Intolerance On The Left
Lejeune, Anthony
INTOLERANCE ON THE LEFT A few months ago I ventured to suggest that the middle classes had been given a raw deal. This not very extremist view attracted a good deal of support; but what...
...other views are simply not relevant and therefore not worth serious consideration...
...Genuine fascism is a left-wing, not a right-wing, heresy...
...Anthony Lejeune REVIEWS (Continued from Page 4) thought would be the inevitable destruction of American individualism if New Deal policies were continued...
...Similarly, liberals are conspicuously tolerant of juvenile delinquencies, thugs, cannibals, savages and blood-thirsty rebels, but singularly intolerant of civilized opponents, of aristocrats, financiers and intellectual right-wingers...
...and, in any case, such abandonment might simply have encouraged the extremists...
...The logical conclusion can be seen in Communist states where not only illegal actions but illegal words and, as far as possible, illegal thoughts are suppressed...
...I do not react to articles by convinced leftists as they react to mine...
...Their doctrines are not vulnerable to argument...
...Rather, I might adopt Dr...
...The events of those two days lead me to certain conclusions about political life on this campus...
...Leftists, in short, are peculiarly intolerant...
...Perhaps it was to enable the Red Chinese to beat Chiang, for later he states that China "inevitably would have been won by the efficiency, incorruptibility, and ruthless fanaticism of Mao Tsetung," due to "the ancient resentments against foreign domination, the pent up demand for agrarian reform (sic), the growing revulsion against the corruption and terrorism of the Kuomintang, and the skill and tenacity with which the Chinese Communists were to exploit these discontents...
...Janis Stares INTOLERANCE (Continued from Page 3) Freedom itself, though they pay lip-service to it, has a low place in their hierarchy of values...
...The I.U...
...Mussolini was brought up as a Marxist, and the Nazis were National Socialists...
...I doubt that either students or administration would welcome "anarchy on the campus" as a political issue next year...
...Right-wingers, whatever their other faults, are not intolerant in this chilling way...
...Is this a coincidence, a historical or political accident...
...They are compulsive demonstrators...
...The Leftist syndrome is complex, but three relevant threads can be disentangled...
...if the masses agree with them, the will of the people is sovereign, but if the masses do not agree with them, the people have clearly been deceived and retarded and must be led to the light...
...As Hofstadter-Miller-Aaron announce, 10...
...The modern Left derives from 18th Century rationalism, from a belief that society can be perfected by planning and the removal of artificial obstacles...
...They hotly resent people, especially people of their own race and class, who refuse to share their guilt, who decline either to do or to demonstrate...
...rational round-table discussions can blow any problem away...
...Because the disagreement with communism is the result of misunderstandings, which can be cleared up, but the disagreement with fascism is a fight against malice...
...each step to the Left is final and requires no further discussion...
...The administration must stick by its decision...
...Like all ideologues, they believe in a panacea...
...First, what is this going to do to I.U...
...even their commitment to free speech tends to be qualified...
...they are blocking the road to paradise, re-opening Pandora's box letting the snake into Eden...
...their use of the platform which the student government now provides them is misleading as to the true feelings of the student body...
...I think it is inherent in the philosophy of the Left...
...No one can intelligently and honestly disagree except over details...
...Secondly, leftists — liberals in the American terminology — luxuriate in guilt...
...Left-wing radicalism is not expected to provoke any similar reaction from the Right...
...If irresponsible activity of this sort continues it will impose needless burdens on the legitimate activities of the students...
...If there is a menace in America, students learn that it probably emanates from the business community, surely not from internal Communism...
...Continued on Page 10) 3 THE POSSESSED (Continued from Page 2) ing on November 9: "We do not believe it is your right to engage in the war in Viet-nam, and we will engage in civil disobedience to protest it...
...In a rationalist, materialist world there can be no value in the freedom to be wrong and to propagate wrong ideas...
...In The National Experience he avers that Roosevelt "had good reasons for not wishing to abandon China...
...In their search for the solutions to social problems they are quite willing to enforce conformity...
...Johnson's answer when he was asked how he felt about the behavior of certain leftists in his day...
...737-38) Maybe Mao is not such a bad fellow after all, eh...
...Second, I wonder if loftman, Hunter, & Co...
...are the sort of leadership the students want now...
...Nothing must be allowed to impede its working...
...They would, for example, still want to disburse foreign aid even if it was clearly bringing the recipients more harm than good...
...Enlarging on this point, Professor Michael Oakeshott commented that the libtral "is not devoid of humility...
...but what depressed, even alarmed me was the reaction of those who disagreed...
