The Lies of the Left

Although we here at HazZzMat range far afield, topic-wise, our central focus remains the cynical manipulation of languge, culture, and media by the American left to achieve the ultimate objective of a socialist state within a world socialist collective. Frequently, the subversive manipulation of language is their weapon of choice.

Power Line today tips us off to an interesting article on this topic by mystery writer Andrew Klavin. It launches with the following observation, with which HazZzMat wholeheartedly concurs:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Power Line cites one of our favorites, City Journal, as the source for this piece and encourages a full read. We took them up on it and found further gems in Klavin's piece, like this one:

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

Klavin's final sentence in the above excerpt is important. The Stalinist left's harsh prescription for socialist nirvana has indelibly stained the 20th century with its murderous failure. And yet, today, they force their message on the public all the more fiercely while concealing the utter failure of all flavors of Marxism to achieve peace, stability, and prosperity without mass murder.

Klavin also duly points out how the odd streak of puritanism in the left has gradually, stealthily silenced rationalism and truth-telling, although, as do most writers, he fails to trace the Gramscian roots of this strategy, which enlists the media, the intelligentsia, and the arts to serve as agents for retooling a capitalist culture into a servant of socialism:

To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I’ve been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends—not because I’m belligerent but because I’ve wondered aloud if the people shouldn’t be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the UN....

...It’s manners, not morals, that lay the borderlines of our behavior.

This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they’re clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute—especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.

And because we’ve allowed leftists to define the language of political good manners—don’t say women are less scientific; don’t remark that black people bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don’t point out that the gunman was a Muslim, it’s not nice—the sort of person willing to speak the truth isn’t always the sort of person you want to be seen with....

The author concludes:

We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty. It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Check out the whole piece via the link above. Well worth your perusal if you want to identify and start turning back the left's ruthless stifling of dissenters on the right—those who pursue rational truth and support the restoration of our noble but rapidly crumbling American culture.