Or...

Why Does The Left Hate Western Civilization?

"We've got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?," said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries . . . that are riddled with poverty?

"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that.

"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"

Senator Patrick Murray (D-Wash)

"With Trent Lott out of the GOP leadership, liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall turns his attention to the new majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee . In a Friday morning item, Marshall unearthed a Frist quote from his first Senate campaign, in 1994. Incumbent Democrat Jim Sasser, Frist said, was "sending Tennessee money to Washington , to Marion Barry... While I've been transplanting lungs and hearts to heal Tennesseeans, Jim Sasser has been transplanting Tennesseeans' wallets to Washington , home of Marion Barry." Marion Barry was mayor of the capital from 1979 through 1990 and again from 1995 through 1999.

In a follow-up item, Marshall explained the significance of the 1994 quote:

It shows, Marshall says, that Frist seemed unable to resist "the temptation to dabble in racial code words and appeals on the stump."

In reference to Lynn Stewart, the lawyer for one of the 1993 Twin Towers bombing co-defendants:

"As Stewart got to know her new client, she came to see him as a fighter for national liberation on behalf of a people oppressed by dictatorship and American imperialism. She came to admire him personally too, for his honesty, his strength of character, his teasing humor.

"I've made up my mind," the sheik would say. "I'm going to marry you, and that will solve everything."

"And what do women get if they fight in jihad?" she would ask. . . ."

"Anti-Jewish bloodlust is not the exclusive province of the Arabs. Britain 's Guardian reports that Tom Paul in, an Oxford poet and "leading anti-Zionist," says Jewish settlers in the Middle East "should be shot dead." In an interview with an Egyptian weekly, he adds: "I can understand how suicide bombers feel... I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale." (#)

So, breaking down the rhetoric, we have a. a US Senator who thinks that it's okay to kill 3000 people if you build a daycare center, b. thinks a political comment about funding a crack-head is a racist comment from a person who did, for many years, charity pediatric cardiac surgery, much of it on black children, c. a lawyer who thinks that bombing a building in New York will free people oppressed by dictatorships. And that, furthermore, it's just Jim-dandy to kill her fellow Americans. And finally, d. an Oxford poet that thinks that slaughtering innocent civilians deliberately is a good thing, as long as they're Jews, because it raises morale.

So the question is: What is with the left?

It can't be denied that many of them do drugs, but I don't think that's the crux of the reason. Smoking too much pot will make you stupid, but not this stupid. This is a special kind of stupidity that requires a real brain behind it. This is stupidity with suspenders.

So let us follow the trail of their thoughts, delve into the inner recesses of this group that makes "Dumb and Dumber" look like "Einstein and Bohr", attempt to divine what is the key factor that binds wanting to go to bed with brutal dictators and hating decent hard working farmers who just want a little water for their crops.

What is it that drives the liberal soul?

The first part of the hypothesis is this: Much of the policy drive on the left comes from people with a great deal of money and their paid lackeys. They determine on a day to day basis what evil America is guilty of.

The Republicans are supposed to be the "party of the fat-cats", but, in fact, if you look at donation patterns and projected wealth, by far and away more of the Democrat's money comes from "rich" people (top 5% of income) than Republican money does. Yes, the majority of their voters are not rich, their largest base voting group is underprivileged blacks, but that group, their voting base, does not contribute "theory" (or money) to the party, it just provides votes in exchange for government largesse of one form or another(*).

But the point is that the majority of the funding for the left comes from a relative handful of very rich people. That was painfully evident based on analysis of the legal battle over the 2000 election. A data base manager friend (who wasn't in agreement with my hypothesis) took my rough notes and showed that 80% of Gore's legal funding came from less than 10% of his supporters. In fact, 20% came from just two. Whereas Bush's support was so broadly spread that only one person stood out and his contribution was "double" the maximum Bush would accept from an individual. It looked as if the person had doubled up with someone and the second person was not recorded.

Republican funding, therefore, is based upon the middle class, not the very rich. There are very rich Republicans and donators to the Republican party, without a doubt. But the basis of the party, both for funding and for voting, is middle class. And, furthermore, the same can be said for conservative institutions in general.

On the contrary, a far higher percentage of Democratic funding comes from the very rich. And the same can be said of virtually any liberal institution.

Now, the very rich are "different." But not in the way that most people think. The rich, especially but not entirely the "inheritance" rich, are often consumed by guilt. "Why me? Why am I so blessed that I have all this money?"

