Some Hard Questions for the Hard Left

A few hard questions for the pro-socialist 'dupes' out there:

If America were truly as imperialist and colonialist as most socialists claim, then why didn't it use the H-bomb prior to 1949 to conquer foreign nations? Or why hasn't the U.S. taken over Canada? Or why hasn't it taken over Mexico, instead of allowing Mexicans to immigrate unimpeded?

Or why does America liberate every people whose nation it goes to war with? In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is fighting brutal, ruthless enemies and trying to liberate and protect people, and the American military, and its leadership, are excoriated by the left for doing it! Does the left enjoy seeing people enslaved and terrorized?

Or why is it that every nation America defeats in war or liberates does better than it did prior to that war? Japan and South Korea are the obvious examples. Japan was demolished by the U.S., with firebombing and nuclear bombs, and then was rebuilt and protected by the U.S. military. Fifty years later, American manufacturers struggle to compete with innovative Japanese firms.

In South Korea, south of 38th parallel, we see from photos taken from outer space at night a brightly-lit peninsula. To the North, we see a dark, desolate gulag-state with a tiny pinpoint in the PyongYang palace of Kim Jong-Il.

We can also add to this short list America's participation in the Normandy invasion, its subsequent protection of West Germany (and France) from the Soviet army, and the obviously positive effects of the Marshall Plan in regenerating Europe after World War II.

Or how can liberals claim to be so smart, while most are unable or pathologically unwilling to see America in an accurate historical context? I will proffer an answer to the last question.

The answer is two-fold. "Progressives" have a deep-seated aversion to history, believing that each 'moment' can be reinvented regardless of prior history. It might even be conceived that they view cause and effect itself as a type of "prison." In addition, their Marxist worldview prevents them from admitting that America could ever do anything good.

To expand on the this, Marxist theory provides the doctrinaire prism through which leftists shoot all their ideas. Marxism, and its offspring, provides a kind of mental security blanket, presumably enhancing "elites'" claims to intellectual superiority. In a way, the sheer bizarreness of their worldview edifies their sense of exclusive insight and separates themselves from the 'unenlightened' masses in their esteem.

Marxism thus leads to the perception on the part its adherent that he is participating in a type of struggle through which he will gain meaning and importance. In this way, it is very much like a cult; a godless, utopian millenarian cult. This is very important in the "post-God" Nietzschean world of the New Left, whose spiritual anomie led disaffected intellectuals to found a new religion, one that they could develop from scratch and mold, one that would be "scientific" in scope and methods of conversion.

Marxian elites distinguish themselves from the masses. That is, they differentiate between those to be mind-manipulated, and themselves, the presumed masterminds (and one has to give the 'dupes' credit for their sheer destructiveness and capability of leading millions to death and enslavement). Thus the "theory" does not hold in all cases, disproving itself. If millionaire Democrats can be socialists, and those in all social "classes" can be pro-capitalist, the theory makes no sense. The material (meaning degree of wealth) explanation for the world's ills is debunked.

In sum, Marxism and its offshoots feed a sense of narcissism and increasing radicalism; as Marxists' demands can never be fulfilled in the real world, they push harder and harder to make reality conform to their ideology; this of course requires that they be given more power and more control.

Thus, in a sick kind of way, America, as the most successful and powerful country of the world becomes inherently the main problem in the mind of the Marxist. All of the backwards and despotic nations, whose failed economic and political models are evident to the student of history, are attributed to the United States by necessity. America must be colonialist, imperialist, and worse, even if its history proves otherwise (thus the neologisms "neo-colonialist" and "neo-imperialist").

Additionally, a capitalist America cannot be admitted by the left as capable of doing good because this would mean by implication that people have free will and agency to choose good over evil. In other words, economics or material reality could not determine behavior in the way that Marx describes. And if it is the case that a capitalist America can do good, then how could the Marxist worldview be true? Who would be to blame systemically for the world's problems, and how could we as a collective change the world?

The emotionally indigestible and even unfathomable answer for the leftist is that we are all individuals, and the battle between good and evil is a personal one. We must all wage that battle alone, with help from others, of course, and with direct accountability to our consciences or God. The full import of this truth fills the leftist with existential anguish; because of his atheist, collectivist worldview, he cannot emotionally accept such a reality.