Thoughts on Collectivists and Progressive Elitists from Notes to a Friend

In the reaction to President Trump's efforts to reduce the scope of government, some key characteristics of the collectivists, socialists, and Progressive Elitists are more openly clear than usual.

The socialists are going berserk.  Hysteria is a key component of socialism.  The madness of crowds, the imagined evils of business, the fears for the environment, the dislike for mankind and man's need to control his environment, the dislike for unequal accomplishment and award, fear of uncertainty, and the fear of being independent or of having to think independently.  Hysteria, alarmism, fear -- they all make the socialist want to trust his life and its care to government and to the collective.

Collectivists and Progressive Elitists are known to be less charitable than conservatives are and I am sure than libertarians are as well.  They look into their own souls and they see a lack of benevolence.  They are ashamed. They seek a cheap and easy way to convince themselves that they are benevolent.  By using the force of government, they can choose the causes of "benevolent" action and dilute the cost to themselves in time and money by making everyone contribute to their chosen causes.  Despite putting a gun to the head of others to achieve their goal, they convince themselves to an extent that they are now benevolent, but that conviction is most uncertain and uneasy.  It is difficult to completely evade the fact that they have done harm to some in order to fill the hole in their own souls.  They are cursed with at least the vague notion, that unlike them, the good man finds it easy and natural to view most other men in a benevolent manner because he sees introspectively his own good and noble soul and naturally tends to project that evaluation of what it is to be a man onto others.

Diane West - First they came for Rush Limbaugh

Diane West's column in the Washington Examiner on Sunday, 18 October 2009, bears some serious thought.  Rush Limbaugh has been demonized by the leftist press and race hustlers such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  But, Keith Olbermann not only has a nightly spot on MSNBC, but he also is co-host of NBC's Football Night in America prior to Sunday Night Football.  This non-distracting paragon of virtue has done the following:

• Said Rush Limbaugh's claim that he had paved the way for Glenn Beck "is like congratulating yourself for spreading syphilis."
• Attacked Michelle Malkin this last week by saying "total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."

Such a man is supported by the NFL, but Rush Limbaugh would be too divisive and inappropriate.  Diane West says that this characterization of Limbaugh by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay marks "the day the demonization of conservatism achieved not consensus, but normalcy, and the day the marginalization of conservatives became not a public sport but a civic duty."

She goes on to say that "Limbaugh's critics were so desperate to make a racism charge stick, to tag Limbaugh as untouchably 'controversial,' that they resorted to demonstrable lies -- statements Limbaugh never made -- and purposely un-documentable innuendo."

But with the successful transformation of Limbaugh the potential team owner into Limbaugh the expendable "distraction," his brand of opposition -- a plain-speaking adherence to a conservatism best described as Reaganesque -- has been judged unfit, unworthy even, for the sports-loving mainstream and sentenced to the margins.

And that is what is most disturbing about this story.  Conservatism in our time has been publicly defined as extremism.