The Powerful Corpse of Radical Progressivism

I've been dealing with death-chant progressives all week, so I thought I'd share a few comments on the left that have become available within a short time frame.

At the letters to the editor yesterday, at WSJ, "If Liberalism Is Dead, It's a Very Powerful Corpse":

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. declares that liberalism, as a political movement, is dead ("Liberalism: An Autopsy," op-ed, Dec. 4). Given the permanently expanding role of government, the effective rollback of key elements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, the redefinition of marriage, ObamaCare and the explosive growth over just the last two years of thousands on thousands of government employees taking home six-figure salaries, it doesn't appear that liberalism's being "dead" makes all that much difference.

That the liberal label has an appeal to only 20% of the electorate is nothing to celebrate because it shows that even with its dwindling numbers, liberalism will nearly always win on policy. In the West Virginia Senate race, Gov. Joe Manchin trounced his Republican opponent by wrapping himself in the conservative label, something that is very easy to do as we keep defining conservatism down, to appeal to any and every viewpoint.

If he'll check the pulse of policy, I think Mr. Tyrrell will find that liberalism is alive and well, and that it is conservatism which has slipped way past rigor mortis and has started to rot.

Douglas Johnson

Chicago

More letters at the link, but Mr. Johnson's really sets the tone. Never underestimate the left's low hanging fog of death. It's hard to destroy.

Another interesting comment was at my post this morning, "Leftists Chant for the Death of Ann Althouse — UPDATED!!" Althouse linked, perhaps sending this fellow over:

Murgatroyd said...

Charles Krauthammer nailed it: "To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."

Anyone who disagrees with a left-winger is by definition evil. Anyone who disagrees with a left-winger and demonstrates that the left-winger is wrong is beyond all possible redemption, and must be hated with the white-hot intensity of the heart of the sun.

Yeah, well, this week sure proved it. Murgatroyd's reference is to Charles Krauthammer, "Speaking of stupid liberals, angry conservatives."

And then there's the big story on Columbia's David Epstein, who has been chared with incest following an alleged three-year relationship with his 24 year-old daughter. Robert Stacy McCain has the epic post on this, "Palin-Hating Columbia Professor, Huffington Post Blogger, Busted for Incest." Flopping Aces digs through the lefty comments at PuffHo. And there's a thread at Memeorandum. But Rob Taylor at NewsReal really exposes the zombie corpse of progressivism, "Leftism Causes Rape and Incest":

The breakdown of traditional morality and taboos, many of which have been a part of Western Civilization since pre-Christian times, is an essential part of leftism but it is naïve to think that it is the only driver of the normalization of sexual predation on the Left. Instead we must look to Marxism’s most fundamental value for an explanation of leftists’ acceptance and promotion of sex crimes – the abolition of private property.

When leftists talk about the abolition of private property, they extend that to your work, whatever that may be (including the “sex work” of adult entertainers and prostitutes), and even to your body. More dangerously the Left teaches that people have an absolute right to sexual gratification no matter how that gratification is achieved. Thus, men who are not having whatever perversion they’ve delved into satisfied are being “oppressed” by the withholders of the sex they crave. This is why groups like NAMBLA can exist on the fringes and be treated as legitimate political and ideological opponents.

But on the individual level, this idea that no woman should be off limits, that it is “selfish” to deny sexual pleasure to others, plays out in horrific scenarios of abuse and depravity. That David Epstein was a neo-Marxist can be gleaned from his occasional blog posts at Huffington Post, and that he thought it a fine idea to have sexual relations with his own daughter is ample evidence of his acceptance of the Marxist belief that the traditional family is outdated and in need of being dissolved. But he is not an anomaly.

Methodologically, we can't show that neo-Marxist progressivism is THE causal factor in the kind of incestuous deviance in David Epstein's case, but we certainly can infer powerful weight to the obliteration of morality and social taboos that is central to the left's nihilist program of death and destruction.

Interestingly, Ann Althouse links again, this time with the legal debate over adult consensual incest: "A Columbia professor is arrested for incest — but isn't there a constitutional right to incest between consenting adults?"

Yet even with that, the powerful corpse of radical progressivism lurks over the entire culture, leaving its deathly shadow of predation across the land. And thus it's good to hold tight to Douglas Johnson's words above, to stay on guard and keep the pressure on: "I think Mr. Tyrrell will find that liberalism radical progressivism is alive and well, and that it is conservatism which has slipped way past rigor mortis and has started to rot."