— by Odysseus
Leftist movements, their leaders, and their voters are not a unified group. Although they all use the same language, the different blocs amongst the leftists hear different meanings when the same language is spoken. This is one of the reason why so-called conservative rhetoricians have such difficulty in crafting persuasive arguments to the contrary. In reality, each leftist bloc is uniquely vulnerable because of its own perceptions and motivations, rather than solely because of the actual language used in leftist dialectic.
The key distinction is between the leftists who are naifs and those who are knaves. The naifs actually believe leftist policy pronouncements, and, for these people, the policy pronouncements are rhetoric. In contrast, much of the leftist leadership is composed of knaves, who know perfectly well that the enactment of their proposed policies will not actually achieve their stated goals — which are often impossibilities — but they will further a hidden agenda that the knaves want to pursue. The knaves recognize that their rhetoric and stated positions are merely propaganda. Thus, an argument that points out the fallibility and outright silliness of leftist proposals when given real world application can be effective on the naifs’ , albeit deeply distressing to the naifs, but have zero effect on the knaves. They will simply look for a way to silence the dissent. After all, they already know it does not work, and want to prevent the naifs from catching on to their fraudulent schemes.
The central logical fallacy common to all modern leftist propaganda is its mistaken axiom that confers upon the underdog moral superiority. The naive followers of leftist dogma are particularly vulnerable to the underdog narrative. They automatically confer a moral righteousness upon the underdog or his cause, without any further examination of either the likely outcome if his cause is successful or the underdog’s actions and behavior. It is as though the mere status of being benighted absolves the underdog of all moral, ethical, intellectual, economic or social responsibility for his actions.
This single principle explains the left’s hypocrisy and seemingly incoherent, illogical, and schizophrenic selection of its causes célèbres. How can the left staunchly advocate for the rights of homosexuals and women, while simultaneously serving as apologists for Islamic fanatics who have no regard for the former? Given the left’s proclaimed love for the previously-mentioned social liberties, democracy, freedom of the press, shrinking the wealth gap between rich and poor, and egalitarianism, why does the left condemn Israel, a very liberal democracy, while apologizing for reactionary Arab theocracies? How can the left be a staunch defender of freedom of speech and resistance to governmental authority when they are done by black Americans, and yet full of virulent hatred for white Americans who question government authority or oppose political correctness? How can the global left continue to support Islamic terror groups that rain rocket fire down on civilian targets in Israel yet condemn specifically targeted drone strikes on Islamic military targets by western powers?
When it comes to social spending, namely taxing the productive to give handouts to the non-productive, why do leftists never expect responsible behavior from the recipient of the handouts? Why are there never enough reports of abuse, fraud, misconduct, and graft, in all the multifarious social welfare programs, to make leftists question the efficacy of any social program? The common thread of it all is that naive leftists are utterly blinded by compassion for the perceived underdog. The naive leftists feel sorry for any underdog, regardless of the underdog’s actual behavior, and the mere status as underdog then confers immunity from scrutiny. Naive leftists are particularly vulnerable to the “little bully”.
A “little bully” is one who uses his small stature and the compassion of society, not a shield, but as a weapon. He can punch, strike or kick any larger man with impunity because, if the larger man defends himself, the “little bully” can then scream for help that he is being abused by the large man. Misplaced compassion then drives society to come to the little aggressor’s defense. Naive leftists ignorantly shield the little aggressor from the consequences of his action, thereby encouraging his further bad behavior.
While, in this specific example, it is not terribly unreasonable for society to somewhat restrain the larger man, even though he is in the right, because the consequences of his full wrath would be disproportionate to the injury he likely suffered, that restraint quickly becomes unreasonable when the type and nature of the little bully’s attacks increase in severity. What if the little bully is using a knife? What if the little bully killed the other man’s dog? What if the little bully stabbed the larger man’s wife or child? Does society still have the right to stay the larger man’s hand just because he has superior power in a direct confrontation? The same principle applies writ large to groups of “little bullies” where their underdog actions should quickly become unforgivable.
Leftist naifs do not recognize that an underdog can be evil. It is not that leftists do not believe in evil, it is that they cannot recognize the underdog as being evil. Thus, the moment an evildoer is imprisoned, he is most of the way to achieving the protected, underdog status. If he goes on to demonstrate that he has long been the underdog, by being poor, small, weak, and vulnerable, naive leftists will quickly forget heinous nature of his acts, even if he is Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, the surviving mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombing.
