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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Just for clarity (and to be annoying), I want to add: while Leftists do seem to hate America and the West, what they really hate is not being in total control of it.

Since the good ol' days of Karl Marx (of blessed memory), angry "intellectuals" have been concocting radical theories in which they posit themselves as an enlightened priesthood who can midwife an egalitairian utopia, if only given total power.

(Marx was best nailed by his rival Bakunin in "Statism and Anarchy": "The words 'learned socialist' and 'scientific socialism,' which recur constantly in the writings and speeches of the Lassalleans and Marxists, are proof in themselves that the pseudo-popular state will be nothing but the highly despotic government of the masses by a new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The people are not learned, so they will be liberated in entirety from the cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd. A fine liberation!")

This also explains the odd historical episode that seems to have been memory-holed, the multiple generations of free Western scholars who gave their hearts and souls to the Soviet Union, a brutal dictatorship that would have silenced them or worse if they'd actually lived there. But what they admired about the Soviets was the power it gave to theorists and commissars to inflict their plans on a subjugated populace—the Soviets may have killed many many profs, but at least they took them seriously!

And the same goes now with the Western Left's pimping for Islamism: whoever most hates their enemies (the bourgeois Westerners who run our societies and the people who vote for them) is their friend, and whoever can provide the frisson of revolutionary hatred (their real addiction) is their spiritual guide. What Western Leftists most want is to feel righteous and powerful and to be able to punish their perceived enemies—whether in the name of Marxism or Islamism is secondary.

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Lynn Edwards's avatar

I love FIRE but I'm ok if citizens have more rights than legal residents.

The amount of federal money in colleges seems outlandish--I don't have much sympathy for Columbia.

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