I have recently run into this myself. My wife and I were "borderline" financial cases for years. Neither of us was exactly excelling in any career track. We were puttering along in low-gear. Oh, food was on the table but money was always extremely tight. And that described the vast majority of our friends.

But through the success of my writing, in a relatively sudden fashion, that has changed. For years taking any sort of "real" vacation was out of the question for our family. As was large-scale discretionary spending. Now, I'm going diving next weekend and I just went out and did what I had dreamed about for...well years and years and years and years; I bought myself everything that I needed in SCUBA gear (like skiing gear but more expensive) in one solid, and solidly expensive, lump. And at Christmas I was finally able to get my wife the sort of jewelry I had wanted to get her since before we were married.

Does this make me happy? Not as happy as I anticipated. Mostly, I'm feeling guilty. I think of many of my fans as friends, family. Fans just designedand constructed a role playing game for my main "universe." I go out to dinner with them. They promoted my books and turned up at Cons and signings when I was a virtual unknown so that strangers took notice and bought my books as well.

But many of these same fans are out of work or perennially on the margin. At least half of the people that did the RPG fell into that category. These are my friends. Other friends, in one case closer than a sister, closer in many ways than my wife, are out of work. And does that make me happy? No, it makes me feel guilty.

"Why me? Why are all my dreams coming true when friends are having a hard time?"

This trip down guilt-lane had a point. My sister's girlfriend (yes, I said that correctly) is inheritance rich. She is also fiscally conservative and a Republican but she grew up with the "rich-rich", the oh so discrete and oh so old Southern money that dates back to cotton picked by slaves. And most of her generation, at least, is consumed by guilt. "Why me? Why am I so rich? Why can't everybody be this way?" And they are all on the hard end of the Left. They may live in Alabama , but Neil Young speaks for them, not Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I now understand that at a level I didn't before. (Understand, not agree. To know all is not to forgive all.) I also understand, I think, people like Alec Baldwin and Barbara Streissand. They're not intelligent except from a "make change, come in out of the rain and check the balance sheet" point of view. They are not able to follow logic puzzles more complex then "where's my driver", nor are they the sort to spend much of their time researching or trying to see the true nature of things. And they are so constantly surrounded by people who say "Oh, yes, Alec, you're absolutely right!" that they think that they can never be wrong. See the movie "Get Shorty" and watch the omelet scene. Then think of that omelet scene in politics.

And because all of this largesse came upon them suddenly, they're consumed by "why me" guilt. "Why me? Why can't that homeless guy on the corner be as as well off as I???(**)"

"Why me" guilt is a form of survivor's guilt, except in this case it's "succeedor's guilt." "I have succeeded and I don't always believe that I should have. Others have fallen by the roadside. I must feel guilty about this." Throw in the fact that artistes are supposed to suffer and you can get a real synergistic crying jag going.

So the starting point and the basis of their liberal wails of anguish always and always is guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Now, guilt is a normal human emotion. It probably has a strong genetic basis. Cooperation is the real way that humans beat out leopards. So when you break cooperation, there is a negative dissonance. At the level of five people in a small group of sub-humanoids, breaking cooperation is eating an extra toothsome grub. That means that somebody has done without the toothsome grub that you were supposed to offer to share.

At the level of a technological, post-industrial, hyper-civilization, breaking cooperation is riding in your limo past a guy who is pushing a cart down the street and muttering to himself.

Now, I mentioned that the basis of their voting, blacks (and to a lesser extent other minorities, teachers and labor), don't contribute much in the way of theory. If any of them do it is labor and labor's theory is essentially income distribution. This fits well with the rich-rich because they can afford lawyers to make sure they use every loophole, lobbyists to ensure there are more loopholes every year and when they do finally sign the check to the government it's not like it means the difference between eating out and not eating out. Even at Spazos.

But they still feel the guilt. As they look out from their crystalline windows at Hollywood spread below them. As they stare down from their Park Avenue penthouses. As they shop on Rodeo Drive or in Palm Beach , the specter follows them everywhere. Guilt. Poor. Homeless. Pollution. Deforestation. Global Warming. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Now, if they were religious, there would be various outlets. One outlet is talking about it openly. And if someone can say "it's not your fault but since you feel that way, do this and it will make it very much not your fault" that really works. How that works in the Catholic Church is "you're right, the homeless is a terrible problem. Say five Hail Mary's and go work at the soup kitchen on Saturday and I'll give you absolution. Go forth and sin no more."

