Being the raging Narcissists they are, I’m surprised Leftists don’t have a Come-To-Jesus moment when they look in their well-utilized mirrors because, as has become Old Wisdom by now, we all realize that, whatever the Left is accusing the Right of doing, is what they themselves are doing.
Over in the Comments section of a post at Legal Insurrection, commentators fulldroolcup and n.n explain this condition very nicely:
Funny how the Left mocks “anti-science” on the right[,] yet embraces homeopathy, acupuncture, rolfing, Freudianism, pyramid power harmonic convergence, arthritis bracelets, Feng Shui, and all the other nostrums of the past 100 years.
And to add to that list, there’s the most ridiculous one of all: Scientific Socialism.
Nate Silver said the other day, “I believe in intellectual progress – that we, as a species, are gradually becoming smarter.”
So I suppose that’s Darwinism on steroids, the idea that a species as a whole is getting smarter after a few generations of progressivism. Maybe he can explain why so many Americans don’t share in those mysterious progressive genes. Or maybe he just takes the average IQs of “The Smart People aka Progressives” and averages them against conservative troglodytes.
And…
They also believe in following rainbows, despite the fact that a pot of gold has never been discovered. That has resulted in the death and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people in the last century alone.
Indeed. Well over one hundred million people have died at the hands of these multicolored Totalitarians.
But these searchers for a pot of gold have also wrecked havoc in another way in other nations [most especially in The West]: applying Scientific Socialism in a much more subtle way.
In his book, We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, Matthew Spalding writes:
Progressives also insisted that change had to be directed according to new scientific methods of politics. In order to reconcile these seemingly contradictory objectives—allowing more democratic opinion and at the same time directing and managing that change—the progressives posited a sharp distinction between popular politics and what they called “administration.” Politics would remain the realm of expressing popular opinions (hence the need for democratic reforms to better reflect those opinions), but the real decisions and details of governing would be handled by administrators, separated and immune from the influence of opinion and partisan politics.
These administrators would be in charge of running a new form of government, designed to keep up with the expanding ends of government, called “the administrative state.” Where the Founders went to great lengths to moderate democracy and limit government, the progressives believed that barriers to change had to be removed or circumvented to speed popular change and grow government. Likewise, emphasis would be placed not on a separation of powers (which divided and checked government power) but rather a combination of powers (which would concentrate and direct government power) in order to bring about reform, consistent with the popular will.
The particulars of accomplishing the broad objectives of reform—the details of regulation and many rule-making functions previously left to legislatures—were given over to a permanent class of government bureaucrats trained in the new science of progressive ideas. This ruling class of bureaucrats would reside in the recesses of endless agencies like the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission), or OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Their decisions, mostly unseen and beyond public scrutiny, were to be based on scientific facts rather than political opinions. The theory was that, as “objective” and “neutral” experts, these administrators would act above petty partisanship and faction to responsibly serve the long-term objectives of the nation’s social programs.
The result is that many of the actual decisions of lawmaking and public policy—decisions previously the constitutional responsibility of elected legislators—are delegated to unaccountable bureaucrats in administrative agencies. While these agencies call their laws “rules,” there is no doubt that they have the full force and effect of law as if they were passed by Congress. Today, when Congress writes legislation, it uses very broad language that essentially turns legislative power over to agencies, which are also given the authority of executing and adjudicating violations of their regulations in particular cases. In sum, while seemingly advocating more democracy, in practice progressive liberalism wants the opposite: more centralized government authority exercised by government bureaucrats.
The constantly changing structure of the administrative state requires dynamic management to keep it moving forward, of course, and so the new thinkers developed their own concept of “leadership” to complete their theory of government. If the times are constantly changing, and the constitutional system must always move to adapt to that change, there must be a role for those who have the foresight and ability to lead the nation in the new directions of history, keeping ahead of popular opinion and always pointing the nation toward its future development. This clarity of vision and unity of direction—of rhetorical inspiration combined with strong political management—is to be provided especially by vigorous presidential leadership.
In this new conception of the state, government is unlimited, subject only to the perceived wants of the popular will, under the forward-looking guidance of progressive leadership. Its form is administrative and bureaucratic, run more and more by government experts and bureaucrats not subject to popular consent. The objective of this new theory is to turn government into a dynamic, evolving rational state, constantly changing and growing to achieve more Progress.
Of course, as we clearly have seen, those governments of The West that have adopted this Smiley-Faced Socialism end-up being neither dynamic nor rational nor growing; they do change, but for the worst. This form of Leftism is but a slower-growing type of parasite.
While nations such as Russia and China experienced the harsh version of Scientific Socialism, others like Great Britain, France, Greece, and The United States have experience this subtler version.
With Leftism, you always have to pierce the facade presented to you and look underneath it to see exactly what is going on. Always remember that. I have been studying Leftist thinking since I was in my teens in the 1970′s and it took me a long time to understand that fact, but I had the luxury of time — now, none of us do.
