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Leftists aren’t socialists. They’re just radicals. And it’s important to understand why.
I’ve always presumed that leftists were those who believed in socialism, communism, or other centralized control systems. Because they understood that collectivism was completely at odds with America’s founding documents, majority beliefs, and national ethos, these leftists then became radicals. They figured out that they would first need to destroy Western Civilization, so they could then replace it with a socialist Utopia. This explanation of leftist radicalism, intolerance, and violence makes perfect sense.
But I’m starting to think that it’s wrong. Completely backwards, in fact. I don’t think leftists are socialists who became radicals. I think leftists are radicals who became socialists. It’s a critical point, in my view, because we won’t be able to communicate with them until we understand them.
With the long and consistent history of every socialist state in the world leading to misery and suffering, I just can’t bring myself to believe that leftists really think that socialism works. So I think they’re just radicals, looking for a home. I could be wrong, but I really don’t think so. Let me try to explain. See if you agree.
In decade after decade, in poll after poll, in study after study, one consistent finding is that leftists are more unhappy than conservatives. John Hinderaker and many others have cited a recent study that shows that among young women, leftists suffer from psychiatric disease at approximately three times the rate of conservatives. Such studies are not outliers.
Anything that widespread and consistent likely has many different causes. But I believe that one is due to a toxic combination of individual liberty and an educational system promoting beliefs in social injustice. If you really believe that “the system” is set against you, it reduces your motivation to excel.
Then, those who are less restrained and more optimistic (and less depressed) will tend to be successful. More successful than those who had less faith in their abilities and the fairness of “the system.” Perhaps MUCH more successful. This leads to jealousy and resentment. It also leads to making their depression even worse, so lots of these people who believed the message from the educational establishment will end up on psych meds.
They’re angry at “the system”, angry at the unfairness of it all, and angry that their classmate from high school now has a vacation home in the mountains, while they still live in a crummy apartment. They might briefly consider the possibility that their classmate worked harder, took more risks, and was more resourceful than they were.
But it’s much easier for them to avoid blaming themselves, and instead to blame “the system.”
Even though “the system” allowed their classmate to be successful, they still find a way to blame it for their failures. This may seem somewhat irrational, but it’s just human nature. This may be one reason that leftists hate Donald Trump so much – he is a convenient symbol of an unlikable person succeeding through free markets. “I have a PhD! He’s an idiot! Why is he a billionaire, while I’m still driving a 15-year-old Subaru?” Well, there are many reasons for that. But the most tempting one is that “the system” is flawed somehow.
It’s important to note that it’s not just those who are dissatisfied with their lives who are drawn to radicalism. It is also very tempting to those who feel guilty about being more successful than others, and seek to demonstrate their virtue by attacking the very culture that allowed them to succeed. Thus, the voting bloc for the Democrat party tends to be an odd combination of the very wealthy and the very poor.
Anyway, they now view “the system” as their enemy. They want to destroy “the system.” That person is now a radical, who seeks to destroy American capitalism.
Of course, what can one person do? Not much. Unless they join a movement, or at least support a movement, that also seeks to destroy American capitalism. A movement like socialism. Or communism. Or Marxism. Or whatever. By default, they find themselves to be fellow travelers with communists, even if they don’t completely believe in communism. Even if that’s not what led them to their allegiance.
Mashpritzot hold a die-in protest against Israeli “pinkwashing”
This also explains left-wing gays carrying signs supporting Palestine or other Islamist causes. Islamists would torture those gay people to death, if they were in Syria or someplace. But the leftist gay people support Islam anyway. Because Islamists share Islamists’ hatred of America.
Leftists attempt to discredit America any way they can, for the same reason as Hitler tried to replace the family unit with many and varied government-managed organizations. They seek to weaken us by destroying that which unites us. Weak people seek the protection of powerful forces. That’s a fast way to gain power.
And a fast way to destroy that which the dissatisfied blame for their unhappiness.
So leftists are people who are dissatisfied with their lives (which is becoming more common due to social media and our educational system). They are reluctant to blame themselves, so they blame “the system.” Their hatred of “the system” leads them to support others who also hate American society. So our left-wing political party (the Democrats) becomes the anti-American party, led by those who are extraordinarily sympathetic to our adversaries, like Russia, China, etc.
So leftists are not socialists who became radicals. Leftists are radicals who became socialists. Not by ideology. Sort of by default.
The reason that I think this is such a critical point is that any misunderstanding on this fundamental principle will lead to misunderstandings on just about every other topic we discuss, to the point that we won’t be able to communicate at all.
