This seems to me the biggest problem with the whole mentality of the left.
Every group (and individual) has grievances and has suffered injustices. It's right to acknowledge these and, where appropriate, to address them.
I say "where appropriate" because it seems obvious that sometimes trying to correct an injustice might cause more trouble than the injustice itself-- if it's a relatively minor injustice, if it's hard to define and isolate, if trying to correct it would involve a serious assault on freedom, if you're simply going to create an opposite injustice, etc.
Both the left and the right, conservatives and liberals, and everybody else, has their pet grievances and injustices-- but grievance seems essential to the left. To them, grievance seems to constitute group identity above all else-- so that it's hardly an exaggeration to say that a group not only has grievances, but is its grievances.
This occurs to me most often when I'm reading something a progressive has written about Irish history. It generally reflects a strange sympathy with the Catholic majority in Ireland, despite all the reasons progressives should have for lacking sympathy with them (including the fact that they were a majority!).
I regard "the right" as a part of the left - unless it is Rooted in religion, which none of the Western parties are nowadays.
ReplyDeleteBut I completely agree with your diagnosis. The old left (communists) had a vision of an ideal situation, a utopia - albeit it was impossible in practice.
The more recent left has no vision or plan, it is a collection of incompatible oppositions, too often rooted in grievance promoted as justified and indeed virtuous! But even when rooted in altruism, the left's motive is always defined by being *against* some problem - never a truly positive value.
I couldn't agree more than the right has to be rooted in religion to the inherent leftist logic of our societies.
Delete"Againstism"...absolutely. They sometimes appeal to fundamental values like equality but they are pretty nebulous. "More substance in our enmities than in our loves", as Yeats said.