John C Wright Describes Leftism

This is incised from Wright's essay on Thanksgiving and gratitude; the essay must be read in its entirety so please do so. This segment is destined to become classic, if there is any justice left in the universe. As tempted as I am to go through and highlight segments and phrases to enable them to shout out their truths, I will not do it. You can see them jump at you and appreciate them for yourself without my interference.

"As Ayn Rand says, you cannot reason with such creatures, you cannot negotiate with them. Reasoning presupposes a standard of evidence that can be satisfied; negotiation presupposes a state of satisfaction that will silence further demands.

The extortion can be material, as for money, or social, as for status, or psychological, as for a sense of unearned self-esteem, but the defining characteristic of the Left is that these things extorted are not earned.

But a satisfied Leftist, a Leftist with nothing further to extort, is no longer a Leftist for the same reason that a Pirate who never plunders ships is not a Pirate, or a parasite without a host is no longer a parasite. They can never be satisfied.

Why? Do they want to be unhappy, always victims, always weak, always pathetic, whining, unmanned, absurd, pathetic, and gormless?

Despite what it seems, this is not due to a mental disorder. It is a disordered philosophy that rewards them for pretending to have a mental disorder. Giving into the temptation once makes it easier to give in the next time, in a soaring parabolic asymptote of unreality.

Contrast the concept of entitlement and the concept of charity. Entitlement means one man is given another man’s money, hours and days of his life and life’s work, as a matter of right. The second man is, in effect, enslaved to the first for period covered by hours and days of labor lost to him.

The second has no reason to feel gratitude to the first, since the labor and life of the first are the second man’s by right, not by grace.

The second man extorts the first by means of white blackmail, that is, he holds the first man hostage not by means of some vice or crime of the first man, by but his virtue. The first man’s ability, his intelligence, his work, his integrity, his unwillingness to see the deserving poor suffer, all these are like the incriminating photos or gambling debts of a blackmailer, except strangely reversed. It is the blackmailer’s own vices and weakness that are used to blackmail the other.

Now the truly subtle, yet inevitable, corruption of character takes place not the first time such a transfer of life and labor is expropriated, nor the second. It takes place whenever the second man realizes that his need, his inability, his suppurating wounds, his failure, and, in sum, his unmanliness, is what gives him the right to expropriate, and he wishes to exercise that right more fully, and can do it only by becoming ever more bloated in victimhood, ever less in manhood.

Legitimate need is forgotten: invented need, make-believe wounds, become the stock in trade. No Leftist cares about honor killing or female genital mutilation. Indeed, they bend over backward to praise and protect the ‘religion of peace’ from criticism. Marvel Comics reissues one of their banner superheroines as a Muslim girl.

But Leftists wax vocal over so-called micro-aggressions such as a space scientist seen wearing a Hawaiian shirt with bathing beauties pictured on it, blaming female inaptitude at physics on him; or a carefully edited video of men in bad sections of New York wolfwhistling at a model walking by, swishing her hips. The sheer, stark unreality of such naggings are beyond parody.

The difference is that crusading on behalf of real women victims of real atrocities gets you no claim on the life and labor of any other person. To fight real rather than imaginary oppression, you would have to do something real rather than imaginary. There is no one to pay the white blackmail.

The claim of victimhood grants you a right to treat your neighbors like livestock. The right is not bound by any logical or theoretical limit. It is limited by nothing but a pragmatic consideration that the herd, if roused, will turn and rend you.

This has three corruptive side effects: first, the real victims or real charity cases are ignored. Second, the gratitude that accompanies charity vanishes. Gratitude vanishes. Third, whoever is most shrill, most unreasonable, most outrageous and insatiable in his demands get the most goods, once again, limited only by the pragmatic consideration that if the herd is roused they will turn on their tormentors.

Whenever the linebacker is approaching the goalposts, and you are in danger of having your demands met, and therefore your power curtailed, you move the goalposts.

Thanksgiving, charity, gratitude, is mutually exclusive with insatiable demands that all things be given you by right."

Read more: http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/11/26/politics/unthanksgiving-leftists-hate-thanksgiving/#ixzz3KCSthkJ5