LEAVING THE LEFT

[Controlled Chaos]

Leaving the left

I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity

- Keith Thompson

Sunday, May 22, 2005

 

 

Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

 

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

 

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

 

My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

 

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept at not taking the measure of the left's mounting incoherence. To face it directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first to myself and then to others. That could only give aid and comfort to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and all the other Usual Suspects the left so regularly employs to keep from seeing its own reflection in the mirror.

 

Now, I find myself in a swirling metamorphosis. Think Kafka, without the bug. Think Kuhnian paradigm shift, without the buzz. Every anomaly that didn't fit my perceptual set is suddenly back, all the more glaring for so long ignored. The insistent inner voice I learned to suppress now has my rapt attention. "Something strange -- something approaching pathological -- something entirely of its own making -- has the left in its grip," the voice whispers. "How did this happen?" The Iraqi election is my tipping point. The time has come to walk in a different direction -- just as I did many years before.

 

I grew up in a northwest Ohio town where conservative was a polite term for reactionary. When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Mississippi "sweltering in the heat of oppression," he could have been describing my community, where blacks knew to keep their heads down, and animosity toward Catholics and Jews was unapologetic. Liberal and conservative, like left and right, wouldn't be part of my lexicon for a while, but when King proclaimed, "I have a dream," I instinctively cast my lot with those I later found out were liberals (then synonymous with "the left" and "progressive thought").

 

The people on the other side were dedicated to preserving my hometown's backward-looking status quo. This was all that my 10-year-old psyche needed to know. The knowledge carried me for a long time. Mythologies are helpful that way.

 

I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam. I marched for peace and farm worker justice, lobbied for women's right to choose and environmental protections, signed up with George McGovern in 1972 and got elected as the youngest delegate ever to a Democratic convention.

 

Eventually I joined the staff of U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio. In short, I became a card-carrying liberal, although I never actually got a card. (Bookkeeping has never been the left's strong suit.) All my commitments centered on belief in equal opportunity, due process, respect for the dignity of the individual and solidarity with people in trouble. To my mind, Americans who had joined the resistance to Franco's fascist dystopia captured the progressive spirit at its finest.

 

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

 

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

 

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

 

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

 

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

 

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

 

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January. Didn't many of these same people stand up in the sixties for self-rule for oppressed people and against fascism in any guise? Yes, and to their lasting credit. But many had since made clear that they had also changed their minds about the virtues of King's call for equal of opportunity.

 

These days the postmodern left demands that government and private institutions guarantee equality of outcomes. Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill. This goal is neither liberal nor progressive; but it is what the left has chosen. In a very real sense it may be the last card held by a movement increasingly ensnared in resentful questing for group-specific rights and the subordination of citizenship to group identity. There's a word for this: pathetic.

 

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

 

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

 

Wait, it gets better. When actor Bill Cosby called on black parents to explain to their kids why they are not likely to get into medical school speaking English like "Why you ain't" and "Where you is," Jesse Jackson countered that the time was not yet right to "level the playing field." Why not? Because "drunk people can't do that ... illiterate people can't do that."

 

When self-styled pragmatic feminist Camille Paglia mocked young coeds who believe "I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening," Susan Estrich spoke up for gender- focused feminists who "would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided."

 

I'll admit my politics have shifted in recent years, as have America's political landscape and cultural horizon. Who would have guessed that the U.S. senator with today's best voting record on human rights would be not Ted Kennedy or Barbara Boxer but Kansas Republican Sam Brownback?

 

He is also by most measures one of the most conservative senators. Brownback speaks openly about how his horror at the genocide in the Sudan is shaped by his Christian faith, as King did when he insisted on justice for "all of God's children."

 

My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.

 

In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders' talk -- and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.

 

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

 

At the heart of authentic liberalism lies the recognition, in the words of John Gardner, "that the ever renewing society will be a free society (whose] capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up." A continuously renewing society, Gardner believed, is one that seeks to "foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe."

 

One aspect of my politics hasn't changed a bit. I became a liberal in the first place to break from the repressive group orthodoxies of my reactionary hometown.

 

This past January, my liberalism was in full throttle when I bid the cultural left goodbye to escape a new version of that oppressiveness. I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

 

True, it took a while to see what was right before my eyes. A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites.

 

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

 

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

 

Keith Thompson is a Petaluma writer and the author of "Angels and Aliens" and "To Be a Man." His work is at www.thompsonatlarge.com. Contact us at

 

[email protected].

[EvilMonkey]

I wonder what names he will be called by his former fellow liberals. If it were a conservative changing 'sides', he would be called a hero, courageous, a maverick or any other sort of names trying to note it as a good thing. We shall see what he is called.

[FlaSoxxJim]

If it were a conservative changing 'sides', he would be called a hero, courageous, a maverick or any other sort of names...

