POSTMODERNISM AND THE LEFT: A PERFECT STORM

Thomas Sowell is worried. Very worried:

Last Tuesday, Dr. Thomas Sowell was interviewed on The Rush Limbaugh Show by Walter Williams, who was serving as guest host. During this interview, Williams inquired about Sowell's opinion of direction that America is heading in . "Are you optimistic or pessimistic?" Williams asked. "Pessimistic, and I am fighting off becoming despairing," replied Sowell.

Sowell's words should not be taken lightly. As a recent Investor's Business Daily editorial about Sowell said, "Doomsters are a dime a dozen. But when a leading economist who's been called "the nation's greatest contemporary philosopher" sees serious trouble ahead, we'd better listen up."

The editorial went on to explain:

Sowell sees the national equivalent of a "perfect storm," a gathering of "dangerous forces (that) have been building .. . for at least a half-century."

Yes, he says, our great nation has weathered many storms. But, he quickly notes, so did the Roman Empire before it collapsed. "Is that where America is headed?" Sowell asks upfront. "I believe it is. Our only saving grace is that we are not there yet - and that nothing is inevitable until it happens."......

The Obama administration "is not the root cause of the ominous dangers that face this country at home and aboard," Sowell says. But "it is the embodiment, the personification and the culmination of dangerous trends that began decades ago. Moreover, it has escalated those dangers to what may be a point of no return."

What are these "dangerous trends that began decades ago"? To understand what is happening in the world today, one must understand the a philosophy that has taken root in Western Civilization and brought us to this point in history--and, yes, ideas really matter; and when you are basing your society on bad ones, then you can expect bad things to happen.

The philosophy that is behind these dangerous trends is Postmodernism; and Barack Obama represents the culmination and embodiment of the perfect postmodern demagogue.


POSTMODERNISM as defined by Wikipedia:

Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields, including literary criticism, sociology, linguistics, architecture, visual arts, and music.

Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from modernist approaches that had previously been dominant. The term "postmodernism" comes from its critique of the "modernist" scientific mentality of objectivity and progress associated with the Enlightenment.

Where modernism is based on reason, truth and the acceptance of an objective reality; postmodernism and it metaphysical and epistemological foundations, in contrast, is based on emotion and whim; subjective or relative "truth" and a belief that reality is whatever you believe it to be.


If you have noticed that Western Civilization no longer seems to be able to defend and stand up for itself--either intellectually or culturally--and that insanity and irrationalism reign, then you need look no further than this anti-modern and anti-progress mind-set and how it has infected almost every aspect of Western culture, politics and thinking.

Postmodern 'thinking' (and I use the term loosely) and rhetoric is the direct cause of the West's descent into the abyss of political correctness and cultural relativity (i.e., the dogma of multiculturalism).

The dual insanity and subversivenss of these two key components of leftist/progressive thought are brought together in the following common, but wholly contradictory, threads of politically correct postmodern rhetoric: On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

These two mutually contradictory postitions are both firmly held beliefs--one might even say they are considered holy writ by the acolytes of the liberal left.

For years now, this contradiction has trickled down into the consciousness and belief system of the West. It has quietly been integrated into the K-12 curriculum and is forcefed to students at most univeristies (where free speech is no longer tolerated if it happens to "hurt" someone's feelings); it is regularly integrated both directly and symbolically into popular movies, books, and into the news tickers for the mainstream media.

And, Postmodern's PC/multicultural dogma has now been duly enshrined into the national platform for at least one of our major political parties; and it even has begun to eat away at the values of the opposing political party--both realities which have led to the rise of the Tea Pary movement and the grassroot anger directed at both Democrats and Republicans. Both parties have forgotten real American values: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Stephen Hicks in his book says that Postmodernism has, "become the activist strategy against the coalition of reason and power." He quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."

It is because of the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and the ubiquitous use of postmodern rhetoric by the political left that America and all it stands for is now on the brink; and this should make you, like Thomas Sowell, very worried.

Rather than setting you free, in the postmodern world, truth just keeps you from believing what you--or someone else--wants to believe; and therefore it must be banned from polite conversation.

In this "innovative", postmodern world view you are permitted-nay encouraged!--to break free from the oppressive shackles of reality and venture into the realm of a "higher" reality, where fools like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank are taken seriously. And where a grandiose and glib, but charismatic man deeply immersed in the contradictory discourse of postmodern rhetoric and the collectivist ideology of "social justice" can be elected President of the U.S.

In order to survive their crushing defeat in the Cold War, the remnants of Soviet communism, along with failed Marxist, socialists and communists around the globe had to evolve and mutate into a form that would not be easily recognized; but the fundamental toxicity of their ideology remained as potent as ever. And it is these various mutations that are truly the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.

In postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, they found the perfect epistemological, ethical and political vessel to reassert their poison. And that is why, despite the untold misery and the millions of dead that were the result of the implementation of their political policies, their ideology never quite made it to the garbage dump of history.

The politically useful concept of "social justice" is now the dominant philosophy forced down the throats of teachers, who obediently spoon feed it to their students from kindergarden through college; while in academia they use "science" to demonize their enemies.

As a vehicle for obtaining political power, postmodern philosophy and its attendant rhetoric are unparalleled in today's academic world. Through the deliberate manipulation of reality, truth, and reason, the children of postmodern nihilism have figured out a way to win any and all arguments. They have pretty much taken over the curriculum from kindergarden through college and thus no major area of that curriculum is now free from political interference.

And, in addition to the toxic dogmas of political corectness and multiculturalism; it is postmodern philosophy that is at the heart of radical environmentalism. Combined these poisonous ideas make up three of the four pillars of the socialist/communist--or, more accurately, the neo-Marxist--revival that has been staged in this first decade of the 21st century. This is the perfect storm in which we find ourselves.

Remember that postmodernism eschews truth and those who adhere to its ideas prefer to exercise power to force social change. They live in a world of contradiction and emotion. Their strategy is not to persuade people to accept their ideas, but to confuse them; to distort the truth, propagate lies and smears; and to use whatever rhetoric is necessary to accomplish their purposes. And when rhetoric fails, they will force through their social change anyway.

Since rhetorical skill is essential to accomplish their purposes, it is little wonder that a trancendently inexperienced but rhetorically gifted nobody like Barack Obama could rise to the top of the [garbage] heap. His career was meteoric, and is based entirely on words, not deeds or accomplishments. In truth, he is the quintessential political postmodern demagogue; skilled in the neo-Marxist/fascist talking points and easily able to convince all who hear him of his passionate committment to "social justice," (better understood as the redistribution of wealth) and universal peace and brotherhood (better known as the appeasement and enabling of evil).

Nothing that is going on now makes any sense, unless you understand that "sense" is not a useful concept when one is talking about postmodernism. That's why to get out of debt we are spending more money and digging deeper; that's why to defend against war we are disengaging from the enemy and enabling them; that's why the "doublespeak" is used over and over again in this Administration.

Truth does not matter; all that matters is that people believe it is true.

But you can make sense out of what the political left is doing. It just so happens, that their basic tenets are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist/Marxist and communist remnants around the world have siezed on and are using to prevent their ideology from entering the dustbin of history.

As I have written before, the fourth pillar of the overall strategy is Terrorism. I believe this last pillar is mostly an unconscious one in the nearly brain-dead minds of the Western elite; but it is why they make common cause with Islam who acts out their own unconscious fantasies.

We can think of the four pillars--POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, MULTICULTURALISM, RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM, and TERRORISM-- as the foundation for both the socialist revival (particularly in the Western hemisphere recently) and for the rapid advancement of the Islamic Jihad and Islamic fundamentalism.

Below is a flow chart that has been adapted from Stephen Hick's book, Explaining Postmodernism (p. 173), which summarizes the evolution of these four strategies/pillars of leftist/progressive thought; and though I have written about it before, it is well worth repeating over and over again as the perfect postmodern storm that swirls around approaches a Category 5; and as reason, truth, and reality are belittled and ignored by our leaders:

EXPLAINING POSTMODERNISM

David Thompson has an interview posted with philosopher Steven Hicks, author of Explaining Postmodernism. If you haven't read this book yet, you are missing out on what is the most important, coherent and detailed explanations of the origins and implications of postmodern philosophy and rhetoric. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

The other use of rhetoric is politically-charged persuasion. Pomo rhetoric becomes long on emotionalism, ad hominem, and so on, and it becomes short on logic and evidence. But the point of such rhetoric is effectiveness, not truth.

