The Left's Celebration of Nihilism

One of the biggest, longest knee-slappers of the progressive idiots at Lawyers, Gun and Money, and elsewhere, is their supposed superior "knowledge" of nihilism. The dolt "Malaclypse" especially loves to hammer the point about how "the dumb Donalde" doesn't even know what nihilism means! Doh! The problem? Well, the idiots themselves don't actually know what it means, can't describe or explain it, and only object to the term because it must apparently hit close to home, or something.

Anyway, I'm getting a kick out of Lawrence Auster's discussion of the topic, at View From the Right, "BENEATH LIBERALS’ SELF-CELEBRATION, THE DESPAIR OF NIHILISM." It's a response to comments, so click the link for the whole context, but this part is good:

...Mr. Hechtman makes a good point. But I should have made clear that when I speak of liberals’ despair, I do not mean that they are consciously, literally in despair. Of course, on the level of their conscious experience, they are full of themselves and their “wonderful” existence. They are soaring in an afflatus of triumph. They are in a state of ecstatic disbelief that Tony Blair’s pledge fifteen years ago to “sweep away those forces of conservatism” has come true, so fast and so thoroughly.

But just beneath their surface joy, there is ever-increasing disturbance. How do we know this? Consider the fact that the more power liberals enjoy over society, and the more conservatives surrender to the liberal agenda (e.g. on the issue of homosexuals in the military), the angrier the liberals become, the fuller of fear and loathing of conservatives they become, the more they feel that conservatives threaten them, and the more they want to silence, suppress, and punish conservatives.

What explains this ever-growing turbulence and hatred in the souls of liberals, at the very moment of their world-historic triumph? It is the fact that their entire existence is based on rebellion against the order of being, or, more simply, against God. As a result, the more power and fulfillment they have, the more they are divided from the order of being, and the more the tension within them grows. Therefore they feel increasingly threatened by—and are compulsively driven to crush—any remaining sign of the Truth which they have apparently defeated. In their minds, it is conservatives that symbolize belief in the hated God and the hated order of being. So it is conservatives (or rather the fantasy demonized image they have of conservatives) that the liberals must destroy.

If this explanation sounds implausible to you, ask yourself why, if liberals are so happy and victorious, they are becoming more fearful, hate-filled, and tyrannical, instead of enjoying and relaxing in their triumph?

Back at the post it goes on like that, and then Auster replies to one more commenter:

Also, to avoid misunderstanding, when I speak of nihilism, I do not use it in the conventional, incorrect sense of “not believing in anything.” There is no human being who does not believe in anything. If “not believing in anything” is the definition of nihilism, then there is no such thing as nihilism. No. Nihilism is the denial of objective moral truth. Our contemporary nihilists believe in and enjoy all kinds of things, but they don’t believe that there’s any objective moral truth backing up the things they believe in.

I'll bet good money that freak leftist B.J. Keefe would blow this off as some "Greater Wingnuttia" hysteria. See, for example:

I was not typing "Blargh" in response to your effort to twist the definition of nihilism to fit your own preconceived notions. It was in response to everything else.

Oh, and don't miss the rest of the commentary at Auster's.

BONUS: When called out in the past on the "meaning" of nihilism, I almost always link to the definition at Dictionary.com, especially "1. a complete denial of all established authority and institutions" and "3. a revolutionary doctrine of destruction for its own sake..." And some real life examples here.

EXTRA: "Navigating Past Nihilism."

Navigating Past Nihilism

Back during the racist Pale Scot episode, BJKeefe rejected David Horowitz's equation of leftist ideologies with the doctrines of epistemological nihilism. Of course such references are common, so I responded in the comments:

The left has recycled Soviet Marxism-Leninism, giving a pass to the murder of 100s of millions. When those apologies for totalitarianism --- what leftist refer to as "actually existing socialism" --- become a defense of a failed ideology, all you have left is utter nothingness, hence nihilism.

In response, BJ babbled something about my attempting to "twist the definition of nihilism to fit your own preconceived notions."

Well, actually not, according to Merriam-Webster:

1a : a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless b : a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.

2a : a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility b capitalized : the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination

I tend to focus on the rejection of moralism (1b), which is clear in my longstanding discussion of the anarcho-socialist and the neo-communist left, but also the left's ideology of death and destruction (2b).

No doubt there's a long body of Western philosophy that examines the impact of nihilism on scientific developments and social thought. Thus, folks into these more refined discourses on nihilism --- that to which I suspect BJKeefe alludes, but does not elaborate --- may find the discussion from Sean Kelly interesting, at New York Times, "Navigating Past Nihilism":

“Nihilism stands at the door,” wrote Nietzsche. “Whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?” The year was 1885 or 1886, and Nietzsche was writing in a notebook whose contents were not intended for publication. The discussion of nihilism ─ the sense that it is no longer obvious what our most fundamental commitments are, or what matters in a life of distinction and worth, the sense that the world is an abyss of meaning rather than its God-given preserve ─ finds no sustained treatment in the works that Nietzsche prepared for publication during his lifetime. But a few years earlier, in 1882, the German philosopher had already published a possible answer to the question of nihilism’s ultimate source. “God is dead,” Nietzsche wrote in a famous passage from “The Gay Science.” “God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

There is much debate about the meaning of Nietzsche’s famous claim, and I will not attempt to settle that scholarly dispute here. But at least one of the things that Nietzsche could have meant is that the social role that the Judeo-Christian God plays in our culture is radically different from the one he has traditionally played in prior epochs of the West. For it used to be the case in the European Middle Ages for example ─ that the mainstream of society was grounded so firmly in its Christian beliefs that someone who did not share those beliefs could therefore not be taken seriously as living an even potentially admirable life. Indeed, a life outside the Church was not only execrable but condemnable, and in certain periods of European history it invited a close encounter with a burning pyre.

Whatever role religion plays in our society today, it is not this one. For today’s religious believers feel strong social pressure to admit that someone who doesn’t share their religious belief might nevertheless be living a life worthy of their admiration. That is not to say that every religious believer accepts this constraint. But to the extent that they do not, then society now rightly condemns them as dangerous religious fanatics rather than sanctioning them as scions of the Church or mosque. God is dead, therefore, in a very particular sense. He no longer plays his traditional social role of organizing us around a commitment to a single right way to live. Nihilism is one state a culture may reach when it no longer has a unique and agreed upon social ground.

More at the link, but that sounds fair enough to me, if a bit minimalist. Basically, societies that have lost an agreed upon consensus of the appropriate, of the boundaries of social mores and values, have become nihilist in the sense Sean Kelly offers. It's not just a matter of religious faith but the social construction of moral right and political order. To the extent today that radicals attack traditional values as extreme --- attacks on proponents of heterosexual marriage, for example --- we've clearly lost a good deal of the decency that derives from a more fundamental set of commitments. The left not only rejects those commitments, but is intent to literally destroy those who stand in the way. Recall Diana West's essay following the passage of Prop 8 in 2008: "The State is Being Set." And the left's dishonesty and anti-intellectualism continued in the federal courts. See Michelle's, "Judicial activism + far Left radical activism = Courtroom intimidation."

