace movement during Vietnam! “U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM!” Yes, so the Communists could control SE Asia. They teamed up again to take over Central America with now the Democrats installing, supporting, and protecting COMMUNIST SANDINISTA DANIEL ORTEGA who arrests all political opponents “as a threat to our Democracy!” (Sound familiar?) This using the CPUSA’S UNITED STATES PEACE COUNCIL with affiliates in every state and major university. While SCREAMING PEACE, they were supporting the Communist FMLN rebels in El Salvador: “El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam!”
(My first NM Peace Council meeting was on Guatemala and instead of talking peace, they were raising money for the Communist rebels in Guatemala. I raised my hand, “HEY, YOU’RE A PEACE GROUP. HOW CAN YOU BE RAISING MONEY FOR WAR?” That 1986 meeting led to my obsession to learn who these groups were, AND TO EXPOSE THEM AND THEIR AGENDA AND GOALS!)
ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE CPUSA AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! Those ’60s-’80s recruits are now BREEDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMMUNISTS WE SEE IN THE STREETS. They are the great-grandchildren, grandchildren, and children of these recruits keeping the torch alive.
Those radicals of yesterday are tame compared to what is being produced today. I attend lots of protests. Quit after the Fall of Communism, except for here, and then the Iraq wars where here they come again. I attended and came up with this: “Same Movie. Same Producers. Same Directors. Same Script… JUST DIFFERENT ACTORS.” I slowed down…. AND THEN A NEW BRED… A PSYCHOTIC VIOLENT BREED SCREAMING, FOAMING AT THE MOUTH, EVIL EYES, TRUE PSYCHOTICS! Again referring to the past…. the recruiters are the same CPUSA/KGB dupes who now lead groups like ANSWER, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, The Revolutionary Communist Party, Democratic Socialists of America, and the CPUSA who then organized Occupy and BLM and who now openly support TERRORIST GROUPS with the FBI, DOJ, DHS, more worried about MAGAS BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ’60S-’80S RECRUITS!
Uh Oh. Looks like Hamas is getting serious about it’s costumes.
Green and Black camo face paint. Black head scarves. Grenades hanging off their bodies And of course the ever present AK 47s.
I’m not sure where the camo face paint works unless you are planning an attack in an open green field.
Well we are getting closer to Halloween, aren’t we.
Everyone should read Townhall contributor Kurt Schlichter’s book called “The Attack”. In this book he details a possible coordinated jihad attack in the U.S. over three days by small groups of armed Muslims and cosplaying white wannabe terrorists, first against businesses, second against Americans in their homes, and finally against infrastructure. The attacks take place mostly in the unarmed blue state cities and suburbs. The jihadis do not want to be confronted by armed Americans
Kurt Schlichter said it best in his TownHall articles:
townhall com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/03/25/america-is-going-to-be-targeted-for-a-massive-terrorist-attack-will-you-be-ready-n2636901
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/06/17/joe-biden-reminds-us-to-buy-guns-and-ammunition-n2640535
Bottom line, buy guns and ammo in the areas of the country where you still can. You guys who live in blue cities and blue states, MOVE NOW! You are sitting ducks. Democrats want you unarmed.
Good point about the costumes they are wearing.
One thing that struck me was, how are the police supposed to know whether those grenades and weapons are real or not?
I guess the Cops find out if the Hamasimians throw them. My guess, since we know Hamas are basically cowards, I would bet they are fakes. They look like toys.
But I won’t be standing in their vicinity without being armed.
Article title is a brilliant observation exposing the corruption of leftist causes, all of which enrichesr the manipulating slugs behind them.
“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.” – Ayn Rand
And the Objectivist who seek to control our thought processes seek the same kind of enslavement and intend to be our master. You aren’t fooling anyone.
You seem hopelessly enslaved to your master.
Dear THX1138:
You are all over the map today so let me just address one fundamental flaw in your atheist philosophy:
The Kalam cosmological argument posits the following:
‘Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist (some 14 to 16 billion years ago). Therefore the universe has a cause.’
Now, logic dictates two things.
1. The “cause” cannot be a physical reality because our physical universe came into existence at a point when nothing physical, (including time) yet existed.
2. Because an infinite regression of prior causes defies logic, the non-physical ultimate “cause” of our universe must be, of logical necessity, eternal and uncreated.