But since they cannot find absolution, going to psychiatrists is pointless for that they just tell you you have to absolve yourself, the guilt cannot be their fault. Something has to break, either they are responsible for the problems of the whole world, clearly not the case, or someone else is responsible. It can't be something within themselves saying "I'm not worthy." And it's not as if they can assuage themselves through actual sacrifice. I don't see Barbara Streissand or Alec Baldwin selling all their worldly goods and giving all the money to the poor. And even if they did, they tell themselves, it wouldn't make a dent in the problem. It's not their fault! But something is wrong! So.

So it has to be someone else's fault. People are poor, there is global warming, pollution is destroying the face of the earth, the world is becoming deforested. Someone must be in charge and whoever they are they are at fault!

They could just seize on any available target; in a previous age it would have been the fault of the poor. I mean, they're poor because they're stupid or they're poor because they don't have "good" blood. They were born under an evil star, that's why they're poor. They're also responsible for the deforestation and the pollution (which is actually true, more on that later.)

But this doesn't work in an age of egalitarianism. "All men are equal except women who are superior." This generation was raised in the era of Woodstock when the Great Society was all the rage. The poor are David faced with the Goliath of the world. Therefore they cannot be responsible, in any way, for their predicament. There has to be another reason. A reason that makes sense to their poor, tired, artistic souls.

Thus, when some intellectual comes forward and gives them a reason that fits with their preconceptions, that intellectual is brilliant. And, remember, they have money to burn. So they give it to the intellectual.

"Hello, my name is Noam and I have the answer to all your problems. It's all the fault of the evil Americans, the bad conservative ones that fill the airwaves with their lies and are in power and want to oppress the world. There. Now give me money so that I can soothsay again and assuage your guilt."

Thus we have the intellectual left. In an age of reason or in an age of kings for that matter, some dweeb with a bad goatee and a beret spouting that the masses (virtually all of whom are reasonably over fed, have a color TV and a roof over their head, with heat or air conditioning as appropriate) are being oppressed by the capitalist society that creates those conditions would be laughed out of town. Especially if he held up Marxism, which universally has led to infinitely worse conditions for all but a favored few, as the ultimate answer. (Logic shows that while laissez faire capitalism and democracy are not perfect, they're so much better than the alternatives it's hilarious. The economic answer to the world's problems is John Adams, not Marx.)

But, clearly, the poor are downtrodden. How else to explain the street people that they see as they ride past in their limousines and SUVs?

The greatest test of a man's intelligence is said to be when he agrees with you. And the intellectual left agrees with these people that the poor are downtrodden and need help. Furthermore, they have an answer to the problem. The problem is the whole corrupt system. A system where people unfairly oppress the masses and gather riches to themselves without let or hindrance. It's the whole rotten capitalist system of which America is the most nefarious example.

ow, given that America as currently run is, therefore, inherently evil, all that it does must be evil. They don't use the word, but that is what they clench to themselves in their heart of hearts. America is the Great Satan, Sauron, all the evil empires of history that have oppressed the masses and turned people into serfs and beggars. Laissez faire capitalism is nothing less than a fancy way of saying "let them eat cake(***)." Or, worse, "let them starve."

Now, carrying the logic to its conclusion, that means that in a world of black and white, where America is, by definition, the bad guy, anybody who opposes America is the good guy.

Let me lay that out again. America is evil because it has not fixed every single one of its social ills. Therefore, anything having to do with America is evil. And anything that opposes America is good.

The same, to a lesser extent, can be said about all of Western Society.

hus we have the specter of people who challenge the US on its "human rights abuses" (such as condemning to death a "leftist intellectual" who shot a police officer or arresting another "revolutionary intellectual" for setting a bomb in the Capitol) supporting Saddam Hussein who rapes daughters while their fathers are forced to watch and then kills them by lowering them into vats of acid.

The crux of the matter is guilty, "filthy rich bahstahds with too much f**king money" and the fact that they don't have a need to engage their own brains. They, by and large, have no need to actually figure the world out to make money. They just have to either clip coupons or sing another song with no lyrics but lots of production values. And feel guilty, loudly, in public.

So they have funded two generations of leftist intellectuals to posture and pout and rant and come up with logic chains that go into some weird alternate reality black hole where vicious dictators that torture, maim and kill are good and a kindly, Christian, determined, righteous, common-sense man from Texas is a vicious, evil moron.