And of course this is true in so many other areas, on issues of war and peace, the science of climate change, and the existence of Israel. The anti-intellectual foundations of the today's left --- foundations that are in essence nihilist as discussed --- are destroying individuals and societies. Melanie Phillips' book covers much of this ground as well: The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power.

Back over at Kelly's essay, the discussion assesses whether societies can reach accomodation over values, perhaps so that the ideal of faith in God is not the sine qua non for a life of virtue. Specifically, we could reject the notion that non-believers are automatically nihilist, and Kelly cites the great American novelist Herman Melville for inspiration. So yes, the debate might continue. But for me it's not so much faith per se, but that of commitment itself to the pursuit of the good, and what we've seen repeatedly is how the left rejects that goodness, and when leftists can't win fair and square they resort to dishonestly, intimidation and violence. As Kelly notes earlier in the essay: "The threat of nihilism is the threat that freedom from the constraint of agreed upon norms opens up new possibilities in the culture only through its fundamentally destabilizing force."

And one of those agreed commitments is that we treat those of different races with respect --- that is, we don't abuse them with racist attacks and, even worse, defend those attacks with the most reprehensible evasions and distortions of truth imaginable. But unfortunately, that's the going program at RepRacist3's dungeon of nihilist hatred, where folks there think of me as the opposite of albino Johnny Winter. Nope, no colorblindness at RepRacist3's stalking nihilist asshat central:

These are bad people, well outside the accepted normative commitments of decency and right in society.

Totalitarian Faith

I've noticed lately that radical progressives get particularly pissed when you call them out as nihilist. I discussed this recently in a lengthy essay, "Anti-Intellectualism and the Marxist Idea." At issue there were some of the objections of BJ Keefe from September, and he reissued them just last week, and I responded again, "Navigating Past Nihilism." While BJ claimed I had "twisted" the meaning of nihilism, he never did actually offer his own definition. The issue has popped up again, as Amanda Marcotte has gotten peeved at my descriptions of leftists as nihilist, and she's spouted off her frustration on Twitter and in at least two posts at Pandagon. She has, for example, attempted to smear me as a "moron" who "pretends" to know what nihilism means. It's fair to say that nihilism is deployed with a range of meaning, although it's not fair for leftists to attack me for ignorance while simultaneously refusing to provide a counter exegesis. As noted, my traditional usage focuses on leftist abandonment of historical norms of morality, along with the concomitant campaign of destruction on Judea-Christian ethics.

In recent posts I've focuses more narrowly on Friedrich Nietzsche's thesis of the social obliteration of God. And unbeknownst to poor Amanda, I've provided a dictionary definition at "Navigating Past Nihilism," and the link there goes to Professor Sean Kelly's recent piece at New York Times. So basically, leftist lamebrains cited here and elsewhere can just STFU.

In any case, I'm reminded of David Horowitz's The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future. He writes, at pages 28-29, on a June 1990 forum held by the Organization of American Historians. The prominent author Christopher Lasch announced that the West had "won the Cold War," upon which he was immediately denounced --- with "outrage and scorn" --- by the radical historians in attendance. Horowitz indicates how the episode reveals the left's epistemic closure on the failures of revolutionary socialism:

The refusal to confront the past meant that leftists could resume their attacks on the West without examining the movements and regimes they had supported, and thus without proposing any practical alternative to the societies they continued to reject. The intellectual foundations of this destructive attitude had already been created, in the preceding decades, in a development that Allen Bloom described as the "Nietzcheanization of the Left" --- the transformation of the progressive faith into a nihilistic creed.

Nihilistic humors have always been present in the radical character. The revolutionary will, by its very nature, involves a passion for destruction alongside its hope of redemption. While the hope is vaguely imagined, however, the agenda of destruction is elaborate and concrete. It was Marx who originally defended this vagueness, claiming that any "blueprint" of the socialist future would be merely "utopian" and therefore should be avoided. The attitutude of the post-Marxist left is no different. Since the fall of Communism, radical intellectuals have continued their destructive attacks on capitalism, as though the catastrophes they had recently promoted posed no insurmountable problem to such an agenda. "I continue to believe," wrote a radical academic after the Soviet collapse, "that what you call 'the socialist fantasy' can usefully inform a critque of post-modern capitalism without encouraging its fantasists and dreamers to suppose that a brave new order is imminent or even feasible."

But how could a responsible intellect ignore the destructive implications of such an attitude? The socialist critique is, after all, total. It is aimed at the roots of the existing order. To maintain agnosticism about the futures that might replace the reality you intend to destroy may be intellectually convenient, but it is also morally corrupt ....

To raise the socialist ideal as a critical standard imposes a burden of responsiblity on its advocates that critical theorists refuse to shoulder. If one sets out to destroy a lifeboat because it fails to meet the standards of a luxury yacht, the act of criticism may be perfectly "just," but the passengers will drown all the same. Similarly, if socialist principles can only be realized in a socialist gulag, even the presumed inequalities of the capitalist market are worth the price. If socialist poverty and socialist police states are the practical alternative to capitalist inequality, what justice can there be in destroying capitalist freedoms and the benefits they provide? Without a practical alternative to offer, radical idealism is radical nihilism --- a war of destuction with no objective other than war itself.

And from page 57:

Totalitarianism is the possession of reality by a political Idea --- the Idea of socialist kingdom of heaven on earth; the redemption of humanity by political force. To radical believers this Idea is so beautiful it is like God Himself. It provides the meaning of a radical life. This is the solution that makes everything possible; the noble end that justifies the regrettable means. Belief in the kingdom of socialist heaven is faith that can transform vice into virtue, lies into truth, evil into good. In this revolutionary religion, the Way, the Truth, and the Life of salvation lie not with God above, but with men below --- ruthless, brutal, venal men --- on whom faith confers the power of gods. There is no mystery in the transformation of the socialist paradise into Communist hell: liberation theology is a satanic creed.

Amanda Marcotte has offered no definition nor defense of nihilism. She has however attacked those of faith as insane, citing atheist phenomenon Richard Dawkins as her source of authority: The God Delusion. It's easy to understand why, for by rejecting the eternal goodness of God, she can justify the destructive radical progressivism that drives her ideological program. That program is nihilist. It is, following Nietzsche, the utter abandonment of the social commitment to morality and right. She, like her fellow radicals, rejects morality in favor of hedonism and license, and hence rejects any larger meaning within a body of faith that is God.

A Mindless, Nihilistic Dirge In Praise of a Godless Universe

From Kathy Shaidle, "Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him?":

In honor of goddam Jack Layton, the goddam bells on the goddam Peace Tower played goddam “Imagine” — a mindless, nihilistic dirge in praise of a Godless universe.

Kathy's talking about the Ottawa Peace Tower, and the memorial for the late New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton.

This reminds me of idiot Bonejob Brendan Keefe, who murderously hates David Horowitz, because the latter has rightly excoriated radical socialist progressivism as a nihilist project of hate, demonization and destruction. Sometime back, I commented at Bonejob's, and he whined like a child:

I would say in particular that this phrase from your blurb of his book -- "the freakish nihilism of the radical left" -- doesn't even make sense in light of what this book of his is supposed to be about: "the Left has continued to advance its socialist schemes …" Stipulating for the moment that We have such an Agenda, it can hardly be said to be nihilist to have one -- to seek to advance a different social order (or to foist one upon you, if you insist) is not at all the same thing as wanting to do away with any and every social order, just for the sake of destruction.

