July 17, 2005

Bruce Thornton makes some interesting points about much of the Western Left's paternalistic affection for all things non-Western (Hat tip: Cara, the birthday girl, reading to me from across the living room).

He points out that though this is often referred to as cultural relativism, it actually doesn't fit that definition because true cultural relativists would not feel they had a right to judge, for instance, American slavery as better or worse than any other cultural phenomenon. In fact, making judgments against Western culture is central to the ideology of Western Leftists.

So why the unwillingness of so many on the Left to see, in things like jihadi fascism, a malevolence deserving of unqualified condemnation? One thing Thornton points to is the old Communist dilemma of underenlistment in what was supposed to be an all volunteer army of international proletarians:

Since the Western proletarians weren't going to play their appointed historical role — they were too busy improving their standard of living in free market economies — the Third World became the new proletariat that would rise up and overthrow the evil Capitalist order.

I'm extrapolating a bit from Thornton's essay, but this observation has helped me get a more solid handle on what is going on in the minds of some of the Leftists around me. The thing is, it had been prophesied long ago that a great proletarian army would rise out of their shackles and seize back the world from the brutal clutches of the capitalists. That must be what's happening then, right? Gotta be.

This reminds me of how, thinking Hernan Cortez to be the latest incarnation of Quetzalcoatl returning, per Toltec prophesy, to overthrow the Aztec empire, some of the peoples long oppressed under Aztec rule were willing to ally with the Spaniards in this righteous war, though things didn't turn out as nicely as some of these allies might have hoped. This is why, in any event, the people of Mexico now speak the language of the conquistadors, and why, incidentally, American Leftists put words from that language on their bumper stickers.

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