Amerika

We like to blame our system of education for the vast ignorance of the average voter. This shows us how passive dependence on peer pressure, religion, and government has made us already. If we were honest we would point out that human social groups function as disinformation engines based on what is trendy or mentally easy.

For those reasons any human group left to its own devices will promptly invent a lore of gossip, innuendo, implication, scapegoats, and emotional reactions. Think of humans as a bacterial colony: left alone, they turn toward illusion and soon it takes over and grows to reckless size.

Most people on the order of all but a few will depend on easy answers from people who amount to being little more than salespeople, like those who write for media or academia. They will follow popular books and video, but if they have to read a page beyond that, they will make excuses and flake out.

It is not surprising therefore that very few people realize that Leftism and Rightism are distinct ideas. Rightism consists of the folkways — behaviors enforced by repetition because they are successful — originating in the idea of realism. It has no One Big Idea and is instead a handful of principles applied on a case-by-case basis.

Leftism, on the other hand, consists of egalitarianism or the notion that people are equal, could be equal, and should be made equal by government. The Right does not share in this egalitarianism, although many individual conservatives try to work it into their philosophy because it is currently written into law, and is very popular.

The root of egalitarianism is individualism, or the belief that all individuals are equally valid, competent, and deserving of power. When collectivized, individualism becomes the core of the Left, egalitarianism:

left, in politics, the portion of the political spectrum associated in general with egalitarianism and popular or state control of the major institutions of political and economic life.

With egalitarianism, the individual becomes more important than the organic civilization (culture, race, folkways) and therefore a strong government is required. Institutions must be designed around individuals, not cultural or historical norms. Eventually even common sense and wisdom become threats to the supremacy of the sovereign individual.

From the widest historical view, we could see this historical change as a shift from kings having the power to individuals having all the power. This requires a philosophy of mutual individualism which binds together the group into a Crowd.

That in turn requires a rationalization or justification in the form of a philosophy of equality called egalitarianism:

An egalitarian favors equality of some sort: People should get the same, or be treated the same, or be treated as equals, in some respect. An alternative view expands on this last-mentioned option: People should be treated as equals, should treat one another as equals, should relate as equals, or enjoy an equality of social status of some sort. Egalitarian doctrines tend to rest on a background idea that all human persons are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. So far as the Western European and Anglo-American philosophical tradition is concerned, one significant source of this thought is the Christian notion that God loves all human souls equally. Egalitarianism is a protean doctrine, because there are several different types of equality, or ways in which people might be treated the same, or might relate as equals, that might be thought desirable. In modern democratic societies, the term “egalitarian” is often used to refer to a position that favors, for any of a wide array of reasons, a greater degree of equality of income and wealth across persons than currently exists.

The big point made here is that egalitarianism immediately fragments into many subtypes, in part because egalitarianism is incoherent, paradoxical, and unrealistic as a concept. It starts with the notion of equality before the law — basically trying to limit the indemnity of those in power — but branches into every other area of life.

In this way it resembles most Utopian thought, where One Big Idea is applied without context. Equality is always good; that can translate into the divisions of theory above:

• People should be treated as equals
• People should treat one another as equals
• People should relate as equals
• People should enjoy an equality of social status

“Treated as equals” corresponds closest to “equality under the law.” Treating one another as equals seems to focus on social behavior, as does relating as equals. “Social status” in the final entry seems to mean more socioeconomic status, degree of power, and importance or validity.

Modern egalitarians combine all of the above; the first three are standard Leftism, the fourth is Leftism pushing toward Communism. Enforced equality through government seems to be the final step in what started as autonomous anarchism and “freedom” but rapidly becomes using society to end freedom in order to enforce equality.

The split between the three and the fourth shows us the only real stopping bright line in egalitarian thinking: equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome.

These divisions make egalitarianism an ambiguous, ill-defined, amorphous, and protean philosophy:

As a view within political philosophy, egalitarianism has to do both with how people are treated and with distributive justice. Civil rights movements reject certain types of social and political discrimination and demand that people be treated equally. Distributive justice is another form of egalitarianism that addresses life outcomes and the allocation of valuable things such as income, wealth, and other goods.

The proper metric of equality is a contentious issue. Is egalitarianism about subjective feelings of well-being, about wealth and income, about a broader conception of resources, or some other alternative? This leads us to the question of whether an equal distribution of the preferred metric deals with the starting gate of each person’s life (giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity to compete and succeed) or with equality of life outcomes.