Blah. Blah. Blah. Bonejob has no reply to David Horowitz or to the right's perfectly accurate description of progressivism as sick, disgusting nihilism, and I hammer idiot Bonejob for his ignorance:

And seriously, you should at least read the book (cited at the link below) before you blow off "nihilism." The left has recycled Soviet Marxism-Leninism, giving a pass to the murder of 100s of millions. When those apologies for totalitarianism --- what leftist refer to as "actually existing socialism" --- become a defense of a failed ideology, all you have left is utter nothingness, hence nihilism. Try to fit that into your vocab, big boy.

It goes on like this, with Bonejob continuing to act like a child, typing some kind of dissing epithet, "Blargh," and finally throwing up his hands in defeat:

I was not typing "Blargh" in response to your effort to twist the definition of nihilism to fit your own preconceived notions. It was in response to everything else.

For Bonejob, "being your age" means calling your opponents crazies worthy of being mocked. It means adopting a postmodern collectivist epistemology that rejects the accepted usage of words such as nihilism. That's typical, since progressives can't respond to arguments on the merits, and frankly must resort to outright lies and intimidation to win the day. It's pathetic. David Horowitz knows whereof he speaks when pointing out the true nature of leftist ideology as a nihilistic project of hate and nothingness.

And that brings me back to Kathy Shaidle, because she's right on. For as much as I love The Beatles, John Lennon's "Imagine," while beautifully idealistic, is ideologically evil. And that's why progressives love it. Their idealism is not about improving the world but destroying it. Every left-wing progressive scheme of grand 20th-century state-level socialiist "improvement" ended in the camps. And despite the 100s of millions who have been exterminated on the road to leftist heaven, they keep trying. That's nihilist. It's so despicably stupid as to make pure evil simply banal. And Kathy links to Dennis Prager, "Why the Right Fears Transforming America -- and the Left Seeks It," who writes:

Lennon's utopia is our dystopia. A world without God to give people some certitude that all their suffering is not meaningless is a nightmare. A world without religion means a world without any systematic way of ennobling people. A world without countries is a world without the United States of America, and it is a world governed by the morally imbecilic United Nations, where mass murderers sit on its "human rights" councils. A world without heaven or hell is a world without any ultimate justice, where torturers and their victims have identical fates -- oblivion. A world without possessions is a world in which some enormous state possesses everything, and the individual is reduced to the status of a serf.

Liberals [progressives] frequently criticize conservatives for fearing change. That is not correct. We fear transforming that which is already good. The moral record of humanity does not fill us with optimism about "fundamentally transforming" something as rare as America. Evil is normal. America is not.

About the Comments

Here's this from one of the leftist commenters at my post yesterday: "I have noticed a lot of your former commenters have abandoned this page."

This is the second or third time I've seen observations like this in the comment threads at recent posts. Some of the lefties apparently sense a victory of sorts, that they've defeated me, or driven away readers. So, I thought I'd respond and put things in perspective around here.

Yes, some commenters have decided they'd rather not participate in the comment threads. As noted previously elsewhere, I routinely get e-mails from readers thanking me for my work here, and urging me to keep it up. Norman Gersman, a fine man who wrote a guest post at American Power two weeks ago, is one example.

But let me share, by permission, a couple of remarks from readers who wish to remain anonymous:

Donald ... you've given me a lot of hope over the past year. One day I hope, my friend, we will clink our glasses and discuss our world and the greatness of our country together!

Keep the home fires burning, while I am reluctant to post in your blog due to some nefarious posters, I do appreciate your existence, because it gives me a sense of security to know that you are out there, with my similar interests and beliefs at your core!

I have highlighted the key portion above on the nature of the "progressive" commenters. The adjective "nefarious" is particularly interesting in this context, as it's defined as "extremely wicked" and its related and synonymous terms include "abominable," "debased," and "heinous," among many others.

These words correspond with the feelings of another reader here, who often tells me she is "horrified" at the unspeakable monstrosity of the left's ideological amorality and the ready nihilism in the threads:

Donald ... I just got caught up on your blog, since yesterday ...

To say that the commenters are really bad, is being too kind. Honestly, I can hardly read them, anymore. They make me sick. After reading the few that were posted the last time I checked, I kept asking myself 'whose children are they ... what kind of people instilled in them, the horrible mindset that they have? ...

I am really sick in my very soul, Donald. I can't believe that there are people like that, who really think like that. It sickens me in a way that I can't even describe. And to think that for every single one of the worst commenters, there are thousands more, with even worse, and more depraved ideologies. Knowing that it is only going to get worse after the inauguration, only makes it more devastating. I can't believe that things will ever be right in our country again ... not ever.

The radical progressives, the perverted, God-hating liberals laugh in His face, and deride people with true morals, and reverence for God. If only they knew how short their time will be for doing that, and the terrible consequences of it. Those commenters think that they are so clever, and laugh at you for your determination in exposing them for what they are ... but did you notice that Repsac3 ... Why do they keep coming back, I wonder? I don't comment anymore, because I don't want any of them ever coming to my blog, for any reason.

Again, these readers are anonymous. I wish they could comment on my blog, and they may sometime, but it's up to them if they feel safe and not unclean. People know that I try to respect most commenters, even those who disagree with me, and people of all persuasions are free to participate at my house, as long as they don't attack me or other posters with racism, anti-Semitism, or personal threats.

But let me dwell on Repsac3 for a minute, since my second reader above mentioned him. While he's by no means the only one causing literal fits of incredulity and moral horror, Repsac3 and his "progressive" blogging alliance truly illustrate what's wrong with the contemporary ideological left in American politics today.

I use the term "nihilist" frequently. Nihilism as philosophy goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche and the ideology of nothingness. But there are many strands, and some more recent philosophers describe a "postmodern nihilism" that's closest to my usage. Hyperdictionary suggests nihilism is a "complete denial of all established authority and institutions," and Merriam-Webster discusses nihilism as "a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths."According to Wikipedia: "Postmodern and poststructuralist thought deny the very grounds on which Western cultures have based their 'truths': absolute knowledge and meaning, a 'decentralization' of authorship, the accumulation of positive knowledge, historical progress, and the ideals of humanism and the Enlightenment."

Perhaps folks can quibble on the fine details and epistemological foundations. I simply use "nihilist" as my shorthand for the radical secularists who are out to destroy America's traditional culture and institutions.

Repsac3 has long had a particular obssession with my blogging, and he's made an endless project in futility of trying to put me down. He does not make arguments, nor does he write his own essays. He offers usually unrelated red herrings and evasions, and shifts the burden of proof away from central assertions identifying his "progressive" anti-American project. He denies his postmodernism while constantly spouting its central tenets. When confronted with the extreme radicalism of groups like International ANSWER, the leading hardline Stalinist organization which has been leading demonstrating against Proposition 8 and Israel's Gaza incurson, Repsac3 writes long, incoherent disavowals that such protesters have anything to do with "progressives."