You mention that much pomo political rhetoric is anti-capitalist and champions unlikely causes such as fundamentalist Islam. Here the pomo are taking a page out of Lenin’s and Marcuse’s playbooks. There’s a long-ish story here that I talk about in Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Traditional Marxism said that capitalism would collapse from the inside (the exploited and alienated workers would rise); but when that didn’t happen, Marxists theorized that capitalism had exported its misery to the Third World (Lenin’s idea) or to outcast and marginalized subcultures (Marcuse’s idea). So the new strategy was to cultivate the anti-capitalist resistance in those places.

Like other pomo of this generation, Žižek is an evolving combination of the above.

Go read the entire interview. And check out the book:




UPDATE: Now here is a perfect example of the kind of rhetoric designed to end debate that is so typical of today's left, "Barney Frank's Namecalling":

Barney Frank’s attack on Justice Scalia as a “homophobe” is inane at several levels:

First, the term “homophobe” is an ugly epithet designed to stigmatize (“he’s the sicko”) those who don’t embrace the homosexual agenda. It’s intended to cut off serious discussion, not to promote it. It doesn’t belong in public discourse.

Second, Frank uses his epithet in the course of expressing his concern that a Supreme Court that includes Scalia might not strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense of Marriage Act was approved by overwhelming majorities in each House of Congress (85-14 in the Senate, 342-67 in the House) in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton. Senators in favor of DOMA included Biden, Bradley, Daschle, Kohl, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Murray, Reid, Sarbanes, and Wellstone. Millions and millions of voters in state after state have acted to preserve traditional marriage. Does Frank regard all these Americans as “homophobes”?

Third, Scalia’s position is clear: The Constitution does not address the matter of same-sex marriage. Therefore, the political processes are free to decide whether or not to adopt it. He, as a justice, will defer to the political processes, whatever the result. In other words, on this matter as on so many more, Scalia will not indulge his own policy preferences (whatever they are) and will not write those preferences into the Constitution. Frank wants liberal activist justices who will indulge his and the Left’s own policy preferences on homosexual matters (and so much more). That’s his real beef with Scalia, and he’s masquerading it under the “homophobe” label.

I’ll leave to others whether Frank’s name-calling is a tactic designed to distract attention from his role in causing the ongoing financial crisis.

In fact, this is precisely how postmodern rhetoric works so brilliantly--to distract from real issues and a rational discussion of them; and to demonize anyone who dares to criticize any political policy that the left promotes. Those who dare oppose them (or, in this case, not actively support them) are always "racist", "sexist", "homophobic" etc. etc. Hence, we can't have a rational discussion in this country anymore about abortion, Gay marriage, or any policy like National Health Care (those who oppose that "want poor people to die or suffer") and so on. The idea that there might be reasonable concerns or consequences that accrue socially or culturally from these policies--intended or unintended--is completely alien to the left's mindset. It's all part of the idea that SC&A have explained many times, the left is of the opinion that they are better people and aren't nearly as concerned about finding better ideas as much as they are with proving to you how superior they are.

TRAGEDY AND FARCE

For anyone who has lingering doubts about the extent to which postmodernism and the trashing of history has thoroughly saturated Western culture, I refer you to this article from Reuters. Two points stand out. The first is this statement that is made without documentation as a simple matter of fact:

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.

The only purpose of such a statement is to emphasize how bad European white culture is compared to the poor oppressed indiginous culture. This as we all know is the primary tenet of multiculuralism: all cultures are equally good, except fro Western culture which is evil evil evil. Al-Reuters could have escalated the provocation if only America had colonized Venezuela. Maybe though, they can alter history enough to ensure that happens.

The second is that this is a "news" article that contains the following laughable statement about the socialist thug currently consolidating absolute power in Venezuela:

Chavez, who has expanded the rights of indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest to the Caribbean, said he felt he was Indian because Venezuelans are a mix of the European race and indigenous peoples.

This is presented as undisputed fact. I mean, isn't Chavez wonderful? What a guy!! He has "expanded the rights" of the poor and oppressed indigenous peoples.

What is Reuters, Chavez' publicist?

Many dictators claim to be standing up for the "rights" of the oppressed; that's how those dictators get power. Hitler's preferred "oppressed: population were Aryans, as I recall; and, he also nationalized banks and industry to consolidate his power. Interestingly, while they are standing up for the rights of the oppressed, these very same champions almost always manage to find a group to demonized so that failure can be externalized and not blamed on the regime. Funny how it works like that, and Chavez is hardly an exception to this motif.

One of the commenters in my post on The Transformation of Education into Indoctrination makes the following excellent point:

There has recently been a survey of Australian High School history students which concluded that they were feeling guilty and uncomfortable at the way the colonial history curriculum was being taught. Similarly to the US, leftist educators have promulgated a "black armband" version of our colonial past and particularly as it appliied to the indigenous aborigines.
Any historian who dares to challenge this orthodoxy of genocide and subjugation is howled down as a racist and apologist for the imperialists. http://www.adelaideinstitute.org...ndschuttle1.htm
This review of one particular book concludes with a calm but telling indictment of the postmodernist educational agenda.
Quote:
"I want to conclude by looking at the motives of historians like Lyndall Ryan and why they write things which are apparently not true.

One critic of Windschuttle, Alan Atkinson, accused him of wanting to “take the discipline back to some golden age, when it was all about facts.” (Australian Book Review, February 2003, p 4 ). This sounds bizarre. We assume history books describe facts and are based on facts. If history is not supposed to be about facts and not based on facts, then what are you supposed to base it on?

This is an issue, which Windschuttle addressed in an earlier book The Killing of History and in several articles on his webpage, The Sydney Line, about history and postmodernism. As the word suggests, postmodernism means what comes after modernism. Modernism, in this context, means the belief that it is possible to find out the facts, to know what is true. Postmodernists believe that it is impossible to know the facts and find out what really happened in the past. They believe everyone is so politically and culturally biased that it is impossible not to be biased and to see things objectively as they really are, so the truth and facts are unknowable. They believe the traditional writing of history, based on facts and evidence, has been used to oppress women and ethnic minorities. So they believe the new purpose of history writing should be to be deliberately politically biased and write history that supports a political agenda, that is, propaganda, in favour of the oppressed minority, such as Aboriginal land rights in this context. Rather than basing what they write on the evidence, they twist or invent the evidence to support their political agenda, much in the same way that Communists used to rewrite history and make events disappear to make history fit their Communist ideology.
[...]
Postmodernists try to justify their bias and creative writing to make up for the way Aborigines or other minorities have been mistreated in the past. However, if they do not believe there are facts and it is impossible to know what really happened, then how can they know the minority group was mistreated or oppressed in the first place? Whatever our political agendas, what we believe about history has to be based on the evidence, not on what we would like to believe happened. "(Emphasis mine)

In an earlier post about the intellectual origins of neoconservatism, which has been a counter-movement to postmodernism and seeks to reclaim historical perspective and preserve the intellectual heritage of Western civilization-- I discussed at length the postmodernist's tendency to rewrite history to make it to fit a particular ideological template. The points of that articale bear repeating, since, as the Chavez example glaringly demonstrates, postmodern mantras and manipulations are inserted everywhere--in news articles like the Reuters one linked above; in educational curricula and in art and even smoothly inserted into entertainment. Indeed, the ubiquitous propaganda generated by the postmodern worldview is designed specifically to ensure that no mind be allowed to come to any "unapproved" conclusions or have any "politically incorrect" thoughts flitting around in the synapses.

Big Brother is always watching and no area is too trivial or inconsequential that it can't be used as an object lesson on the correct way to think; witness the link above where even in a film that promotes bestiality in a positive and sympathetic manner, it's important to have the proper political perspective.

The postmodern slogans and talking points of the left are everywhere portrayed as if they were universal, incontravertible, and absolute truth. Which is very curious since postmodernists will tell you that all truth is relative-- except, of course, for postmodernism which is absolutely true.

As I noted:

The rise of neoconservatism represents the only modern intellectual counter and the only known antidote to the infection of postmodernism and its resultant toxic effects on philosophy, rehtoric, and politics.

In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Furthermore, they had to deconstruct and invalidate human consciousness, making sure that the everyone understood that the only apparatus available to humans for perceiving reality--the mind--was completely unreliable, and that the evidence of the senses must therefore be discounted. This intellectual strategy resulted in a pervasive cultural relativism and intellectual nihilism that permeated all aspects of society and intellectual thought. Words and language were redefined to mean whatever one wanted; history was deconstructed--ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless; and the ideas and values that were the foundation of Western civilization were mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.

