The poisonous propaganda relentlessly spewed by the contemporary Left infects even the consciousness of a staunch “conservative” such as myself.
I just completed a 5-7 minute shower in which it occurred to me, as it inevitably does, that the water I had used was probably enough to sustain an entire family in certain parts of the world for an entire week. Naturally prone to a certain level of guilt given this reality, I have to remind myself of the gross superficiality of the Left’s historical narrative. The notion that the horrid Capitalist West is responsible for the ills of every non-Western civilization on the planet is truly absurd, suffering, as does every Leftist belief, from it’s refusal to admit the inevitable impact of human intelligence, courage and effort on the course of history.
Does this mean I have no empathy for those living in squalor across the face of the planet? Of course not! Apparently tens of millions in China are presently perched on the edge of starvation. But gee, isn’t Communist China the very sort of regime implicitly championed by Leftists, those who firmly believe the freedoms engendered in Capitalism are the root of all evil while naively willing to grant governments absolute power to impose upon each Individual their sacred, collectivist, Utopian vision? Hasn’t history itself proven this to be a grossly simplistic if not utterly stupid recipe for disaster?
The notion of “privilege,” White or otherwise, implies that those so endowed are the benefactors of something they don’t deserve. Of course I had no say in the socioeconomic condition to which I was born. This is a random fact of life over which no one has any control. To burden any individual with a sense of guilt because he/she was born in Canada rather than Kenya is quite literally to reject the givens of Life itself. But beyond promoting this absurdity, because the egalitarian Left refuses to acknowledge the obvious disparities in the cultural achievements of history’s various regimes, because it subscribes to the idiotic, Marxist notion that success is always rooted in oppression, it implies the relative affluence and freedoms enjoyed by the vast majority of people here in the West, be they extremely wealthy or just getting by, are somehow the product of an injustice.
Am I suggesting the citizens of the world’s wealthier nations have the right to revel recklessly in their prosperity with no concern for either other people or the environment? Of course not. But the term “privileged” as it is used today is an abomination, simplistically demeaning the achievements of millions who have applied their wills and minds to the pursuit of happiness, while exonerating those who have failed to do so as mere innocent victims of oppression. It is a narrative that encourages irresponsibility. It is a narrative whose impact is evident in the moral/intellectual decline of most every aspect of contemporary Western society. It is a narrative that demonizes those who stand up for the Principles and Values which unequivocally led to the prosperity of the West as White Supremacists. It is a narrative which makes the room in which I presently sit, with its heat and electricity, running water and computer, not the product of the West’s 2500 years of strife-torn, dialectical, cultural evolution, but of the “materialistic determinism” which Marx saw as the driving force of all of history, a force which makes the “conservative” [i.e., Humanist] notion of Man as an Intelligent, Moral Being, utterly irrelevant.