Progressives are untruthful. It is not because they are “liars” per se, but rather because they don’t believe the truth exists. You can not be truthful when you do not believe truth exists; truth is necessary for truthfulness.
So it goes with morality; progressives are amoral because they don’t believe morality exists and morality has to exist for someone to be moral.
I am not calling leftists untruthful or amoral as a form of verbal attack, but as a simple empirical description. If one actually reads and listens to what leftists say, it is plain as the light of day that leftists both explicitly deny both truth and morality and/or implicitly accept this; usually the more hardcore leftists are explicit, while the useful idiots accept it implicitly.
Richard Anderson points out a recent example from a speech at a white privilege teachers conference:
“Teaching is a political act, and you can’t choose to be neutral. You are either a pawn used to perpetuate a system of oppression or you are fighting against it,” Radersma said during the session. “And if you think you are neutral, you are a pawn.”
Which implies that there is no such thing as objective truth, merely political truth. This is the mentality of a totalitarian. The writer of the above isn’t a fool, she’s a dangerous fanatic.
This is, of course, not unique. Cultural and moral relativism is rife throughout progressivism. To deny absolute truth is to deny Truth itself. TO deny an absolute morality is render morality subjective and therefore entirely meaningless.
But even denying Truth and Morality, leftists still hold to truths and moralities. Leftists believe in social truth and they will usually accept fact truth (as a concept, if not in all particulars, such as IQ), but they deny the existence of primal truth.
As I noted, Truth must be primal truth. Fact truth is empirically true, but mundane, while social truth is true but only through consensus. Primal truth is true on a deeper level; it is what is fundamentally truth.
The leftist is stuck only with mundane empirical truths which have no moral value and no meaning and social truths which are only true and meaningful insofar as they are society makes them true and meaningful. The leftist finds himself in a nihilistic hell where his only meaning can come through the shifting social mores that surround him, yet he knows that those mores are not True, because those outside his particular social grouping deny those social truths.
From this comes the leftists need to intrude his social truths on everyone else. It is why gays need to force Christians to bake them cakes, it is why feminists need Catholics to pay for their birth control, it is why non-leftists, however milquetoast, must be purged, and why leftism must be forced throughout the globe.
He knows that his social truths are only valid insofar as they are accepted by society, so he must force society to accept them, or he renders himself, his truths, his values meaningless. But he must even go beyond his own society, for if other societies do not accept his truths, then he is rendered meaningless to the rest of the world.
Here we can see why the most virulent forms of leftism are so thoroughly narcissistic. The leftist needs others to accept his truths, accept him, or he is, in any real sense, meaningless.
By denying primal Truth, his entire value must come from the society around him. If society ever denied his value, he would lose it completely. Leftism forces its adherents into either nihilism or narcissism (or both), and most people are not psychologically equipped to stare into the nihilistic abyss.
Meanwhile, the natural narcissists find in extreme leftism an ideologically cozy way to enact their narcissism.
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In practice most progressives will usually act and espouse some level of morality (ex: most leftists would abhor murdering a child outside of the womb) and will hold to some things to be true (ex: global warming).
Here we get into the dichotomy of true leftists and useful idiots. The true leftist, such as our educator above, truly denies the existence Truth and Morality believing all truths and morality to be social truths. The useful idiots are either unable or unwilling to actually examine their cognitive dissonance with reason.
As well, not all leftists will become narcissists, as some will become nihilists, and some will either simply live with the cognitive dissonance of living as if the social truths were Truth or simply not be able to intellectually comprehend that social truth is not Truth.
Social truth = narcissistic truth.
People who don’t generate state from within need society to tell them who they are.
Which means everyone else has to see them the way they want to see themselves.
Hence “respect my pronouns.”
How to ensure that this approach won’t derail into “I will burn you at the stake for disagreeing with me. It would be for your own good, BTW”… Once again. Other variations were also possible.
Namecalling is one thing. Capital punishment for blasphemy is another.
There were times, once, when a wealthy, educated man, the father of 14 might be present
at the funerals of 11 of them. I’d prefer to cease to exist before this would be common again.
“Sinister” Left, “Righteous” Right… It’s amusing how the human mind works.
I expect such nonsense from the female mind.
It is when men engage in such illogic that I worry.
Why are liberal men such nancy-boys?
I have an alternative hypothesis that is equally consistent with the facts you cite: Liberals/progressives hold “Fairness” as the primary “Sacred Value” (in the sense that Jonathan Haidt discusses) – IOW, as a Primary Truth in equivalent fashion that Reactionaries might hold traditionalism or hierarchy.
Kim Radersma is trying to make things fair for non-white (however misguided her characterizations). Fairness is also what’s driving cakes for gays and free BC pills.
It is *absolutely the case* that most progressives aren’t paying due deference to objective truths like the meaning of IQ tests or the pull of biology on gender roles. And that progressives are sacrificing other important values like freedom of expression in pursuit of “fairness.” But frankly, this idea of Progressives being nihilistic because they deny the existence of “Primal Truth” strikes me as a caricature.
Progressive men are basically women. So they act in a womanish manner
It seems evident that every side wants to believe that it is morally justified, and that it is better than its opponents. Every side claims truth.
The difference, then, is the degree to which each side is self-conscious, or does it trust in a higher power. Surely, the professor-priests of The Cathedral are not ashamed of pushing their doctrines, but do the rank and file have the same confidence or are they more self-conscious and overall weaker.
The difference can then be drawn between the Left, as described, or the Right which is moved to less self-consciousness overall, and to more character and honour of a truth that comes from past successes. That the Right’s truth comes from the traditions is of greater strength and resolve, but yet depends less on modern opinion. It really depends on strength through the ranks, and not grotesquely polarised alpha-beta relationship which is the pagan spiritual system of the Poltically Correct Cathedral.
A.J.P.
“Roe”
You are wrong because it is not about fairness. If it were, then people would be treated as they should be treated and not in a similar manner. Fairness or equality doesn’t mean the same, it means that different parts are accountable to each other. If you are a Rightist of depth, then you would not concede those complimentary terms to the Left.
What Leftists want, “Roe”, is more than their peers, they want more than their neighbour. What they want is to be beyond scruple and so they push themselves to ever higher degrees of masochism to Prove Their Righteousness. It may seem Egalitarian, but it is actually driven by a competitiveness for moral preening.