Thus, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; and not significantly different from slavery; democracy is just as much a fraud as tyranny; that which was always considered the good, is really just as evil as evil; and so on. Twentieth century postmodernists thus set themselves up as culturally and morally superior to all other humans in history, and with the postmodern relativistic advantage, they could pass judgement on everyone and everything. Thus from the superior postmodern perspective, there was nothing of value to learn from a slave-holding Thomas Jefferson; there is no moral superiority in a system that strives toward increasing individual human freedom and dignity compared to a system that doesn't even recognize the rights of the individual. There is no difference between right and wrong; good and evil--all are suspect, all are hypcritical, all are imperfect; and thus all such concepts are rendered irrelevant.

The key to this undoing of that which is good and conflating it with that which is evil; of deconstructing the reality and reason upon which more than 5000 years of civilization is founded; is through the nihilistic process of deconstructing and reinterpreting the historical past and redefining and undermining its meaning.

You are probably familiar with the leftist drill, since it is now frequently applied to anything valued in the West (in the last week it has even been used to "demythologize" Thanksgiving so as to invalidate what that quintessential American holiday even means). By using the now-common relativistic formula, all individuals and thinkers in the past are ridiculed, demeaned, and scorned because they fail to live up to postmodern and politically correct standards of conduct. Thus, their ideas are considered meaningless and described as "hypocritical"--the absolutely worse possible sin from the leftist perspective.

On the deconstruction of the American past:

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington--all the Founding Fathers for the most part--did not have the consciousness of the postmodern intellectual: they were slaveholders! Yet they dared to consider the problem of human freedom, bound as they were to the cultural norms of their time. That they could not entirely break out of the culture of their time, but still could push the envelope of civilization forward is irrelevant to the postmodern left. From the left's perch of moral superiority they blithely dismiss these "white males" as hypocrites with no moral standing. Thus are the foundations and the generationally built constructs of civilization invalidated and destroyed. Is it any wonder that all that is left is the nihilistic garbage that postmodernism deems as "reality".

Likewise, the postmodern left means us to understand that the exploration of the world by the intrepid Europeans; the discovery of other continents and all colonization--in other words, the rise of Western civilization and its expansion westward only resulted in "slaughter, disease or enslavement"; and that this process is merely one of "white imperialism".

But consider, if we do not understand the past; if we abandon the ideas that underlie our values and our morality-- how can we appreciate who we are today? If we are only allowed to think of Thomas Jefferson as a hypocritical colonial slaveholder; if we only see history as evil white males enslaving or slaughtering the oppressed indiginous cultures-- then we are forced to pronounce Jeffersons ideas on the struggle for human freedom as no better and no worse than Hitler's Kampf; and human progress itself as "oppressive".

And so, Jefferson's mind-blowing, paradigm-shattering declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" has no more meaning or worth than Yasser Arafat's statement that, "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war; we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel." Both are either completely meaningless; or both are examples of freedom-fighters--who cares which? Bush = Hitler; Good = Evil; Freedom = Slavery; there is no way to judge because the nihilistic relativism we subscribe to has taken away our ability to morally distinguish and discriminate between right and wrong.

By discarding reason and reality; by abandoning the past and embracing moral and cultural relativism, the left has brought us to this place where we are morally and physically paralyzed and cannot distinguish between the deliberate targeting and killing of innocents and the accidental killing of innocents despite herculean efforts to avoid it; between waging war to give people a chance at freedom and democracy; and waging war for domination and imperialism; between standing up for what is right and accepting the consequences, and abandoning one's values and surrendering with "honor" to the scum of the earth.

This is the postmodern quest. To establish themselves as the arbiters of moral behavior by behaving immorally; of calling themselves "reality-based" without the necessity of having to acknowledge reality; by speaking "truth" to power, without even being capable of recognizing truth (isn't all truth relative, after all?); and by teaching history that fits the marxist/socialist template.

In the specific example from Reuters at the beginning of this post, where the "journalist" has set himself up as the arbiter of moral behavior, the correct way to think is clearly spelled out for us. No other interpretation of history is permitted; and the underlying assumption is that all cultures are equally good and special, the white male-dominated Western culture is uniquely evil and its values must be denounced by all right-thinking people.

Thus, European colonization of the New World was particularly evil and wrong because it disrupted ("enslaved and slaughtered")all those peaceful and morally superior cultures that were already here. SC&A have noted:

...much has been made of ‘Colonialism’ as the scapegoat for hindering change, but clearly, that excuse is wearing thin. Colonialism has now become the watchword- and an excuse for those who refuse to join the rest of a modern and productive society.

The legacy of colonialism is what those former colonies made of it. More often than not, colonialists came into a society that was far behind their own, in terms of achievement, advancement and human progress. Notwithstanding the mythical and fabricated notions that ‘the white man’ came into primitive, peaceful and loving cultures, only to destroy them, the fact remains that these cultures and societies could have been greatly benefited by the advent of the ‘white man.’ Those societies resisted the advances they could have assimilated into their own culture.

It is true there were abuses, of course, as there are in any human endeavor. It is also true that taking advantage of modern day tools and ideas are not an all or nothing proposition. Even today, there are groups of people that refuse the tools that might make their lives easier.

Strange, isn't it, that the same people who are adamant that Darwin's theory of evolution must not be "contaminated" with any non-scientific dogmas like creationism; and can be heard screaming with outrage if any hint of religion is allowed to seep into the curriculum believe that indigenous cultures must never be contaminated by new ideas or behaviors. You wonder how the hell they imagine that "evolution" actually takes place in the real world--either on the cellular or societal level?

Evolution is adaptation to change and change is constant. And it is a process that goes on at every level of human existence--from genes to culture. Those "indiginous cultures" which they see as somehow superior to Western culture and are eager to add to their preferred victim group list, are subject to it and must be capable of adapting to change--or they will die out just as surely as the platypus and other extinct species. Adaptation will either makes them stronger or will undo their "superiority". "Survival of the fittest" does not give a free pass to the unfit and unadaptable morally virtuous; and as Siggy notes above, the interaction of cultures, while not always peaceful, almost always results in a dynamic exchange of strengths and an infusion of creativity and innovation. Under ideal circumstances, both cultures will absorb aspects of the other and be stronger because of it.

But idealize the primitive; keep it forever in amber; demand that it forever be immutable and "uncorrupted" by change or progress; or by freedom and innovation--and you have the recipe for cultural stagnation and the crushing of the individual mind.

The postmodern left elevates clowns like Hugo Chavez and call him a "liberator"; they swoon over despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro; and have champagne toasts with fruitcakes like Kim Jung Il.

Karl Marx once said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce." And he was absolutely correct.

Marxism in its initial incarnation was the tragedy; and its current revival via postmodernism, is the farce.

UPDATE: I was thinking of the dodo, when I wrote the platypus. My bad. This error on my part clearly is convenient proof that nothing I say means anything. I am just crushed.

GLORY TO POSTMODERNISM SCIENCE !

From American Thinker, I found the link to this article in The New Scientist--which is absolutely astonishing (not in a good way, I might add):

If you want to get a message across to the public, don't obsess about facts. Just look at Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Olson says. The film contained more than a few factual errors, but it also had a profound influence on the world's attitude to climate change. Perhaps compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil...is this really the right way for scientists to go? With climate change, perhaps the end justifies the means... given Gore's success and the prevalence of scientific illiteracy, it remains an interesting path to consider.

In other words: truth is irrelevant, lying is perfectly ok, and "compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil" --particularly when it is some important issue like climate change...or any other issue deemed important for social policy by the political left. It is, after all, for our own good! A "greater good" !

Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."

Apparently, it's not what is true, it's what you can convince others to believe that matters.

Think about that for a moment...and consider how far humankind would have progressed out of its caves and slime if man's rational faculty had been discarded with the aplomb that The New Scientist dismisses it.

Postmodernism deliberately eschews truth and reason and reality. It insists that our minds are not capable of even knowing reality. Under such conditions, what good is science, you may ask?

Well, those who adhere to postmodern ideas prefer to exercise power to force social change. They live in a world of contradiction and emotion. Their strategy is not to persuade people to accept their ideas, but to confuse them; to distort the truth, propagate lies and smears; and to use whatever rhetoric is necessary to accomplish their purposes. Science is particularly useful if it can be manipulated to make those who oppose your ideas to STFU.

The politically useful concept of "social justice" is far more important than reality or truth; and the way that you can expedite the acceptance of unpalatable social policies is to use science to demonize your enemies or to pronounce that there is a "scientific consensus" on a contentious issue.

