Before we bid adieu to the topic, it behooves us to contrast the Seven Right Ideas of Conservativism (which have been discussed in this space over the past two months) with their opposition, and to say why the opposition is so vehement and implacable.

The cult of darkness variously known as Leftists, Liberals, Progressives, Brights, Socialists, Pinkos, Late Moderns, Collectivists, Traitors, Blame-America-Firsters, Political Correction Zombies, Statists and Shriekbunnies – but which I call the Morlocks, because they have the courtesy and dignity of devolved cannibal troglodytes – is controlled by a Seven Bad Ideas around which their various emotions and interjections orbit.

The Seven Bad Ideas are:

Solipsism — the paradox that asserts that truth is personal, hence optional: “It is not true that truth is true.” Relativism — the paradox that asserts that virtue is subjective, situational, relative: “It is wrong for you to judge right and wrong.” Subjectivism — the paradox that asserts that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As if putting a urinal in an Art Museum, and betraying the standard somehow proves the standard wrong, not the betrayal. Irrationalism — the paradox that asserts reason is untrustworthy. Each man’s reason is too biased by upbringing, class self interest, sex, race, and background such that no one, aside from members of a given race and sex and victim group, can be expected to understand or advise other members of the victim group. Of course, reaching this conclusion from that premise is itself an act of reasoning, requiring the reasoner to trust his reason, despite the background and race and sex of the reasoner. Pervertarianism — the paradox that asserts it to be licit to seek the gratifications of sexual union of the reproductive act without the union, without the reproduction, and, in the case of sodomites, without the act. The same insane paradox asserts that females should be feminists rather than feminine; and that sexual predation is more romantic than romance. Totalitarianism — the paradox that asserts that freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength. The Constitution is a living, breathing document, ergo it must be smothered and killed. Nihilism — the paradox of that the meaning of life is that it has no innate meaning.

No proof is being offered here that Leftists believe these ideas or make these assertions. The reader can discover that for himself, merely by listening to them talk, reading their works, and reaching his own conclusion. If you cannot see it by reading what they say, you will not see it by my repeating what they say. Look for yourself.

No claim is here being made that these Seven Bad Ideas are rational, related to reality, or even comprehensible. This irrationality and unreality and incomprehensibility of the ideas is a feature, not a bug. Once logic has been dismissed as a tool of cognition, reflection and judgment are unnecessary, and the process of thought is greatly simplified. Instead of a levelheaded discussion such as Leftists, back when they were in the minority, were wont to pretend to want, the modern Leftist substitutes venom, vilification, sneers, slights, and self congratulation.

No claim is being made that all, or even most, of the individuals on the Left adhere to each of these Seven Bad Ideas. No one can. These are things various Leftists say in various debates to silence opposition, but little or no attempt is made to carry out any logical consequences of these ideas. Indeed, paradoxes have no logical consequences. In that respect, they are something like Zen koans. These Ideas are not thoughts, they are riddles meant to jam the gears of thought.

Why so vehement?

Looking back, one may note that the comments to the column on point six, romance versus perversion, reads like the transcript of the yowling at Bedlam. Before saying farewell to the topic, let us at least explain the vehemence of the cacophony.

Their word-noises are not meant to convince themselves or anyone. They are ritual repetitions of mumbo-jumbo phrases, meaningless words whose only meaning is as a gang-sign. By these bafflegab phrases, the members of the herd identify themselves to each other and proclaim their loyalty. By claiming that all polite and right-thinking persons should adopt these phrases they can make the herd seem larger than it is, by tricking the unwary, the craven, and the inattentive into repeating the gang-sign word-noises along with everyone else.

Anyone who does not low the word-noises on cue with the rest of the cows is ejected from the herd by expressions of scorn. Hence, the comments by Morlocks found here and elsewhere discussing conservative ideas contain not the smallest scintilla of logic. That is not their role. They are expressions of scorn meant to eject nonconformists.

But there is more in this case. To say that even sex is subject to the rules of prudence and justice is to provoke the Left to their utmost madness. Sex is their idol. Sex is their Mohammed. Sex is their golden calf and sacred cow.

Sex is an overwhelming pleasure, a union, and therefore (but woe to the Lefty who admits this) the closest thing the materially-minded man has to a religious experience and unity with the divine. Sex is innately mystical.

So when I made the outrageous claim that there is a right way and a wrong way to approach their great god, Eros, and that the right way was more fun, the Leftist paramount idea was challenged at the most fundamental level.

As you can see from the Seven Lame Ideas listed above, Leftism is perversion, both intellectual and legal, but also sexual and physical. Leftism is the parasite attempting to distort, maim, corrupt and kill its host.

