Recently there was an exchange between an older conservative and a younger liberal regarding the destruction of monuments here in the United States. In the course of the exchange, the younger liberal explained with all her education and training she cared far more for people than she did about the destruction of public property. This set off a series of internal questions I’ve been mulling over. I’ve come to the conclusion if the young liberal really believes what she is saying is true she is living through a serious case of self-denial.
What the evidence suggests is she believes in causes far more than she believes in people and she has been deluded into believing that supporting the “right cause” is the same thing as caring about people. Let me explain.
In an earlier discussion, I asked her what she would do to end “systemic racism” in America. Let’s stop right here for a moment while I explain I am not sure what systemic racism is, but I do understand the evil of racism so I figure if we could end racism the systemic part would take care of itself. So that was kind of the answer I was looking for.
Her answer didn’t surprise me. She listed a whole litany of progressive causes. Everything from transitioning police funding into community programs, business incentives to hire minorities, to abolishing the electoral college. I had seen every single one of her solutions identified in progressive papers, or conservative critiques. Not one item actually dealt with how to change an individual from a belief set that one was superior to another (a root cause for racism). Every single suggestion dealt with centralizing power and prioritizing that funding as progressive politicians have suggested curing the ills of society.
In defending the on-going political struggle between those who would overthrow the government and those who would defend it, she again sided with those who would overthrow the government rather than adapt. It is, after all, today’s “cause celeb.” This was when “I believe in people” comes in.
She has spent a good portion of her life in school and now works for a technology firm where she makes a good living. The question I would ask her if I thought it had the remotest chance of causing self-reflection is, if you care about people more than statues why aren’t you spending your life helping people rather than creating technology that has proven to divide us? The reality I see is all the social progressives who’ve achieved success express empathy with the poor and downtrodden, as long as it doesn’t take their getting their own hands dirty or separate them from their personal wealth.
There are thousands of people who spend their entire life trying to make the lives of the unfortunate better. Of course, some people think if they can give enough money to a cause it will make things better, but I am talking about people who really truly believe in helping people. Those people work at the human to human level. They are the Mother Teresa people. They quietly, without fanfare, and with the deepest compassion set out to make the world better by making one life at a time better, until they look back at their own life and they’ve changed the world. Those are the people who believe in people. I do my own small part, but I realize I am not one of those magnificent examples of humanity, and neither are almost all liberals.
We simply need to look at the way liberals approach a problem to see that. Almost all the influential liberals get someone else to do the heavy lifting. As this younger liberal pointed out, she would be out on the streets with Antifa and BLM, but she had to work. She is not a mover or shaker in the world of high tech so she can probably be forgiven if she doesn’t really understand how her company takes advantage of cheap foreign labor to suppress the income of minority college graduates looking for entry-level jobs in the high-tech business she works for. She could be forgiven if she didn’t recognize the billionaires who employ her use the same tax loopholes available to the uncaring conservatives who think that the tax code should be dismantled, but she recognizes that she is superior to others who “don’t support the correct causes” and so I wonder why should I forgive her?
At church this morning there was a wonderful homily about God and love. The foundation of love for our fellow man is found; as Jesus explains in his discussion of the commandments given to the Jews as they fled from Egypt.
Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31
Of course, if you reject the idea of God it is simple to reject the wisdom of these words as being critical to our survival as societies. You can see in the progressive movement all kinds of alternatives to these profound words. We create a wide variety of moral rationales, but time and time again we come up short in our ability to find a form of government where all are treated equally. The strong will always dominate, the weak will always cower and the majority will go with whatever direction someone who promises greatness points them in.
If we can replace the wisdom of the bible with the new wisdom of relative morality, we can always find a cause to believe in and another to despise with equal enthusiasm. Let me set before you a simple example.
We can watch on the television commercial after commercial talking about saving whales, abandoned puppies, orphaned giraffes, rhinos, and cheetahs. All seeking to allow you to relieve your guilt by sending in a few dollars a month, the equivalent of a Starbucks coffee a day. You’ll hardly miss those dollars and think of all the good they will do?
On the other hand, women and men will take to the streets and the media will cover with as many hours as it takes to promote the idea that a human fetus is nothing but a “clump of cells” that should be mined for any genetic value they may have. They are unwilling to acknowledge the viability of the human until there is no other option, but even then, they have no problem with the stark contrast between killing a fetus and then claiming black lives matter. Not one of them is willing to question the illogic of that statement when black fetuses are killed at a significantly higher rate than as a simple percentage of the population. Nor are they willing to admit that only certain black lives matter. Black cops are okay to kill, black children in the major cities are okay to kill as long as they aren’t famous. After all, if blacks are killing blacks that don’t fit the agenda of the cause. It is just “inconvenient truth.” The only black lives that matter isa the ones they say matter. No more, no less.
I am not sure I understand how liberals come away with a sense of moral superiority but they do, you see it in their every action. Governor Cuomo made a decision that led to 40,000 dead New Yorkers from the COVID pandemic, yet he has the balls to lecture the rest of the nation on how they should follow New York’s lead on keeping their states locked down and that will solve everything.
We see in the news the portrayal of those who choose to protect themselves against the mobs as anti-social, while “the cause” seeking to overturn the evil of our society as legitimate by those who choose not to think through the consequences of their choices.
A couple of years ago another liberal engaged me in a discussion over the use of tear gas as a crowd dispersal tool. His opening salvo was all about how it was immoral for the national or state governments to allow this, and oh by the way it was forbidden by the Laws of Armed Conflict. Having served in the military for more than 20 years and been trained in the defenses for Chemical and Biological warfare I was pretty certain this young man, with zero actual military experience didn’t have a clue about the subject, and I found out in the course of my discussion and research all he was doing was parroting the talking points popular with the protest crowd as they bitched about being on the receiving end of a tear gas exchange.
After pointing out the actual agreement on the use of chemical and biological weapons he still insisted on the laws that allowed their use was morally outrageous. The fact that the alternative to the use of tear gas could be the use of lethal force we finally decided to end the discussion. The thing that became apparent in this and every subsequent exchange is his dogmatic commitment to “the cause.” I’ve not seen many original fact-based thoughts come out of him as we’ve exchanged ideas. He has a lot of opinions, but everyone I’ve ever checked up on comes out of popular progressive talking points. I don’t see any deep thought going into his sense of moral superiority.
On a purely selfish level, I have to laugh at the two children (for despite their ages they are in fact indoctrinated children who can’t think beyond the public statements of the cause). Memories come up which recall the time the young liberal ran crying to her bedroom because she was mad, or the time her older brother had to prove his grasp of modern trivia while intimidating his sister. The one good thing appears they’ve become more supportive of each other as she identifies her brother as a “well-respected Geneticist,” with his BA in Biology, I had always thought of him more as a lab technician. So, there is that.
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