This is what your typical leftist postmodern progressives has in mind for the future of science. Instead of a dedication to reality and truth, science will be used to foist leftist ideology down the throats of the populace. And if you think this is unlikely, then you probably never visited the Soviet Union during their communist heyday. I have. And one of the things I remember most clearly is how all the scientific "academies" were emblazoned with banners that proclaimed in bright red letters, "GLORY TO SOVIET SCIENCE!". Meanwhile, the scientists in these prestigious academies were desperate for a glimpse of objective truth and any reality that existed outside the dictates of the Communist Party, which controlled every aspect of their work.

Fortunately, there are still some independent and non-government controlled minds out there searching for truth...but the same kind of "new" and "progressive" science (that made the Soviet Union the progressive third world country it was)--where the goal is implementing "social justice" and not uncovering truth or reality--is brought to you by today's postmodern political left; who, with a little utopian luck, will have us back in our caves, mucking around in the primeval ooze in no time!

HOW POSTMODERN "LOGIC" MANAGES TO "WIN" ALL ARGUMENTS

Substitute almost any talking point of today's political left for "Manmade Global Warming Debate". and you their tried and true recipe for "winning" debates: ignore reality, truth, and reason.

It turns out that postmodern philosophy and rhetoric are simply perfect for this purpose (see here, here, here, here, here and here, for example) and can be mobilized rapidly whenever there is the slightest possibility that a glimpse of the real world might break through the barrier of perpetual psychological denial.

Those who live in the wonderful world of denial go through their daily lives secure in the knowledge that their self-image is protected against any information, feelings, or awareness that might make them have to change their world view. Nothing--and I mean NOTHING--not facts, not observable behavior; not the use of reason or logic; or their own senses will make an individual in denial re-evaluate that world view. All events will simply be reinterpreted to fit into the belief system of that world--no matter how ridiculous, how distorted, or how psychotic that reinterpretation appears to others. Consistency, common sense, reality, and objective truth are unimportant and are easily discarded--as long as the world view remains intact.

This is one of the wondrous aspects of postmodern rhetoric, where reality and truth are only relative, is that anybody's "reality" is as good as anybody else's. For the dedicated postmodernist, polls and opinion are the final arbiters of truth; and the results of a poll or two, constructed along ideological lines to fit a particular template, is all you need to confirm your reality.

Reality is a matter of opinion (simply ignore any polls that don't agree with your reality, of course). This type of useful rhetoric can even determine today, what history will say many tomorrows from now. With enough repetition and passion, "history" can be set in stone in the temporal present!

Extremely convenient for anyone who wants to avoid confronting their own contradictions in the present.

The rhetorical passion and word play is mere camouflage for the inherent philosophical and psychological contradictions that the postmodern left exploits in order to achieve and maximize political power. They are perfectly aware that their positions don't make any sense and can be refuted by anyone with basic knowledge of logic and logical fallacies; but their goal is to maintain the psychological denial necessary to believe in the left's ideology. Interpreting this defense and exposing it is essential to countering that ideology.

Postmodernism accomplishes this Herculean anti-intellectual, counter-rationale feat with aplomb, using a technique known as "contradictory discourses"; something Stephen Hicks wrote about in Explaining Postmodernism. In this excellent and well-reasoned book, Hicks discusses a leftist strategy which he describes as "using contradictory discourses as political strategy". (page 184)

Using contradictory discourses as a political strategy

In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consisteny can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

- On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.
- On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.
- Values are subjective--but sexism and racism are really evil
- Technology is bad and destructive--and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
- Tolerance is good and dominance is bad--but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.

In other words--don't waste your time looking for any sense in the contradictory statements; illogical demands and confusing rhetoric of the postmodernists; their goal is to distance themselves from any unpleasant reality by returning to a simple, childlike state where their wishes and feelings are all that matter. Truth and reason can be easily cast aside whenever they don't fit in with the emotion du jour.

For example:






They are patriotic and support the military.








They have a plan to win by giving up.





The opening cartoon demonstrates nicely how this sort of "logic" manages to "win" all debates. We are reminded repeatedly that the political left see themselves as a "reality-based" community; dedicated to science (as opposed to faith) and champions of free speech and unfettered intellectual inquiry... and yet, their behavior suggests that the man-made global warming "debate" is not so much a debate as it is an article of deeply-held faith and religious conviction.

Before the most recent global warming industry was popular, there were the imminent global catastrophes of pollution, overpopulation, universal famine, nuclear winter, and ozone depletion and just a short decade or so ago there was the global cooling scare. None of the predicted environmental catastrophes arrived on schedule. Some have suggested that the current obsession with global warming has actually adapted elements of almost all the previous environmental crazes and escalated the dire prediction beyond all reason or rational discourse.

The entire purpose of the contradictory discourse technique is actually to shut down any argument or debate. This rhetorical ploy is guaranteed to drive the opposition crazy as they try to deal with the ensuing flip-flops (how many of you remember that just before the debate on global warming was all the rage, the same leftist experts were touting imminent global cooling?). They can be FOR something and at the same time AGAINST it, thus covering all the bases.

I'm sure you can see how this would be a particularly useful strategy in today's politics. It enables you to be simultaneously for everything and nothing at the same time!

Not surprisingly, promising everything and delivering nothing captures the essence of postmodern leftist intellectual thought in all its neo-marxist/fascist, nihilistic and irrational glory.

WHY KANT COULDN’T, AND STILL CAN’T

Stephen Hicks has suggested that postmodernism arose from a fusion of leftist politics and skeptical epistemology. Faced with the demise of their precious socialist belief system and drowning in obscurity, the intellectuals of the left grasped at postmodernism like a lifeline that could lead them once again to dry land.

Over the last hundred years, these apologists for socialism and communism have had to face disappointment after disappointment as they watched the unraveling of every holy prophecy and had to deal with multiple socialist nightmares in the real world; instead of the fantasy dreamworld they imagined. In both theory and practice, socialism's battle for supremacy with capitalism had been decisively lost.

In every empirical test in the real world, capitalism worked better than socialism and once and for all completely debunked all the original Marxist claims about socialism's supposed superiority.

--Instead of exploiting people, capitalism has empowered them, while socialism made them poor, miserable, and oppressed.
--Instead of increasing poverty, capitalism has mostly eliminated it. The rich get richer indeed; but the poor get richer, too. Under socialism’s yoke, everyone became poorer except the corrupt.
--Instead of being more humane and peaceful, socialism has almost always deteriorated into dictatorship and oppression; and then became aggressive and violent toward other countries

But the confrontation between capitalism and socialism in the last century was only the most recent in a long series of historical battles between the forces of freedom and individualism on the one hand; and the forces of tyranny and collectivism on the other.

In the 1700’s this conflict was manifested in the philosophical and societal confrontation between religion and the Enlightenment.

From Hicks' book:

In the 1950’s and 60’s the Left faced the same dilemma that religious thinkers faced in the late 1700s. In both cases, the evidence was against them. During the Enlightenment, religion’s natural theology arguments were widely seen as being full of holes, and science was rapidly giving naturalistic and opposed explanations for the things that religion had traditionally explained. Religion was in danger of being shut out of intellectual life. By the 1950s and 60s, the Left’s arguments for the fruitfulness and decency of socialism were failing in theory and practice, and liberal capitalism was rapidly increasing everyone’s standard of living and showing itself respectful of human freedoms. By the late 1700s religious thinkers had a choice—accept evidence and logic as the ultimate court of appeal and thereby reject their deeply-cherished religious ideals—or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter. “I had to deny knowledge,” wrote Kant in the Preface to the first Critique, “in order to make room for faith.” “Faith,” wrote Kierkegaard in Fear and trembling, “requires the crucifixion of reason”; so he proceeded to crucify reason and glorify the irrational.

Thus Kant and others in the 18th and 19th centuries paved the way for the more recent Postmodern attacks on reason, logic and reality itself. Postmodernism is the latest incarnation of the Kantian rejection of reason in order to “make room for faith”; and it has become the preferred method of the left to champion Socialism over Capitalism.. Becoming increasingly marginalized by events in the real world; the leftists simply adopted the position that reason, logic and reality don’t matter; that feelings are more important facts; that objective reality doesn’t exist; and that everything is relative anyway. In this way, they "made room for" socialism, which otherwise might have become extinct.

Do you wonder why the left hates religion with such a passion? Why the left is fairly united in its hatred of Israel? It is simple—they are in competition with religion for the hearts of the people. The ideology of the left has evolved into a religion that is essentially even more religious (and certainly more fanatical) than either Christianity or Judaism--both of which had their more toxic elements blunted by the rationality of the Enlightenment.