This formulation gives us another two divisions:

• Equal at the starting gate of each person’s life (giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity to compete and succeed)
• Equality of life outcomes

Not surprisingly, the first here deals with the first three in the prior example; the second here corresponds to the fourth in the earlier list. This explains the branching that occurred twice, first with the Jacobins and early 1800s socialists, and later with Marxists branching off from classical liberals and liberals.

However, everyone on the Left has some form of egalitarian thought at the basis of their philosophy, while those honestly on the Right do not:

Egalitarianism may focus on income inequality and distribution, which are themes that have influenced the development of various economic and political theories. Egalitarianism may also look at how individuals are treated under the law.

Karl Marx used egalitarianism as the starting point in the creation of his Marxist philosophy, and John Locke considered egalitarianism when he proposed that individuals had natural rights.

One of the main tenets of egalitarianism is that all people are fundamentally equal. Everyone should be treated equally and have equal opportunities and access in society, no matter their gender, race, or religion.

As a consequence of equality, people must believe in externalization or the idea that, because all people are equal, the only differences between them are external influences. This parallels the externalization that happens when individuals become individualists and delegate their self-identity to peer pressure.

In an egalitarian society, at the very least, all people are assumed to be equal in minimum competence including judgment, analysis, and critical thinking.

This means that if one ends up rich and one ends up poor, that division is not the result of differences in ability, but differences in situation. An egalitarian believes that a poor person raised as a rich person will be as competent as someone born wealthy.

All differences between individuals are external and not genetic, biology, or intelligence-based in that view.

Not surprisingly, this means that the Left is a messianic movement or one dedicated to change (charity, tikkun olam, social justice, progress) toward equality, which is why Leftism is revolutionary in nature or dedicated to overthrowing whoever is in charge:

those professing views usually characterized by desire to reform or overthrow the established order especially in politics and usually advocating change in the name of the greater freedom or well-being of the common man

In other words, they want less order (natural, social, hierarchy, divine) and more individualism.

Conservatives go the opposite way: we want more order, which requires a focus on results in reality, and less individualism.

Modern conservatives have no idea of this because their information base — media, pundits, GOP — has become hybridized with Leftism in order to accept order-destroying policies like diversity and socialism.

Leftists run into trouble over time because equality removes freedom over time:

The liberal egalitarian view is considered to be a much more promising position than standard strict (or outcome) egalitarianism. Strict egalitarianism does not allow any inequality among individuals, and hence is not at all sensitive to individual differences in choices

The liberal egalitarian paradox illustrates a basic tension between liberal and egalitarian ideals. It shows that if we combine the egalitarian ideal of equal opportunity with the liberal aim of holding people responsible for their choices, then we sometimes will infringe on people’s freedoms and liberties.

This conflict will, of course, not be present in all situations. However, the fact that there exists no other mechanism than strict egalitarianism respecting three minimal liberal egalitarian requirements within a reasonable set of first best economies, proves that it is impossible to establish an independent fairness argument for rewarding effort within a liberal egalitarian framework.

The conversational term “liberal” means someone who is accepting of individuals and their distinct and specific needs. Political liberals are like conservatives, basically without ideology but trusting in their gut, and they want acceptance of everyone, but this clashes with the desire for equality of outcome.

Liberals are doomed as soon as they accept any equality because equality cannot be proven except through equality of outcome. This is why every egalitarian movement begins the long march to full Communism as soon as it starts talking about equality.

Egalitarianism therefore only works when it has an order to rebel against, some people who are less capable that it can make “equal” by taking from the more capable, and a base of people who support it because of their liberal instincts but lack of having thought through what achieving “equality” will really entail.

This means that in liberal society, victims form the true elite because they are those to whom things are given that are taken from others. Those who operate the apparatus that does this — government, media, entertainment, unions — also get given some of the dosh taken from the credulous herd.

Inclined toward guilt and pity, Leftists favor the underdog by altering their perceptions of reality:

For example, two sets of studies by two different research teams found that participants evaluated science on sex differences more favorably when women were portrayed more favorably than men (as better drawers and less prone to lying and as more intelligent) than when men were portrayed more favorably than women. In both of these sets of studies, these tendencies were stronger as participants were more politically liberal.

