Liberalism, Progressivism, Leftism
... I think that there are three basic, interrelated and mutually reinforcing ideological systems at work in the Western world today. These are liberalism, progressivism and leftism.
By liberalism, I mean the cluster of moral and political ideas emphasising individual rights and self-determination. The liberal tradition is now hundreds of years old, and espousing some minimum of liberal principles is a requirement for participation in polite discourse....
Progressivism is an essentially religious belief in the inevitable forward march of human progress. Deranged or deceived by the technological advances of the last 150 years, progressives believe that the present is better than the past, and that the future will be better than the present.....
... leftism is the invasive algae that has taken over our aquarium. The term should be used in its broadest possible sense, to include any egalitarian ideology that seeks to overcome human inequality and natural hierarchy via special technological, social or legal interventions. Leftism wants, or pretends to want, a great flattening, a world where everyone is the same....
The insistence that wealth inequality is bad, that all humans are biologically identical, that European-descended populations are unfairly privileged, that identities can be intersectionally disadvantaged – all of this is leftism....
For a lot of different reasons, a diffuse cultural leftism has taken our institutions by storm... Their aim is to appropriate the cultural and political capital that these middle ranks accumulated in the course of the Industrial Revolution and the first half of the twentieth century.
On the Failure of Conservatives to Mount Effective Opposition to the Most Insane Policies Ever Visited Upon Mankind, by eugyppius, 16 May 2022:
The leftist system is not meant to produce political stability or prosperity, and it feels a lot like it’s entering a death spiral. Getting these lunatics out of power, before they crash the entire West with no survivors, is the most urgent problem we face.... We must defeat the leftist elite, not win them over; and to do this we must deprive them steadily of popular support....
If Corona restrictions return in the fall, populist political upsets will become our only hope.
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