A Confession

During my time in the collectivist #RegressiveLeft I fully bought into Democratic Socialism. I believed, like many do today, that the government shouldn't make my shoes, build my car, own farms and that kind of thing but was fully willing to accept government redistribution of wealth programs. For example, I supported authoritarian measures like limiting individual income as well as having some rather degenerate opinions on obscenity and other things that normal people might bristle at.

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama. I did it again in 2012. Now I find the idea of voting for a Democrat repulsive because the party has been completely captured by the Regressive Left. The feminists and the Social Justice Warriors are in control of the Democratic party, despite all of the president's words about not coddling college students. If you need any further proof of this you need only to look at how Clinton and Sanders trip over themselves to be more in line with Black Lives Matter despite BLM being built on an insidious lie.

In those days I would've believed the BLM lie. I would've been a full-throated Sanders supporter. Many of my friends bristle when I compare Sanders to Trump. To be perfectly honest I am far more concerned about Sanders and his demagoguery than I am with Donald Trump and his brutish language and policy proposals. Sanders clearly represents the worst bullying tendencies of the Regressive Left, as is evident by his demonization of the wealthy and conservatives.

Democrats have been publicly opposed to the wealthy for a long time. Sanders takes a different approach, suggesting that a return to a 90% upper tax rate would be appropriate. Obviously this is a fantasy proposal but what most don't understand is that it is tyrannical. I still support a progressive tax rate to some degree though not nearly to the degree I had in the past. Placing full weight of the tax system on the wealthiest Americans is tyrannical when that rate becomes oppressive. I see little difference between this and the jizya that non-Muslims are forced to pay in Islamic societies. Both rely on a threat of real violence to enforce.

I had at one point in my life supported a functional limit on wealth. A 90% tax rate is a functional income limit. In effect, the state takes the wealth earned by individuals and seizes it to give to those who have nothing. To a degree government does this when there is some form of social safety net. The difference now is that Sanders justifies it through the use of a distorted concept of social justice that pits 'Americans' against the wealthy elite. Traditionally presidential candidates wax poetic about the American dream and the ability of any person to join the wealthy with hard work and smart decision making.

When I was a Social Justice Warrior I internalized the victim narrative that is required to believe that the wealthy elite are not Americans – that the wealthy elite are not human. I would relish stories from progressive outlets like US Uncut, Air America, MSNBC and the rest that showed the crimes of the Koch brothers or demonized Ronald Reagan or suggested that Dick Cheney was some demonic villain. Part of living in the world of the Regressive Left is to shut off the part of the brain responsible for critical thinking. Ideology shuts down the process of dialogue by destroying the ability of people to critically think.

If this political season requires anything it is the ability of voters and the media to think critically. When Donald Trump is smeared by the media using rhetoric that is eerily similar to that of Bernie Sanders you know that critical thinking is missing in the debate today. What is needed now is a return to critical thinking and an abandonment of ideology. The US and the West broadly is poised for a new kind of political realignment, one that pits authoritarians against libertarians. The old Left/Right dominance of politics may be dead for the foreseeable future. The politics of authoritarianism relies on the abandonment of critical thinking. It's how a figure like Trump can be turned into Hitler without actually examining his political positions. The best criticisms of Trump come from the political Right, which see him as a moderate. If you only listen to the mainstream media without investigating him you'll think he is an arch-conservative. Ideology preys on our inability or lack of desire to investigate the truth for ourselves. I know this from experience.

The Violent Tendencies of the Regressive Left

No movement claims to be about 'peace and justice' quite as much as the Regressive Left does. We see it in the claims of Bernie Sanders and his plans to have the US take a step back in military interventions. We see it in the anti-gun movement on the Left. And we see it in the stated motives of the Black Lives Matter movement. But beneath all of this lies the true motives of the Regressive Left, which I've expounded on at length.

Like any authoritarian movement, the Regressive Left is violent at heart. This is due in large part to the anger that motivates regressives: anger at the 'system,' anger at the wealthy, anger at alleged institutional injustices (mythical or real). Anger is a powerful motivator in elections. It is far more efficient to mobilize voters using anger than mobilizing them through compassion, kindness or rational facts.

Anger relies on something or someone to be angry at. Scapegoating is an essential tool of any demagogue. The psychologist René Girard states that a kind of community is formed when people from a wide variety of backgrounds identify a common enemy to hate. One only needs look at Third Wave Feminists to see this in action, with white “cis” straight men being reduced to subhuman status. Sanders is a master of this by subtly targeting the rich beyond what Democrats typically do. This should come as no surprise, as Sanders's base are the same Social Justice Warriors who menace college campuses around the United States.

A great example of anger and dehumanization is the case of libertarian commentator Lauren Southern, who had a bottle of urine dumped on her head when she dared to question the unscientific gender ideology promoted by SJWs. On March 5^th Southern has was assaulted by so-called 'anti-fascist' protestors inVancouver who used fascist tactics in their protest. Dumping urine or other body fluids on a person is considered assault in any civilized place in the world. One wonders what the reaction of the Left Regressives would have been if Southern had been a feminist protesting a Men's Rights Movement meeting and this had happened. Add in the online harassment against Southern that SJWs typically claim they stand against when advocating censorship of Twitter and Facebook and you get a clear picture of the hypocrisy of the fascistic Regressive Left.

