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Instrumental Rationality: How Progressives Use People as Means to a Political End

17shooting_ss-slide-1I6D-blog480Whenever there is a tragic loss of human life, conservatives grieve or pray. Progressives scheme for a way to turn the tragedy into an emotional weapon to promote their irrational agenda. Their perverse point-of-view may even lead them to abuse the dead for their political causes.

Such was the case with Newtown, where 20 beautiful children’s lives were snuffed out, along with six who worked for the elementary school. The emotive force of that catastrophic event provoked an immediate chorus of argumentum ad misericordium from the left to deprive Americans of the right to self-defense.

Leftists thus uses as a cudgel the dishonest presupposition that they have a monopoly on compassion. They pose as if conservatives are on the side of the deranged shooter if they are on the side of the individual’s right to defend himself and his family from criminals; and let’s be frank, from the government. But conservatives value human life much more so than progressives, who employ an instrumental rationality that deforms people into faceless, numbered entities or members of victim groups — means to their political ends.

Conservatives want to see every human life unfold naturally. Each person should be free to explore, face adversity, and with the support from those who know this particular individual, overcome those obstacles that prevent him from becoming a person in full. Each human being’s life is an end in-and-of-itself. It is complete and needs no addition or subtraction from government — only protection and true justice.

The progressive is racked by a tortured conscience that cannot accept that this kind of life is “all there is.” Disbelieving in the ancient religions, he partakes in the creation of illusory grand causes and fancies himself an integral part of them.

It is inconsequential to the progressive whether the cause really makes a positive difference for the individuals he shares this world with. Indeed, many of his causes, such as radical environmentalism, are based on irrational hysteria, and serve to make life worse for his fellow man. But he intuitively follows the supposed nobility of his vision, affirmed by the presumed elites who inhabit his environ.

What progressives cannot grasp is that supposedly positive causes like feminism, veganism, animal rights, and environmentalism are actually anti-causes: they are directly opposed to human life itself.

Abortion is the feminist opposition to human life. Veganism is the codification of guilt for man’s “predatory” behavior of eating meat (like other animals). Animal rights is the false elevation of animals to rational beings, and the lowering of man’s mind to that of instinctive beasts. Environmentalism is the synthesis and all-encompassing opposition to civilization, and the flourishing of human life on the planet.

The latest cause of ‘gun control’ (more accurately, the government control of guns) implicitly argues that men have no free will, and that we are slaves to inanimate objects.  Therefore, men are not entitled to self-defense; yet the moment that someone becomes part of the government, he is somehow not a member of the human race. He is a privileged being –able to control his savage impulse to kill his fellow man, which comes about merely by being in the presence of a gun.

As opposed to making the nation safer, the inequality of power resulting from gun control would be infinitely more dangerous than the dispersion of the potential for violence as reflected by high rates of civilian gun ownership. This is true for other social phenomena besides violence; the economy, for example.

The progressive cannot see that by not trusting himself, and by not trusting others, that he is denying the existence of agency and free will. By blindly trusting this mystical entity he calls “government,” he is misplacing his faith in easily the most corrupting and dangerous human institution known to mankind.

The tragedy of the socialist’s vision, for all its unblinking homage to democracy and human rights and social justice, is that his causes are easily manipulated by those who see collectivism as a means to power over the impressionable. For those who desire a ready path to meaning in life, as opposed to the torturous path of self-discovery, socialism holds out a means to instant karma.

The progressive is someone who is easily led, and even more easily misled. This is because his ideology leads to the abandonment of the self and the systematic avoidance of personal responsibility and accountability. Ask a socialist about someone on his side taking responsibility or accountability for his actions and he will inevitably blame ‘the system’ or his ideological opponents.

Unwillingness to compromise on principle makes the conservative hated. Deemed selfish, individualistic, and judgmental, he is shunned and forced to commune with the great minds of history that are yet hallowed in the libraries (until the socialists obliterate them, as they do with all those who stand outside their totalitarian schemes). He chooses to educate himself so that his mind is his own; his to care for as a work of art. The educated conservative is very much a creature of the Enlightenment; but even deeper at his core, of the Renaissance.

