| HN Mirror

You don't get it. The entirety of (current) leftist ideology falls apart if force is ever used on any large scale. So "it can't happen", right ?

The same goes for intelligentsia's hate for violenc. Keep history in mind, intelligentsia will order "their" forces to do horrible things on their behalf against defenseless people, but touching a weapon themselves, no no no no no. What should be understood is that they have nothing against violence. They just want the guarantee that the plebs can't use violence against them, and that they, personally, can never be forced to commit violence, so they cannot be directly blamed for things, even things that are obviously their fault. Like, say, you will not find a single French philosopher accepting responsibility for the French revolution's aftermath, despite the fact that they were very, very much responsible for it.

What should be understood as well is that figures like Gandhi epitomize this behaviour. He's commonly misunderstood. He's a very religious Hindu man from a Brahmin family. His hatred for violence does NOT come from a desire for peace (no more than any other human, he wants a peaceful city to live in, like anyone else, but he certainly does not want peace at any price), it comes from being raised to never, under any circumstances do any work, certainly not manual labour, and certainly not risky work, like committing violence against other human beings. Such a thing would massively lower his karma, it'd be like forcing a jew to celebrate his birthday with a pig barbecue. He has, however, ordered large numbers of both soldiers and civilians to commit violence on others, or threaten them, he even ordered genocides. And even more often, he has often created or contributed to situations that he knew perfectly well would erupt in violence. He is at least partially responsible for the tens of millions of deaths during India's partition.

This person is celebrated by leftists, by the lower ranks because "he is a man of peace" and they can just deny real history because they're 15 years old and haven't ever touched a history book with more than 50 pages (they also revere complete monsters like Che Guevara of course). The higher ranks are well aware of history, yet they love him for his cunning use of violence. How he caused huge battles while moving his forces right under the nose of the enemy. How he created situations that got millions of muslims killed (in revenge for what they did - not saying there wasn't any justification) without ever ordering anyone to fire a gun (he did make sure they had more guns than the enemy of course). How he kept getting his way by creating situations that were completely intolerable for his enemy, e.g. preventing villages from getting food, preventing government departments from operating by cutting communications, destroying the means of escape for refugees by sabotaging train lines, ... Thereby forcing his adversaries to start the attack, usually at a disadvantage. But he is no more a man of peace than Adolf Hitler, and for the same reason. Which is another reason they revere him. This guy killed millions, maybe more than Hitler ever did, because they disagreed with his ideology. He did so without so much as ordering a single person killed. And of course, they revere him because he won.

No matter how pure your leftist ideology, you will be skinned alive by intelligentsia if you don't achieve leftist policy being imposed. E.g. the kibbutzim movement in Israel is widely reviled by leftists ? Why ? I've never met people more dedicated to living as leftist ideology dictates. They failed to take over Israel, that's why. Their failures made Israel a more rightist state than any rightist politician could ever have achieved.

Violence, arms and people choosing for themselves is just completely and utterly incompatible with leftist ideology on pretty much any level you can imagine.

Leftist policy, enforced sharing, massive government expansion, ... can only work if it's imposed from above by a privileged group of rulers (and intelligentsia would quickly leave leftism if this ever changes). But it's not just that. Generally leftism requires that large scale violence doesn't exist, or doesn't matter.

For example, obviously if war threatening America is a real risk, then a large well-funded military is an investment you can't seriously criticize.

If a large internal threat is possible, whether government or otherwise, then you can't argue against gun ownership. Hell, you might even advocate a DUTY to bear arms, something along the line of what Switzerland does [1]. You should see foreigners panic to the most normal of things there : someone comes to work with an assault rifle in his backpack, casually put beneath their desk, lots of ammunition in the same bag, because they leave for mandatory training that evening. Not easy on American nerves that one, let me tell you.

Generally most big government policies would never succeed if there is a serious risk of a large part of the population resisting force. Which is of course exactly the point of the second amendment, but a byproduct is that it makes leftist policies very, very hard to implement.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland