Conservatives, Libertarians, Independents, Liberals, Leftists (Socialists, Communists, and Fascists); all are political labels. Unlike many folks, mostly on the Left, I think that “labels” are perfectly good and are rather accurate in “pre-describing” what values and thought processes a person would generally display.
No, they aren’t perfect, as there are always some things on the margins that may not apply, and there are times when there are major personal differences from that label’s heterodoxy that would otherwise hold sway. However…
I like Dennis Prager, and we’ve often put up his Prager U videos (note to self, need to go do one soon as it’s been too long). He has a post, “Can You Define Leftism?” that addresses that exact question. We on the Right know what Leftists DO politically, but can we give a succinct answer? He did, and I hadn’t thought about it in quite the same way, but his definition is rather plain-spoken and simple to understand.
If we are to successfully tell the Left why they are off base, we need to KNOW what their defining soul is in order to attack it vigorously.
The runup with an important point:
After a speech in Romania last week, I was asked a question by a young member of the audience that, remarkably, I don’t remember ever having been asked: What is leftism?… But the question is rarely posed, and few know how to answer it.
…If you ask people, “What is Leftism?” most will respond by listing left-wing positions, not by defining it. People confuse identifying left-wing positions with knowing what leftism is. But naming left-wing positions is not the same as defining leftism.
I can list the Left’s positions all day long and never finish. Long-term readers already know that. But he’s right – while positions and talking points start to tell the story, none of them are Leftism’s bedrock. That place where there is no deeper part of a man’s soul and belief system from which all expression is derived.
The definition:
Leftism is the attempt to destroy the past — every value and every institution, the good as well as what it regards as the bad. That is why leftists, by definition, hate conservatism. Conservatism seeks to conserve the best from the past. The Left seeks to destroy the past, including the best.
It’s true. His examples from the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution that codified Communism (re: the Soviet Union, are ya listenin’ Bernie?) prove his point:
The first of the modern left-wing revolutions, the French Revolution, quite consciously sought to destroy every major institution and value of French society — not just the monarchy but God, religion, the legal system, traditional notions of good and evil, the calendar, the old way of telling time, the old weights and measures, and even the names of the days of the week. In other words, the past. Just like the Left in contemporary America, the leftists of the French Revolution toppled statues — in their case, the statues of every king of France.
Now look at what the Democrats Leftists are replicating (Leftist history repeats itself – THAT they never “memory hole.” No, we don’t have monarchs, but we do have Founding Fathers – statues, anyone? The Left hates the Constitution. They hate God. They are rewriting what is good and evil (cloaking them, as Prager put it, “substituted class and racial categories for moral ones.” Marriage is the evil heteronormativity that must be destroyed – degeneracy is the new. Every norm is being turned inside out. And a constant theme with me lately is they are destroying the innocence of our children by not just advocating for pornography in schools; they are DEMANDING it and calling those of us fighting back “domestic terrorists” – implicitly stating we who reject this are Enemies of the State and are evil. They have spun up all kinds of narratives, twist things around, and are continuing the work started decades ago to redefine our common language not for better understanding but to serve their political agenda. They’ve ushered in 2+2=5 in all things – including “the Left is working to destroy the distinction between man and woman.” How much more basic can Science be than that – the very essence of who we are?
They wish to destroy us as individuals. And as families.
All for one and only one reason – believe us, and we will be your Saviors and usher you into our version of Heaven on Earth. Yeah, how has that worked out over the centuries – instead of just leaving people alone to find their own Happiness?
No. They can never leave others alone.
Tell’em “Up Yours!”.
(H/T: Hot Air)
And I’ll throw this in as well from Powerline (emphasis mine, reformatted)
Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism: everything contrary to leftist beliefs represents Sin.
More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists’ drive for power. The leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement. But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity.
That is, the leftist’s real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the leftist has to re-educated him.
Leftists are nothing more than bullies. Instead of schoolyard bullies, however, that only want your lunch money, they demand you give up your Freedom to them and that you bow in fealty to them.