What's wrong with the utopianist left world view

"Christian or not, it bears repeating," we wrote back in April of 2004: "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."

It looks like the spiritual descendants of Mayor Daley really ARE stuffing the ballot box at Wizbang's Best of the Weblogs 2006 after all. Charles Johnson of LGF got the first whiff:

The Kos Kidz share tips on how to cheat on the 2006 Weblog Awards.

Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters has more:

Apparently leftist Raw Story followers are trying to cheat their way to victory. At least one of their readers appears to have constructed an automatic voting script to artificially drive up their numbers. They also seem to be doing the same trying to drive up Daily Kos's numbers against LGF.

Irony-challenged commenter NCrefugee at Daily Kos cites Frank Zappa as if to support his own world view:

The biggest threat to America is not communism, it's moving America toward a fascist theocracy.

As we've blogged early and often, the totalitarian instinct runs deep and dark in our species. It is forever raising its ugly head on both ends of the political spectrum, and cheating your way to victory is precisely where it's at. Ends justify the means. That's why commies and Nazis -- not to mention Islamofascists -- parrot the same party line: We educated elites know what's best for you plebes. Bill and Hill's "What if you spend your money wrong?" and "We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" come to mind.

Update: Speaking of voting early and often, there's only one more day to vote for sisu as Best of the Top 250 Blogs. We were running about 30 votes above the lowest blog on the totem pole until today, but now the gap is narrowing. If we come out last, we will never speak of it again. Oh, the humanity!

Comments

[Ghost Dansing]

"Christian or not, it bears repeating," we wrote back in April of 2004: "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."

Probably true, except in the case of the Crypto Trotyskyites, who some say are modern Neocons... that for another day.

Take Marx, for example:

2.1 ‘On The Jewish Question’
In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between him and that of his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation.

In responding to Bauer Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation.

Marx's reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the example of the United States demonstrates then. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier.

Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings.

Therefore liberal rights are designed to protect us from such perceived threats.

Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people.

It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation.

Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he clearly sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day.

Nevertheless such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately Marx never tells us what human emancipation is...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

[bird dog]

So much for the evils of vote fraud.

[Gayle Miller]

I'm currently re-reading "The Stand" by Stephen King - the expanded version that was originally submitted to his publishers before he had enough clout to fight major editing. It is disturbing and frightening.

And do mine aged eyes deceive, or has Ghost returned? Just as succinct as ever too, I see!

[hnav]

ah ha !

you found out about those dishonest liberal cheats long before i...

isn't amusing, with their distrust of manipulative governments, they engage in the same behavior they fear?

or that they push to grow a monopoly of government, when they think it is the bastion of conspiratorial contempt?

sorry, but these liberal democrats are so odd, and provide such a vivid, mindless contradiction.

they hate the US Government, yet push to elect people who will grow it...