 

Hey, if you guys want out that bad, then make the switch!

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I'm just reminded of the Jon Stewart quote: For example, do you support universal health care? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro-limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly reflects the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought."

[YASNY]

That was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in ages.

[mreye]

Jim,

 

Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

 

Apparently, I'm not the only one that sees rooting against America by the left. This is what I meant in the other thread.

[Controlled Chaos]

That was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in ages.

 

I felt the same way.

[Rex Kickass]

Making the most extreme left wing folk in our movement speak for the rest of us is like saying that David Duke is representative of White America.

 

Being Progressive, or left-wing, or liberal or whatever the hell you wanna call it has less to do with the people involved and more to do with the basic ideas involved. You can be a liberal without liking Susan Sontag as much as you can be a conservative without espousing the views of James Dobson.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Jim,

Apparently, I'm not the only one that sees rooting against America by the left. This is what I meant in the other thread.

 

I realize you're not the first one to make such statements, but they're spurious statements regardless of who from the right is making them. They're borne of the same monochrome perception that begets the "love it or leave it" crap levelled at anybody critical of any aspect of America. Now, it's that anybody who calls screwing up screwing up is a Muslim extremist sympathizer cheering for America to fail.

 

I learned last week at the movies that supposedly only the Sith saw the world in such absolute black and white terms. But that is not actually the case, is it?

[mreye]

Making the most extreme left wing folk in our movement speak for the rest of us is like saying that David Duke is representative of White America.

 

Being Progressive, or left-wing, or liberal or whatever the hell you wanna call it has less to do with the people involved and more to do with the basic ideas involved. You can be a liberal without liking Susan Sontag as much as you can be a conservative without espousing the views of James Dobson.

Aren't you the one that always brings up Limbaugh, Hannity, etc?

[mreye]

I realize you're not the first one to make such statements, but they're spurious statements regardless of who from the right is making them.  They're borne of the same monochrome perception that begets the "love it or leave it" crap levelled at anybody critical of any aspect of America.  Now, it's that anybody who calls screwing up screwing up is a Muslim extremist sympathizer cheering for America to fail.

 

I learned last week at the movies that supposedly only the Sith saw the world in such absolute black and white terms.  But that is not actually the case, is it?

Again, you misunderstand and I've grown tired of trying to explain the difference between pointing out criticism and rooting for failure.

 

PS I haven't seen Revenge of the Sith.

[Wong & Owens]

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

 

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

 

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

 

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

 

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

 

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

 

--George Washington

[FlaSoxxJim]

Again, you misunderstand and I've grown tired of trying to explain the difference between pointing out criticism and rooting for failure.

 

Your criticism before was appropriate, and I rephrased my statements.

 

Now, however, you just posted, "I'm not the only one that sees rooting against America by the left." How have I misunderstood the meaning of "rooting AGAINST America" which logically seems to mean rooting for America to fail?? Last night, I rooted AGAINST the Angels. By that I mean I wanted them to FAIL. I wasn't trying to point out any criticism, I just wanted them to lose. How else am I to interpret the allegation that the left is rooting against America?

Edited May 26, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[YASNY]

Your criticism before was appropriate, and I rephrased my statements. 

 

Now, however, you just posted, "I'm not the only one that sees rooting against America by the left."  How have I misunderstood the meaning of "rooting AGAINST America" which logically seems to mean rooting for America to fail??  Last night, I rooted AGAINST the Angels.  By that I mean I wanted them to FAIL.  I wasn't trying to point out any criticism, I just wanted them to lose.  How else am I to interpret the allegation that the left is rooting against America?

 

In all honesty, FSJ, at times it does appear that hoping America fails is exactly the agenda of the left.

[Rex Kickass]

Aren't you the one that always brings up Limbaugh, Hannity, etc?

Actually, yes I do bring them up a lot. I don't honestly think that they speak for anyone other than their fat wallets. They are both blowhards worthy of my derision. And I assume that they speak only for the idiots who parrot out all that they say, lock stock and barrel.

[YASNY]

Actually, yes I do bring them up a lot. I don't honestly think that they speak for anyone other than their fat wallets. They are both blowhards worthy of my derision. And I assume that they speak only for the idiots who parrot out all that they say, lock stock and barrel.

 

I agree with with some of their points and on others I feel they go WAY to far. Especially Limbaugh.

[mreye]

Actually, yes I do bring them up a lot. I don't honestly think that they speak for anyone other than their fat wallets. They are both blowhards worthy of my derision. And I assume that they speak only for the idiots who parrot out all that they say, lock stock and barrel.

Fair enough. I, personally don't mind either of them, but I think I have an intelligent enough mind to weed through the truth and bulls***. All the while, I understand that there are people that believe 100% of what they say. The same goes for lots of thing, including the major network news corps and Fox. I take them all with a grain of salt.