...The fanaticism of these apocalyptic gurus needs to be contained...
...They were not content simply to disagree...
...Because the criminals and savages are ignorant, victims of capitalism and imperialism, a cause of guilt-feelings rather than of anger in liberal breasts, whereas the aristocrats, financiers and right-wing intellectuals are more or less deliberate villains and therefore regarded as virtually incorrigible...
...Useful discussions produce a positive response...
...697) Speaking ex cathedra as is his wont, he feels no compulsion even to adumbrate what these "good reasons" were...
...Blithely ignoring revisionist interpretation, Hicks-Mowry-Burke encapsulates typical emphasis that only Japan wanted war: "At stake was Japanese domination of East Asia as against the traditional American position of respect for the sovereignty of all Asian nations and the equalitarian commercial principle of the open door...
...administration acted as it had to and disciplined the students so that a small group of people would not be able to force their will upon the rest of the campus...
...no amount of contrary evidence can shake their belief in equality, in planning, in the perfectibility of man...
...Such an attitude to freedom is a mark of the ideologue, and leftists are essentially ideologues...
...nor, on the whole, does it...
...Rightwingers, therefore, are not merely opponents in a debatable field...
...What interests them, both at home and abroad, is that leftwing views should be heard...
...Will it continue to do so much longer...
...And the rational solution is, in its nature, the perfect solution . . ." Leftists, being egalitarians, assume that everyone wants and needs the same things: and, as rationalists, they believe that their policies, their solutions, are the objectively correct way toward these universal goals...
...Firstly, it is an essential doctrine of the Left that most human evils are the fruit of socio-economic conditions and can be cured by political means...
...Modern liberals are not really very liberal...
...These beliefs help to explain the paradoxes and apparent double-standards of the Left...
...This double standard is an integral part of the liberal frame of reference, and the liberal frame of reference nowadays controls a very large part of public discussion...
...I don't think so...
...Anyone who questions the basic assumptions of the Left — the absolute desirability of universal suffrage, for example, or of progressive taxation or of state-run welfare schemes or of the right to strike — will meet incredulity and indignation rather than argument...
...Worse, it is certain to become a political issue in the 1968 election in Indiana and will probably result in further cuts in an already inadequate academic budget...
...As Professor Charles Frankel, himself an arch-liberal, observed: "To put it starkly, but I think exactly, liberalism invented the idea that there are such things as social problems...
...It follows that anyone who professes to disagree must be either unintelligent or dishonest...
...We must do something" they say, even when they are not in any sense responsible and there is nothing useful they can do...
...Liberals are enthusiastic advocates of trade and cultural exchanges between Communist countries and the West: but in the next breath they advocate boycotts and the refusal of performing rights as weapons against such "fascist" countries as South Africa and Spain...
...They regard political development as a one-way process...
...But the third is the root cause...
...They were outraged that anyone should write such stuff...
...But he cannot imagine politics which do not consist in solving problems, or a political problem of which there is no rational solution at all...
...The American Nation, Vol...
...Thus Bernard Hollowood said recently that anybody who resented paying taxes at the current rates must be either hopelessly unsophisticated or a selfish feudal reactionary...
...they are quite content, in practice if not in theory, for "reactionary" views to be suppressed...
...Vol...
...which, considering the prevalence of articles by convinced leftists, is fortunate for my blood pressure...
...Their confidence is not dependent on popular support...
...a negative response implies ignorance or obduracy...
...They feel responsible for all the world's injustices, inequalities, miseries...
...They are interconnected and of ascending importance...
...The miasma from the fever swamps of the New Left is now wafting from our student government...
...2, p. 519) Considering Roosevelt's role in gaining American entry into World War II, the texts vary from cautious to giddy approbation...
...Such a problem must be counterfeit...
...Civil disobedience is a time-honored form of protest in this country, yet the forces whose duty it is to preserve order have had to act so that this order was not completely disrupted...
...I would have knocked the factious dogs on the head, to be sure," he replied, "but I was not vexed...
...Clashes between men of good will must be the result of misunderstandings...
...2, p. 651) Schlesinger's remarks are even more blatant...
...Thoreau went to jail protesting what he considered unjust laws, yet he believed in the necessity for law and did not resist his arrest...
...They champion the rights of Communists in what they regard as fascist countries, but they never demand free speech for "fascists" in Communist countries...
...More than most of us, leftists find that useful discussions are possible only with people who accept their own basic premises...
...he can imagine a problem which would remain impervious to the onslaught of his own reason...
Vol. 1 • November 1967 • No. 3