In the ensuing 300 years since Kant critiqued pure reason, religion--i.e., Christianity and Judaism-- have more or less come to an uneasy compromise with those who recognize the importance of reason, logic, and reality in the real world. This is almost certainly the psychological origins of the Western concept of "separation of Church and State"; which seems to me at least, as a very bold strategy designed to keep the fundamental conflict at bay and allow development of both these spheres of human experience unimpeded by the other.

The left refuses to accept such constraints on their religion, and have embraced postmodern rhetoric and politics with religious fervor in order to save their own sacred beliefs about socialism. Once again there is an historical attempt to combine religion with politics and political rhetoric; and to crucify reason, logic and reality in the process.

This is what those on the left hold in common with Islamic fanatics. Islam, which never went through an Enlightenment like the other major world religions; and has never had to deal with the separation doctrine developed by the West; has not had the worst of their irrationality ameliorated by the infusion of Enlightenment or Western values.

This brings us to the 21st century battlefield of this conflict. The left recognizes in extreme Islam a soul mate that hates individualism, freedom, capitalism and rejects reason and reality with the same enthusiasm. In essence, they cannot oppose even the most vile of the jihadists behavior (i.e., toward women or toward gays) without their own postmodern arguments completely falling apart.

This op-ed piece captures the dilemma faced by the women’s movement, for example:

"The multicultural feminist canon has not led to independent, tolerant, diverse, or objective ways of thinking," she writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "On the contrary, it has led to conformity, totalitarian thinking, and political passivity. Although feminists indulge in considerable nostalgia for the activist 60s and 70s, in some ways they are no different from the rest of the left-leaningacademy, which also suffers from the disease of politically correct passivity."

American women are the most pampered women in the world. It's no surprise that the phrase, "You've come a long way, baby," was easily co-opted to sell them cigarettes. Enlightened self-interest is neither misdemeanor nor felony, but it has blinded the feminists to the larger picture.

Islam, whether isolated in enclaves in European cities or dominant in the Islamic nations of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, is exploited to oppress women. But feminists with the big microphones keep the silence of church mice. "Because feminist academics and journalists are now so heavily influenced by left ways of thinking," writes Phyllis Chester, "many now believe that speaking out against head scarves, face veils, the chador, arranged marriages, polygamy, forced pregnancies or female genital mutilation is either 'imperialist' or 'crusade-ist."

Multiculturalism and its buzzword "diversity" are perhaps the most triumphant and omnipresent of Postmodern concepts. In the last decade they have subtly and pervasively infiltrated almost all K-12 curricula and textbooks; as well as permeated all aspects of academia--from admissions to course content in almost every field; to setting the limits on academic inquiry.

It is immensely interesting to observe how the left's topsy-turvy thinking about this conundrum works: realistically, rationally, and logically the left finds itself unable to criticize the excesses of Islam in any way, shape or form--without exposing for even the most dim-witted to see, the fatal flaws and contradictions in their new religion--which disavows reality, reason, and logic.

Their only recourse in order to maintain some sort of bizarre consistency at any price, is to embrace the same irrationality as the Islamists and join with them in hating America, freedom, and capitalism with comrade-like solidarity. Thus, championship of several of their key victim groups is pragmatically abandoned to remain consistently illogical.

Kant and his successors have never been able to explain away the formidible real world contradictions inherent in a philosophy that celebrates the irrational and the unreal at the expense of reason and reality; yet somehow expects to bring peace, harmony, productivity and progress to human living.

Related posts:
Contradictory Discourses
The Highway to Hell
The 10 Commandments of Multiculturalism
The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Left

POSTMODERNISM, THE CORRUPTION OF TRUTH, AND THE COMING GLOBAL TRAGEDY

Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."

As I have noted in earlier posts, postmodern rhetoric explicitly rejects truth, and because of this it is indifferent to consistency and dismissive of reason.

It is because of the pervasive influence of postmodern philosophy and the ubiquitous use of postmodern rhetoric by the political left that Randall Hoven has had an epiphany. In, "Stop Making Sense", he says:

I've been suffering under the wrong paradigm for decades. All this time I thought what mattered was "reality." How wrong I've been....

Before my epiphany, if you had asked me about some problem or policy, I would have tried to analyze it -- asking, or even answering, what I thought were pertinent questions. Say we were talking health care. I would have looked up what we spend on it, life expectancies, infant mortality, disease survival rates, etc. I might have wanted to know what the cost drivers are, how much we spend for each year of life saved, how we compare to other countries. That sort of thing.

How silly of me. And how futile. The answer is simple: propose a "New Era of Responsible Health Care", fund it with a trillion dollars and assign a czar.

You need to read it all, but Hoven comes to this sad conclusion:

When we were dealing with nature, rational thinking anchored in reality was key. It led to those transportation, communication, health and agricultural advances, plus plenty of labor saving devices and methods. You might think it was high-minded liberalism that ended slavery. Was it just coincidence that an institution that had flourished for multiple millennia ended during the industrial revolution?

But when the adversary is not nature, but fellow men, rationality as normally considered is out the window. We live in a world where Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank are taken seriously. Where Libya is given the chair on the Human Rights commission at the UN. Where heads of state genuinely believe sheep farts are dangerously heating up the planet.

As Vladimir Lenin was commenting on "all those starving people who are starting to eat each other, who are dying by the millions," Walter Duranty was the New York Times Moscow bureau chief saying things were just wonderful there. He won a Pulitzer Prize for that.

Here is the awful truth: it's not what is true, it's what you can convince others to believe.

Bill Clinton knew this instinctively. When most of us learned about logical fallacies, for example, we thought of them as things to be avoided since they could lead us astray -- away from truth. But to Bill Clinton, those fallacies were something to adopt, since they are effective ways to persuade.

He beat an impeachment rap for one simple reason: he was popular. It had nothing to do with being innocent, or what I had called, prior to my epiphany, reality. He beat the rap because people liked him.

It's neither the law nor the facts, but what you can get the jury to do.

While absorbing that concept, consider that about one third of the US population thinks the phrase, "to each according to his need, from each according to his abilities," is in the US Constitution. One third also believes that the US government conspired in the 911 attacks. A majority thinks sheep farts have more to do with temperature variations on earth than the ball of nuclear fire the size of 1.3 million earths that is eight light-minutes away.

And now, as stock markets plummet around the globe and our national debt is set to triple in just two years, the number of people who believe we are on the right track has tripled.[emphasis mine]

Rather than setting you free, in the postmodern world, the truth just keeps you from believing what you--or someone else--wants to believe; and therefore it must be banned from polite conversation.

In this "innovative", postmodern world view you are permitted-nay encouraged!--to break free from the oppressive shackles of reality and venture into the realm of a "higher" reality, where fools like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank are taken seriously. And where a grandiose and glib, but charismatic man deeply immersed in the contradictory discourse of postmodern rhetoric and the collectivist ideology of "social justice" is elected President of the U.S.

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner diagrees with that President on what is the most dangerous leagacy of the Cold War--and it is not nuclear weapons:

To me, the most obvious dangerous legacy of the Cold War would have to be the damage the Soviets did to the world. I don't mean the millions they murdered; those dead do not threaten us now, even if they should haunt us.

I mean the relentless distortion of the truth, the psychological violence they visited on the West and the World via their useful idiots and their agents. I'm thinking not merely of the intellectual corruption of the American Left (which even folks like Richard Rorty had to concede), but the corruption of reformers and their movements around the globe. Soviet propaganda still contaminates, while nuclear fallout does not. Lies about America, the West, and the nature of democratic capitalism live on throughout the third world and in radioactive pockets on American campuses.[emphasis mine]

In order to survive their crushing defeat in the Cold War, the remnants of Soviet communism, along with failed Marxist, socialists and communists around the globe had to evolve and mutate into a form that would not be easily recognized; but the fundamental toxicity of their ideology remained as potent as ever. And it is these various mutations that are truly the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.

In postmodern philosophy and rhetoric, they found the perfect epistemological, ethical and political vessel to reassert their poison. And that is why, despite the untold misery and the millions of dead that were the result of the implementation of their political policies, their ideology never quite made it to the garbage dump of history.

The politically useful concept of "social justice" is now the dominant philosophy forced down the throats of teachers, who obediently spoon feed it to their students from kindergarden through college; while in academia they use "science" to demonize their enemies.

Additionally, it is postmodern philosophy which is at the heart of such irrational concepts as political correctness, multiculturalism and radical environmentalism, three of the four pillars of the socialist/communist--or, more accurately, the neo-Marxist--revival that has been staged in this first decade of the 21st century.

Remember that postmodernism eschews truth and those who adhere to its ideas prefer to exercise power to force social change. They live in a world of contradiction and emotion. Their strategy is not to persuade people to accept their ideas, but to confuse them; to distort the truth, propagate lies and smears; and to use whatever rhetoric is necessary to accomplish their purposes.