This is part and parcel to the postmodern project. As Dr. Sanity indicates this morning, "don't waste your time looking for any sense or consistency in the contradictory demands and rhetoric of the political postmodern demagogues. They will say whatever they need to say in order to obtain and keep power."

Indeed. It is all about power, and more: To Repsac3 and his allies, traditionalism is all a joke. Conservatives are just plain evil. They are a bunch of clinically-deranged extremists spouting racism and archaic values of hierarchy. Repsac3 has literally said he is "laughing" at me and my readers, and he's created a whole new blogging platform to prove it: "American Nihilist."

At risk of feeding the monster, I'm responding here nevertheless to respond in general to this attack on traditionalism, and also to express my disappointment with what's franky the childishness in folks like this. A look at the blog, first of all, shows the inclusion of links to J.D., who is not welcomed at American Power because of his rancid anti-Semitism. Repsac3 links to Andrew Sullivan as well, an anti-Semitic who last year proved beyond any doubt that radical progressivism and wild homosexual licentiousness are acceptable practices at the top levels of mainstream journalism. Repsac3 also links to The Swashzone, a group blog to which he belongs, and whose proprietor has sent to my inbox empty yet wicked e-mail threats against me and my family.

These are bad people, and while it may be a "waste" to chronicle and repudiate them, recall that this is why I initially started blogging, as I wrote in April 2006: "No other single topic or object of analysis in my entire career as a political scientist has worried me as has contemporary anti-Americanism."

People like this have no foundations of universal right and good. They prescribe to a cultural self-actualization of "free to be me" and the denial of Judeo-Christian nationalism. Repsac3 has identified himself as Unitarian, which has been described as a "theologically liberal religion" that rejects the bulk of Christian tradition. That makes sense. In response to my post yesterday defending the Anglo-Protestant model of American national identity, Repsac3 said "I see our traditions & ways of thinking ... taken from our varied national & religious backgrounds."

There you have it: varied national and religious backgrounds ... that is, a postmodern relativism of equality of all groups, traditions, cultures, and norms. With that, it is impossible to denounce the evil in our midst and in the world, because all cultures have moral equivalence and relative worth. It's no wonder that people like this have invested so much hope and irrational love in Barack Obama, himself America's first truly postmodern president. These people hate America, and they'll destroy this country or die trying.

Only God knows if the next fours years will go well for the United States. My readers, as seen in the e-mail comments above, are concerned and even fearful of a virtual end times. I am trying simply to fight the good fight, and I know that what I do is grounded in a humble decency that has not forsaken this country's values for a radical secular humanism that is truly nihilist, anti-American, and self-evidently dangerous.

Anti-Intellectualism and the Marxist Idea

I had a brief exchange the other day with Brendan of BJKeefe blog. I don't normally go over there, but his link showed up in my Sitemeter and I found a post suggesting that someone should "take the shovel away from Donald Douglas." Brendon apparently thinks leftist demonization is a barrel of monkeys, and as I disabled comments to avoid the abuse, Brenden writes: "Nothing like the wingnutosphere's love for the frank and open exchange of ideas!" Check the post for what follows. Actually, it turns out Brendan's not so intellectually prepared for the "open exchange of ideas." For starters, I left one of the Sadly No! sample comments from my blog: "... you're nothing but a bag of meat and your thoughts and desires are meaningless and you are a worthless piece of" shit. Sure. And I guess that's quality high-octane exchange for lefties. So I respond to Brendan, "So you wanna debate, bonejobkeefe? Bring it on." And what's he do? Runs from debate!

Thanks also for the invitation to debate. Perhaps someday we shall. I do not think it likely in this case, however. Take whatever admiration you have for David Horowitz and multiply it by -100, and that will approximate how I feel about him. On this matter, to borrow from someone whose name I have forgotten, sorry, but our views of reality do not overlap sufficiently to make discussion possible.

For the record, my own sense of Horowitz is this: If in the past decade he's said anything beyond "Yes, waitress, I'll have some more coffee, please" that isn't utter lunacy, it's escaped my notice. One does not engage with so determined a conspiracy theorist. One simply abandons him to his milk crate at Speakers' Corner and seeks more worthwhile voices elsewhere.

I would say in particular that this phrase from your blurb of his book -- "the freakish nihilism of the radical left" -- doesn't even make sense in light of what this book of his is supposed to be about: "the Left has continued to advance its socialist schemes …" Stipulating for the moment that We have such an Agenda, it can hardly be said to be nihilist to have one -- to seek to advance a different social order (or to foist one upon you, if you insist) is not at all the same thing as wanting to do away with any and every social order, just for the sake of destruction.

Two things of interest right away: (1) The complete dismissal of David Horowitz's ideals as sheer lunacy, and (2) the rejection of my use of the phrase "freakish nihilism" to describe the ideological agenda of the left. There's a word for this: Anti-intellectualism. And that stance marinates in a devilish sauce of hard left-wing hubris and deceit. It's further soaked in hatred, for to hate one's enemies is to categorize them as beyond the pale of reason and civilization. Perhaps there's some psychology at work for Brendan. Someone as esteemed as David Horowitz, who lived through --- in direct participation --- all the cultural revolts of the last couple of generations, is ridiculed as a crazed milk crate screamer? Brendan certainly thinks he's got it all figured out. But I doubt he's actually read the book in question, Horowitz's The Politics of Bad Faith. I respond at the post, in any case:

I guess we have nothing to talk about then, since with the exception of Melanie Phillips, I can't think of someone more penetratingly clear on the left's ideological campaign of death and destruction. (And you're down with that, apparently.)

And seriously, you should at least read the book (cited at the link below) before you blow off "nihilism." The left has recycled Soviet Marxism-Leninism, giving a pass to the murder of 100s of millions. When those apologies for totalitarianism --- what leftist refer to as "actually existing socialism" --- become a defense of a failed ideology, all you have left is utter nothingness, hence nihilism.

Now note something here: This is substantive. There are ideas on the table, postulates to consider. It doesn't matter who's producing them. A hypothesis is just out there, to be evaluated. And how does Brendan respond? With more anti-intellectualism. My comment was caught in the Blogger spam filter, and Brendan takes that as a launch pad for some wise cracks, and then the non-response:

I have to say, now that I have restored your comment of 1:57 PM, September 18, 2010, maybe I am not completely surprised that it got flagged as spam. Because it sure does read just like the wingnut chain emails one sees on Snopes, for example. Are you really a college professor? At an accredited school? And not, say, teaching math or something?

Anyway, our discussion so far:

You: Let's debate! Let's talk about David Horowitz and how great he is!

Me: There, we have nothing to talk about.

You: Let's talk about David Horowitz and how great he is! No, how he's greater than great!!!1! Because left nihilist leftist soviet Marxist death evil left effete dark side BLARGH BLARGH blargh …

Me: Nice milk crate.