To naive leftists, Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, regardless of who it is threatening to use them against, simply because Iran is not as big or wealthy as the United States, China, Russia, or England. To the naifs, any group of people which are perceived as disadvantaged should be allowed to riot, loot, destroy, rape, and pillage with but minimal consequences, a dispensation they would never grant to those they perceive as powerful, influential or wealthy. Mass atrocities and the murder of hundreds of thousands by former colonial nations engender little more than a “tsk, tsk” from the global left, yet the destruction of a single Qu’ran in Guantanamo by the United States sparks global outrage in leftist corners. From Vietnam to Rwanda, from Rhodesia to Ireland, from the German Baader Meinhoff gang to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, from Joseph Kenyatta to Salvador Allende, viciousness has sought out and successfully worn the protective cloak of the underdog. Atrocities by the Apache, the Viet Cong, the Mao Mao, the Irish Republican Army, Sindero Luminoso, Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe are all either somehow forgivable or overlooked entirely. The moral double standard arises from the leftist naifs’ inability to recognize the underdog’s capacity for evil. The evil little bullies of the world have well learned this lesson and know how to capitalize upon it.
The leftist knave leadership knows this blind spot and how to capitalize on it as well. This is what sets knave leftists apart from naive leftists. Every leftist dictator wannabe and greedy leftist con-artist who seeks to enrich himself at the public trough uses this as well. He both proclaims himself and his followers to be the underdog and, in his rhetoric, pledges to use any power conferred upon him to help another underdog. Precisely who these other underdogs are, that he claims to desire to assist, varies from country to country and from time to time, but the style and structure of the knaves’ cynical appeal remains the same.
The magic performed by the leftist knave leader is that, by conferring underdog status upon himself, any action he or his minions take to acquire power becomes excusable. Likewise, any actions, no matter how depraved, committed by the group he proposes to help, are also given a pass because they are underdogs. His followers give themselves a moral pass on every disgusting, dishonest, reprehensible or even heinous act they perform on his behalf because they also wear the cloak of the underdog. This moral slippery slope is so attractive to the followers that, in the end, they begin to use the moral cover not only for their actions in direct support of their leftist knave leader, but for their own personal gain. After all, their needs must be met so they can continue to support the greater cause.
From the global communist social movements to the members of revolutionary governments to the Nazi atrocities, the common thread is the “switching off” of normal moral expectations when applied to the perceived underdog. Only conservatives were outraged when a Louisiana Democrat congressman, William J. Jefferson, was discovered to have secreted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, hidden in his freezer. Conversely, the Democratic Party, as a whole, is not ashamed that one of their Congressmen from Florida, Alcee Hastings, was an impeached and convicted, corrupt former judge. Neither are their naifs and knave allies in the media infotainment industry.
Limousine liberals, who come from pampered backgrounds, are particularly likely to be naifs who buy into the syrupy language of underdog worship. Their backgrounds of privilege kept them from any personal dealings with any underdogs so they buy into a false nobility projected by popular entertainment or the propaganda of the leftist knave class. From the comfort of their penthouses, their academic ivory towers or their gated communities, they imagine all sorts of underdogs as gentle, wise, and selfless monks who live lives of imposed asceticism. Even when forced by factual events that prove the underdogs to be greedy, cruel, violent, opportunists, limousine liberal naifs cast themselves into the role of patrician parent and excuse monstrous behavior as the uninformed actions of a child-like innocent, incapable of knowing the wrongness of his acts. This soft racial imperialism destroys any possibility of rational justice and, simultaneously, deprives underdogs of even the dignity of consideration as a rational human being who capable of making adult choices, not that evil underdogs are not happy to be excused from all moral responsibility.
When crafting rhetoric to expose the unworkability and speciousness of leftist proposals and propaganda, the conservative rationalist must be aware that he is speaking to different groups. The naifs of either limousine liberal variety or kindly school teacher variety are motivated by genuine, but misguided compassion. The knaves are merely using leftist rhetoric to enhance their own wealth, power or agenda, and are, therefore, not amenable to persuasion by any argument about efficacy since it is irrelevant to them. Neither is the self-perceived or labeled underdog willing to voluntarily relinquish his social sword/shield. The only people to whom such an argument is even worth making is to the naifs, and, even so, it must be carefully couched to the delicacy of their compassion. The argument must be as much an emotional argument as an intellectual one since they are compassion-driven. They must be convinced to understand that leftist proposals are not only unhelpful, but actually hurtful in their long term outcome. Then, lastly, the conservative rationalist will need to overcome the plaintive cry of naifs upon losing their argument, “that’s true, but we have to do something!”
At home and around the globe, conservatives must puncture the myth of the angelic underdog. This is both the most important and the most achievable objective. All humans can recognize moral deficiency, and it is only through rhetorical obfuscation, that their moral vision is clouded. The liberal knave mesmerizers, who use “circle talk” to distract people from experiencing moral outrage, must be called out in any debate, exposing their sleight of hand tactics. When applicable, the underdog must be roundly condemned as both evil AND an underdog in order to show all that the two are not mutually exclusive. If this is done often enough and with logic as well as emotion, the cult of the blameless underdog can be broken. Only then will human ethical discourse resume its progress of rational development.