"What drives the deranged Bush-hating left"

Masaccio's "Expulsion from Paradise" 1427. Fresco. Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy

"The old Christian thing was to do good, in the knowledge that we are capable of terrible evil," writes David Warren in what Charles Johnson colorfully describes as "this perceptive column on what drives the deranged Bush-hating left":

But the "new man" believes that he is good in theory, and thus does not recognize the evil in his deeds [Rousseau's "Noble Savage"]. We make a desolation and call it peace.

There you have our post-modernity in a nutshell: an unthinking elision of the moral into the psychological, creating a "nuance" where no nuance exists. And by so doing, the previous translators externalized the evil that Dostoevsky's character had discovered in himself . . . [avoiding] the word "wicked" and usually [putting] the word "spiteful" in its place.

What we see on the streets of Ottawa, instead, is an almost pure fanaticism -- that radical spirit of alienation that ultimately motivatest the Jihadis, too.  This nihilism is the splinter in the heart of our modernity; it rejects everything; it proposes, finally, nothing in its place.  It is the devil himself speaking out of his void, leading finally to the silence of Iago.

And yet the tragedy of these people -- whose fanaticism puts them beyond the pale of give-and-take in party politics, and whose views, should they spread, would take the whole democratic order down with them -- is that they know even less about themselves than they know about the world they condemn. They are angry, but finally they don't know why.

They don't believe in evil, as a category; yet it haunts them externally on every side: "Bush" being only the straw man of the moment. And unlike the actual Mr. Bush, they do not believe in grace, either. They see evil everywhere. They rail, and they rail.

It's the classic tragic vs. utopian view of human nature in its latest manifestation on the canvas of contemporary politics. As we always say, Christian or not, it bears repeating:

We believe deeply that the denial of "life's dark side in ourselves" is the key to what's wrong with the utopianist left world view.

Comments

[goomp]

Looking at mankind's attempts at living in peace is not very encouraging. Europe in the big picture is a continuous series of wars between states. Only after the our nation, the USA, became the world's first and freest democracy did a somewhat less hostile world develop in Europe. However, they contiually regress and really don't understand what makes freedom work. Unfortunately, many in this country are not taught our history, and we are on a slippery slope that could lead to a loss of freedom and a fascist state.

[Michael]

Sissy,

There you go again with that subtle undercurrent of Christian philosophy. But it does seem to model the world and humanity most perfectly doesn't it?

Post-moderns, aka liberals, aka Progressives will never be able to admit the potential evil in themselves & therefore in the world because: (1) it would require acknowledging the existence of a force they cannot explain or control, and (2) it would require a humility and honesty they don't posses because they cannot allow themselves to think of themselves as anything other than being equal with God (3) it would require them to no longer be the perfect beings they are (ok this last one is satiric).

It is difficult to explain the world and its happenings without the concept of evil in my opinion. Yet we see its counterpart everyday in the actions of people who overcome it in order to whats good and right. The struggle is in our souls, and my own belief is that the Christian model of good & evil, with its doctrines of repentence, forgiveness & sanctification, is the most complete in freeing us to become the people we were intended to be.

/sermonoff