“It was a sickness of the mind, and where sickness
thrives, bad things will follow.”
~ From the movie The
Hobbit
There’s something about movie
theatres that puts me to sleep. I don’t
know if it’s the darkness or if perhaps it’s self-defense against the explosion
of deafening noise spewing forth at me, but it never fails that, despite my
iron resolve to stay awake for the entire movie, I find myself quickly
descending into unconsciousness shortly after the beginning credits are
done. I was on the path of my descent
during the movie The Hobbit when the
semi-conscious blogger in me heard the sage voice of the narrator uttering the
words quoted at the top of this post. Temporarily
roused from my sleepy state, I reached down and began furiously fishing through
my purse in the dark, searching for a scrap of paper and pen to write it down
before I could forget (that’s about a ten-second window for me). Eventually I found what I needed and, under
the wary glare of my husband, I quickly scribbled it down before proceeding on
to my nap.
“It was a sickness of the mind, and where sickness
thrives, bad things will follow.”
There is nothing I love more
than to hear a little gem of truth and wisdom all neatly contained within one
simple little sentence. This is the DNA
of argumentation. It is inarguable, or
as my teenage son would put it, “Boom!”
“...where sickness thrives, bad things will
follow.” 2 + 2 = 4.
Now, the sickness he was referring to was greed, and the
reason it was a problem is because it was the king who was consumed with greed. That’s why, conservatives understand, it
behooves society not to vest power in kings (duh!) or in governments where
people can make themselves king-like (double duh!). No, what occurred to me when I heard “sickness
of the mind” was liberalism. I guess I
have thought of it this way for so long now that I assume it to be an accepted
fact among all conservatives, but recently I learned that I am sadly mistaken.
Not long ago a conservative
blogger friend of mine wrote a post urging republicans not to villainize the
Left, but to instead accept liberalism as just a different political
philosophy. A wrong-headed philosophy,
perhaps, but still one that is generally rooted in good intentions. Believing that it is the nasty tone adopted
by the “Angry Right” that’s scaring liberals away, he suggested we embrace a
strategy of polite persuasion instead.
I don’t mean to pick on my
friend. He’s not alone in his thinking;
in fact his feelings are probably shared by a majority of republicans. But I could not disagree more on either his
view of liberalism or his suggested strategy for dealing with it. A true understanding of liberalism would make
clear why polite persuasion not only will never succeed, but has failed to
succeed for the better part of a century now.
It is not our bad manners but our collective failure to expose
liberalism for what it really is – a sickness of the mind – that has brought us
to the current state.
If you want to understand the
difference between conservatism and liberalism, skip the political section at
your library and head to the psychology department. Liberalism and conservatism have to do with state of mind, and it is the state of
mind that leads to the choice of politics, not the other way around. There is a reason that, despite the enormous
odds against it, liberals and conservatives are at odds on virtually everything: social policy, gun control, the role of
government, entitlements, the environment, national security, immigration, etc.,
etc., etc. This fact alone is evidence that something is amiss.
Why? Because 2 + 2 is not adding
up to 4, that’s why. It simply is not
possible that people with the same ultimate motives would adopt such polar
opposite attitudes to everything that is of importance to this nation. Find the explanation for that and you will understand
the real difference between liberals and conservatives.
Here’s where the discussion
gets a little complicated, as I try to compress into one paragraph an
explanation of what should easily take an entire series of books. The driving
force behind all classes of liberalism is psychological immaturity. Among other things this manifests itself in
the push towards socialism as people either look to be taken care of at the
expense of others, they seek power over others, they wish to see themselves as
the benefactors of others, or some combination of the three. Regardless of which it is, the motivating
forces are the same: there’s either the
wish to be taken care of or the desire to gratify one’s own ego through power
and/or self-congratulation. And yes,
there are always those who simply have chosen their “team” (democrat), but who
could argue that this isn’t immature as well?
And that is the
sickness: the absence of a properly
developed maturity of mind. The traits
that we frequently see in liberals are ones that we often associate with
children. They are often habitually
dishonest and hypocritical, they cheat, they bully others to get their way,
they engage in tantrums (i.e. riots), they seek adulation and they engage in childish
idealism. Liberals, particularly those in
the elitist ranks like Barack Obama, exhibit an absence of conscience that
enables them to engage in behaviors that conservatives generally would not. And therein lies the key to understanding why
a strategy of polite persuasion will never succeed. We have vastly different motivations. Trying to win them over with persuasion would
be analogous to an air traffic controller on 9-11shouting advice to the
hijackers on how to avoid crashing. The ATC
wants to save the plane and passengers. The
hijackers want to be martyrs. They are
not going to be persuaded by the ATC’s advice.
As I watched The Hobbit (yes I did eventually wake
up) I was struck by how easy it was to tell who the good guys were and who the
bad guys were. Cute little Hobbits with big,
hairy feet – good. Nasty looking Orcs
with open sores and rotting teeth – bad.
It’s easy to recognize danger on the silver screen. In real life, however, the danger we face is hidden
in the faces of people who look pretty much like us. Such handy camouflage often makes it
difficult to see others as a danger and to confront them. Conservatives’ homage to the rules of
civility and polite debate have made us unwitting accomplices to the advance of
liberalism, as playing along with the charade of liberalism as a noble pursuit only emboldens them.
As we wrestle with our
demoralization from recent defeats, now is not the time to play nice. In fact, the time to play nice with those who
would destroy this nation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was never. No, I’m not suggesting we grab our swords and
axes and go after liberals the way the hobbits fought back against the
Orcs. But it is time to pull aside the
smiling masks of people like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and others,
and reveal the snarling, hideous Orcs underneath. And the way this is done is to lay bare the true
motives behind liberalism – the search for ego gratification, the quest for
superiority, the pursuit of power and control, and the desire to take what
belongs to someone else. That is the only path to success, in my humble opinion.
~CW
~CW
