24 Replies to “The Dreadful Attraction of Utopian Ideas”

  1. it aint ‘u’topian.
    ’tis ‘me’topian.

    the left is so, mired, so engulfed in its hypocrisy I lack words to adequately convey this.
    e-v-e-r-y high profile leftist I can think of shows this to be true, from mao’s secret exclusive palaces where he raped young girls to brezhnev’s dachau, the black panther leadershit misogyny, jack layton going out of country for medical treatments, on and on and on it goes.

    leftism. luckily the hypocrisy is soooooo close to the surface it’s real easy to spot and know what we’re dealing with.

    1. Don’t forget Naomi “Poverty for Thee but not for Me” Klein. Those deplorables in the lower classes need to be penalized for their lives of comfort–make ’em pay the carbon tax.

  2. The people who are attracted to the left come in two types. The first type are lazy people who want free stuff, and the second are people assume that they will be part of the nomenklatura. These people all assume that they will be getting something out of it that they don’t get out of their current life, either free stuff, or a position that will let them tell other people how to live with a good city apartment and a dacha in the countryside. No one who aspires to live in a Soviet type system does so thinking that they will be the tractor mechanic at the “Revolutionary Peoples Collective Farm.”

    1. Minuteman: Or believes he might be the poor bastard shovelling cow shi* all day long at the glorious collective farm.

      The Revolution only needs a certain number of intellectuals,right,comrade Beria? What to do,what to do? heh.

  3. The left is child-like in the way it separates “intentions” from “outcomes.” Leftists are prone to Utopian ideals because utopian ideals are all theory or all intentions. They refuse to accept the outcomes that result when people try to implement Utopia to the extent that they will deny the attempt to implement as being legitimate. It’s why every leftist says no one has tried to implement “true” socialism or “true” communism. So despite the deaths of millions, socialism and communism are still desireable because of their intentions.

  4. The attraction is only seriously consummated if the following principles are present.

    I would suggest ‘righteous zeal’ due to unrealized personal ambitions or dreams.

    From the Spring/Summer issue of Dorchester Review. Waller R. Newell writes in “Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror”, “What if it were rooted in the capacity of young men for righteous zeal, anger, and indignation, harnessed in the service of what they fervently believe to be a righteous, even divine mission to bring justice to the world?”

    Also.

    ” Hence, if Hitler had succeeded in getting into art school, or if Lenin’s brother had not been executed for being a subversive, if Mao had not felt looked down on as a student for his peasant origins, Germany, Russia, and China might well have been spared the million-fold suffering brought about by their supremacy.”

    As well.

    “Another thing that distinguishes millenarian
    103Spring/Summer 2018 The Dorchester Review
    tyrants from mere assassins and rank-and-file terrorist cadres is their megalomaniacal conviction that they are not merely political outsiders driven by a passion for vengeance and justice, but great “thinkers” or “artists” whose genius has been overlooked, but whose visions will someday govern every facet of everyone else’s life every moment of the day. Hitler fancied himself a great artist gone to waste due to his sacrifices for the German people. Lenin’s dreary harangues and vicious diatribes were dressed up in an indigestible mish-mash of pseudoMarxist dialectics. Stalin told famous composers, novelists, and scientists how they might improve their work; Mao imagined himself a great “theorist” as well as poet. Their loneliness and bitter alienation as young men were filled with hours of furious autodidact learning, gleaned in magpie fashion from whatever lay at hand in the extremist fashions of the day, that helped them spin the fantasies of the totalitarian new order they would impose on all others, finally recognized by all for their hidden genius. The interminable dinner-table monologues in which the Leader bangs on for hours with his insuperable insights into every aspect of human existence from ancient history to art, diet, and medical science is a hallmark of many of them, including Hitler, Stalin, and Castro.”

    The people of history that Newell lists could well be supplemented by more recent world leaders. Barack Obama comes to mind with “fundamental change’ as does Justin Trudeau with his, “We are now a post-national state”.

    I have Newell’s book on order.

  5. Many great comments above before mine at 6:59.

    The sad part is that the ‘injustices’ that the utopian, as my late grandfather called them, “World joy-bringers”, perpetrate are almost always much greater than the injustices they had dreams of replacing with their version of nirvana.

  6. Utopians and collectivists (e.g., leftists, communists) are driven by the normal human greed for wealth, power, and position but, in their case, they do so off other people’s backs and, worse, at the cost of other people’s lives.

    That’s why so many millions upon millions of people have suffered and died under collectivist ideologies such as Islam, nazism, and communism.

    Utopians and collectivists use other people to gain and keep power, wealth, and position.

    They self-anoint as superior to justify their using other people to gain and keep power, etc.

    Utopians and collectivists also kick the Judeo-Christian God out of the picture because they will, in their judgement, only be accountable to themselves.