Similarly, in a more naturalistic study on Twitter, liberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly. In another set of studies, White liberals presented less self-competence to Black than White interaction partners, whereas White conservatives treated Black and White interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.

Other teams of researchers have found similar patterns in other domains. For example, people had more generous acceptance criteria for admitting Black than White candidates to an honor society, and this tendency was stronger among liberals. Whereas those high in social dominance orientation favored a White over a Black job applicant, the reverse tendency to favor a Black over a White job applicant was stronger among those low in social dominance orientation. And whereas those high on system justification (correlated with more conservative ideology) found jokes that target low-status and high-status groups similarly funny, those low on system justification (liberals) found jokes that target low-status groups less funny than those that target high-status groups.

This enables them to keep the Narrative going that says that Utopia is achieved through equality, anything that promotes equality is good, the victims must be pitied and subsidized, and anyone who does not agree favors “inequality” and therefore is evil. Not just wrong, not just bad… but evil and in need of eradication.

The vast heaps of bodies that come out of Communist societies should surprise no one, nor should the executions after Leftist revolutions in France and the terrorism in Germany, nor should anyone be surprised that Americans forced integration at gunpoint and censored, deplatformed, surveilled, and arrested conservatives.

Leftism is a pathology that feeds on self-pity projected onto others, and it absorbs liberalism because the symbol of “equality” is the lowest common denominator between the two. Liberals are Leftists who do not know it yet.

For those who are alienated or fear they are losers, Leftism provides a revenge pathology that makes them feel better about their status by vandalizing, sabotaging, and subverting those above them:

Overall, the study sample rejected critical social justice propositions, with strong rejection from men. Women expressed more than twice as much support for the propositions (d = 1.20). In both studies, CSJAS was correlated with depression, anxiety, and (lack of) happiness, but not more so than being on the political left was.

People who are miserable, depressed, unhappy, and perceive themselves as alone in the world drift toward Leftism.

This reveals in turn the pathology of individualism, which is geared toward making people feel better about themselves by rejecting anything but themselves (and the others whose peer pressure is needed to force individualism onto saner people).

It is at heart a cult religion based on the moral worth of the individual as being superior to the morality of realism:

Individualism, political and social philosophy that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.

We are no longer talking about order, function, and realism but a morality that values individuals more than anything else. This is a detachment from adapting to our world like any other species.

No one can argue against morality because morality is a choice. It can be reality-based or arbitrary, in this case humanity valuing itself more than the world around it.

The West rose because it suppressed dysfunctional behaviors like filth, criminality, narcissism, and individualism.

Now that we have adopted a morality of individualism our society is in decline as it pulls itself in as many directions as it has individuals:

The root of all the West’s problems, at least, is individualism. By this we mean putting the individual before all other factors of decision making. A common misconception of course is that by being an individualist, the person somehow gains a greater uniqueness or bravery in asserting their own beliefs (which they invent in order to assert them, in a parody of logic). Nothing could be further from the truth! The individualist has created a false god, a worship of self, which is like saying that in the world we will pay attention only to things that come in threes. There is more to the world than the individual, but we choose to focus on the individual instead of the whole; what could motivate this except fear? Fear that the individual does not measure up? Consider this: if herds of sheep united against their attackers, they would never lose a member. Instead, they panic as a group and determine their paths individually. It seems paradoxical, but the greatest herd-mind is that of the individualist, because they are afraid to embrace the world as a whole and do what is right, which actually takes bravery as it may require individual sacrifice, and it takes actual knowledge to know what is right. Interestingly, individualism requires neither of these, nor has ever produced a single viable solution through history.

Individualists rationalize the bad as good so that they can feel good about the presence of the bad. Instead of minimizing the bad, they accept it so that they can be unhindered in their own pursuit of power, wealth, and status.

This inverts the function of civilization. Where it once amplified the good deeds of the individual, it now sacrifices those for the “human right” of individualism for all.

Leftism exists as a psychology that validates, justifies, excuses, and rationalizes this process as good when it is in fact decay.

All of this begins in the fundamental idea of Leftism, which is that for “me-first” to be enforced by a Crowd, it must be extended to all and made into a kind of religion.

Tags: anarchism, communism, egalitarianism, equality, freedom, individualism, left, leftism, liberalism, marxism, socialism