The Ultra-Reactionary Left

The left cares about nothing but power. All the noise it makes about "change" and "progress" and "revolutions" is just that: noise. The very last thing leftists want is any change that would cost them power, prestige and wealth. The left is ultra-reactionary. Orwell grasped this well in the prevailing ideology of Oceania, which was "Insoc," or "English Socialism." History changed every day so that no one could reflect, and language was maimed so that no one could think. Oceania was filled with angry militants demanding radical action, but, of course, all the fury of these robotic cadres had no meaning at all and would freeze humanity and prevent it from ever changing.

Power, raw and naked state power, overwhelms less important things like money. In the Soviet Union, Stalin's "salary" was as meaningless as Hitler's "salary" in National Socialist Germany. A boss who can imprison and torture at will is richer than the richest businessman. In the Soviet Union, money itself meant nothing because there was nothing to buy with money. The nomenclatura, the party and state elites, could shop in special stores that actually had goods one might want. The ordinary Soviet subject, even if nominally a millionaire, could not rent a nice apartment or visit an excellent restaurant or even see a good doctor. Power was wealth, and "wealth" itself was nothing. The ultra-reactionary leftists are those who have power and who snarl at anyone who wants a share of that power. These bosses have a stranglehold on government and on every powerful institution. What large nonprofit organizations are not wedded to chic leftist cant? What broadcasting empire is not soaked in leftist messaging and images? Public schools are all re-education camps, and academia ruthlessly purges any student or instructor who deviates from the dreary plantation of entrenched power. Every federal agency has been filled with dutiful flacks. Every union boss really works for leftist overlords. Even large corporations pathologically follow what officers and directors believe is politically correct. Why in the world would leftists ever want the revolutions of free enterprise or the nonconformists of Judeo-Christian moral values to have a chance to prove that freedom produces happy work and also wealth, or that morality produces joyful life and purpose? Leftists want no one to rock the boat. Instead, the ultra-reactionary left feigns "new ideas" (like gray, wrinkled, addled socialism) and opposes "extreme conservatives" (those who work in a thousand different self-started businesses, each with a new idea behind it, or who worship in a hundred different varieties of churches and synagogues, or who think and study and write outside the flat latifundia of old leftist dogma.) Here ought to be our response to the geriatric politicians whose health care, police security, office staff, and everything else are paid as a perk of office by government when these old folks start to rail about the need to redistribute wealth: instead of that, redistribute power. The left rails against "imperialism," so why not champion those colonists in Flyover Country whose independence has been crushed under the heel of an imperial Washington? Why not decentralize union power so that big bosses of giant unions cannot push around and exploit the worker with little income and no power by prohibiting national unions as trusts in restraint of trade? The big power gap, of course, is the theft of the power of individuals into the behemoth institutions of leftism. So allow each parent to withdraw the tax dollars used to "educate" his child and instead allow that parent to use whatever means is effective in education, using regular standardized tests to prove success. Allow each citizen a "slice" of the broadcast bandwidth, which he can give to whichever association he feels best represents his moral, cultural, and political values – allowing these "unions" of ordinary citizens to reach beyond the monolith of established media and entertainment. Empower those genuinely disempowered individuals – the oppressed colonies we call "states," those harassed religions and beliefs squeezed out and bullied by doctrinaire state atheism, the victims of federal bureaucratic and judicial activism who cannot survive the crushing weight of statist power. This is what true revolutionaries, genuine champions of the people, and actual radicals who see how ghastly life has become for many Americans would demand. This is what the ultra-reactionary left, which is the nearest we have to medieval barons and bishops, would want, if it wanted anything at all, really, but power.