The left has an ego problem

January 22, 2022 By J.A. Frascino

In describing human behavior, Freud defined the id as the source of primal urges, the superego as the moral conscience, and the ego as the outwardly expressed mediator of the other two's interaction.  Woke progressive activists project an aura of superego.  They are the moral, virtuous seekers of diversity, equity, and inclusivity.  They passionately lash out at the oppressive forces of society to which they attribute our many intolerable social injustices.  When confronted with resistance to their agenda, they swing abruptly from self-righteous indignation to slander, character assassination (Kavanaugh), civil unrest (BLM, Antifa), witch hunts, identity politics, and cancel culture.  They preach superego but practice id, displaying little in the way of ego.

Social progress does not depend upon such gyrations.  When Rosa Parks sat in front of the bus, she was using her ego to trigger meaningful social reform.  She was not virtue-signaling, nor did she attack a white occupant with her umbrella.

But the left has grown far more radical over the years.  As social injustices progressively wane, the left waxes more passionate and hysterical for their resolution.  The venting of their innate discontent requires the unearthing of new dragons to slay.  America's founding, American imperialism, systemic racism, the Confederacy, offensive statuary, law enforcement, voter suppression, immigration control, etc. are irredeemable sins of the past, oppressive policies, or intolerable cultural inequities that must be overcome..........To Read More....

 

How Witch-Hunters Operate

July 31, 2021  By Judy Wallen

As I grew up in a California suburb that was largely colonized in the latter half of the 20th century with the hope of many upwardly mobile young families, I am often reminded by fellow Californians of my good fortune in spending those years between cradle and teenage wasteland nourished and sheltered by privilege.  Up until high school, I even had the rare benefit of experiencing pre–Proposition 13 California public schools, a Golden Age of Education rivaling Athens, the Renaissance, or Haight-Ashbury's Summer of Self-Love.  When I confess how I have trouble remembering what or if I learned much of anything during this utopian period, the wistfulness of the young Californian liberals turns to disappointment, disbelief, and rage.  Yet cancel culture's recent occupation of our zeitgeist has given me a renewed appreciation of the advanced multi-year curriculum that I received during that time when occupants saturated the school with the insatiable primal energy of the id while adults were not looking.  Almost all I really needed to know about witch-hunting I learned in middle school........To Read More....

Political Correctness Goes To War on American History"Where will the impulse to purge the past of its sins end?

Should Washington, DC, named after a slave owner, adopt a new title? Should the Jefferson memorial be torn down?"

Jacob Heilbrunn

George Orwell once remarked that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a place yesterday’s weather could be changed by decree. America, it seems, is not wholly immune to this totalitarian impulse either. It increasingly manifests itself in political correctness, a phenomenon that is flourishing at elite American universities. Make no mistake: the authoritarian implications of this movement, as Jonathan Chait points out in New York magazine, should not be pooh-poohed. Quite the contrary. The tribunes of political correctness, Chait notes, “ are carrying out the ideals of a movement that regards the delegitimization of dissent as a first-order goal.”

The New York Times is thus featuring a story on a plot against Woodrow Wilson—or, to put it more precisely, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. A student group called the Black Justice League is demanding that Princeton University, which Wilson molded in his image first as professor, then as the school’s president, acknowledge “the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson” and move to strip his name from both the public policy school and the residential college. For good measure, these student radicals want Princeton to institute courses on “the history of marginalized peoples” as well as “cultural competency training.”

Well. 
 
Wilson, a great Progressive hero, the would-be spreader of democracy and freedom around the globe, was indeed a racist—a nasty disposition that he happened to share with a number of his contemporaries......To Read More......