Such peaceful, loving people. Nothing says 'anti-violence' like wishing cancer on someone.

Prior to the assault the protestors had been wearing masks to hide their identity. This is a common tactic on the extreme Left. During the George W Bush administration masked protestors were a common sight at anti-war demonstrations in the United States. These same protestors were largely out of sight when President Obama used drones to continue waging and expanding the US war in the middle east by proxy. Consistency is not to be expected in politics, though. Instead ideological consistency is more important.

Obviously Trump uses anger as well and is in a much stronger political position after last night's Republican primary. Trump's antics are well known and heavily criticized by Sanders's supporters and the mainstream media. Sanders and the Regressive Left get a pass. Evidence of this was the total emotional meltdown many Sanders supporters had on social media in the aftermath of the crushing defeat he received on the March 15^th Democratic primaries. The corollary to anger is righteous indignation when things do not go according to plan, as was the case last night when Sanders supporters pledged to not vote for Clinton. Disregard that this hands the White House to Trump or Cruz.  

Social Justice IS a Religion

A common charge made against Social Justice Warriors by members of the online resistance movement is that social justice has become a religion for Social Justice Warriors – that feminism is a religion. Given that most of the anti-SJW pro-liberty figures are atheists, this charge is meant to be an insult. But it is far closer to the truth than those who make the charge realize. Contemporary Social Justice Warrior-ism has taken root in the US, UK and Canada predominately, all of which have some things in common, including a religious history rooted in Protestantism.

What does Protestantism have to do with a largely atheistic movement? The answer lies in the impact these religious doctrines have on culture. Protestant ideas, especially extreme ideas associated with Calvinism, are pervasive in American culture today. This was revealed to me by reading a book for my doctoral dissertation on an entirely separate topic. The book is Broken Trust, Broken Land by Robert G Lee, which focuses on the topic of environmentalism and the authoritarian nature of the environmentalist movement. Lee is a forester and sociologist who himself believed in the claims of the environmental movement until he grappled with two major issues in the movement.

The first movement issue he dealt with was the authoritarian nature of the environmental movement. According to Lee, natural resource managers don't particularly care about the jobs lost, lives destroyed, and families undermined by the policies of resource managers who live and work hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the lands they manage. Lee responds to the claim made in the 90s by conservatives that environmentalists are not American:

There is a tendency for Americans to be easily seduced by biocentric views because we still hold a Calvinist outlook on life, and have difficulty accepting responsibility for others. We tend to see ourselves through a lens of religious imagery as a favored people whose destiny is to lead the world to freedom and enlightenment. Hence, it would be totally wrong to say that radical environmentalists are 'anti-Americans.' They are instead about as American as they can be. Environmental preservationists are simply the latest in a long line of reformers who have drawn upon our Puritan origins and Calvinist ethics to divide the world into the saved and the damned. The religious imagery we inherited from Calvin, although now highly secularized, is what makes the environmental movement so appealing. Calvinism is a familiar resting place in a time of uncertainty and rapid change. (Lee 1994, pg 52).

Lee goes on to illustrate the destructive nature of dividing society between the 'saved' and the 'damned.' If you change the words 'environmentalist' and 'biocentric' into 'Social Justice Warrior' and 'feminist' (respectively) you'll see that this idea applies equally to the landscape in the US today. As Lee says, Calvinism is hidden in the idea that some authorities have the right to tell others how we should live, to plan our lives, and to manage the technical infrastructure that makes modern life what it is. Thus we see ideologues like Anita Sarkeesian as part of the new censorship movement on Twitter. Thus, to shamelessly rework a quote of Lee and apply it to the current landscape, “Anyone who has seen Calvin's ghost will conclude that [feminism] embodies moral exclusion and could, under adverse political circumstances, lead to horrors few would have anticipated. A secularized Calvinism provides no limits to radical solutions for [social justice] problems” (Lee, pg 53, edits mine). The horrors today include the case of Gregory Allen Elliot who made the mistake of confronting radical feminists online and disagree with them forcefully; Elliot was charged in Canada with harassment and banned from the internet for 2 years until he won his case in court. The Elliot case only touches the surface of the horrors of social control we see being promoted by adherents to the new Calvinism, however.

Feminist curriculum in public elementary schools targets children at their most impressionable age. That is, taxes are being used to promote an ideology rooted in a strange and unholy marriage between Marxism and Calvinism. Children are actively being taught unscientific and unsupported theories regarding gender identity. Children are being indoctrinated to believe race-based privilege is a real thing when they are too young to engage the concept and make informed decisions on their own regarding these important topics. Jailing people for saying unpopular things is scary but the terrifying prospect is that feminists are using the state in the US and Canada to remake society in their image. In true Calvinist form they are conditioning people into being in the feminist elect.

If this book sounds interesting to you follow the link. I make no money off the sales of the book and have no connection to Dr Lee in any way. Buy it here for the current cost of 1 penny plus shipping in the US. It's worth the read.