Knowledgeable Christians understand that this ultimate first “cause” is the God of the Holy Bible. We know this is true because our living God is Spirit and He exists outside of time, space and matter just as the Bible has made clear for thousands of years. Further, because He is the Creator, He can interact with His creation at will.
What can atheists offer as a better, more logical explanation for the miracle of existence?
I await your reply.
Kent
Ayn Rand desperately wanted to be your master.
And ours as well.
ocd chick
only a matter of time with all the pontificating
Yet another essay where Daniel’s prose rises to the level of poetry.
Like his book, there is something about it that goes beyond any history I have read previously.
Maybe one thing is how clear and easy to understand it is. A lot of other histories I have to struggle with to understand.
Thank you so much.
The great philosopher Eric Hoffer said the following:
1. Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
2. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
The left still has not learned, after hundreds of years and millions of corpses, that the only thing worse than inequality is forced equality.
Forced equality always ends in Genocide. Always.
Destroying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is taking us to Totalitarianism. Freedom is fleeting. Eventually all nations succumb to tyranny because of evil and people who are deceived.
“Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism”
This is a PROFOUND statement.
And entirely correct.
The 20th century is a testament to its validity.
Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Sung Il etc. etc. all prove the truth of it.
But here’s the thing……….
NOBODY EVER VOTED THEIR WAY OUT OF A COMMUNIST/TOTALITARIAN REVOLUTION…………NOT ONCE.
Excellent point. Outsiders are always criticizing California voters for not voting their way out of the Democrat Party control of the state government.
The out-of-state voters, the cemetery voters, and the overthrow of the two=party system caused the California slide from success into taxpayer hell.. I know no one who votes Democrat.
The first sign of Daniel’s totalitarian empathy I saw was in the seventies when voters approved the requirement that landlords had to rent to anybody who came to the door. Why, it was unfair for a property owner to reject criminals and deadbeats! Now it’s almost impossible to evict them, too.
Now they cry about the lack of affordable housing.
The humanitarian part is normally just to put us off guard.
This article is why Animal Farm should not be read in middle schools, before the kids have any realization of political beliefs. In a high school setting, the article would be a great introduction into Orwell’s books. Animal Farm leads to 1984.
Unless of course the curriculum or the administration doesn’t want a kid to think too deeply in that.
Those who think their doing good for the environment are doing the worse harm instead
It reminds me of when people used to get really exasperated they would add the phrase “for God’s sake” to whatever they said. Maybe so much of today’s humanitarianism is such a power polemic because it keeps the human part because leaves out the “for God’s sake” part. (I suppose eventurally they’ll need to be more overt in the shift of meanings and names in that idea too should they ever feel the need to repurpose it even further).
The leftist ideology is 100% psychopathic. Appealing to people’s emotions to gain control over them.
Majority of people can not reason and don’t understand logic, but everybody responds to emotions.
The psychopaths are masters of manipulating people’s emotions, but they don’t feel any emotions themselves. They are extremely selfish and only care to serve themselves. Their main purpose is Control and Power.
What psychopaths hate most is being revealed for who they really are, resulting in loss of their power to control their victims. That’s when they advocate for killing whoever doesn’t agree with them. Without any remorse or guilt.
Islam and communism are both psychopathic ideologies, created by psychopaths.
The left’s ideology today is a mix of islam and communism, with quite a few distractions and masks to cover it up for what it really is and sell it to gullible people.
But make no mistakes about it, the end game is always a brutal dictatorship with endless executions.
Islam and communism/socialism are the main evil powers of our time.
I agree 100% with your assessment! There is no reasoning or logic with these demented people.
I believe it is Thomas Sowell who said to the effect that you cannot reason a person out of a belief they did not adopt through reason. And he is right. As usual.
Comparing their fake empathy to my actual empathy is sickening to me.
They want to look like good people. They don’t care who they hurt in the process.
You don’t defund the police because your actually care about others. You do it to get cheers and drinks from your cult, while ignoring the people who die because of it.
Regardless of philosophy or label, reason or motive, if it is godless, it will ultimately result in theft, death, and destruction.
