The collectivist side of the political spectrum is in serious trouble these days. Their polling is dropping like a stone, along with voter registration, and they are in a cash flow crisis. Even worse for them is the fact that these are just superficial indications of endemic problems that cannot be fixed. Two of these threaten to bring down the entire edifice. Closely examining these helps explain the left, and show why the left is doomed.
Their attitude is typified by a line in the New Republic:
We’ve seen multiple periods of one-party dominance in our history; we’ve also seen defeated political parties wither and die. Why shouldn’t the Republican Party join them?
It’s always been a common occurrence for a political movement to be at an ebb after a devastating election. However, in the left’s case, these issues span centuries in scope, rooted in the differing political philosophies of the two sides of the spectrum. The result is a crisis that is far worse than a mere electoral loss. One of the worst flaws for the left stems from the basic ethos of its collectivist ideology, which must be founded in force and falsehood.
Leftist Ideologies are centred on force and falsehood.
The pro-freedom right side of the political spectrum is based on liberty and limited government. We may make the severe mistake in straying from that at times — and paying the price — but the foundational elements are based on these important considerations.
The collectivist left side of the spectrum is set in the concept of “equality” and the redistribution of wealth — concepts that require the application of force, since this requires the taking of property from some and passing it out to others, usually in exchange for their votes.
This has been tried for centuries in countless varied forms, and it has never achieved its lofty goals as advertised. Thus, this requires that the left resort to falsehoods.
These two foundational concepts of the left — force and falsehood — go hand in hand and are also its inherent flaws that cannot be fixed. All the happy talk of “equality” and the glorious world of next Tuesday sounds wonderful. But after a while, the Bolshoi wears thin, and the people notice the distinct lack of an omelet for all the eggs being broken.
There is no getting around the left’s use of force to accomplish its lofty goals. “From each according to his abilities” cannot be done without the point of a gun. The second half is easy and works rather well when they’re looking to buy votes; it’s the first part, where they must grab the stuff to hand out, that gets awkward, especially when they’ve been running around talking “peace, love and tolerance” or the current leftist buzzwords of the moment.
Everything redounds from these foundational concepts. If they’re relying on force to take people’s stuff, they want to avoid armed citizens at all costs. This is why they obsess over gun control and gun confiscation. Disarmed serfs are a lot easier to push around and throw into a concentration camp if needed.
Always depending on falsehoods means they need to tightly control the flow of information, and have “friendly media” to “fact-check” their enemies into oblivion.
Since they’ve lost these vital support elements, their movement is dying out. If they can’t arbitrarily disarm the peasants, they are going to rightfully keep their property, and the ever-tolerant lefties aren’t going to be able to use it as a bargaining chip to buy votes. When they don’t have a tight hold on media dominance, false narratives get torn apart by the truth.
Their biggest problem is that these flaws cannot be fixed.
What if they did change? Sure, they could give up their gun confiscation obsession, but that would mean the people would be on an equal footing with them — and they certainly cannot abide that, because they depend on force and intimidation to get their way, seize property, and use that to buy votes. If they can’t buy votes, the people won’t have a reason to vote Democrat, and they will lose.
What if leftists finally confessed to all their lies? Collectivist ideologies depend on lies, and an outright admission on their part that it’s been tried countless times and never worked will put them out of business. All of the ancillary lies would have a multiplying effect. Instead of trusting them, people from this point on would ask the obvious question that if they were lying previously, what guarantees are there that they aren’t still lying? This would completely undermine their ideology. Without lies, they wouldn’t be able to rationalize the mandatory use of force to “equalize” society and buy votes.
These are just two of the left’s intrinsic flaws that will lead to its eventual demise. Loss of media dominance means that leftists’ lies have ever-decreasing effectiveness. And this means they can’t cover up the fact that their collectivist ideology depends on force. Both flaws spell leftist doom.
D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites. Find him on Substack.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.