From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu May 26 2005 - 13:55:07 BST
Hi All:
Following are excerpts from an essay by Keith Thompson citing his reasons
for "leaving the left" after a lifetime of "long-term intimate
relationship." He reminded me of the story of the brujo in Lila, although
as far as know, Mr. Thompson has yet to suffer torture for his rebellion
against today’s liberal priests.
"Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking
their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in
rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a
long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a
cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has
shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community,
even my sense of cosmos.
"I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and
what it has become during our time together.
"I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the
simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed
solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways
Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.
"My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I
watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly
see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace"
movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-
suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than
they love freedom.
"I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies
of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end
America's misadventure in Vietnam. I marched for peace and farm worker
justice, lobbied for women's right to choose and environmental
protections, signed up with George McGovern in 1972 and got elected as the
youngest delegate ever to a Democratic convention.
"A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously
described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern
world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word
"evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable
sense that we might not make it to dessert.
"When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20
million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'"
too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort
you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child
molestation for sport.
"All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking
response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people
stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against
fascism in any guise? Yes, and to their lasting credit. But many had since
made clear that they had also changed their minds about the virtues of
King's call for equal of opportunity.
"These days the postmodern left demands that government and private
institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender
"disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless
of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is
neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a
very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly
ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the
subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this:
pathetic.
"In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden
discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut
has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing
unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or
unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking
"subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).
"In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that
prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders'
talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into
law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.
"America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals
committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their
talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral
intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human
condition.
"This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the
cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I
departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and
the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically
human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to
any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.
"True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain
misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as
morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that
shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's
entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful
external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous
shepherding of caretaker elites.
"All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others
who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a
genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left
has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name
"progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction."
The third paragraph from the end beginning with "This past January. . .
strikes a particularly strong responsive chord with the MOQ, and supports
the view that today’s leftists are the new Victorians.
The complete essay can be found at http://www.aldaily.com/
Best,
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
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