Since rhetorical skill is essential to accomplish their purposes, it is little wonder that a trancendently inexperienced but rhetorically gifted nobody like Barack Obama would rise to the top of the [garbage] heap. His career has been meteoric, and is based entirely on words, not deeds or accomplishments. In truth, he is the quintessential political postmodern demagogue; skilled in the neo-Marxist/fascist talking points and easily able to convince all who hear him of his passionate committment to "social justice," (better understood as the redistribution of wealth) and universal peace and brotherhood (better known as the appeasement and enabling of evil).

Nothing that is going on now makes any sense, unless you understand that "sense" is not a useful concept when one is talking about postmodernism. That's why to get out of debt we are spending more money and digging deeper; that's why to defend against the North Korean missile threat, we are cutting down on our missile defense...and so on. Truth does not matter; all that matters is that people believe it is true

As Mark Steyn says in his response to Goldberg's post,

It's not just embarassing to hear the so-called "leader of the free world" talking like a 14-year old who's been up in his room listening to "Imagine" for too long. I fear this presidency has the makings of global tragedy.

THE PARTICULARS ARE RELEVANT

A must read post at The Belmont Club as Wretchard contrasts Ralph Peters "12 Myths of 21st Century War" with 12 ideologically consistent parallels. He concludes by noting:

The key to understanding why it is possible to form statements which contradict individual myths yet remain consistent within the ideological universe is this: the only essential myth it is necessary to accept is the guilt and worthlessness of Western civilization. The particulars are irrelevant. (emphasis mine)

Stephen Hicks wrote about the phenomenon of these seeming contradictions in Explaining Postmodernism. He termed this leftist strategy as "using contradictory discourses as political strategy":

In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consisteny can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims. - On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.
- On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.
- Values are subjective--but sexism and racism are really evil
- Technology is bad and destructive--and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
- Tolerance is good and dominance is bad--but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

As I noted in a recent post on The New Political Discourse, there is a common pattern to the illogical assertions: subjectivism and relativism in one breath, and dogmatic absolutism in the next.

In other words--it is a waste of time looking for any sense in the contradictory demands and rhetoric of today's political postmodernists

Compare and contrast the positions of each of the 12 myths and its counterpart provided by Wretchard. Both are firmly held as holy writ in the minds of the believer. Imagine, if you will, the degree of cognitive dissonance that would be necessary to have both beliefs in one's consciousness; and to act on them with equal religious fervor.

Take just the first two sets:
(1)
War doesn’t change anything.
and
War is capable of achieving liberation from the clutches of America.

(2)
Victory is impossible today.
and
Victory over America is not only possible, but inevitable.

You begin to see how the nihilism of the postmodern, neo-fascist left dovetails nicely into the fanaticism of the Islamofascists; and how the one sets the stage for and completes the other perfectly.

Postmodern rhetoric evolves into, and seemlessly becomes, the post-medieval terror of the Islamic fanatics. The circle is unbroken. The contradictory discourses of the former pave the philosophical path for the barbarism of the latter.

As Wretchard notes, the particulars are irrelevant--if the destruction of western civilization is your ultimate destination.

In The Four Pillars of the Socialist Revival and the Rise of Islamofascism, I wrote:

Observe how easily Islam has been able to subvert key Western values--such as freedom of speech and expression--with a degree of invincibility and outraged virtue, capitalizing on a tactical opportunity that they have never before had in history. And worse of all, many on the political left--particularly the remnants of utopian socialism-- are aiding and abetting the Islamofascists.

With that in mind, is it at all surprising that Islam is able to take maximum advantage of this Achilles heel within Western culture and use the vulnerability to optimize their own religious, political, psychological, and military objectives?

Multiculturalism and political correctness are two of the fundamental pseudo-intellectual, quasi-religious tenets-- along with a third: radical environmentalism--that have been widely disseminated by intellectuals unable to abandon socialism even after its crushing failures in the 20th century. These tenets have been slowly, but relentlessly absorbed at all levels of Western culture in the last decade or so--but primarily since the end of the Cold War.

All three have been incorporated into most K-12 curricula and all other learning environments. They have been at the forefront of attempts by leading academics and academic institutions to rewrite most of history and undo thousands of years of Western cultural advancement. And further, as the culture has been completely saturated with this toxic brew, any attempt to question the tenets' validity or to contest their value is met with hysterical accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, imperialism, bigotry, or--worse of all --intolerance or insensitivity.

It just so happens, that these tenets represent three of the four pillars that are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist remnants in the world have developed and are using to prevent their ideology from entering the dustbin of history.

And, what is most interesting is that, even as they encourage and enable Islam with the first three pillars; the Islamofascists are aiding and abetting them by using the fourth pillar- Terrorism. We can think of the four pillars as the reason for both the socialist revival (particularly in the western hemisphere recently) and the rapid advancement of the Islamic Jihad.

Click on the link to see the philosophical flow chart that explains how this comes about. For people anchored in the real world, the particulars are extremely relevant.

Having granted the philosophical premises of postmodernism (truth and morality are relative; reality is unknowable; and life's a bitch and then you die--without purpose, meaning, or sense) ; then the complementary premises of a pre-primitive terrorist suddenly are quite simple to grasp.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW...

...is not love or global orgasms, but more neoconservatism.

Wretchard observes in a brilliant post:

...you can kill more people with a well intentioned peace than with a well intentioned war

and, that in the case of both Zimbabwe and Iraq:

...simply because we don't hear the tree fall in the forest doesn't mean it doesn't fall. And the question is why it should be any different with a problem like Iraq. The challenge of terrorism forming within the chaos of the Third World will remain with us until we learn to meet it. We haven't learned how to yet. And it's not clear that solving this problem is optional.

Rather, solving the problem is absolutely essential for all of Western civilization. But the solution may not lie in simply discovering the correct military response to assymetrical warfare (though that may be a part of the solution). It seems to me that the solution to the problem posed by the "death by benign neglect" that is going on in Zimbabwe, Rwanda and numerous other places around the globe; as well as the international hysteria that surrounds the desire to run away, ignore, and/or pretend that real problems don't exist. can only be solved with good ideas that counter the bad and destructive ideas that have sapped the will of the West and plunged it into nihilistic despair.

The problem is countering the source of this pervasive nihilism, promulgated and promoted by the West's own intellectual elites under the pseudonym of postmodernism.

And the only intellectual remedy brought forth in the last five decades to nullify postmodern philosophy and rhetoric is neoconservatism.

If you listen at all to the MSM, you might begin to think that neoconservativesm is either in dissaray, dead and abandoned by all its former adherents.

Since (particularly recently) I take everything the MSM says with the proverbial grain of salt, I suspect that the truth is something very different entirely. Neoconservatism has been pronounced dead by its opponents many times in the decades since its ideas were first formulated; primarily because the philosophy that underlies neocon policies is extremely threatening to the methodology of today's postmodern political left.

Today's left is a nothing more than the hallow shell of what was once known as "liberalism"; and it is held together by the empty and meaningless rhetoric of postmodern intellectual nonsense, otherwise known as political correctness and multiculturalism (or, cultural relativity).

Neoconservatism as an intellectual theory actually arose from the observation in the 1960's that classical liberalism had been hijacked by the left and its essence literally reconstructed to suit the needs of socialists and communists who were beginning to realize that the jig was up for them.

All over the world it was becoming apparent that political and social collectivism was an abject failure. Where implemented, such policies led to intractable poverty and misery economically; and unbelievable oppression and the crushing of the human spirt politically and morally.

I have discussed elsewhere how the recent revival of socialism and its collectivist/totalitarian agenda in the late 20th and early 21st century was made possible by the adoption of postmodern epistemology, rhetoric and politics by western intellectual elites:

Multiculturalism and political correctness are two of the fundamental pseudo-intellectual, quasi-religious tenets-- along with a third: radical environmentalism--that have been widely disseminated by intellectuals unable to abandon socialism even after its crushing failures in the 20th century. These tenets have been slowly, but relentlessly absorbed at all levels of Western culture in the last decade or so--but primarily since the end of the Cold War.

All three have been incorporated into most K-12 curricula and all other learning environments. They have been at the forefront of attempts by leading academics and academic institutions to rewrite most of history and undo thousands of years of Western cultural advancement. And further, as the culture has been completely saturated with this toxic brew, any attempt to question the tenets' validity or to contest their value is met with hysterical accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, imperialism, bigotry, or--worse of all --intolerance or insensitivity.

It just so happens, that these tenets represent three of the four pillars that are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist remnants in the world have developed and are using to prevent their ideology from entering the dustbin of history.

