I have long maintained that Leftism is prior to Marxism. Hence when the rubbish that is Marxism visibly failed, the Left barely broke stride on its way to embrace feminism, ecology, and Islam as vehicles through which they could continue the attack on civilization and the people who uphold it.
The Left is permanently outraged, and the outrage is prior to any political or religious view. It starts in outrage, and has no permanent goal. No reform will make it happy because unhappiness is its nature, and to be happy is to “sell out” to the “System”.
Hence all rational improvers and all reformers are not Leftists. The true conservative cuts the rotten branch, said Tennyson. I may disagree with some person’s mistaken view of global warming, for instance, without thinking them Leftist.
Leftism is a soul sickness, as I define the term. “Pneumopathological” to speak Greek.
I was reminded of these truths this morning by perusal of an excellent discussion of the same topic in Front Page Magazine. “The Left’s Religion of Unhappiness”, by Daniel Greenfield. A snippet or two to entice you:
The left does not redistribute wealth. It redistributes want. It does not want everyone to share in the happiness of others, but to be burdened with a larger burden of their miseries.
The left’s greatest vulnerability is its meanness of spirit. It has suffered its worst defeats at the hands of the happy warriors of the right. Its defeat comes when its malaise is contrasted with happiness, when its deep suspicion of humanity is met with patriotic optimism and when its alarmism is met with laughter.
The reason why the Left accuses conservatives of “mean-spiritedness” is that they live that condition every day. They know it intimately, they dwell in it. I knew these Marxist pukes in university and I have never been deceived; they are servants of evil itself, and they inwardly suspect they may be so. Badly brought up, they need conversion to a religion of peace and love, which they fight with every breath in their bodies. Hence conversion to Islam merely justifies the hatred and does not change the animus. Their situation is hopeless, and quite serious.