When "The Left" stopped being liberal

I live in what used to be a liberal" community, close by a major university. There remain many good old-fashioned liberals out here, but a significant chuck of the locals have slipped off into some other sphere entirely. The descent of this group into unhinged looniness has been a common topic in the blogosphere and has provided Michelle Malkin with material for a book.

I'm not going to even try to explain it. Pat Santy, aka Dr. Sanity, (and a fellow Homespun Blogger!) is a psychologist and far better qualified to dissect the roots of this madness. I can only bemoan the effects of the rest of us, those who still hope to hold a reasonably coherent dialog on important issues.

Pat has plenty to say on the subject; it's a long post, as she has the good manners to warn us, but worth the effort. I especially like her observation that "The Left" as she has labeled these folks, has abandoned liberalism. Not just the "classic liberalism" of the 19th century, but the liberalism of recent memory.

Those glory days when the Left believed in freedom and individuality; and that the content of one’s character was more important than the color of one’s skin-- are long gone. Nowadays it seems that the Left only pretends to believe in those values and feels it necessary to mouth the words.

But my observation is that today’s Left pretty much stands for nothing-not freedom, not equal opportunity; not individual rights; not even peace. Trying to right the wrongs and injustices of the world is truly ethical and noble goal, but something happened on the road to that beautiful utopia. The Left made a wrong turn and got lost--somewhere in the vicinity of Vietnam, I think.
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At this very moment, every issue supported by the Left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the Left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom. The Left is far to busy to promote freedom for the common man or woman, because their time is taken up advocating freedom for tyrants who oppress the common man; terrorists who kill the common man; and religious fanatics who subjugate the common woman.

She's spot on, you know. In my neighborhood we have a crowd that regularly protests in support of Fidel Casto, and people will casually refer to Saddam as the only legitimate ruler in Iraq. The so called Anti-war marches up the peninsula in San Francisco are just the reverse. They glory in depictions of violence, calls for violence and occasional acts of violence. They dream of a great war, where America and her allies are destroyed. There is a feeling of death and evil about the crowd. Perhaps you have seen pictures of some of these marches. I've seen a few up close, from the sidewalk. Pictures cannot do the event justice. These marches radiate hate.

The left has always had it's loonie (and scary) extremes, as has the right (even scarier in the old days) and I know home to ignore those people. What is most frightening about this current phenomena, aside from the virulence of the hated, is the way it has spread into the otherwise sensible liberals of the Democratic party, and threatens to spread. We cannot afford to lose the left half of the political debate. Even more, we cannot afford to allow a similar right-wing madness to develop in response. Politics has become especially poisonous of late. I know where this leads, it is not a happy ending.

I've seen a quote on a number of "liberal" websites lately, although often the writers are pulling it from a conservative book/pamphlet by David Horowitz. The quote comes from Vladimir Lenin, who apparently said, "In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth"

As with so many other things, Vladimir was wrong about that. What he describes is not "politics" but rather "Leninist politics", a philosophy and approach that managed to precede him into the grave. This is the philosophy of the extremist, note that Horowitz was a radical leftist before he converted to the extreme right wing, and it will lead any American political group to that same ash-heap it Lenin and his boys. Of this I have no doubt. I worry, nevertheless, how much will be damaged and lost in the process.

You can hear Lenin's quote echoed in the comment of Maryland State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, when she said that "party trumps race." Some years ago the phrase "Women's Movement" ceased to have any real meaning as it became clear that party trumps gender as well. We are sliding into a time when party trumps truth, and trumps sense, and trumps human compassion.

Could politics and party even trump all human rights, even life? Of course...glance at history, it's commonplace. We have been blessed, in America, with a political environment where opponents can remain friendly, or at least at peace. Less so today, I fear, and if the palpable hunger for violence that surrounds a 2005 "peace protest" is any indication, less so in the future. Keep your powder dry, folks...

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