So why do many people assume that the only remedy for anything bad—including bads that involve no physical force—is state action, which always entails the threat of violence? Are we really so powerless to deal with repulsive but nonviolent conduct unless politicians act on our behalf?
Why should we give up our power and freedom to the State in order to deal with a few isolated cases of “people doing things we don’t agree with?”
I’ll give you an answer: Because leftists get off on using state power to punish people they don’t like.
There are two parties to every exchange, else the exchange can’t take place–even in those exchanges where coercion is used to force at least one of those parties, and even in the drug trade where addiction is the coercive force–there must be those two parties.
It’s especially pernicious in the welfare trade (here I use the term more broadly than usual, to include having the state carry out the “Mommy, make him stop” welfare) where the addiction exists on both sides of the exchange–the addiction of those become dependent on welfare, and the addiction of those to the ego trip and to the power associated with being the one doing the handing out.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage enjoins each of us to help those weaker than us–and that applies to every one of us: there’s always someone worse off than us in some way. But that’s an individual moral obligation, not a collective one. Each one of us must execute our morality ourselves; we cannot wish it off on others. Certainly we can band together, the better to carry out our individual obligations, and certainly we can bring our hireling government into the process to help us execute our duty. But these must be solely to help us do our duty, not to replace us in the doing.
But it’s also hard work, along a number of dimensions, to see to our own responsibilities. It’s easier, in the short run, just to abrogate our duties and wish them off entirely on government to carry out for us, perhaps in our collective names, perhaps not even with that transparent fig leaf.
It remains our individual obligation; we cannot divorce it from each of us. But the ease of surrendering it to the state is why we so encourage politicians to act in our stead.
Eric Hines
That, and what the original Randians used to call “social metaphysics”: the inability to feel that your viewpoint is valid, unless you have countless others mirroring you and reassuring you that you are valid.
I think there is another component to all of this. I think progressives embrace government policing of bigotry because they secretly fear that the default political philosophy of white Americans, when unchecked by progressive thought and action, is fascism and white supremacy. Invoking states’ rights on issues like gay marriage sends up red flags for progressives, because the Confederates invoked states’ rights as well. Thus, Joe Biden can be completely honest when he says that he thinks conservatives/libertarians “are going to put people back in chains.”
And since leaving people to their own devices will naturally lead to another Holocaust, progressives need to stamp out anything that even smells of opposition to the progressive agenda. Hence “No H8.” They see themselves as heroes fighting the inner demons of humanity.
But yes, there is an addiction-to-power thing going on, too.
Leftists can not find happiness. They are manic-depressive and depressing people who are forever searching for hope, change, happiness, equality, fairness, justice, peace, a square deal, a fair deal, tomorrow, solidarity, tranquility, esteem, deliverance, compassion, abundance, concord, blah, blah, blah.
Leftists are fully engaged in the deep-seated feelings of their hearts where victims must be saved from aggressions against them and aggressors must be cleansed of their aggression.
Utopia is preceded by the state which must re-educate the masses away from their vile ways. Only leftists can see the core of abstract concepts and act on what justice, equality, fairness, , , , , , …… “really is”.
Leftists are depressed by the depressing recalcitrance of non-leftists who want to preserve the current misery and who resist efforts to perfect human kind.
The leftist sees state power as a force to redeem people they see as deeply flawed.
The Christian ethic is one on one interchange. The leftist ethic is state forced rehabilitation.
The leftist is stuck with the mind of the 18 year old where everything is possible if you just will it to be so. The leftist sees this as optimism and takes a religious zeal fueled by his own indefatigable belief in the power of hope.
Zeus gave Pandora a covered jar and told her that it must not ever be opened. Pandora took a peek and all of the evils of the world were released …. except one …. which Pandora kept trapped when she slammed the lid back down. Elpis was thereby trapped. The ongoing debate from ancient times is whether Elpis is only “hope” or it is colored with “expectation.” Nonetheless, “hope” was among the evils. “Hope” is a form of ambition, daydreaming, dependence, anticipation, greed, and other vices. It is not a virtue. It is a lottery ticket. To foment hope as a prescription is pure demagoguery.
It is multi-layered. In order to work it requires a victim class and a hero class.
The victims are every “oppressed” minority. And they must be KEPT oppressed, otherwise, they no longer need the progressive to act as the hero come to liberate them.
The hero class, is, of course, the progressive, who makes the victim class feel powerless without their “help” but who never, ever, get around to actually giving them any power, or giving them power only by proxy through them. And when two of these minorities clash? They talk to them separately and tell them different things, or else distract them with a common enemy.
I believe it’s a matter of seeking relevance. Rooting out increasingly microsocial affronts requires an inversely proportionate level of tolerance. Such politics serves as both the platform for and the distraction from government seizing an ever-larger role, especially as each electoral cycle is the expression of a particular politician’s desire to have made a difference in the lives of those he supposedly serves.
Another factor is that leftist have always eschewed and denigrated western religious values and continue to seek, if not their outright abolition, their being relegated to the nether regions of the culture.
And in their place, a secular god (government), that is forever trying to create ‘heaven on earth’, if the right people are allowed to run the show (‘elites’), pass enough laws, cow a sufficient number of people into being beggars (because as Glenn Reynolds notes “they’re easier to please”) and silence the heretics.
David Horowitz has it right: “Inside every liberal/leftist is a totalitarian screaming to get out.”
There is yet another explanation: domestic finger-pointing, non-issues, and vote-buying is much, much easier than diplomacy and other forms of administrative competence. And really, re. Obama, it’s entirely reasonable to regard him with a bigotry of low expectations similar to that with which he was elected: one not due to his color but that he was hired for an entirely different reason and position, though we call him “President”. Those with whom I have the most argument are those who expected Obama to actually be successful, especially betrayed by those who most vocally insist he in fact is. Obama is merely being himself and we couldn’t have elected a much smaller man. Few public gestures are more neurotic than to practice Affirmative Action in the voting booth when all indices predict failure, yet believe that somehow symbolism will trump reality, even if reality is conservative.
I understand being angry with an awful administration but I’ve spent the last 5 years or so coming to the conclusion that a great many of us are in need of therapy and I don’t want to live through the only kinds of upheaval that will reach them.
I suspect that some lefties simply believe that their godlike intelligence and endless (pseudo)compassion will allow them to solve any problem despite repeated failures and evidence to the contrary.
Many years ago, a Democrat mayor of Tulsa spoke of her goal (as mayor) to heal the racial divide. This in a town where synchronizing two traffic signals on either side of a freeway bridge is beyond their capability.
As a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link (and we’re specializing in creating weak links in this society nowadays), I’m sorry to say that you’re going to have to live through it, and so will the rest of us.
I take some solace, but very little, in the fact that people like me don’t cause the kind of sh*t that we’re going through now, nor the much more cataclysmic sh*t that’s likely not very far off.
And if you’ll forgive my editing…
Clever bullshitting crooks at the top, uneducated feral children make up the rest. I agree that leftists are unhappy. I don’t believe they give one wit about justice, fairness, peace, or compassion. They are envious, greedy, and have tiny hearts, if they have one at all. All ego.
I am related to several who are okay with misery for everyone because it’s just not right that someone may have more than them. Doesn’t matter how hard someone works, talented, or skilled. If they can’t have the ‘good life’, then noone should….so it is ‘just’ and ‘compassionate’ that their elected thief spread that wealth. It’s the only way.
Not to mention the contentness of being state owned pets. So long as they are fed and vaccinated, they don’t have to exert themselves in thought or deed.