In essence, the socialist has no understanding of what it means to be alive and to be a human being in full; he must live at the expense of others, not only physically, but metaphysically. His is a sad life of craving appraisal, which he even denies to himself out of altruistic pretenses; he pours out this unfulfilled desire for validation in the worship of a cult leader, who gladly accepts the power to rule over him, and in turn gives him what he desires: More self-denial.

The ugly process of self-negation is reinforced in millions of true believers’ minds until the vicious community consumes itself in a spectacularly bloody conflagration of self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of others.

Contrary to popular mythology: Socialism destroys society. What promotes society? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for each individual, who is protected by, though not encumbered by, the corrupting power of government.

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5 Comments

  1. Mr. Becker, I got one paragraph in-nay, two sentences before I kinda had to respond. Don’t pretend that just being conservative makes you virtuous. I’m sure what you’re saying about praying and grieving is true for you, but it is by no means a blanket description. I can think of several examples of major tragedies on a similar scale to the Sandyhook shooting where the conservative response was fairly self-serving. The September 11 attacks touched off massive changes that promoted a radical neocon agenda (rendition programs, torture-oh, I’m sorry, enhanced interrogation techniques that were used during the Inquisition, increased surveillance of domestic minorities, programs that monitored privateemail and cell phone

  2. Sorry, technical problems… Oh, what about the leak in the gulf? Conservatives may have been praying and grieving, but they were also working to limit BP’s liability. Hey, what about the Benghazi attack where instead of praying and grieving (or even being angry at the actual attackers) I heard nothing but conspiracy theories from the right. You would have thought President Obama himself had stormed the compound. The behavior I see most when one of these things happen is that There is a desire to show these tragedies as anomalies That are inconsistent with reality. We don’t have to do anything about offshore drilling because the BP disaster was an isolated incident and nothing about the way things are done should be examined, is the attitude that I saw after that particular tragedy. Sure there have been several mass shootings recently in this country (The Fort Hood shooting, the dark Knight rises shooting, and now this recent shooting in Connecticut), But we don’t need to do anything about our gun laws. Praying and grieving are appropriate things to do after tragedy, but they don’t do anything to prevent a similar event.

    1. Yeah, but I’m an Objectivist, so I didn’t say that praying and grieving did anything. I just explained why conservatives do — because they value individual human lives. Progressives think they do, but they actually care about “humanity,” propose cookie-cutter solutions to everything in the name of “equality,” and use blacks, womens, and other victims groups as a means to their ends. Conservatives are individualists who have a hard time picking pizza toppings, let alone trying to run the lives of other people. The right is filled with people who want to leave others alone and to be left alone. Progressives are do-gooder, know-it-all control freaks who live immoral lives and want to micro-manage the lives of others.

  3. Kyle, another ‘good’ work. You said, “the progressive is incapable to trusting himself” Would it not be necessary to actually ‘know’ oneself first?…A small child tightly grips his mother’s hand when first crossing the street, as he discovers his own ability, he gradually loosens the grip & crosses on his own…some never loosen the grip & continue through ‘adulthood’ to be led, only to become parrots/slaves/ mini-me’s to the progressive masters of their mind & soul. It is a great deal easier & avoids the bumps & brusies of ‘thinking & acting on one’s own may bring…They learn not to accept responsibility, but to loudly proclaim any wrongs were done by those ‘different’ from selves.

    Some 35 years ago I had the opportunity to speak with & council highschool students. Repeatedly I was astounded by how many did NOT know How to think or rctually reason & unable to ‘problem solve’ without quotes or published theroy. Apparently this is a malignacy that still exists today.

    “What GOD has joined together, let NO man put asunder” is most often used as part of weddings, but it also be read & mean “What GOD has created..let no man put asunder…To Include “FREE-WILL”… & “if you don’t use it, you lose it”

    Yes ‘Socialism does destroy” so I continue to guard my defenses.

    Had thought to comment on Jon’s post, but have decided that he just enjoys the arguement.

  4. Progressivism came to this country in the 1880’s and has been growing ever since. It has infiltrated both parties and is especially harmful to the Republicans, because they were looked to for honor, integrity,and pro American policies. Many of these progressives call themselves conservatives and even the MSM calls them that, but they are far from it. Benjamin Franklin once said “those that sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither”. Sacrificing freedom for safety is the mind set our society today, because of the years of being programed by the progressives that government knows best. Real conservatives have never bought into that thinking, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are still front most.

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