A typical criticism of a leftist from a Conservative person sounds like this: “Socialism has never worked, you moron! Do you really want to live in Venezuela?” I think that type of thinking is unhelpful, because the leftist of course understands that true socialism doesn’t work, and of course, they have no desire to live in Venezuela. They’re just unhappy, and they find American capitalism to be a convenient target for their rage.
If we want to have meaningful dialogues with leftists, we may need to find a way to address the source of their unhappiness, help them understand the power of gratitude, and somehow change their jealousies and resentments into motivation to work harder. Just attacking their fellow travelers is unlikely to be helpful.
But if we get this wrong, and continue to focus on stuff that leftists don’t really care about anyway, then America will gradually tear itself apart, with increasingly partisan and divisive politics.
What do you think? Am I on to something? Or am I misguided on this point?
I thank you in advance for your input.
Published in Politics
I recommend Deprogramming Educational Intervention (DEI) centers (pretty sure no one has used that acronym) designed on the old-fashioned idea of a place that encourages critical thinking and the entertaining of a number of points of view in robust debate without censorship. I would call these DEI centers “colleges” or “universities” but those labels now mean something diametrically opposed to what I’m proposing.
After these radicalized leftists can be shown to think critically and not call for the death or persecution of those they disagree with, then we can get all neighborly with them.
I am just trying to help.
I think you are correct. Look at how Bernie Sanders plays his followers for absolute fools from his multiple homes. Ditto Elizabeth Warren and the Obamas. Oprah rages about injustice from behind her billions. The truly crafty know that in socialist systems the apparatchiki always live the good life.
But I think there is some sincere belief involved. The BA in women’s studies working as a barista thinks she checked off the correct boxes; why isn’t her life as she expected?
Besides, the divide isn’t left/right any more. It’s establishment versus everyone else. The Trump/Kennedy alignment will in retrospect be a huge inflection point. Where we go from here I don’t know, but it will be huuuuuge.
That would be nice, but I don’t think RFK Jr had that much influence of his own to make that big of a difference. Even if it might be enough to make a marginal difference to get Trump over the line, assuming Trump wouldn’t have made it anyway which may not be true.
I’m not talking the effect on this election. I’m talking about longer term political alignment, which is why I said in retrospect.
I understood that, but my point was that I don’t see it making a big difference in the political alignment – either now, or in retrospect – even if it DOES make a difference in this current election by getting Trump over the line assuming he wasn’t going to make it anyway. Because RFK Jr just isn’t – and won’t be seen in the future to have been – that influential.
It seems far more likely – to me, anyway – that Trump (or more accurately, the movement supporting him etc) will be the “huge inflection point” all by himself.
There is also the possibility that if RFK’s support came more from the otherwise-Democrat voters than the otherwise-Republican voters, and/or if most of those people go back to voting for their “original” side, or at least more than the others do, it could end up getting Kamala elected.
Like what probably would have happened in reverse, if Perot had dropped out.
In his indispensable memoir of Germany between the wara, Sebastian Haffner describes the interval when society and the economy began to stabilize during the Stresemann chancellorship:
The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.
Most people liked this situation–but not everyone:
To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
Haffner felt that the Nazi movement…and also the Communist movement…was to a large extent driven by people searching for meaning that was otherwise absent in their lives.
The killer moment for me was Oprah on stage talking about the “economic disparities” she had suffered in her life.
Your net worth is in the neighborhood of $3 billion, toots. Give it a rest already.
Very much on point. And since we are (from what I’ve read) hardwired to be religious in a general sense, godless lefties have to seek out their religion of progressiveism.
On my first read of your post (I usually read them at least twice – because you are a good writer and they make me think) I think a big part of the problem is in the educational system. They are taught that Western Civilization is bad, that America is bad, that we are a racist, unjust country. And on and on. One has to be taught to be a radical. Just as one has to be taught to be a good citizen.
And/or, that’s why they created it to start with.
The reaction of establishment dems is sufficient to show how important this is. This is their cobbled together coalition coming apart.
Maybe, but of course it’s possible that they’re wrong.
I will expand on this:
Since RFK has already dropped out, it’s not possible to get any real idea of how his vote numbers are/will be affected. Even if some people follow his requests and continue to vote for him in reliably blue or red states, but to vote for Trump in “swing” states. Because we’ll have no way of knowing how many really did that, versus how many would have voted Democrat otherwise and so will vote for Kamala, or how many from either persuasion just won’t vote at all. Or even how many will go ahead and vote for Trump in the “reliable” red or blue states, against his request.