That is all it does. It is not a worldview, but a mental process that destroys worldviews.

The Leftist process can only operate by equating two unequal things: calling food poison, calling inequality equality, calling normal abnormal, calling wage-earning slavery. Leftism is the perversion of calling evil good and good evil.

Leftism dulls the mental acuity. That is its purpose. You should read in the comments below the Romance column one poor soul unable to comprehend the idea of loving subordination as separate from servile obedience. I do not think the comments were in bad faith: the poor fool had been lobotomized by Leftist ideas, and had no categories, no vocabulary, no conceptual tools to grasp the obvious.

Calling good evil and evil good is a word game, not a worldview. The central idea of this word game is to call perversions equal to (or better than, because they are more brave) the wholesome, to call ugly better than beauty, to called sodomy better than matrimony.

So for me to utter the obvious truth (which I strongly suspect they all know but dare not acknowledge, hence their venom) that matrimony is more fun than sodomy or sexual predation is a direct attack on their highest and most sacred idol, perversion, had to be met by their one, sole, and only weapon: the utterly futile child-fury of name-calling.

They cannot form an argument because persons who can form arguments are not Lefties.

This did not used to be the case. I remember reading actual thoughts written down in a coherent order by persons who tried to persuade others by means of rhetoric and logic to their side. Now, a corner has been turned, and the Leftists feel no need to persuade, and apparently have lost the talent. So they nag.

Some commentators believe that abortion is the Lefty sacrament. But this would not be an issue were not sexual disorders sacred to them.

Why so Implacable?

The struggle of Leftism against civilization is pursued without quarter and without courtesy because what is at stake is an absolute.

It is their version of a crusade, a holy war. The Unholy War of the Left is not a struggle over one policy, one economic system, one set of social rules. They are fighting as one universe against another universe.

On the one hand, the universe of Christ contains truth, virtue, beauty, reason, and a sound explanation for all these things, where they come from and what they are for.

In this universe, love and romance are not merely part of human nature; love is the ultimate law of nature overcoming all other laws, including time, death and entropy. In this universe, free will exists, and therefore life and liberty and the rights of man can have a place, as well as hope and charity.

On the other hand, the universe of Political Correctness is, not to be too dramatic about it, the universe of Antichrist.

There is no truth in that universe, only personal or cultural narratives. There is no virtue, only appetites and desires which you must indulge without prudence and without restraint. There is no beauty, only the warped and blurry nightmare of total ugliness leering at you from every corner of human life. There is no reason, only evil men with bad motives and your fellow cultists with enlightened motives. There is no romance, except between gays, because the relations between the sexes are mutual exploitation, best served by many dreary one-night stands. There is no free will; there is nothing but genetic conditioning; you are nothing but a meat robot. Your desire for life and happiness are merely chemicals in your brain, and they have no meaning. And after you die, and after the world dies, there is nothing but an infinity of darkness.

The choice is simple, dramatic and binary: either you are of the Christian universe or of the Antichristian universe.

A simpler way of framing this choice would be to talk about the universe, the sum total of reality in which we live, natural and supernatural, on the one hand, and the process of rejecting reality, bit by ever-more-leftnut bit, until there is nothing left.

When I was young, the Leftwing rejected the supernatural but still believed in the natural, still believed in reason, still believed in free will. Now, very few on the Left accept the concept of free will, and they have replaced the strategy of reasoning and debating with the tactic of shrieking. The current screaming tactic is actually more logical, that is, more in keeping with the underlying axiom of rejecting reality. It is a point of pride on the Left, their badge of courage, to express total loyalty to unreality.

There are, to be sure, other religions, other philosophies, and other worldviews aside from these two. But all of them are intermediate. They accept some part of the universe and reject others. Some, like Libertarians, reject the supernatural but accept the supremacy of reason. Some, like Taoists, reject the supremacy of reason but accept the supernatural.

But in the war between reality and unreality, these intermediary positions do not possess the integrity, universality, or logical consistency of the total acceptance of the truth and the total rejection of the truth.

The total acceptance of truth is Christ, who is the way, and the truth, and the life. The total rejection is an outer darkness filled with wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

John C. Wright is a retired attorney and newspaperman who was only once hunted by the police. He is a graduate of St. John College (home of Mortimer Adler’s “Great Books Program“). In 2004 he foreswore his lifelong atheism and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He has published over 10 SF novels, including one nominated for a Nebula award, and was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “this fledgling century’s most important new SF talent.” He currently lives in fairytale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children.