Understanding and Defeating Leftist Ideologies

Eighteen month old Jeremy Flenstickle reacts to Chris Matthews' news program Hardball.

Ideologies are powerful and sometimes dangerous things. Modern leftist ideology has some particularly insidious and seductive elements:

• We are not responsible for our actions and can avoid the consequences of our choices.
• We are entitled to any "right" as long as we think it makes us happy.
• There is no good or evil, no right or wrong, except for the "evil" produced by individuals who do not accept the current ideology.
• There is some, future Utopia where a benign government holds all the power to correct inequities, unfairness, pain and suffering.

The concept that we aren't responsible for our actions and don't deserve its consequences is particularly seductive and deceitful. As an example, we can see this in the world of rampant sexual promiscuity where we are forbidden to mention or even think about the real consequences of promiscuity. Of course the attack on the definition of marriage falls into this category where identity based on sexual preference promotes a complete and universal acceptance of bad behavior. In this ideology, those who stand in the way of sexual liberation, who suggest that unleashed sexual promiscuity is bad for both individuals and for society, are demonized as the absolute barrier to "true" freedom.

Defeating ideologies is difficult. Danged difficult. Really, really difficult. Consider how long the ideal of socialism has hung on despite its historical and monumental failure of the 20th Century. Consider the almost worldwide turn away from the democratic ideal, toward statist forms of governments. Consider the ever increasing number of totalitarian and authoritarian states. And consider the alarmingly rapid spread of the mainstreaming of homosexuality as the upcoming expression of human "rights."

The only way to defeat ideology is to replace it with something different. For people to give up their ideals, they must perceive the replacement ideology to be better. In ideological terms, for example,
Christianity has the capacity to supplant a world of ideologies (which it did in the past). Modern socialistic Christianity, however, doesn't have the power to keep its own followers, let alone change those who are directly antagonistic toward it.

Classical liberalism (not today's socialist brand) had the power to create Western Civilization with its concepts of individualism, life, liberty, private property, and limited government. Modern socialism has tainted the ideal, promising that true "equality" can only come, once again, from a benign, but statist, government.

This is the real fight, to win victory over the polluted and dangerous ideology of modern democratic socialism. In order to do so, modern conservatives can indeed try to undermine its seductive power by pointing out the falsehoods and foibles of its beliefs. In doing so, we open ourselves up to criticism, sometimes violent, yet always condescending, as if modern conservatives are somehow inferior to (biased, bigoted, intolerant, full of hatred toward) the left. (Consider as an example, the past few weeks full of biased invective against the right wing for the shooting in Tucson, Arizona.)

Another method is to supplant the common leftist ideology with something better. Consider that if the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were good ideas back when they were written, then they are still good ideas today. The danger to sticking with the original texts lies in the myriad means the left has employed in the modern day to minimize and even belittle these founding documents and ideals. Teaching to the better ideals of the founding principles of the US opens us up to the full fury and spite of the ideologically indoctrinated left.

Yet it is still good to pursue the better way, as well as to poke holes into leftist ideology. There are many who are merely ignorant of the ideological battle taking place, having been lulled to a waking sleep by the succubus of leftist ideology. Those are the individuals to whom we must reach and speak of a better way.