    Only the Judeo-Christian God is able to rescue us (“save” us) from the tyrants and totalitarians of utopianism and collectivism.

    1. A simple thought that you touch on….. leftists have bought the drivel that humans are basically good, and given the option, will do the right thing. Add to that the “noble savage” drivel about the unspoiled nature of humanity and children. All the evils are the result of society, or whoever happened to be at the top of the food chain. (For the last long time, white males)
      Then the budding leftist looks in the mirror and in his/her conceit, sees confirmation of that goodness and rightness of humanity.
      Add Marxism, which teaches that inequality of outcomes is the result of unfair class war, rather than individual choices.

      History teaches that humans are capable of amazing wonders, and amazing evil. Christianity teaches that humans are made in the image of God, but are in a fallen, sinful state. Both ways of looking at humans would indicate that society must encourage the good, while actively discouraging the evil. Leftists cannot and do not see that evil, because they cannot see it in themselves. (Thank our education system for much of that, along with natural human conceit and parents who buy in to the cult of self esteem.)
      So of course they think that under socialism, everybody will work as hard as they can, for the good of others.
      Of course, no one would ever cheat the system they set up.
      Of course no one deserves more wages than anyone else, because we all work just as hard. (Feel the Bern?)
      Of course no criminal is responsible for his/her own actions….society has failed them.
      Of course any group that has a higher prison population must be there as a result of discrimination.
      And anything that smacks of a Judeo-Christian heritage must be destroyed. We hates it!!

      And of course, anybody who disagrees with them is evil, and must be swept aside. (They cannot see the hypocrisy between the “everybody is innately good” and “my opponent is utterly evil” statements.)

    2. as an aside observation, made by the preacher @ the church I attend (most sundays), very telling also,
      the Christian bible is a religious work that ‘includes the warts and all’.
      aka *other* religious works (anybody got a copy of the cornran?) are all flowery and bejeweled in THEIR descriptions of utopia.

      not so the bible, which clearly spells out early conflicts between and among believers, the violent deaths of many believers, and a real gritty close up look at living conditions of the day.
      economics, politics, history, psychology, practical advice on day-to-day living, and yes, religion.

    3. garry D, and how many Jews has the “judeo-kristian” nonsense “killed”?. How many “churches” today support the BDS bull$hit. Quit yer damn virtue signaling. These lefty utopians are a knock off of kristian totalitarianism of the past.

      As to people stating that they “brain” wash their followers, yup, just as the churches did and do still!

  7. “Are they more driven by ignorance, stupidity, or something else?”

    They get money, personal validation and a feeling of moral superiority from it. Take away the money, and most of this socialist BS will disappear on its own. Because you can’t eat validation and feelings.

  8. Oh it is ignorance,but none of them know it.
    None have built anything,not an outhouse,a doghouse or a skill set.
    Theory is great,until you get your hands dirty.Then theory becomes empty noise until you understand the medium you are working with.
    All political science grads should be shunned and banished,demented emptyheaded fools who believe they can control man.
    Hubris is huge,an earlier post here touched on the arrogance of those who have been taught that they can “educate” other people into being just as they,the learned elites, feel those others should be..Usually in their twenties before a real understanding of human nature begins to develop.
    Of course in the incestuous circle jerks of modern progressive enclaves, reality is never allowed to intrude.
    Cannot cure stupid.

  9. Leftists are motivated primarily by a combination of vanity, greed, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony and wrath. Their Satanic ideology tempted them with promises of unlimited power, wealth, and opportunities to fulfill their most depraved sexual fantasies (generally involving rape and sexualized murder) and to avenge themselves against everybody who ever injured their vanity by insisting they do a jot of honest labour.

    Ignorance? Stupidity? If they were ignorant and stupid they wouldn’t be the menace they are. They are evil.

    They cannot be reasoned with, only utterly defeated and returned to their master in hell posthaste, or, failing that, sent to prisons and labour camps to end their days in the slavery they wished on the righteous.

  10. I have noticed that no matter the label applied to a revolutionary system, the org chart seems to resemble what came before.
    The parliamentary system is just a proxy for the civil wars that England used to choose leaders by, the politburo resembled the system of nobles under the Czars, Chicoms don’t seem a lot different than the old Chinese warlords.

    Most of these leftists imagine themselves to be the new aristocracy, and their politics are best described as neo-feudalism. They are pushing for a new population that is more accepting of the feudal system.

  11. Ignorance. They’ve been indoctrinated into the leftist utopian vision since kindergarten, they’re totally ignorant of reality.

  12. People who want what others have and don’t want to work for it are called socialists and they are very dangerous to both your freedom and your prosperity. In depth analysis of the reasons is unnecessary.

  13. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

    This is why we no longer teach history in school, the socialist powers that be WANT history repeated.

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