It’s a very different situation from Perot, who DIDN’T drop out. It’s easy to see that if much more than half of the Perot voters who DID vote for Perot, had voted for H Bush instead, he would have defeated Bill Clinton. And it seems pretty likely that Perot’s support was more from the otherwise-Republican side than the otherwise-Democrat side.
I seriously doubt that, if he hadn’t dropped out, RFK would have even gotten Perot numbers of voters; and that was 32 years ago, when vote totals were about HALF of what they’ve been recently. Plus of course it seems likely that RFK was/is getting more of his vote from otherwise-Democrats, rather than otherwise-Republicans. So there might be a better-than-50% chance that RFK dropping out helps Kamala more than Trump. Unless a lot of the otherwise-Democrats don’t “go back to” the official candidate, and instead just don’t vote at all. It seems unlikely that many of them would switch to voting for Trump, even with RFK asking them to.
I have no disagreement with anything you wrote. I think I can add a thing or two.
I think a lot of people believe they’ve been lied to. Maybe. Those unrealistic expectations came from somewhere, but they seem to think that hard work guarantees financial success. Last time I was in CA, I tuned in to KCBS to get the traffic/weather and heard a report about the latest graduating class, specifically their income expectations for their first job versus reality. All the majors mentioned had expectations way beyond reality, but the journalism majors were the most unrealistic. The reporters had a hard time not laughing because journalism majors expected twice the average starting salary for their job. I remember something similar from my first days at ricochet. Some member was complaining that he has a masters degree and was working for UPS, driving trucks, IIRC. Someone asked his field and it was political science. To me, and I could be wrong, that’s almost a vanity degree. What does one do with that specialty if he doesn’t have connections in the political world? Maybe get the Ph. D. and try the tenure track?
One other thing is from a quote by . . . I’ll remember immediately after hitting “comment”. Anyway, the distinguishing feature of modern man is his utter lack of comprehension of how much he is indebted to previous generations. The few young people I know seem to take everything for granted. They think of “this” as the baseline, a given. They see injustices of some sort and think it’s because some group is perpetuating those injustices. Those “injustices” in many cases are just differential outcomes. Choices and actions have consequences, but pointing that out is just being mean. As I have pointed out, the problem with life is that it gives you the test before you have had the lesson.
They all should be forced to read “Hard Truths About the Workplace” from an old issue of Esquire magazine. E. g.,
There are 16 other charts.
PhDs and idiots are categories with a lot of overlap.
I’ve been told that it’s wrong, although in my own work lifetime I’ve seen no evidence of that, but in the past the mantra I picked up was that people learn calculus so they can get tenured jobs to teach calculus to people who want to get tenured jobs teaching calculus….
Other than having connections, as you mentioned, Political Science seems like the same kind of thing.
Doc, I think you’re absolutely right that there are relatively few true enthusiasts for socialism who aren’t first and primarily radicals. I think a lot of the left’s causes serve as safe gathering spots for individuals seeking some kind of belonging and purpose. I think that’s probably true of conservatives as well: we humans, left and right, seek companionship and meaning.
I’ve long believed, and have often written, that I think the important divide is between conservatives and radicals, and that both conservatism and radicalism are usually, and more than anything else, matters of temperament and emotion. I think conservatives are people who feel an affinity for traditional norms and values, and radicals are people who feel an antipathy toward traditional norms and values, in both cases without much regard to the norms and values themselves.
That’s not everyone, of course. But I think it’s what shapes most of the popular divide on most issues.
That would explain some things that might otherwise seem perplexing. It explains why radicals seem to be more spontaneous and creative: they tend to be rule-breakers by nature. It would also may explain why they seem often less happy, even angry: first, they’re compelled to live within a framework of traditional structures, and that probably frustrates them; and secondly, those structures they rebel against are there for a reason — they’re tested and generally successful, and people who disregard them in favor of a better, more enlightened way are setting themselves up for failure. And it explains why, regardless of the radical cause, the people caught up in it seem to look and act the same as all the other radicals caught up in all the other radical causes.
Fortunately, I think most people are conservative. I think the species would be extinct by now if that weren’t the case. Radicals are entertaining, we often enjoy the show they put on, but we should be very careful about letting them gain power — because they’re fundamentally nihilists, most of their ideas are bad, and they derive satisfaction from breaking things most of us value.
For a while, I didn’t use much of what I learned, but when I got to the more advanced modeling/simulation and engineering optimization work I spent a lot of time digging into the old calculus and analytical geometry textbooks.