And so, David Horowitz, and myself, apparently, are out standing on a corner, on milk boxes, raving like alleged lunatics? This is what Brendan calls debate. As I said, concepts are in play here. Ideas have consequences. Why is it that Democrats utter nary a peep when declared Stalinist ideologues wind up gaining access to the top levels of the Obama administration? These same folks, including many Democrats in Congress --- including dozens who have open affiliations with the Democratic Socialist Party of America --- call for and implement a Castro-style healthcare regime in the U.S. Of course, these people blow off the mass murder and desolation of the such communist thugs. It's not what they do, it's the ideals of humanity and transcendence that count! And thus with Brendan, to contemplate the nothingness in the wasteland of leftist neo-communist ideology is to scream "BLAARRGGHHH!!"

Yeah. And how about that "exchange of ideas" Brendan was pumping up? Not so much, eh?

But that's not all. Brendan tells me to "grow up." No kidding:

I was not typing "Blargh" in response to your effort to twist the definition of nihilism to fit your own preconceived notions. It was in response to everything else.

Seriously, Donald, be your age. Do you really think you're going to interest me in any sort of discussion where you start off by howling how everything Left is irredeemably evil? I'd just as soon discuss spherical geometry with a Flat Earther.

This is pure dismissal. It's definitely not intelligent discussion. Check the link to the post. I'm not going to waste more time on someone who is that closed-minded, at least not at that entry. What you see here is the notion that leftist ideology is UNCHALLENGEABLE. There's nothing that can penetrate the hard-shell of neo-communist ideology. Anyone with a different idea is literally a "Flat Earther."

Truly amazing. Meanwhile, these people and their grand schemes for a nationalization of the U.S. health delivery system under ObamaCare socialism are running for the hills. It's not working. Costs are not going down. Firms are responding by not hiring, precisely at the same time that unemployment keeps rising. It's statism that's failing, and the idea that state planning --- THE CENTRAL COMPONENT OF ALL SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY --- is proving just one more disaster rammed down American throats by the mandarins of the Democrat-Socialist Party in Washington.

I don't know how old Brendan is. He is idealistic. Perhaps the real world will intrude sometime in his life, and he'll learn to appreciate an actual argument for what it is an not the twisting evasion of some wingnut hokus pokus.

In any case, sometimes it's necessary to actually read the writings of your political enemies. (I didn't love wading through Markos Moulitsas' American Taliban, but I don't begrudge him for writing it. I know exactly where he stands now, and I'm all the more determined to resist him.) Perhaps Brendan might actually exhibit a little bit of personal maturity and actually attempt to engage some of these ideas, for example, this passage on Page 57 of The Politics of Bad Faith:

Totalitarianism is the possession of reality by a political Idea --- the Idea of socialist kingdom of heaven on earth; the redemption of humanity by political force. To radical believers this Idea is so beautiful it is like God Himself. It provides the meaning of a radical life. This is the solution that makes everything possible; the noble end that justifies the regrettable means. Belief in the kingdom of socialist heaven is faith that can transform vice into virtue, lies into truth, evil into good. In this revolutionary religion, the Way, the Truth, and the Life of salvation lie not with God above, but with men below --- ruthless, brutal, venal men --- on whom faith confers the power of gods. There is no mystery in the transformation of the socialist paradise into Communist hell: liberation theology is a satanic creed.

I'll have more later. Maybe tomorrow, even.

Pot Calls Kettle! Look Out for Those Opportunistic Nihilists!

Firedoglake's probably the last place you'd expect bloggers to throw around epithets like "nilhilist," but that's exactly the case here:

George Packer's New Yorker article asking if conservatives have "run out of ideas" caused quite the stir in the Right Blogosphere this past week. And right bloggers proved Packer wrong: as it turns out, they didn't have any "ideas" to start with. They have obsessions and vindictiveness in plenty, but ideas? Not really.

To me, the response to Packer's piece is far more illuminating than the actual article, which is rather banal. If "movement conservatism" has failed, as I sincerely hope it has, I'd argue that this is because too many of its proponents believed their own press and became persuaded that "movement conservatism" was ever an intellectual movement at all, as opposed to an essentially nihilist politics of vicious opportunism, where the entire goal is power for its own sake.

Packer is of course discussing the GOP's rather bleak electoral prospects this year, especially in the House and Senate. (He pretends to believe that McCain is a new kind of "post-partisan" candidate, a common form of elite journalist wishful thinking that ignores, for openers, Hagee and Parsley.) He speaks to a number of conservative writers, like David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David Frum, and Pat Buchanan. The Brooks part has gotten the most attention, perhaps because of Brooks' admission that "You go to Capitol Hill—Republican senators know they’re fucked," which is of course hugely entertaining. But the overall thesis is that the period of GOP dominance just may be over, because the Nixonian "Southern Strategy" as well as other mechanisms for splitting the old FDR coalition may just have finally run out of steam.

First, I think Packer's late to the party. Karen Tumulty made the case for the ideological decline of the GOP over a year ago, and at that time the thesis wasn't all that novel.

But for FDL to attack GOP partisans for the "nihilist politics of vicious opportunism" is like the pot calling the kettle black.

What's nihilism, in any case? I routinely deploy the term to identify hard-left terror-backing defeatists, many of whom are the main supporters of the Democratic Party.

I generally refer to my politcal opponents as "nihilist" in this sense:

An approach to philosophy that holds that human life is meaningless and that all religions, laws, moral codes, and political systems are thoroughly empty and false. The term is from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.”

Nihilist political philosophy's also identified with postmodern ideological movements, which privilege the notion that there exists no objective morality.

Postmodern nihilists on the left include those who've joined together in an anti-American alliance of socialism and Islam to destroy alleged American neo-imperialism worldwide. These are the same folks on the American left who call for the murder of American military service personnel as a putatively legitimate form of antiwar protest. Today's nihilists include the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats who voted to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002, and within three months of the toppling of Saddam Hussein turned around to denounce the Bush administration for launching a "provocative and unnecessary" war.

That's opportunistic nihilism!

I also include Firedoglake as fundamentally, radically nihilist, root and branch, in its program of demonization, anti-Semitism, bereft of any shred of true traditionalism and essential value.

As always, I'll have more.

Until then, see Dr. Sanity, "The Children of Postmodern Nihilism."

Atheist Nihilism

Readers may enjoy FrontPageMagazine's interview the Jonas Alexis.

Alexis is the author of the book, "In the Name of Knowledge and Wisdom: Why Atheists, Sceptics, Agnostics, and Intellectuals Deny Christianity."

Here's a couple of key passages:

FP: Why has atheism become so popular today?

Alexis: Atheism is so popular because many people—even those who claim to be atheists—do not seriously examine the worldviews and detrimental ideologies that post beneath the surface. The famed mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell was an avowed atheist until he debated the philosopher Frederick Copleston. Once Copleston logically showed Russell that atheism is existentially and experientially untenable, Russell immediately changed his atheism into agnosticism. In the Name of Knowledge and Wisdom simply shows that the atheist position is irrational and unliveable.

*****

FP: Why is nihilism so rampant in our pop culture today?

Alexis: ... In a nutshell, nihilism is so rampant because the nihilistic culture has no moral framework or principle upon which a person should base his or her life.