Exactly. The Germans called it Leidensneid, or an envy of suffering, when analyzing the ’68ers and their terrorism in Europe. Eventually these people became so despairing, knowing they would never realize their utopia, that they instead tried to destroy Western society in toto. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/why_the_support_for_hamas.html
This makes a lot of sense!
I used to wonder :
Why BLM (who flap their lips about caring for black lives) are so committed to looting and destroying black businesses, aborting black babies by the millions, killing each other with glee, and refusing to support black politicians if they happen to be Republican;
Why so-called feminists, who say they’re all about destroying “toxic masculinity” and destroying the “patriarchy”, are cheering regimes who embody toxic masculinity and dominate their women completely;
Why so many LGBTQ activists openly shout their support for a culture that would happily throw them off rooftops;
Why environazis, in their protests about climate change, purposely destroy landmarks and structures that have been around for hundreds of years, and have NOTHING to do with “climate change”;
Why “free speech” shrills will attempt to cancel, shut down and discredit anybody who practices their right to free speech but whose views are different from theirs.
But then, we shouldn’t look for logic in these people.
This essay explains some things. I remember the guys I went through grade and high school with. Most of them absolutely never did the right thing, except by accident. Then they quickly corrected their error.
But once they turned 18 and went to college, lo and behold, they suddenly were paragons of virtue eager to teach the whole society what it was to live according to moral principle.
I instinctively knew it was all bullshit.
Excellent point. I often think about the guys I went through grade school and high school with. And how they influenced me. I had to relearn morality and ethics from scratch 🙂
Exact opposite experience for me. We managed to get in a lot of trouble for being such squares and uncool, corny but the morality was as midwest as it could be.
cheap virtue
Daniel Greenfield has, yet again, deftly dissected one of the great structural defects of leftism … The template he describes is pretty much applicable to everything they do — or should I say everything they “DESTROY” … ? … Need to get more people into a healthcare plan? Simply destroy the healthcare system! Need to ‘protect Democracy™’? — jail your opponents, of course! Got a leaky roof? Hell, why not bulldoze your house! The list is endless … Nobody cuts through the clutter and gets to the heart of an issue like Mr. Greenfield!
Define a problem by also defining that which exists as the problem. And then destroying everything that exists becomes the solution.
No,,no,,just no, baby. I almost always agree with you, and it’s a beautiful thing, but you don’t get it.
Say there’s a group of hungry children. I have empathy. I want to help. I find out what child is allergic to tree nuts. What children are smaller, and feed them separately. What kids are scared of me, so I can get their mom to help.
If I was a liberal I would throw peanuts at them, and revel in praise while the kid behind me can’t breathe and dies. I step over him to “help” some more ppl.
This isn’t empathy. This is narcissistic. They want to LOOK like a good person., but do you think any of them know the names of a single victim killed from defunding the police?
When you have morals, but reject God, your morals can begin to come from government or other people.
FFS they tried to leave a guy rotting in prison for praying in the captial. They tried to hide the evidence. Not one liberal GAF.
This is NOT empathy. This is wanting to look good to a cult.
WOW. I gave a complete, well thought out reply. And you ERASE it!!! Nothing but praise, right.
What happended to you, man?
I’ve been coming here for years. You think you have the right to silence me? What kind of person does that? SHAME on you!!!!!
Software does it, not humans.
I see what I presume is your reply up above. I haven’t touched your comment.
Mr. Greenfield your premise for how a caring people turn into monsters is wrong. It’s not about leftists who are humanitarians, it’s about people striving for political and cultural utopianism. As we all know utopianism ends with the same results every time it’s been forcibly adopted on a society. It leads to a dictatorship, repression of people’s rights, arbitrary arrests, putting away people in political prison camps, extrajudicial executions and even mass atrocities. Now those are the results of left wing utopianism but the same applies to right wing utopianism that can be seen in Islamic utopianism adopted in Iran, Afghanistan as well by terrorist entities like Hezbollah and Hamas.
The issue isn’t humanitarianism which leads to hell, the road to hell is paved with the good intentions of the utopian mindset, regardless of a society absent of religion or a society built upon a theocracy. It’s all the same crap and both models end up with the exact same devastating results.
Leftism is to altruism as porn is to love.
King WesternMan
Great article, as always! I put it on my Facebook page, and FB notified me that they took it down bcz it violated its fascist community standards. It said I have done so repeatedly, and the gulag may be next.
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