Celebrating at the Bastille - Unconscious Leftists

I couldn't be more amazed to watch the joy of the socialist celebrations in France after taking the elections.
These elections have proven that liberal France is dead - or at least that socialists don't really have a liberal French majority.
Even when the far right casted about 20% of the votes and refused to vote for Sarkozy, Hollande barely got 50% of the votes with very little difference over Sarkozy.
The votes Hollande got consisted of classic liberals (modern liberals, secular, feminist, gay, etc) but also of a large contingent of people who voted just to oppose the Republican Secular strict agenda lead by Sarkozy. These people (mainly marginalized and extremized communities) do not understand or share the values of the liberal left that sincerely embraces them - in some cases even despise them. Hollande couldn't have refused to these votes, but I'm not sure his people understand the undercurrents.
If we do the simple arithmetic, the liberals in France are an absolute minority which managed to take the elections supported by non-liberal populations based on an ad-hoc need.
I would assume that given this anti-Sarkozy coalition, Hollande's administration will evade promoting a "Franchising" policy and not even liberal education to all the French population. The amazing Republican building will be growingly under attack from left and from right.

By the end of Hollande's term the far right in France will be stronger and bigger than ever as well as the non-liberal communities who voted him.
Does Hollande have an alternative? Yes he does. He must take the middle path, cherish the Republican liberal values even at the expense of losing a chunk of his voters. The other way will be far too disastrous for the liberal essence of the republic. Hollande's administration must see itself as the last defender of the Republican values. Otherwise, I'm afraid there will be nothing to stand between the troops of La-Pen and Immigrants' gangs that will clash in the streets.

The Conquest of the Bastille (CC Wikipedia)

Sustainable Liberalism?

In an era where sustainability is one of the most common buzzwords spread by liberals worldwide we have the right to ask ourselves: Is Liberalism itself sustainable?

Liberal ideas carry a lot of real world attributes which we commonly define as positive, like tolerance, human and civil rights, advance of knowledge, higher life standards, novelty by free minds - just to mention a few.*
However, Liberalism bears also a terrible pain. It carries at its womb a time bomb that will bring to its own destruction. Either this aggressive tumor or one of its complications will kill liberalism. Its self assuredness and pacifism.

Modern liberalism is pacifist. Its main stream adherents do not want to fight in real wars. Actually, many times they do not want to fight at all. The belief in Liberalism embeds the belief in man kindness, benevolence and an ever improving world. So, if the good always win and if everyone are good, why should one fight at all.

This liberalism is light years away from the much more realist founders of liberalism or the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, who lived the oppression that they wanted to oust with their liberal ideas.They knew they had to fight and die for the life they wanted.

Modern liberals, mainly western ones, have never felt oppression, commonly the worst thing they went through is unemployment.We grew up in welfare states, we saw too many movies in which the good guys always win and whenever we felt blue we could just open the TV to watch a movie, read a book, go for a drink or go shopping. We didn't have to be out fighting for our families' or ideas' survival.

If you have ever participated in an elections campaign, felt the stress in the days before the elections and celebrated with multitudes a victory, you probably know that feeling of an essential battle been won. A tide of strong feelings that you didn't know exist in you. But, a few days later the feeling is gone. This emotion, this fervor lacks in the liberal movement and when it exists it is commonly turned in the wrong direction.

Some additional characteristics add to the clinical history of our soon to be defeated liberal camp.

Liberal people make little children, while non liberals tend to have many.

Liberal communities (if you can call community to an agglomeration of individuals) tend to be tolerant to ideas that threat their way of life even in a violent way, while non liberal communities do not reciprocate and do not allow liberal ideas to freely enter their realm.

Liberals tend more than others to focus on career and material achievements over ideology and community life. Individualism is venerated while the general good which requires an effort to defend is left for others to do. It is a kind of outsourced values implementation. NGOs to which we contribute from time to time, tweet their links, share their Facebook posts or rarely manifest for are the perfect conscience purifier.

Our family life is a sterile from ideas and actions, and even when it is full with ideals passed to our children, we are rarely activists - thus teaching our children what hypocrisy and that a good liberal doesn't have to stand for his ideas.

Liberal which are activists prefer to reprimand their own community or other liberal communities for not being liberal enough towards others, while exalting non-liberals as mere noble savages. It is safer to verbally castigate a liberal society, since the attached price tag is low. When you attack a non liberal society you may be required to pay higher prices which almost no contemporary liberal is willing to pay.

Living such a sweet life, never having to really fight for your way of life and convictions, tunes down our instincts. Most of us are not able anymore to correctly identify who are the essential rivals. This is easily exemplified by cooperation of leftist organizations with dictatorships and undemocratic regimes. So, either these organizations aren't liberal or they are blind and cannot recognize the enemy. Maybe they cannot take seriously any enemy - after all they believe, the good guys will always win.

Human character is shaped like that of other animals through struggles, combats and playing-training towards them. When daily life is left out of any existential struggle and when we are educated that nothing is worth fighting for, we suppress those basic instincts.

The elites which carry the ideas of every regime are always the first ones to become complacent, lose their instincts and take the path towards the extinction of their own regime. Elites, being spoiled and living well, tend to become cosmopolitan, less provincial and supposedly more and more liberal. This is a stage of suicidal liberalism. Liberalism like any other idea must keep its vitality. It must have a Carthage to rival with if it wants to avoid petrification.

* These 'positive' and benevolent attributes can be considered such only in certain situations. When being a 'good guy' gets you or someone from your family/community killed by the 'bad guys' in your neighborhood, there is no meaning anymore to 'being good'.

