Naked Tribalism

Dr. Bob is a favorite site when your soul needs healing by humanness and decency, reason and logic, sometimes wonderful whimsey, and always damned good writing. Not surprisingly, his "The Pornography of Ideas" [permalink not working] on the reality of the Left is another thoughtful post. His blog. [Paragraphs added for emphasis.]

From this observation arises another conclusion: those on the left are far more tribal than national. Their allegiance and loyalty is no longer to country -- working for and hoping for more national unity, peace, and progress -- but rather to their particular interest group, whose narrow agenda dominates their worldview and becomes the totality of their focus.

They are not Americans who seek to improve the country's environment, but - environmental activists - who view all who differ on means and priorities as greedy polluters and evil capitalists. They are not Americans who genuinely seek, by personal effort and compromise, to improve the lot of the poor and underprivileged, but who prefer instead to exploit the poor as political pawns, demagoguing those who seek the same goals by economically rational means. They are not Americans who seek racial healing and cultural unity, but rather to use race as a lever to power, and charge "racism" freely and liberally - all the while being viciously racist against non-whites who dare to leave the liberal plantation.

To be on the left is to be gay, lesbian, or transgendered; pro-choice or feminist; environmental activist or animal-rights warrior; anti-globalism anarchist or antiwar protester - but never a member of a unified national community striving through compromise and cooperation to address core issues of discrimination, tolerance, economic or environmental progress, national security. The tribe comes first: their personal grievance their only allegiance; the nation - if considered in any positive light at all - is nothing more than a alliance of tribes, bound together by collective victimization, whose goals are to seek sufficient power to coerce their intellectual and moral inferiors into submitting to their dictates. Such is the natural history and inevitable outcome of multiculturalism, which seeks to divide and conquer rather than unite and restore.

And the title comes from this observation.

The postmodern left loves the pornography of ideas: not the deep, transformational passion for beauty, and character, and worthy cause, sacrificing self for the best of the beloved, but rather ideas as harlots, useful to satisfy their lust for power and control, lascivious but cheap, discarded like yesterday’s condom when their utility passes and another conquest looms.

I might be wrong, but I've always thought the French had perfected the Pornography of Ideas with the French Revolution and the rot set in from there. The Russian Revolution and Communism were the logical consequences and post-modern man, in his naked secularism, the new converts to nihilism. I never thought of the True Believers as tribal, but I will from now on.