FP: What danger is there to a society embracing the concept that God is dead -- as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed in the nineteenth century?

Alexis: G. K. Chesterton made the point that “the first affect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” Among the “anything” that people begin to believe is the idea that all “truth” is relative. This, by the way, is a self-defeating position. If all truth is relative, then the statement that “a ll truth is relative” is either a relative statement in itself, or it is an absolute claim. It cannot be both. If it is a relative claim, then why not include other statements such as “all truth is not relative”? Moreover, it does not take a student of philosophy to show that the claim is absolutely ridiculous. If the statement is relative, we can easily dismiss it on the basis of uncertainty because the person making the claim is not even sure that the claim is right or wrong.

Read the whole thing, here.

Debating Atheist Nihilism

Regular readers may remember my post from some time back on our freaky anti-religionist counter-culture, "Atheist Nihilism."

Well it turns out that today's story of an athiest statement of coequal political status sheds a needed light on that debate - in this month when we celebrate the birth of Christ.

As MSNBC reports, authorities in Washington State allowed an atheist sign to be displayed opposite a traditional Christian Nativity scene at the Capitol Building in Olympia. The athiest statement included this passage:

There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds ...

Such blatant hostility to traditional American values apparently angered the state's residents, who have been flooding the governor's office with more than 200 calls an hour, and that's not to mention an apparent avalanche of e-mails as well.

It turns out, in any case, that this display of militant atheism, which was sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, was too much even for Paul at the well-known far-left blog, Shakesville, where he comments on the athiest group's surprise at the backlash:

Oh, puh-LEEZE. You can't for a second tell me that you were expecting any other reaction when you put this sign up. As I've documented far too many times, there are people out there whipped into a frenzy over the manufactured "War on Christmas" that are dying to find examples that it's really happening. And I've got a little news for you, radical athiests: When you do stuff like this, it appears as if it does exist, and you're not helping ....

You know something? I seriously f***ing doubt that there was anything on the Nativity scene explicity stating anything about non-believers going to hell. Symbolically? Well, that's arguable. But to say that there was an explicit message is disingenuous, it insults the atheists that can tell the godd****d difference between an expression of celebration of a religious holiday and an attack on themselves or atheism itself, and it's just f***ing annoying. (This is, of course, completely separate from atheists - not to mention religious people, for that matter - who object to religious displays in public spaces for constitutional reasons. There's a difference between that and "You hurt my feelings!") Besides, if you're an atheist, why the f**k are you worried about anyone saying you're going to hell it the first place? You don't believe in hell, remember? "I guess they don't follow their own commandments." Oh, shut the f**k up. You wanted this. You were hoping they would do this so you could use that stupid line.

Never mind the incongruity between Paul principled outrage and his crass vulgarity (common to leftists, of faith or otherwise, apparently).

But what's interesting is not only that Paul's correct (and it's rare that I agree with the lefties), but that his comments have pissed off Brian at Incertus, who would normally be allied with Shakesville on the usual range of all-encompassing anti-conservative derangement. Incertus' post is entitled, "Controversial? Why?":

Dear Paul ... you're not only wrong, but you managed to be more offensive than I ever imagined you capable of being while doing it. Please take your self-righteousness and false equivalencies, fold them up until they have four or five very pointy ends, and insert them in the most uncomfortable place you can imagine.

Well, no, Paul is not wrong. There are no "false equivalencies" here: The Freedom From Religion Foundation sucks, frankly.

It's a pretty good indication that when folks up in Washington, a "blue state" if there ever was one, get upset with extremist displays of atheist nihilism, such anti-religionism is obviously way beyond the pale

It's one thing to tolerate diversity of opinion. But when such views themselves become so oppositional as to be inherently hostile toward folks of otherwise good-faith and acceptance of difference in opinion - and this during a time of year when people are reaching out to join hands in callling for peace on earth - then it's obvious something's really out of whack here.

I've already identfied Incertus for its extreme anti-capitalist political agenda. Now with the author's variation on the Marxist attack on religion as the "opiate of the masses," it's clear that this particular blog's neo-Stalinist agenda is truly hegemonic in its anti-American project.

Rest in Peace: Elizabeth Edwards Dies of Cancer at 61

Pray for Elizabeth Edwards. Pray for her soul. We need to, since lefties won't do it. My good friend Cheri on Twitter has been praying for Mrs. Edwards, and we will continue to pray for her in eternity and for her family today:

Cheri decided to pray after I sent her this post and a following tweet: "She's very outspoken on being anti-God... And leftists are mad I pointed it out, amazingly." And Cheri replied: "Oh YES! I am sure the lefties will chase you around for that. Very sad...It is an eternal not PC issue!"

Exactly.

It's not a PC issue whatsoever. At death's door, Elizabeth Edwards lost her faith. I was taken aback when I read her statement yesterday. She had put her faith in hope, but not in God. And it's sad that there was no greater body of spirit upon which Mrs. Edwards could draw. But it's also sad that her supposed champions have descended to the putrid depths of recrimination. Yet, I welcome this. Look at the vile hatred spewing from my comments. They hate the truth of Elizabeth Edwards' rejection of God, her nihilism in the face of the awesome unknown. And they hate not only that I have stressed it, but also the fact that one of their own partisans applauded it --- yes, applauded it just as radical progressives applaud John Lennon's irreligious anthem, "Imagine." But again, let us pray. We pray for those so injured by the truth of their revealed anti-religious doctrines, for those who espouse fake references to the Word of God. It is on this ideological plain where we meet hatred with heart. Let us pray for those who hate. Let us raise our hands to Him so that he will lead them to love and not vengeance. Pray so they will rejoice in something good and righteous. So that they will relinquish that which drives them to rage. Let us hope to Heaven that they will reject their nihilism.

We pray for those like this wounded soul at Wonkette:

I stopped praying a long time ago. God does not seem to be too interested in my life or my problems. Evangelicals have perpetrated a huge fraud on the unsuspecting masses. The bastards on Wall Street giggle and guffaw while the masses are on their knees praying to be able to make ends meet, feed the kids or not get evicted from their apartment.

Of course, Elizabeth left God out of her statement. She's lost a son. She's lost her health. Her husband humiliated her and continues to do so. Of the big three, Love, Health and Family, that Elizabeth had she was screwed out of all of them in some way.

The world belongs to those who lie, cheat and steal. Just ask Julian Assange.

If there is a God, it is not compassionate. The best argument that God doesn't exist is that republitards believe in one wholeheartedly and with a passion that borders on hysteria.

New York Times has the obituary (via Memeorandum).

Misunderstanding WikiLeaks

There's some debate on the degree of international cooperation in apprehending WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. At Telegraph UK, "WikiLeaks: British Police Asked to Join Hunt for Julian Assange." Also at Memeorandum. And there's some breaking stuff at NYT that I haven't gotten to yet, for example, "Diplomats Noted Canadian Mistrust Toward U.S."