That hypothesis is about to be put to the test…
Perhaps moreso in the past, less so now with less “weeding out,” as it were.
In the past, the radicals who failed, were also less likely to reproduce, and/or to influence later generations in other ways.
Maybe conservatives shouldn’t be conserving so many radicals?
It does seem to have value in certain more specialized fields, but as with many other things – and perhaps college in general – there’s probably no reason for EVERYONE to be expected to learn it.
When I went to Oregon State, “back in the day,” some calculus seemed to be a graduation requirement for just about anything.
Dude, it has been already — and repeatedly.
Look at the electorate and the polling positions in the current cycle. Trump and Harris are about 50/50 right now; that’s becoming something of a norm in our quadrennial elections.
Then consider the playing field. Almost all of the press, and almost all of the social media, and essentially all of the educational institutions, and essentially all of high-end entertainment, and all of government, and essentially all of academia — basically, almost everyone with a voice, almost ever opinion-leader, is openly and unabashedly left. Those who are supposed to be objective, who pride themselves on pretending to be objective, make no effort to hide their lack of objectivity.
Given all that, we’re a 50/50 nation.
It takes a 90/10 left-leaning opinion-shaping elite working full time at it to achieve that 50/50 split.
Yeah, we’re a conservative people.
But they only need to shift the general population to like 51/49 in order to make a shambles of it. And they’ve been doing some pretty good shamble-izing (h/t Col Henry Blake) already even without that.
It takes a lot more people, a lot more time, to build something, than to bring it down.
All true, but irrelevant to my comment.
Not really. For one thing, that 90/10 media appears to have been successful at shifting the larger population, over time. It may be admirable that they haven’t succeeded more, quicker. But they HAVE BEEN succeeding. And they’ve already caused plenty of damage as-is. Enough so that, for example, many conservative ideas that may only need 50%-plus-one to get through, are blocked. While enough of “our” 50% are sufficiently amenable to “go along to get along” or “the president gets the nominees he wants” etc, to allow the other side to win more than they really should, even now.
And it wouldn’t take much more “success” from the left to become in effect overwhelming. Partly because THEY don’t even need a 2/3rds or 3/4ths majority to enact what they might want through Constitutional Amendment, for example; they just ignore what exists and do it anyway. “Student loan forgiveness” and “eviction moratorium” being just recent examples. And again, “our side” is unwilling to do much to stop them.
50% is more than enough to win, if the other 50% doesn’t oppose them sufficiently.
In programming terms the word “conservative” is overloaded. In the media, it seems to be synonymous with “resistant to change”. In political terms, it’s something different, as in WFB, Jr. small-government conservative. Then, we had big-government “compassionate conservatives” of the Bush era, an oxymoron if I ever heard one. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I think you are wrong. We are a semi-authoritarian, nanny-state liberal country.
I disagree, and that’s really my whole point. You don’t shift fundamental aspects of human nature that easily — not in a population of 300,000,000.
States that run lotteries advertise those lotteries heavily: ads consume a lot of the lottery revenue. They do that because when they stop doing it people stop buying lottery tickets. Because people have to be constantly persuaded to make such a poor, high-risk investment.
Similarly, the elite opinion-shapers have to keep doing what they’re doing, wildly tipping the playing field, in order to sustain the 50/50 split. If it were otherwise, we’d expect the field to keep tipping, but that isn’t what we’re seeing.
I think the bias became flagrant in 2000, in the Bush / Gore race. That was a famously close one, and it remains similarly close today, almost a quarter of a century later, despite more than 20 years of America being subjected to that strong leftist headwind.
I think we remain a conservative country with rotten institutions.
Having said that… our educational system is a disaster, and if parents fail to tell their kids what is worth conserving about America, all those little natural conservatives will eventually think they’re supposed to be conserving pronouns and gender-queer identity rules. Because that’ll be all they know. That’ll be their tradition.
The single most important point might be, that 90/10 media lean has “only” made it 50/50 SO FAR. I don’t see any reason to think it stops there, or that they would need 91%/9% to push it farther.
Not quite my point. They’ve only “made it” in the sense that if they keep pushing a constant left message, they can keep people from reverting to their conservative norm.”
If the media became neutral tomorrow, the 50/50 split would dramatically shift to the right immediately after. The people haven’t changed. What’s changed is the boldness and intensity of the leftist establishment institutions.
Which supports my argument, that they’re continuing to make progress; it hasn’t stopped at 50/50.