Forgot My Own Anniversary

Yesterday it was exactly ten years since I published my first blog post.   I made some statements of intention in that first post which I think I've fulfilled to an extent, though I am a much different person today than I was then.   That first post is reposted below.  Ten years of researching and writing about what the left has been doing wrong has resulted in me becoming far more radical than I was when I started.  More radical because I came to understand why real liberalism is really important and why it is incompatible with what has become misidentified as liberalism and radicalism.

One of the early changes was a result of asking why politics matter, why liberal politics was important.   I'd have called my politics "leftist politics" back then.   I didn't yet appreciate the complete difference in the two things called "liberalism" the traditional American meaning of the word, based in religion and the 18th century "enlightenment", quite different meaning of the word.  And I didn't understand that the traditional American meaning of the word was about making the real lives of everyone good on an equal basis and so was far more radical than the reality of Marxism or the other ideologies denominated "leftist".

It was the great mistake of traditional American liberalism that it got involved with such things or that it had a need to defend the rights of Marxists.  Marxism will never produce sustainable political institutions, it has failed that test of time repeatedly in the 20th century, it can't even sustain socialism.  Socialism can only be started and  sustained by egalitarian democratic politics.

Marxism, either covert or daring to speak its own name, is deader than dead, except in the minds and writing of academics who are reality averse.  You'll find that quite well represented in the program for the upcoming Left Forum but nowhere in real life, not even in the most Communist of all Communist countries remaining from that most horrific and tragic series of tests of time.   It is the enduring delusion of so many on the left that Americans able to look at those experimental results would ever tolerate it here.  As to confirm that, look at how Russians, the society with the longest record of experimental trials of communism has gone for a classic fascist strongman as the former communist elite take up organized crime.

No, the future of any viable and real left in the United States won't be based in Marxism, it won't come from academic atheism, it certainly won't come from the pseudo-leftist, liberalish, entertainment media based libertarianism which is just another form of conservatism.   The "enlightenment", pseudo-scientific, atheistic 18th century liberalism was never much different from "enlightenment" conservatism, what is generally termed "economic conservatism" "constitutional originalism" and the such.  They were not different in any radical or fundamental way, they are just divergent ideologies that lead to the same place, inequality, a demotion of the regard for life, a superficial and amorphously amoral, materialistic existence without any transcendent meaning or value.

That was what I needed to unlearn in order to understand how liberalism went wrong, why it couldn't even put its best ideas and understanding into law, why it couldn't even win elections.  The liberalish libertarians who have been in effective control of "the left" have pushed ideological positions and slogans that have been self-defeating.  I was beginning to understand that ten years ago, I wasn't ready to admit as to how much of the culture of  the left was involved in that self-defeating program.

Another thing I had to learn was, as such atheists as Jurgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky have had to admit, "The Gospel is radical."  It, understood along with The Law and the Prophets, is the most promising basis for any viable American liberalism.  I would say that no ideology, no philosophy, no system that doesn't share the morality of those will produce egalitarian democracy anywhere under any other name.  If it can be done under Islam, under Buddhism, under the non-caste ridden Hinduism, I don't know.  That's for other people to try to figure out.  I only know that it is the most likely means of reviving democracy in the United States.   American Christianity, the real thing, not the modern day Roman Imperial religion, complete with homicidal games and imperial conquest and sanctified prostitution as religious acts, is in as much need of renewal as American liberalism. 

Saturday, May 13, 2006

To start with, there are two things about the Code of Liberal Ethics that bother me. One, that we are supposed to be entirely fair to everyone and especially in instances when that would put us at a disadvantage, will be dealt with later. The one I will deal with first is the assumption that liberals must get it right every time, not only right but correct. That liberals and leftists, such as myself, must be purer than pure or relegated to the tip, is something I'd better address right now in this first post.

I have no intention of getting it right every time. I begin with no expectation of getting it entirely right a plurality of the time. No guarantee of such is given or offered. I will not allow considerations of the possibility of failure from keeping me from action. On occasion I'll plow straight ahead if conditions seem to warrant it. I, friends, am the thoroughly bad sort and claim as mine, as the sacred possession of every liberal and leftist, the absolute right enjoyed by the rest of humanity to get it wrong. And not only this but I claim as the birthright of leftists to present our side of things to the advantage of our side. I have absolutely no intention to be fair to fascists either, but that's for another day and I hope that Nat Hentoff doesn't die before I get to it.

The Code of Liberal Ethics is a standard operating setting required in every organ of the media. It is applied without consideration, without thought, as a matter of habit. It is a solid state component of the minds of far too many liberals. It is a weapon used exclusively against liberals and leftists and is applied to no other segment of the political spectrum. Everyone, from mushy moderate to rabid fascist is allowed their failings and their biases. But not liberals. Certainly not leftists.

No more. Here, today, I issue our own manumission, my fellow leftists. We have shaken off the chains of perfection, we are free of the lash of faultlessness. We claim our right to consider our own opinions superior and worthy of dominance. Never again will we present the arguments of conservatives as if they merit equal treatment. We will scorn their folly and expose their lies and their entertaining hypocrisies without apology. We will get off our knees and kick every fascist where it counts. In all seriousness, our lives, the lives of our loved ones, the life of the biosphere absolutely depend on it. We must crush out of ourselves and our kind the remains of these mind forged manacles and wipe their residue from every voice and their assumed existence from every ban. Friends, we have nothing to fear. We are free.

Disclaimer: I make no pretense of being a journalist. At best, if someone wanted to insult me, they might claim me as a columnist, an unskilled occupation of which I do not claim to be a part. I would never want anyone to assume that I pretend to be a real journalist, a reporter.