>
>sent to another list, from a poster who sees himself as libertarian leaning
>conservative. he gave it the subject heading.
>
>http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html
>Moderate progressivism is just a big front or cover for these raging
pathological
>lunatics. If someone counters this argument, to Horowitz, by pointing out a
>right wing or capitalist atrocity causing hundreds of thousands of deaths,
>his retort is that you are trying to censor him, and indeed the calm
>language you are using is really a front as well because as soon as the
>binds of society hypothetically were lifted, you would be shooting him in
>front of a firing squad with your khmer rouge buddies.
As Horowitz himself says, "Of course, a well-known attribute of paranoia is the capacity of the victim to project onto others his own aggression." But, then, he's not talking about himself. He's talking about people who posted critical comments about him on Amazon.com. "Therefore, the flames posted against me didn't bother me as much as the sense that their presence reflected a general erosion of civilizing standards in our culture."
He projects his aggression onto the left by claiming that the left is projecting its aggression onto him. But he's not unaware that the accusation could be turned against him, so he invokes his high-mindedness as if to say that such hate-filled thinking is completely alien to him. His efforts to pre-empt accusations of his own pathological aggression suggest that he's actively engaged in repressing his recognition of the truth. He knows, deep down, that he's paranoid, but if he can hallucinate this trait in his enemy, then he doesn't have to see it for real in himself. This explains the weirdly symmetrical reversals of reality so common among the disturbed.
"Ever since abandoning the utopian illusions of the progressive cause, I have been struck by how little the world outside the left seems to actually understand it. How little those who have not inhabited the progressive mind are able to grasp the ruthless cynicism behind its idealistic mask or the fervent malice that drives its hypocritical passion for 'social justice.'"
If, as the left argues, we have the capacity to make our society more just, and furthermore that we could have done far better in the past as well, then suddenly we must take responsibility for all the terrible things we've unleashed upon the world in the name of capitalism. To seal off any possibility of experiencing guilt over our wretched history, we must take it on faith that human society cannot be helped by conscious efforts at promoting justice and peace. What makes Horowitz interesting is that he's sensitive to the horror entailed in facing our history, and he's logically rigorous enough (in his uniquely twisted way) to recognize that the self-evident absurdity of the socialist project means that leftists are either insane or malicious, or some combination of the two.
"The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity—often without even realizing that they are. Because they also lie to themselves."
This is indeed the essence of insanity-- to fervently believe what you yourself know to be ridiculous.
"No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which 'social justice' prevails."
This really takes us to the core of paranoia. Leftist radicals want to change us. When they attain power, they don't just take over the government, they take over our minds. They remake our relations with each other. Love ceases to be something shared between *individuals* and becomes self-renunciation before the transcendent and omniscient "love" of the State.
Horowitz is quite correct in his assessment of the Clintons, not only regarding pathological narcissism but the fact that Bill appears to be much harder to nail down than Hillary. He doesn't seem as deluded as most of his progressive supporters. He seems to have a real grasp of what he's doing, a genuinely conscious evil. Yet clearly his actions as president are not those of a progressive. This prime example of the malevolent left turns out to be someone who betrayed the left years ago. Sort of like Horowitz.
Ted