For now what's sparking my interest, and some frustration, is the easy accolades so many commenters are offering to WikiLeaks, with attention especially on claims that increasing transparency is a means to a greater libertarian end. And in this I'm finding, as a side note, through Ross Douthat, that Will Wilkinson is now blogging at The Economist. I was a subscriber for three years while in graduate school. I read that magazine religiously. But like just about every other mainstream periodical in recent years, its quality has deteriorated badly. Outside the pages of Wall Street Journal, The Economist used to be the place to read the most rigorous analysis of free market economics. Yet now the previously classically-inclined editors at The Economist have jumped ship. (Alan Caruba captured this unfortunate descent just the other day, "Climate Change Idiocy and The Economist.") So I guess it makes sense that Will Wilkinson's blogging there now. The countercultural left has increasingly joined with ideological libertarianism to escalate the contemporary attack on the modern moral regime and the foundations of social order. To take that attack to its logical conclusion is to launch an extreme repudiation on state power, since it's the state that controls the monopoly of force and the means to prohibit certain activities, such as drug use and prostitution. But with the recent WikiLeaks dump, the left-libertarian alliance has metastasized into a romantic nihilism, which sees a heroic purpose to WikiLeaks when the exact opposite is true. My old infantile antagonist E.D. Kain gleefully provides a synopsis, which perfectly illustrates the verbose left-libertarianism's replacement of firm realism with fluffy fawning:

The government has a monopoly on violence; the media has only words. We should encourage underdogs like WikiLeaks who continue to fight an uphill battle, not against the United States – this country is more than its government, after all – but against the over-reach of the state. We have ceded so much of our own privacy to our government, perhaps now we would like to return the favor.

WikiLeaks may be a small player, really, in the bigger scheme of things. But to some degree it is also a bellwether, a forecast of things to come as information and technology continue to nip at the heels of the state. Perhaps we really are approaching a time when government becomes less relevant, less necessary, where other institutions both real and virtual can begin to supplant the role of the state in our lives, subversively at first but then more openly as time passes. I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that would look like in practice. Predicting the future is not among my talents; I cannot see where frying pans leave off and fires begin. But if I am at all correct then we should also realize that when an institution is threatened it reacts accordingly. Things will get worse before they get better.

If this were just a philosophical excursion vis-à-vis theories of federalism and government devolution, that'd be one thing. But it's not. We're talking about a 21st century non-state actor conducting information warfare against the United States. It's not a big surprise that WikiLeaks' most enthusiast backers are found among the world's anarcho-communist contingents. What's pathetic --- although not new, just even more pronounced --- is how willingly the libertarians jump on board this lame new vehicle toward alleged greater government accountability.

So to be clear: Julian Assange despises America with all he's got. There's nothing good about his agenda. And libertarianism is deathly nihilism if folks can't get their heads around the idea that there's little functional alternative to the nation-state in today's post-modern advanced democratic societies. That's not to say we can't limit the expansion of the state nor improve government performance and accountability. But we'll destroy ourselves by radical attempts to tear it down. And back over at The Economist is a deep clue to the ideological confusion. Folks apparently never got the memo from earlier this year on the bogus WikiLeaks Apache video "Collateral Damage." There's wasn't anything "objective" about it. But tell that to The Economist:

WikiLeaks's release of the "Collateral Murder" video last April was a pretty scrupulous affair: an objective record of combat activity which American armed forces had refused to release, with careful backing research on what the video showed. What we got was a window into combat reality, through the sights of a helicopter gunship. You could develop different interpretations of that video depending on your understanding of its context, but it was something important that had actually taken place.

A lot of commentators apparently act as though they're offering profound insights of democratic theory when expounding on WikiLeaks. I note E.D. Kain as one exhibit, although Glenn Greenwald comes to mind as well. But it's really not such a super sophisticated or intellectually glamorous issue. WikiLeaks wants to destroy authority. People are going to get killed, and not in the name of any state interest that could be otherwise checked by the processes of democratic governance. IBD had a great editorial on Julian Assange the other day, and I'll close with this, "An Infoterrorist?":

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the soon-to-be chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is absolutely correct in calling for Assange's outfit to be classified a terrorist organization under U.S. law. King has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to charge Assange with a crime under the Espionage Act. While Holder's office has announced an investigation, don't hold your breath.

But what of Assange's accomplices in the U.S. and foreign media?

The New York Times, where Assange gets to dump "all the secrets fit to leak," boasts that its collaborations with WikiLeaks give "the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions" — hardly a rationale for endangering our liberty.

This is a continuing, slow-motion disaster for the U.S., and our government has done little beyond having a State Department lawyer send a huffy letter to Assange's lawyer in Sweden.

These leaks must be plugged — by force if necessary — before it is American blood we find flowing.

At the video, more radical left-wing Wiki-boosting from communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

RELATED: From Peter Feaver, "WikiLeaks Only Interested in Damaging U.S. Foreign Policy."

Dems Tone Deaf on the Moral Crisis

From Star Parker, at WND:

Maybe Democrats have some slick salesmen, like Bill Clinton and our current president, who can sell you swampland and have you convinced that you’ve bought choice beachfront property.

But the omission of any mention of God and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the Democratic Party platform, which were in it in 2008, and then the almost failed attempt to add them after the fact, showed the clear truth about the 2012 Democratic Party.

It took three boisterous floor votes to add these principles to the platform – and listening to the ayes and nays in the third vote, it is questionable that they actually got the two thirds that were needed.

The omission of these key principles from the Democratic platform was the party equivalent of what journalist Michael Kinsley calls a political gaffe – when a politician inadvertently says what he really believes.

Party operatives panicked when they realized that the platform, as initially drafted, showed today’s Democrats exactly for who they are – the home base for the nihilism, radical moral relativism and welfare statism that defines today’s far left.

But the Democrats are the party of the entertainment industry. They know how to create fiction and appeal to fantasies.

So the party of the radical left brands Republicans as extremists...

Hmm...

Nihilism? Check. Radical moral relativism? Check. Welfare state dependency? Check.

Looks like Parker's hit the nail on the head. The progs no doubt will be coming after her for speaking truth to power. She must be destroyed!

Neoconservative Antidote to the Postmodern Left

Dr. Sanity has a big post up offering some musings on Barack Obama's faux post-partisanship and the ever-attendant fawning media, plus some historical perspective on presidential greatness (will George W. Bush win history's vindication?). But frankly, I think Dr. Sanity's just getting some stuff off her chest, and as neoconservative I can fully relate:

The left deeply fears neoconservatism and the economic and political freedom that it supports, and will stop at nothing to discredit its ideas. But they cannot do it using reason, reality, and truth; so these impediments they must abandon.

Neoconservatism is far from perfect. After all, neocons are ordinary human beings - as opposed to Obamacons who are perfect beings of pure (and vague) "hope and change" postmodernism. As I noted in "What the World Needs Now":

The problem is countering the source of this pervasive nihilism, promulgated and promoted by the West's own intellectual elites under the pseudonym of postmodernism.

And the only intellectual remedy brought forth in the last five decades to nullify postmodern philosophy and rhetoric is neoconservatism.

If you listen at all to the MSM, you might begin to think that neoconservativesm is either in dissaray, dead and abandoned by all its former adherents.

Indeed, the left said pretty much the same thing even before Ronald Reagan got elected in 1979. It was wishful thinking then, and it is wishful thinking now.

