THE CONTRADICTIONS OF LEFTISM

Old hands will recognize that I am using a favourite Marxist term above. "Contradictions" were supposed to be the fatal flaws in capitalism. There never were in fact any such contradictions, merely tensions. Leftism however is replete with REAL contradictions. Projection at work again

The left, liberals and the academy are schizophrenic. One half of the split personality applies to epistemology, aesthetics and culture. In these areas "progressives" adopt a radically skeptical viewpoint, rejecting the importance of tradition, standards and culture. The ESR blog argues that this is due to Stalinist influence. However, this explanation does not explain the staying power of progressives' disdain for American culture more than a decade after the Soviet Union's fall and more than five decades after Stalin's death.

The other half of the split personality is that when it comes to public policy, the "progressives" adopt an aggressively rationalist stance, arguing that their managerial problem solving skills can solve all problems: from predicting the outcome in the war in Iraq; to running the New York City subway system; to understanding global warming; to understanding abortion; to understanding the optimal way Wal-Mart ought to run itself; to understanding how income taxation will influence capital formation. When it comes to culture, the left, liberals and the academy argue that nothing can matter and that everything is a matter of power, not reason. When it comes to public policy, the left, liberals and the academy argue that their reason is infallible.

Of course, the left's opinion that its reason is infallible is a delusion of grandeur. Hayek called this the left's "fatal conceit". In reality, most everything that the left has attempted to do has failed. Putting aside the mass murder and environmental destruction in the Soviet Union and China, even just limiting the discussion to their influence in the United States, virtually everything that liberals and the left have touched has been destroyed. New York is a shadow of its former self. The welfare system destroyed millions of lives. The health system is a pathetic joke. The education system graduates illiterates. The Federal Reserve Bank caused the depression of the 1930s...

An important reason for liberalism's, the left's, and the academy's fatal conceit is its failure to integrate time into its thinking. Economists tend to use cross sectional or limited time series-based studies to derive conclusions that may depend on many decades' worth of data. Government budgets are based on annual cycles. Decisions made in one year are forgotten only one year later. Revenues can be raised in year one without contemplating the costs in future years. For example, public sector pension funds have tended to use overly aggressive assumptions because such assumptions reduce contributions in year one while others bear the costs in future years.

Liberalism, then, is based on short term thinking and that is a critical difference between those who advocate laissez faire , i.e., those who value individual rights, and advocates of state-based solutions who favor the collective over the individual in the economic realm. The costs of state-based solutions are borne over many decades, in the end destroying the social fiber, the economy, wealth and the community. However, the benefits are typically short run.

Post above lifted from Democracy Project. The writer does not understand why Leftists are so short-sighted and contradictory. Such Leftist characteristics are however diagnostic of a psychopathic personality -- which also features the moral blindness mentioned above

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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