Why Obama's Opponents are Racists

The left obviously values a certain kind of freedom. It's just not the American kind. When you think about it -- and this was a central point of both Mises and Hayek -- the majority of our "lived freedom" is in the economic arena. Especially prior to the advent of the internet, our political freedom consisted of, what, voting every two years and an occasional letter to the editor?

But economic freedom affects most every decision we make in the world. It is specifically this kind of freedom that the left undermines. However, in so doing, they erode the very foundation of liberty. As Hayek explains, we have "progressively [!] been moving away from the basic ideas on which Western civilization has been built" and slowly abandoning "the freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past."

And "Although we had been warned by some of the greatest thinkers... that socialism means slavery," we have nevertheless "steadily moved in the direction of socialism." Truly, it is like a kind of ineradicable mind parasite that must be confronted anew by each generation. We give vaccinations to children for other deadly diseases. Why don't we vaccinate them against socialism?

Oh. Right. The left controls education. Don't expect mind parasites to eradicate themselves. It's not in their economic interest, to say the least.

This, I think, is the objection people had to Obama beaming into the classroom and asking children to write a letter about how they plan to help him achieve his goals. Out of the mouth of an American president this would be a platitude, but from an un-American president it becomes sinister.

And please, when I say "un-American" I am being literal, not inflammatory. Dennis Prager says the same thing. He merely means that Obama -- or any leftist -- comes from an intellectual tradition that does not find its roots in America but Europe. It doesn't necessarily mean "anti-American," although I certainly believe it's no coincidence that the further left you go, the more hatred of America -- and of course, Israel -- you see.

When some moonbat says that the world hated America because of President Bush, what they mean is that the international left hated America, which is no doubt true. It's just that there are many more leftists than classical liberals in the world, and obviously not a single other Judeo-Christian country. Ask the Poles how they feel about Obama. He has been going about alienating governments that most share our values, such as Israel and India, while coddling and appeasing those that do not share our values.

Consider again that little graph I came up with the other day, with the vertical y-axis running from worldly to spiritual, the horizontal x-axis from collectivism to individualism. This graph will show you exactly where I differ with the left, but also with Schuon and the traditionalists, who are ultra-conservative in the European (not American) sense. Thus, we are dealing with two varieties of un-Americanism.

For me, the quintessence of Americanism -- the ideal person, as it were -- is located in the upper right quadrant, the "spiritual individual." This was so beautifully laid out by the founders, that there is no reason for me to try to surpass them. Just sample some of their theo-political reflections in Novak's On Two Wings. I remember Dennis Prager saying at the time the book came out, that he had brought it with him to sabbath services, because it's that sacred.

Here, let me see if I can dig out a representative sample without losing my momentum. There are really too many to choose from. Here -- John Adams: "I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."

Talk about a pure Raccoonish sentiment! Do you think I care what the ignorant slaves and slavers of the international left think about America? Ho! Our values are antithetical. Of course they hate us. We are "un-European." We are liberal. We are not collectivists. We remain the last best hope for mankind moving into the space of the Upper Right.

Alexander Hamilton (and again, bear in mind that this self-evident truth would be "unteachable" and therefore unthinkable in a leftist-controlled school, even though it was said by one of our most important founders): "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

Those are the words of a real UpRight man. Now, you may disagree with Hamilton, and that is your prerogative. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that your values are "American," because they're not. No one had your values at the American founding, except perhaps in France.

James Madison, perhaps the most important "doctor of liberty" at our founding: "The belief in a God All Powerful, wise, and good, is so essential to the moral order of the World and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it."

Again, an UpRight man of the first rank. Does this mean that our founders didn't care about the collective, i.e., the left hand side of our political graph? Hardly! This was one of the things that most caught Tocqueville's attention, that is, the spontaneous emergence of civil society, of people taking care of one another. When the state takes over this function, it not only diminishes the domain of the Upper Left, but replaces it with the lower left, the fascist/socialist space of the magical collective, impervious to the light of reason.

I'm currently reading Mises' Human Action, and he says what amounts to the same thing. Amazing that he wrote this in the 1940s, because he does a spot-on analysis on the leftist attack on logic that we see today with multiculturalism, deconstruction, and political correctness. These cognitive pathologies are not just peripheral but central to leftist thought, because they undermine reason itself. That is, if different races, classes, cultures, and ethnicities all have their own distinct modes of thought, then western logic is no better than any other form of logic.

Thus, DownRight, or LowDown man inevitably becomes Lower Left man, i.e., the infra-logical and magical collective. This is again why I would hesitate to assume that the Obamanians are trying to be so illogical in attacking the opposition. Again, the absence of logic is not a bug, it's a feature of leftist thought. They have no idea how to respond to an actual argument.

Indeed, just a couple of days ago there was a lengthy piece in the Washington Post -- can't find the link -- about how the White House was trying to come up with a coherent strategy for dealing with the opposition. Fascinatingly, not a single one involved simply "responding to the arguments." For to respond to the arguments would immediately pull them up into the space of logic and evidence, which is precisely where they don't want to be.

Here is how Mises describes the historical emergence of the leftist attack on logic: "The economists had entirely demolished the fantastic delusions of the socialist utopias [read: the lower left, or infralogical collective].... The communist ideas were done for. The socialists were absolutely unable to raise any objection to the devastating criticism of their schemes and to advance any argument in their favor. It seemed as if socialism was dead forever."

So, what do you do if logic is not on your side? "Only one way could lead the socialists out of this impasse. They could attack logic and reason and substitute mystical intuition for ratiocination." The DownRight men of the neo-Marxist left argued that there is no universally valid form of logic or truth, and that to even think so is "oppressive," especially toward minorities. Rather, your so-called truth is merely a reflection of race, or class, or gender, interests.

And this is why if you oppose Obama you are a racist, but if you oppose Michael Steele or Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas you can't be. In the perverse cognitive world of the left, the former is "inevitable," the latter "impossible."

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Happy birthday to Mommy!