The ideology of the Left is integral to the Left's power. Democrats seek to codify political correctness into legislation as settled verities admitting no further debate. This is despite the abject failure of their policies to solve the problems they contend need fixing. The welfare state has spawned intergenerational dependence and misery as well as national debt. Their self-appointed victims have not been healed by un-gendered bathrooms. Yet despite facts, evidence, and rational thinking, which have all exposed the absurdity of the Left's current dogma, like fanatics, they cling to it more vehemently than ever.

The great Roman orator, Cicero, advised that there are always two sides to every dispute. Both sides justify their claims using chains of reasoning (not necessarily in accordance with objective data) against which logical argument, he stated, cannot carry off victory. Vanquishment can be achieved only by an appeal to the emotions — and here, Democrats have been winning hands down, except in the area of popular national patriotism championed by the president.

Cries of "social justice," "affirmative action," "racial prejudice," etc., ad nauseam, enfranchise the Left to wallow in a fictitious self-regard of moralizing sentimentality. Anyone who opposes leftists is automatically demonized as inhumane. Cowardly Republicans, large corporations like Procter & Gamble, and bureaucrats are shaken down and extorted to comply, for fear of appearing insensitive toward "oppression." Any evidence of political incorrectness can damage employment prospects or even get one fired. We are being thought-controlled and speech-tyrannized.

How can we push back against such imperious "bleeding heart" compassion? The ideology has a stranglehold on academia and is being rolled out in schoolrooms from kindergarten onward. We've already lost the Millennials. Yet from the time of Marx's historiography, which examined humans exclusively as members of a class, to the postmodern deconstruction of all meaning, the Left has described society along one parameter, and one parameter only: that of political power!

Nothing else matters. For the Left, the good society comprises powerful identity groups (who were formerly victimized identity groups), together with the judicial, political, and economic subjugation as well as social ostracism of their previous oppressors. This is the vile mirror image, rhapsodized from a deformed, delusional distortion of today's society — a caricature of actuality. To maintain this ranting fiction, the Left "discovers" oppression in every possible human (and non-human) interaction. One cannot have a power-neutral relationship, except with like-minded people. Regardless of moral character, one is either a victim or a persecutor by dint of skin color, religious affiliation, class membership, economic status, genealogy, history, and now (biologically irrelevant) sex. The Left is entirely uninterested in moral character. Personal moral responsibility has been outsourced to "woke" identity memes, worn like tattoos and skin piercings. Ideology is identity, and identity is power.

I suggest that so constipated a view of human nature is the Left's Achilles heel. Firstly, it accuses statistically normal people of abuses they do not commit and thus elicits outrage — a strong motive to vote against Democrats. Secondly, power is hardly the only, or even the most significant determinant of daily human interaction in this country. Untold trillions of people throughout the historical ages have lived under monarchies and empires, where they enjoyed little to no power, yet still managed to create personally fulfilling (even if not idyllic) lives. They have recorded their immeasurable humanity in the rich cultural artifacts they left behind. Contrariwise, many in the West's politically correct, materialist, and now aggressively atheist constitutional democracies are unhappy, addicted and suicidal, belligerent and frenzied. They suffer a crippling spiritual malaise, prominently evoked in so-called "modern art."

The Left's penchant for deconstructing human nature into a plethora of mini-identities has broken apart the wholeness of human experience! Divide and rule is the game. The more identity divisions, the more categorical victims and the more claims to political power the Democrats can stake. Other societies have also held a dissected view of human nature. In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and modern China, acceptability as a holistic human goes from strictly circumscribed to nonexistent.

All of these ideologies, including the Left's, deny that the human being is greater than the sum of its parts. None is humanist. Traditional humanism, whether secular or spiritual, implies a profound depth and endless horizon of possibility within human nature. Even though the Left abhors the avowal of religion to discover eternal truth, and disputes that there is such a thing as human nature, leftists nevertheless insist that the borders and boundaries they've erected inside the psyche and its skin are incontestably defining. Thus, the possibility of spiritual, rational, and emotional growth is aborted. The self-referential parameter of identity-masks produces a circularity of being, like a Ferris wheel one cannot get off or a prison. There is no maturation beyond its confines. The politicized mask has swallowed the soul.

Sadly, modern humanism has also been injured by the Left's postmodern critique, which ironizes and debases the integrity of all it touches. In arguing that truth is a social construct, grounded on power relations, it contradicts itself and becomes irrelevant to the enlargement of human potential. Academia needs to be swept clean of such cockamamie.

It is time for us to take back not only our national sovereignty, but sovereignty over human nature. We must deny the Left its attempt to circumscribe, shut down, shut out, and reduce us to stereotypes. By reviving humanist respect for the dignity of every soul and the possibility of moving beyond the horizon to fresh endeavors of the mind, we will win against those on the Left who wish to confine us in an ideological coffin. If more people embraced a holistic humanism, more students would become interested in studying the humanist classic, Renaissance, and Christian texts, and the pressure will be on the universities to change direction. Then we can take back the education of our children and give them the philosophical expectation of continual spiritual growth. Then the malaise may be annulled, the mental health of the community might be improved, and the Left will have to alter or disintegrate. I dare say that such a resurgence of holistic humanism could even drive down the epidemic of suicide and addiction wreaking havoc and misery on our society. It is a cause worth fighting for.