For more on postmodernism and its implications, see here, here, here here and, of course, here.

The rise of neoconservatism represents the only modern intellectual counter and the only known antidote to the infection of postmodernism and its resultant toxic effects on philosophy, rehtoric, and politics.

In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Furthermore, they had to deconstruct and invalidate human consciousness, making sure that the everyone understood that the only apparatus available to humans for perceiving reality--the mind--was completely unreliable, and that the evidence of the senses must therefore be discounted. This intellectual strategy resulted in a pervasive cultural relativism and intellectual nihilism that permeated all aspects of society and intellectual thought. Words and language were redefined to mean whatever one wanted; history was deconstructed--ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless; and the ideas and values that were the foundation of Western civilization were mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.

Thus, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose; and not significantly different from slavery; democracy is just as much a fraud as tyranny; that which was always considered the good, is really just as evil as evil; and so on. Twentieth century postmodernists thus set themselves up as culturally and morally superior to all other humans in history, and with the postmodern relativistic advantage, they could pass judgement on everyone and everything. Thus from the superior postmodern perspective, there was nothing of value to learn from a slave-holding Thomas Jefferson; there is no moral superiority in a system that strives toward increasing individual human freedom and dignity compared to a system that doesn't even recognize the rights of the individual. There is no difference between right and wrong; good and evil--all are suspect, all are hypcritical, all are imperfect; and thus all such concepts are rendered irrelevant.

The key to this undoing of that which is good and conflating it with that which is evil; of deconstructing the reality and reason upon which more than 5000 years of civilization is founded; is through the nihilistic process of deconstructing and reinterpreting the historical past and redefining and undermining its meaning.

You are probably familiar with the leftist drill, since it is now frequently applied to anything valued in the West (in the last week it has even been used to "demythologize" Thanksgiving so as to invalidate what that quintessential American holiday even means). By using the now-common relativistic formula, all individuals and thinkers in the past are ridiculed, demeaned, and scorned because they fail to live up to postmodern and politically correct standards of conduct. Thus, their ideas are considered meaningless and described as "hypocritical"--the absolutely worse possible sin from the leftist perspective.

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington--all the Founding Fathers for the most part--did not have the consciousness of the postmodern intellectual: they were slaveholders! Yet they dared to consider the problem of human freedom, bound as they were to the cultural norms of their time. That they could not entirely break out of the culture of their time, but still could push the envelope of civilization forward is irrelevant to the postmodern left. From the left's perch of moral superiority they blithely dismiss these "white males" as hypocrites with no moral standing. Thus are the foundations and the generationally built constructs of civilization invalidated and destroyed. Is it any wonder that all that is left is the nihilistic garbage that postmodernism deems as "reality"?

But consider, if we do not understand the past; if we abandon the ideas that underlie our values and our morality-- how can we appreciate who we are today? If we are only allowed to think of Thomas Jefferson as a hypocritical colonial slaveholder, then we are forced to pronounce his ideas on the struggle for human freedom as no better and no worse than Hitler's Kampf.

And so, Jefferson's mind-blowing, paradigm-shattering declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" has no more meaning or worth than Yasser Arafat's statement that, "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war; we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel." Both are either completely meaningless; or both are examples of freedom-fighters--who cares which? Bush = Hitler; Good = Evil; Freedom = Slavery; there is no way to judge because the nihilistic relativism we subscribe to has taken away our ability to morally distinguish and discriminate between right and wrong.

By disgarding reason and reality; by abandoning the past and embracing moral and cultural relativism, the left has brought us to this place where we are morally and physically paralyzed and cannot distinguish between the deliberate targeting and killing of innocents and the accidental killing of innocents despite herculean efforts to avoid it; between waging war to give people a chance at freedom and democracy; and waging war for domination and imperialism; between standing up for what is right and accepting the consequences, and abandoning one's values and surrendering with "honor" to the scum of the earth.

By mocking intellectual giants like Thomas Jefferson and dragging him through the postmodern mud; by equating Bush with Hitler; or the behavior of the Palestinians with the behavior of the Israelis; the actions of the U.S. military with the actions of the Islamofanatic terrorist thugs-- the left is desperately trying to numb the mind of the West. Who are we to judge? they scream, desperately trying to prevent history from judging their own unbelievable and pathological destructiveness, their own morally repugnant behavior and ideology.

This is their quest. To establish themselves as the arbiters of moral behavior by behaving immorally; of being "reality-based" without the necessity of having to acknowledge reality; of speaking "truth" to power, without being capable of recognizing truth (isn't all truth relative, after all?).

Just as the Saudis have let the wahabbi religious fundamentalism genie out of the bottle, inflicting it on Islam; so too has the political left let loose the genie of postmodern moral relativism onto Western civilization. The two genies have much in common since both work in tandem to destroy the human mind and spirit. Islamic fundamentalism is actively destroying millions by its soul-murdering ideology; while postmodern nihilists apologize and enable the barbarians at the gate , even as they destroy the very ideas that built the gate in the first place and which offers the only hope for liberating those millions from the boot of fanatical oppression.

If only these postmodern vampires, sucking the lifeblood from Western civilization, could look in the mirror! Would they see the monsters they have let themselves become--or would they see the nothingness reflected by their empty, meaningless souls?

They elevate clowns like Hugo Chavez; swoon over despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro; have champagne toasts with fruitcakes like Kim Jung Il. And they admire and promulgate the propaganda of the worse barbarians and murderers in history. They fail to consider the logical inconsistency of their own relativistic arguments: all truth is relative, they say; but then they would have no basis upon which to assert that their "truth" (i.e., postmodernism) is anything but rubbish also. If all cultures are good, then why is Western culture uniquely evil?

The political left refuses to look unflinchingly at the consequences of their ideology or their behavior--and, as much as they want to deny it; as much as they demand people like me retract what I am saying, it is their ideas and their precious utopian nihilism that are the problems that must be addressed before we can win the war on terror; before civilization can address the evil in Darfur, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere. The left must be held to account for their malignantly narcissistic behavior. Envy is their dominant emotion; mediocrity and dragging humanity down to the lowest common denominator is their goal; tyranny and oppression is their modus operandi; and the greatest threat to their ideology is human freedom.
And those are precisely the reasons why neoconservative philosophy can rescue the West from the quagmire of moral and cultural nihilism that paralyzes us and limits our ability to fight the enemies of civilization.

President Bush in his 2005 Inaugural Address said:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

These words are what neoconservatism stands for in the truest sense. It acknowledges the reality of human nature, both the good and the bad; but chooses the good; it seeks truth from history and uses it to better the world now--not by imposing useless utopian fantasies, but by supporting human freedom and individuality and opposing tyranny wherever it is found; it recognizes that all men and women are entitled to life, libery and the pursuit of happiness; and it understands that freedom is often messy and chaotic, while tyranny is orderly and deadening to the human soul.

Neoconservative philosophy represents the beginnings of a neo-rationalism that just might be able to offer new solutions for the intractable problems that have followed us into the 21st century.

By proudly reclaiming the history of Western Civilization, which has been built slowly with great idea after great idea; and which always strives for the good, but is never perfect; neoconservatism remains the only antidote for anti-reality, anti-mind, anti-truth postmodern relativism.

More neoconservatism, please, and faster.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson perceives the same crisis of the soul that I am talking about:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

UPDATE III: Comments on this post are now terminated. Clearly some people have nothing better to do than to waste their time and mine by trying to be obnoxious in the comments when it is clear they haven't a clue what they are talking about. It doesn't happen to be my responsibility to give you chapter and verse of what constitutes neoconservative philosophy--I generally assume my readers have the intellectual capability to read books and have some knowledge about what they are ranting about. Judging by some of the people who arrived via the Daou Report, it seems clear that their brains are so infected with the postmodern virus that they prefer to argue without any knowledge of what constitutes either neoconservatism or postmodernism. It is perfectly clear that they aren't even capable of mounting a rational response of any kind. Typical. I suggest for your reading pleasure--that is if your brains have not completely rotted out from lack of use, that you refer to the books below. Who knows? You might raise that old IQ a few points. OTOH, I would not want your brain to explode, either. Too messy.

A FASCIST BY ANY OTHER NAME

In a very interesting article at the WSJ, Peter Berkowitz suggests a revolutionary idea: "If they can find time for feminist theory, they can find time for Edmund Burke." He correctly notes:

There is no legitimate intellectual justification for this omission. The exclusion of conservative ideas from the curriculum contravenes the requirements of a liberal education and an objective study of political science....

