Leftist illusions bite the dust of reality

By Aussiegirl

In today's Front Page Magazine Michael Lopez-Calderon takes us on a magical mystery tour through the mind of an American leftist:

"That crashing, piercing sound you hear is the fall of my Leftist House of Mirrors. A worldview that purported moral truths, cloaked itself in the language of arcane academia, venerated its doubtlessly dedicated, sincere intellectual stalwarts and activists - Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Benjamin Spock, Howard Zinn, Edward Said -- and preyed upon alienated young idealists who like me were in search of a workable Utopia, proved a chimera of monumental proportions. That my Leftist House of Mirrors produced an illusion on such a massive scale is now evidenced by the reaction of the Left's priestly class to the horrific Islamo-Fascist act of mass murder on September 11, 2001. "

[...]Clinging tightly to The Nation, Tikkun, F.A.I.R.’s Extra, and the latest works of Chomsky, Norman G. Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, and Said, I sought reassurance that my Leftist ideals had escaped the Utopian thinking of lesser minds. I was steeled in the notion -- what later proved an illusion -- that rationalism was the basis of my idealism. However, there was one troubling, recurring weakness about the Left that kept reappearing like termites, eating away at my wooden edifice of arguments and premises: The Left offered no solutions. The Leftist critics of America and the West sit in the most comfortable seat known to all – the seat of the critical critic, the cynic who destroys all but from the rubble offers no constructive alternatives. The Left tears but never builds. A colleague and friend consistently reminded me of this dilemma, saying “Mike, notice the difference between a Thomas Paine and a James Madison – it is easier to tear at something but the more difficult task lies in making a government.” We on the Left needed more Madison and less Paine. We hammered and chipped away at America, but unlike Jean-Antoine Houdon, we created detritus instead of magnificent sculptures.

My Leftist House of Mirrors Comes Crashing Down

By late August of 2001, I became increasingly convinced that no rational solution could arise in Israel-Palestine precisely because disorganization, disunity, terror, and corruption marked the Palestinian political community’s primary achievements. The emergence of religious fanatics, in this case Islamo-Fascists like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among the Palestinian youth spells the death knell of a rational and just peace. But nothing prepared me for the devastation of nearly all of my political and philosophical underpinnings like the horrifying dust and soot-filled crash of the World Trade Center and the equally horrific apologias proffered by the Left for this most despicable act.

From the moment the second plane struck the South Tower, the Left was falling over itself to rationalize this mass murder. Ventriloquists for and mind readers of Osama bin Laden came out of the woodwork.