Sometimes I feel that Hollywood is one of the main problems of the modern liberalism. Darwin taught us that the fittest, the fiercest and the strongest survives. Extremists, dictators and racists twisted the ideas trying to justify some of the most horrible deeds in human history. Liberals decided that they will negate and turn their back to any notion of Darwinism in politics and society. This is where Hollywood gets into the picture. It seems that liberals truly tend to believe that the good guys will always win. I find no possible explanations to that but two - stupidity or watching too many Hollywood movies.

Hi everybody! Wake up! Bad guys do win if you do not fight back! You cannot assume that wife beaters and child abusers will change their ways nor you can assume the same about crazy extremists, people who think a certain deity allowed them to kill others or deprive their women from basic rights.

No competition to capitalism and the rotting west

Hegel made a correct observation that dialectics between two opposites (thesis and anti-thesis) creates new matter (synthesis) and promotes the advance of history.
Currently, when the leftist ideas championed by the USSR and socialist movements were demolished, there is no counter thesis to create dialectics versus the capitalism, which in its turn causes the rotting and decay of capitalism.

This way, the basis of the western renaissance, the logic questioning of subject, competition between ideas and cycling improvement is in danger.

While Capitalism and Socialism were contending against each other, new and advanced forms of matter appeared in the friction lines - social-democracy, welfare state, social security and more.

Nowadays, it seems that regardless whether you are a western capitalist, a middle eastern Islamist, a nationalist Russian or a competitive Chinese - money is a tool and a goal at the same time. Thus, they do not challenge capitalism and capitalism isn't really challenging their core values. This way, western liberalism (what we used to wrongly call, leftism) is left without a defender and is vanished from the ideological arena.

I agree that these ideologies currently competing on world dominance do have dialectics between them, but not sure these dialectic currents are positive.

The left has left and we are left alone. It's our own responsibility to bring up a new notion of liberalism.

We had a dream - and now we have none

Martin Luther King had a dream. That dream marched hundreds of thousands of people all over the USA and inspired others around the globe.
The strength of King didn't lay merely on is personality and his ideas.
It laid, first and foremost, on the fact that he had an idea. He combined the existing wishes and passions of people in the USA, centuries of belief in human equality and human rights into a clear an articulated utopia - an achievable new world which managed to wash away cynicism and mobilize masses.
The existence of a clear alternative world is a strong force - the one which explains the force of religions over people. The one which explains why Marxism had the same force over people.
This explains also the amazing strength of the capitalist idea - which is a clear but also one of the simplest of all utopias. Let the market play, don't intervene and the world will be paradise.

There is no leftist utopia nowadays. There is no liberal utopia. Liberalism has succumbed to a pile of post modernist bullshit. It retreated in the face of a mass of relativist ideas which justify why all the ideas of humanism and liberalism should be sacrificed to appease religious, extremist ideologies and oppressing regimes.
Enlightenment as moved aside and in the name of liberalism cleared the way to anti liberal ideas.

The west's liberalism submerged itself in a bath of guilt over the calamities that Europe has brought on the world over the 20th century has disappeared.
Instead of reformulating its aspirations into a new sociopolitical movement is was washed away by relativism, effectively accepting non-liberal ideas as acceptable just in order not to impose "European" ideas and castigating those who still believe in it as "imperialists", i.e. the USA.
For the sake of humanity and the world, the western liberalism has the same right to exist and profess its convictions like any other ideology. Regretting for western deeds should learn to a revision of ideas, improvement of liberalism and cleanup of racist ideas, but not to a full retreat.

Music that makes me tremble

When the ideas aren't razor sharp, when you are too tired, music speaks for your soul. Like a little children walking in darkness - songs have a magical power to re-attach you to the emotional sources of your belief. When the brain wants to sleep, emotions can still stir your soul.

Yesterday night I went for a walk in the central tents camp in Tel Aviv. Later, at home I read quite a lot of opinions and reports about this amazing creature. Exhausted, I fall asleep before sunrise.

Today, I woke up a bit melancholic trying to come up with a sharp insight about how leftist ides relate to the current events worldwide - London is burning, masses being murdered in Syria, protests in Spain and Israel, falling stock markets and others.

I have many ideas which I'll try to present in a readable manner for you in the next days. However,  now I just have a strong urge to share with you three emotive songs which summarize for me leftist gut feelings, the deeper emotions that feed my more quotidian political views.

Later I will try to find a decent translation to English.

For Life - Leon Gieco

The Memory - Leon Gieco

Luis' Christmas - Mercedes Sosa & León Gieco

What is left and what is right

The common understanding of what's left and what's right is the European one. Leftists are expected to be tending to liberalism, dovish and support welfare-state/socialism while rightists are expected to be tending to religion/tradition or conservatism, hawkish and capitalism.

Well... sorry to be the one to tell you this: the world is a bit more complicated.

The 20th century exhibited leftists who were terrorists more than liberals, rightist who were more populists than capitalists, as well as other numerous variations.

So, when we will be discussing the left and right in a certain realm or country, it must be understood in its respective context. If you'd like us to elaborate on something, please post a comment under the related post.

In the context of our previous post, when the government in Israel is trying to denounce something or someone as leftist, it means to point out dovish ideas mainly in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The Israeli left is commonly correlated with its affluent middle class and old elites holding social-democrat views, while the right is correlated with the popular and conservative masses and religious public. Leftist economical ideas were set aside by both right and left main parties while small parties in both left and right hold fractions of leftist economical ideas.

Argentine, is a different example. There are 2 main parties. One which would be a classical European left party, liberal-social democrat, but it is tainted as an upper-middle class only bastion. On the other hand, there is a populist party which has factions which brutally privatized the whole country when they ruled and other factions which are anti-American, anti-capitalist and affiliated to the left side of the South American political map (Chavez, Castro, etc.)

There are many other examples, but that's enough to illustrate our point.