There are those amongst this broad group that are both intelligent and wise. But you can distinguish them, usually, by the fact that they don't equate the West with evil. They recognize its faults (as do I) and think that it needs some tweaking. They generally don't act as if the world is going to come to an end if America spreads its society to countries that are trying to kill us. They generally think that the broad concepts of Western Civilization are good enough that they should be spread as wide as possible

In other cases, people can make the (understandable) statement that "I'm neither rich nor an intellectual and I believe those things!" These people are generally, but not always, young. Well, if you're just learning about the world and you are fed a steady diet of propaganda, or if you're just not much of a thinker and you're spread a steady diet of propaganda, then you tend to go with the Groupthink. And the majority of the media is driven by the same liberal groupthink until what you have is a resonance harmonic setup. Thus you have Peter Jennings unwilling to wear the American flag and journalists refusing to call terrorists terrorists but willing to call America "evil."

"There are poor (environmental problems/homophobes/racists/whathaveyou) in America . America therefore does not care about the poor (insert other topics du jour). Therefore America is evil. Therefore anyone who opposes America is good. Therefore Saddam Hussein is good."

The reality of the poor being better off in America (or other Western culture societies) than anywhere else in the world does not phase their arguments. It's a moot point to them. Ditto the others. The communist countries had the worst environmental record in the world; the only saving grace was that they were so inefficient they couldn't do more damage. Orphans in America get clothing stipends and Christmas gifts that when Karin and I were "just making it" often had us green with envy. In Romania they were chained to their beds and fed a bowl of gruel a day. The reason you don't see "homeless" in Iraq is that they are all in prison or murdered by the government.

None of that matters. This is the evil that they see. The fact that you can't fix everything, that no society is God, that overall, by and large, society is better off if people have the freedom to fail as well as succeed, is moot. They see the evil and they must fight it. The evil is in America , therefore it is America that is evil.

Rabid anti-Semitism, terrorism, acts of unspeakable brutality, none of it matters as long as the people committing the acts are anti-American. America and all it represents, capitalism, "opportunity" that permits the aggressive to get richer and richer, the raping of the environment by putting in tacky strip-malls and chock-a-block housing developments, all of it is evil and it must be destroyed.

Even if, in something regarding functional reality, the desire stems from nothing but a sort of bastardized survivor's guilt.

"Why me? Why am I not sleeping on a grate?"

Because your mother and father didn't carry the wrong genes. Because you were raised in a decent environment, brought to you by your mother and father and this great country, this great civilization, that you despise. Because of all the generations of human beings, we few, we lucky lucky few, by the grace of our forefathers and the blood of our elders, and the sweat of our contemporaries who don't think this is an evil land and venture forth to do rough justice to the men who would do us harm, brought us forth this wonderful gift called freedom and all that it entails, including the freedom to fail.

And the Left looks upon it in horror.

Lord save us from the guilty that cannot find absolution. We now have an eighth deadly sin.

References

# Examples culled from various Opinion Journal "Best of the Web Today."

*Including clout that prevents governmental interference that would drop like a hammer on other groups. Eg, letting black churches be used for political purposes without losing tax funding.

** Answer: Because he's a treatable schizophrenic that nonetheless will not stay on his pills. So half the time he's in another world. His family has tried to help him, but the only reasonable answer is some sort of implanted device or incarceration. Neither sits well with "the powers that be."

So he holds up a sign that says "Will work for food" meaning "give me money for beer" and mutters to himself all day long.

***By the way, like Wellington 's comments about soldiers, Marie Antoinette has been unfairly maligned. She was that century's version of Barbara Streissand, a person of prominence who had gotten there not by intellectual or business work but through methods that required no degree of intelligence or perspicacity. The remark stemmed from a famine that was happening in and around Paris . As part of an early liberal attitude, the king had instituted price caps on foodstuffs. "Clearly the people are suffering because of the price-gouging bakers."

Since there was a famine and the price of wheat was sky-high, the price caps meant that a baker paid more for materials than he could charge for the bread. So the bakers stopped baking even what flour they had and did not order more. However, the king, clever fellow that he was, had ordered that if bread was not available, bakers were required to substitute other, more expensive, foodstuffs that they had in stock. Such as cake. Thus she was making a reasonable statement. "If they have not bread, let them eat cake." Which, if the bakers were making that, should have been an alternate. Since there was a famine and ham-handed price controls, there was no such alternative. But within the information she had, "Darling, I have solved the problem by telling the bakers they must substitute cake at bread prices", it made tremendous sense. If you're a complete idiot.

Like I said, much like Barbara Streissand. Detached doesn't begin to explain it. But guilty? Yes.