John C. Wright, in his final piece of a four part essay titled Restless Heart of Darkness, is skewering modern leftist thought:
It is not the courtesy which prevents a gentleman from discussion divisive matters at family gatherings (remember how Mr Obama wanted the Progressives to ruin Thanksgiving and Christmas by having them proselytize his health care scheme to their ungood thoughtcriming kinfolk?); it is not a admission of one’s own lack of qualifications to have an opinion in the matter, for the Progressive does not shut up when he is ignorant of the facts, he gains confidence and talks louder; it is not frustration that their enemies will not listen to reason, for reason IS the enemy; nor is it because the matter is a highly technical topic reserved to experts, nor an ineffable topic reserved to mystics, nor matters of dogma reserved to the faithful, since the topics involve matters of common knowledge and common experience known to the common man.
The unwillingness of the Progressives to discuss their beliefs is because one of their beliefs (the most
outrageously false of all, and most easy to prove false) is that they are superior beings, superior by virtue of their greater intelligence, open-mindedness, higher education, finer sentiments, and greater compassion, surrounded by yowling and filthy yahoos. These Progressives, who have never read a word of Aristotle, much less read him in Greek, boast that they cannot discuss philosophy honestly with a psychotic yet retarded Neanderthal like me, due to my inferior nature. Well, I cannot argue with their assessment of my education, except to say ἀντικεῖσθαι δ᾽ ὁ ἀλαζὼν φαίνεται τῷ ἀληθευτικῷ· χείρων γάρ. (And it is the boaster that seems to be opposed to the truthful man; for he is the worse character. Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea IV, 7.)
And yet this propensity, which naturally leads us to anger at the hypocrisy, self-flattery, and incivility of the Progressives, instead ought to lead us to pity: for this is also an upwelling not of narcissism but of despair. It is not that they think they can reason and that we cannot; they think reason is vain, and philosophy is useless.
It is not as if they talk to each other in a rational fashion in the faculty lounge or news bullpen, and then only assume a demeanor of barking moonbat lunacy when they talk to us. They talk to each other in the same way, like loyal party members in George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR, exchanging meaningless and soothing slogans and nonsense words, lulled to sleep by the perfect agreement in the perfectly empty word-noises, unless someone jars the serenity by disagreeing on some small point. Immediately the barking moonbats close in, screeching and caterwauling, until the deviant offers servile apologies and self-flagellation. The power of speech is not entirely removed from them, as it is removed from the disloyal animals at the end of THE LAST BATTLE by C.S. Lewis; but it is removed from them on certain topics, wherever the Correct Speech and Correct Goodthink vetoes individual thought.
It is a trap, like an iron snare that closes on the leg of a wild animal. Once they have entered into the delirious realm of non-thought and non-language, only a radical change, only a miracle, can pull them back into the realm of light.
There is much more... I urge you to read it all.
Mr. Wright, by the way, became a Catholic in 2008. That story would also be a good read.
Carry on.