Today's left is a nothing more than the hallow shell of what was once known as "liberalism"; and it is held together by the empty and meaningless rhetoric of postmodern intellectual nonsense, otherwise known as political correctness and multiculturalism (or, cultural relativity).

Neoconservatism as an intellectual theory actually arose from the observation in the 1960's that classical liberalism had been hijacked by the left and its essence literally reconstructed to suit the needs of socialists and communists who were beginning to realize that the jig was up for them.

All over the world it was becoming apparent that political and social collectivism was an abject failure. Where implemented, such policies led to intractable poverty and misery economically; and unbelievable oppression and the crushing of the human spirt politically and morally.

I have discussed elsewhere how the recent revival of socialism and its collectivist/totalitarian agenda in the late 20th and early 21st century was made possible by the adoption of postmodern epistemology, rhetoric and politics by western intellectual elites ....

The rise of neoconservatism represents the only modern intellectual counter and the only known antidote to the infection of postmodernism and its resultant toxic effects on philosophy, rehtoric, and politics.

In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Furthermore, they had to deconstruct and invalidate human consciousness, making sure that the everyone understood that the only apparatus available to humans for perceiving reality - the mind - was completely unreliable, and that the evidence of the senses must the refore be discounted. This intellectual strategy resulted in a pervasive cultural relativism and intellectual nihilism that permeated all aspects of society and intellectual thought. Words and language were redefined to mean whatever one wanted; history was deconstructed - ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless; and the ideas and values that were the foundation of Western civilization were mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.

So today's polls seriously presented as meaningful and full of import by a somber MSM at the behest of their political masters is nothing more than an attempt to hijack history and historical analysis. To strip it of its very meaning in the true postmodern tradition, and to ensure that it cannot be used by true scholars to expose the pathetic lies, abject economic failues and horrific human legacy of leftist thought.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Distorting Christian History to Defend Islam

From Michael Ortiz, at the Wall Street Journal, "Secularism didn’t save the West from religious excesses, and it won’t save us from jihadists":

In an attempt to find a peaceful alternative for those in the Islamic world who advocate violence for political and religious goals, Christians in the West shouldn’t distort the history of Christianity, or stand idly by while others do so. Letting this version of events shape perceptions of Christian history invariably means a portrait of religion as a force of darkness, while science and technology will always be beacons of sanity and light.

The narrative portraying religious conviction as antithetical to reasoned comity among people and nations is easy enough to fall into. At the national prayer breakfast last week, for instance, President Obama compared the excesses of the Crusades and the Inquisition to the terrorism of today’s radical Islam. The president went on to condemn (rightly) those who advance their religious convictions with violence.

But what he and many others miss is the conviction that Western core values come from a faith in which God enters into human history precisely to save the world from the erring reason that fails, among other things, to recognize that terrorism is an affront to God and humanity.

The all-too-common narrative goes like this: Centuries ago, Catholics and Protestants gladly burned heretics up and down Europe by the thousands until, thank God—or All Powerful Goodness, as Ben Franklin would put it—the rise of Enlightenment thinkers banished the barbarity that is somehow native to religious fervor. Only with the liberalizing mandates of Vatican II (1962-65), we’re told, did Catholicism—usually the main boogeyman in this version of history—come to grips with the idea of democracy and religious freedom, and finally extinguish the last embers of the Inquisition.

This narrative is false according to the historical record and to the origins and abiding ethos of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant. Historians call this the la leyenda negra—the “Black Legend”—because it blackens the name of Catholicism in particular and religion in general. According to this legend, the Inquisition is on a continuum with the Holocaust and the terrors of Stalinism.

Yet objective historians realize that in the most infamous example, in Spain, several popes condemned the Inquisition’s excesses. Moreover, the 6,832 members of the clergy executed by the Spanish Republican Red Terror in 1936 is more than twice the number of those executed in 345 years of the Inquisition in Spain.

Far from being an enemy of reason and peace, Christianity’s overwhelming message through the centuries has been one of tolerance, a message that underpins many of the values that people of all faiths, and of no faith, can live by. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI ’s work as a theologian has done great service in trying to correct the erroneous view that faith and civil tolerance must always be opposed.

He looks forthrightly at the negative aspects of the rise of democracies in the West, while not forgetting their positive legacies. As then- Pope Benedict pointed out in a 2005 address to the Roman Curia—the church’s governing body—popes of the 19th century condemned democracy because so many of its exponents were claiming “to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make” God completely “superfluous.” He thus reminds us that a Western culture beset by nihilism cannot provide a way out of the nihilism of the jihadist...

Still more.

Nihilism and Progressivism

Bosch Fawstin illustrated my recent essay, "Navigating Past Nihilism," which is cross-posted to NewsReal Blog.

And now I'm re-reading Sean Kelly's original essay at New York Times, but this time in light of the left's response to my thoughts on Elizabeth Edwards' rejection of God. Citing Nietzsche, Kelly suggests that those who have abandoned God are living in "self-deceit." The deceit is to hold out the possibility of the good life. The solution, suggested by Kelly, is to adopt an alternative set of commitments, as Melville would say, in a smaller, more local set of values. I don't doubt many could find a pleasing and satisfying life. But it would be materialistic and autonomously derived, i.e., without a greater nobility found in the eternal. This is, then, an inferior substitute to God. People would find meaning not in self-denial, abstinence, and penitence, but in engorgement on worldly pleasures. Spiffing this up in fancy sounding language won't do (these "many new possible and incommensurate meanings," for example). It's a jumble of nothingness in the end. Nothing higher to seek, and hence little to be attained. It's metaphor for progressivism. Excellence and attainment are for the selfish and greedy. And the response to that alleged greed is redistribution of wealth and the organization of society into hierarchies of recrimination. Appropriate ways of thinking are enforced. Truth is deemed hate speech, and expressions of faith are excoriated as theological fascism. Hence the response to my commentary on Elizabeth Edwards. It took a day or two, but just to speak out boldly for a vision of God in full awesomeness, God at our moment of complete and utter vulnerability, was just too much for the progressive nihilists. It's a rare thing, but shock-proof demons of the leftist netherworld were indeed shocked. The attacks followed. I was "Donald Dick" for refusing to embrace Elizabeth Edwards' non-belief. Another gleefully exclaimed that someone needed "to take a shot at Donald Douglas." And of course SEK blew his wad before he'd even consummated the information I'd posted. And upon receiving my response (linked to LGM), SEK proceeded to swiftly threaten death. It's always that way with progressives:

The Donalde, I am absolutely serious here: try to drive traffic to your shit site one more time on this thread and I will end you. Remember, before I taught composition, I taught journalism, and some of my former students are very, very intrepid.

So I’m only going to say this once: diminish the experience of cancer to a cancer survivor again and you’ll learn exactly how great of a teacher I am. That’s the deal: you be a fucking human being and allow that scoring points by writing “trending” instead of “dying” is a cheap tactic that makes you a terrible person, and no one I’ve taught will prove you’re a terrible person. This is your first and only warning.

I allow nothing short of indicating SEK's Stalinism.

I'll have more later, in any case.