Why Will Leftists Not “Live and Let Live”?

Someone close to me had a great friend who lived through the Stalinist times in Ukraine. She said that when she was a little girl, her father made the whole family go to bed every evening fully clothed, coat, shoes, and all. One night she found out why.

Secret police came to her home in the darkness and unceremoniously forced the family out. They were then compelled to go on a long march in the bitter winter cold. They suffered, but, prepared, they survived. Many did not.

The history of leftism reveals that its adherents don’t settle for half a loaf. They want complete control, everywhere, all the time. And, metaphorically speaking, they take no prisoners. (Literally speaking, they take a lot.) On Tuesday, commentator J.B. Shurk examined reasons for this mentality.

“Why must leftists conquer entire nations?” he asked in his opening sentence. And, “Why do they get so angry at anyone who resists their ideology? Why can’t they just build a new nation filled entirely with fellow leftists?”

This would be a bit as how libertarians launched the Free State Project in 2001. They were encouraging co-ideologists to move to New Hampshire to create a truly libertarian state.

But leftists don’t do likewise. They’re not satisfied to rally fellow travelers to, let’s say, settle in California and forge a thoroughly socialist state. In fact, liberals often move to conservative states, attracted by the lower taxes/cost of living and generally better social environment.

What Is Leftism?

Later on, Shurk tries answering his introductory questions, writing:

Leftism is, first and foremost, an ideology of grievance. Its devotees don’t have principles. They have targets. They tell their minions whom to blame for their miseries and failures. They encourage their brainwashed followers to steal what they want and to burn everything else down. As is currently visible amid the ruins of war-torn France, leftism is destruction.

That is why leftists can’t just relocate en masse to Canada or carve out a new nation in some scarcely settled part of Africa, South America, Australia, or Asia. Leftism doesn’t build; it takes. It doesn’t inspire; it blames. Without an “oppressor” to vilify, leftism devours itself.

Speaking of France, this certainly was apparent during that great left-wing conflagration, the French Revolution. That bloody affair began eating its own, killing revolutionaries themselves. Then, afraid they’d be next, some of these leftists executed none other than one of the revolution’s leading figures, Maximilien Robespierre.

But what Shurk gets at is this: Today’s so-called “leftism” is not an ideology as much as a process. It is the process of ever trying to change the status quo, whatever the latter may be. (Note: “Conservatism” is also a process, that of ever trying to preserve the status quo.) Thus, for example, will leftists transition from fighting to establish women’s sports to fighting to effectively de-establish them by allowing “trans” males to compete.

(Second note: This “fighting the man” ends the moment leftists achieve complete power — for then they are the status quo.)

And don’t think you can just “agree to disagree” or say “Don’t go away angry — just go away” to the leftists, warns Shurk. As he also states:

But peaceful separation is impossible because leftists cannot permit jurisdictions outside of their control to succeed. When free societies prosper, Marxist-socialist and communist societies are exposed as authoritarian, joyless, poor, and weak. Leftism is so at odds with human nature that its proponents cannot allow those they enslave to witness a reality free from misery.

Otherwise, leftism’s enslaved masses will risk their lives to climb over walls, trek through mountains, or cross oceans just to feel what it is like to be free. In the Soviet Union and East Germany, the communists built walls, not to keep illegal immigrants out, but rather to keep unhappy citizens in. Nobody breaks into the leftist “paradises” of communist Cuba or China; millions, however, have fled communist regimes. People escape from leftism and run toward freedom.

What this means is that leftists will never leave us alone. They will take from us, abuse us, censor us, persecute us, imprison us, and even kill us. But they will never peacefully separate from us.

My, it sounds like a toxic relationship with a narcissist. Yet still more could be said.

A Deeper Dive

While many question leftists’ sincerity, in reality, many really do feel true passion, and some others fake it. And what makes them all tick?

Well, a paraphrase of philosopher G.K. Chesterton applies here:

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

Leftists are not “true soldiers” by this definition. The reason why they so often accuse others of being “hateful” is projection: They themselves are driven by hate.

They then assume that they reflect the norm (because they couldn’t possibly be “abnormal”; perish the thought). Consequently, others must also then reflect this norm.

And what motivates this left-wing anger? One factor could be that they believe their very happiness is at stake. (Just consider here the women who broke down crying when President Donald Trump was elected. Their emotion ran deep.) Studies have illustrated leftists’ unhappiness and, externalizing, they blame others for it.

As a result, the feminist may believe she can’t be happy unless the “patriarchy” is destroyed.

The racialist may suppose he can’t be happy unless “systemic racism” is purged root and branch.

The environmentalist may fancy he can’t be happy unless “degrowth,” population reduction, and net-zero carbon emissions become reality.

The multiculturalist may be certain he can’t be happy unless Western norms are “deconstructed.”

The sexual devolutionary may believe __ (fill in the pronoun) can’t be happy unless “heteronormativity” is overthrown.

And the list goes on.

These people constitute the activist class and part of the left-wing rank and file. They are true believers, even if not true soldiers.

The Machiavellians

Then there are those who use them — the fakers. These are the politicians who entered politics for all the wrong reasons, which, tragically, amount to the most common reason.

That is, we all know that people can lust after money, sex, or food. These are motivations we can relate to because it’s natural for man to have desires in those areas. (Hopefully, though, it’s not to a disordered degree.) Yet just as people can lust after those things, so can they crave power. Those in this obsession’s grip will do anything to get power, too. And just as a greedy man’s lust for money may know no bounds, so may a megalomaniacal politician’s lust for power.

Of course, these demagogues use the true-believer leftists to gain control. But the point is that neither group will accept half a loaf. If you believe your happiness depends on destroying _____, you’ll want it purged coast to coast. And if power is your drug, limited fixes won’t be enough. You always want a higher dose.

Whatever the motivation, though, what’s clear is that as with the Pinkertons, leftists “never sleep.” And as to what they want, the answer is ever and always the same: more.