While ignoring conservatism, the political theory subfield regularly offers specialized courses in liberal theory and democratic theory; African-American political thought and feminist political theory; the social theory of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school; and numerous versions of postmodern political theory.

Dennis Praeger in an article from 2007 wrote:

Students at most universities are almost brainwashed into being leftist -- and the way they are taught to disagree with their political opponents is by using ad hominem attacks. Conservatives are described over and over as mean-spirited, war-loving, greedy, bigoted, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, sexist, intolerant and oblivious to human suffering.

Such ad hominem labels are the left's primary rhetorical weapons. So when leftist students are actually confronted with even one articulate conservative, many enter a world of cognitive dissonance. That is one reason why universities rarely invite conservatives to speak: they might change some students' minds.

Which brings me to the definition of the term "fascism". I am going to quote Jonah Goldberg, because I think his book Liberal Fascism is an absolute must-read to understand how the term "fascism" has become distorted by the political left. In fact, we see this distortion on a daily basis in the news today, because the left are particularly anxious to make sure that the use of the term is associated only with the political right. Goldberg's book is actually the countermeasure for this leftist ploy, because it, "rectif(ies) the misunderstanding of what fascism is and to highlight(s) the deep historical, ideological and emotional ties between progressivism (now called liberalism) and fascism:"

Definitions vary wildly among academics. I would argue that’s because they can’t bring themselves to place it squarely on the left side of the ideological spectrum and part of the “revolutionary tradition” starting with the French Revolution. So they come up with these sometimes goofy or unwieldy definitions. Some define it by what it isn’t. Other are simply descriptive, focusing on the “anatomy” of one fascist regime or regimes. One problem with that approach is that it is almost impossible to come up with a description of fascism that would exclude, say, Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Joseph Stalin’s Russia. That’s a dilemma when fascism is supposed to the diametrical opposite of Communism. Many simply ignore the problem and keep moving. Gilbert Allardyce, a prominent scholar of fascism, put it well when he said “Put simply, we have agreed to use the word without agreeing how to define it.”

I’ve got a long definition in the book, but a short one would be an instinctual religious impulse - usually gussied-up as a secular or modern ideology - that seeks to impose uniformity in thought and action throughout the entire society. All oars in a fascistic society must pull together. The personal is political because everything goes together. Political correctness is one name we give to such efforts in civil society.

Political correctness and its accompanying identity politics, with race and resentment are on display 24/7, particularly in the Age of Obama.

It wasn't that long ago that a firestorm of criticism erupted because of the use of the term Islamo-fascism. This criticism was led by leading news organizations in the U.S. , in spite of the obvious fact that the word precisely describes the threat of the religious fanatics of Islam.

Not surprisingly, the association of their religion with the term 'fascism' has angered many in the Muslim world, who see it as branding all Muslims as fascists.

"I think it's despicable," Middle East expert Juan Cole said sometime back. "Linking Islam… with a pejorative term such as fascism is extremely unfair. In fact, it is a form of racism."

Racist is, of course, a non-pejoritive term used to describe anyone who happens to disagree with Professor Cole and the leftist fascists whose only goal is the uniformity of thought and behavior in America. Calling others racist or sexist is trademark tactic to end the discussion.

I suggest my readers check the definition of 'racism'; but last time I looked, a religion was not synonymous with a race. Further, not connecting Islam with the likes of Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Ahmadinejad--and the Mullahs, and all the other jihadist thugs out there is a form of idiocy--not to mention it would probably offend their delicate sensibilities (and Cole wouldn't want to do that!). They see themselves and their millions of followers as the true believers of the religion.

Not linking the political aspirations of these Islamic fanatics to fascism is clearly a form of psychological denial. And not understanding how today's leftist ideology is all about fascism, is willful blindness.

Which brings me back to some fundamental questions that must be answered if America and Western Civilization are to withstand the onslaught of both leftist and Islamic fascism.

The questions are:

Why has the political left abandoned all pretense of the liberal tradition?

Why is it that they say one thing and do the opposite?

Why have they been able to delude themselves into thinking that they are "reality-based" and "progressive"?

Why have they struggled so fiercely and angrily to impede and undermine this country's ability to fight Islamofascism, while at the same time enabling the terrorists and their plotting?

For all these questions, there is one unifying answer: Postmodernism.

Reality, truth, reason, consistency, integrity and almost all the values of the Enlightenment that I discussed in this post have been abandoned--cheaply surrendered--by the intellectual elites of Western Civilization. (also discussed here , here and here for the interested)

Victor Davis Hanson once made this observation aabout the Europeans:

Europe boldly produces films about assassinating an American president, and routinely disparages the Church that gave the world the Sermon of the Mount, but it simply won’t stand up for an artist, a well-meaning Pope, or a ranting filmmaker when the mob closes in. The Europe that believes in everything turns out to believe in nothing.

And his comments are descriptive as well of the political left, whose members long ago embraced postmodernism; and whose ideology is inculcated and force fed to several generations now in the very classrooms that Berkowitz writes about. Indeed, so pervasive is this leftist religion, that it has percolated down into the K-12 curriculum. And, in the Age of Obama, this fascist conformity of thought and behavior is proceeding apace.

What the left is teaching our children is to believe in nothing.

The left has essentially reached a philosophical endpoint in the postmodern intellectual journey they began early in the last century, and have arrived at the core nihilism that animates their entire belief system.

Once reason has been rejected; and reason and reality set aside as a basis for human actions, all that is left are the intense feelings that are the twinkling stars of the postmodern emotional universe.

Is it any wonder that the same people who aggressively champion gay rights one minute, will--when it is expedient--throw gays under the bus to score political points? But gays shouldn't feel slighted; they may not have recognized the truth yet, but their candidate is the perfect postmodern demagogue poster boy. He promises every group the moon and feels not the slightest twinge of remorse at the neverending political contradictions he utters.

The question is, why should we expect anyone on the left--least of all their leaders--to behave reasonably? Reason plays no part in their ideology or thought processes, such as they are. Forgetting about the many Democrats who are as corrupt as any Republican they happen to be demonizing at the moment ( excellently documented by SC&A, by the way) is not simply a benign lapse on the part of the left; it is a perfectly acceptable tactic in a conflict where the only goal is power at any price. Full speed ahead; truth be damned.

Or just consider this popular smear tactic at Think Progress Delusionally, used to discredit Norman Podhoretz. Someone should probably mention to these progressive champions of truth and logic that making an historical analogy is not the same thing as an ad hominem attack.

Only people without a lick of insight, self-awareness, honesty, or even a rudimentary sense of humor could ignore or forget the rampant Bush=Hitler meme that dominated their side of the political spectrum for eight long years; and engage in the criticism of Podhoretz in such a self-righteous and ridiculous post. But, they don't need no stinkin' facts: they're from the left, and anyone who disagrees with them threatens their utopia of uniformity.

The breathtaking hypocrisy simply boggles the mind; but it is all part and parcel of the postmodern rhetoric of leftist nothings.

Postmodernism is nothing more than intellectual nihilism dressed up in academic robes. If someone ever wrote a history of psychological denial, the philosophy of postmodernism, which burst on the human scene about half a century ago, would undoubtedly have a special place.

The use of postmodern rhetoric is usually a desperate attempt on the part of the person in denial when he recognizes that logic, reason, and reality actually argue against his beliefs or purposes. This strategy can often take the form of redefining or distorting language and ideas so that they conform to ones pre-existing attitudes and emotions.

EXAMPLE: "Everything is relative anyway."

EXAMPLE: "Objective truth does not exist"

EXAMPLE: "Truth is relative and my feelings are just as important as your facts."

EXAMPLE: "My reality is just as significant as yours"

EXAMPLE: "Reality is an illusion."


In the end, they all serve to facilitate today's left in their unwillingness to confront the evil that threatens civilization. Axis of Evil? Don't make them laugh. They are the anchors of the Axis of See-No-Evil. They would like you to believe that the only evil confronting the world is George Bush and have no problem equating George Bush and conservatives with fascism. But connecting Islam with fascism? Connecting their polices to fascism? That's really, really offensive. And mean. And, of course, racist.

Projection, anyone?

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit is correct: this is absolutely outrageous and completely insane. The left and their catamite media suck-ups are so heavily into denial and projection in the age of Obama, that they live in an alternate, fantasy universe. What did I just say above? They would like you to believe that the only evil confronting the world is George Bush and have no problem equating George Bush and conservatives with fascism. The problem is that they are the ones promoting a fascist ideology that demands complete uniformity of thought and behavior--it's no wonder that the idea of Islamic sharia appeals to them so much.

UPDATE II: Boy, the enviro-fascists must be really PISSED!