We hear a lot about “identity politics” today.
Identity politics refer to the idea that your race, class of birth, gender, sexual orientation or other NON-CHOSEN characteristics are all-determining of your fate. You don’t have choices. Or if you do, it doesn’t matter. If you’re white and male, you’re destined for success and happiness. If you’re not white and male, your life is a vale of tears and you deserve – well, everything in compensation. The unstated premise here is that you have no choice. Life is ALL destiny.
And people think this is a NEW idea?! It’s called determinism, another word for fatalism. It’s the oldest and most toxic idea of all.
In order to accept identity politics – the entire basis of the modern Democratic Party – you have to accept that there’s no such thing as free will and choice.
In that respect, the Democratic movement toward all-out socialism and even totalitarianism makes sense. If we have no free will, what’s the point of liberty? Liberty and individual rights refer to the right to exercise sovereignty over your own life. Freedom presupposes that you have a mind and a brain to use of your own free will. If your gender, race or class of birth doom you to a certain point-of-view and set of actions, then what’s the point of liberty?
We fight over politics only the extent to which we differ on more basic, philosophical and psychological questions of life. One of these issues: Either man has free will, or he doesn’t.
The welfare state was based on the idea that we all need a little help so we can better exercise free choice. It wasn’t true or honest, but that was the idea. The new push toward socialism is different. It’s based on the idea that none of us can control anything, so the only hope is to let a government – run by an elite and select group of people who DO have free will, presumably – do things for us. It starts with “free” health care, college, education, etc. Soon after, free speech, the right to arm yourself and any other remaining liberties will follow. They ALWAYS do.
The amazing thing isn’t that it’s happening in America. The amazing thing is that it took so long – and that millions of ignorant and foolhardy Americans actually believe it’s something new.
It’s likewise not amazing that there’s a huge fight as we enter the more advanced stages of this epic battle. This is the fight underlying the Donald Trump phenomenon. President Donald Trump is the last refuge for people who don’t want socialism. The people who support Trump want many different things, some of them contradictory. But the socialists have no such confusion. They know what they want, and they aim to roll right over us to get it. The best way to do that is convince us we have no free choice.
The idea of people taking over control for you via an authoritarian, oppressive government is the norm of human history. Even in Nazi Germany, Hitler tempted people into his cult of tyranny via the means of National Socialism, meaning all kinds of freebies and perks.
These freebies and perks are worse than loot from a toxic, dishonest tyrant masquerading as Santa Claus. They’re a deal with the devil, in the most real sense of that phrase. They’re a psychological drug designed to lull people into thinking that sure enough, they have no free will, and therefore no responsibility for anything. “Take care of me, socialist Democrats. Take my guns. Decide what I see on social media. Who am I to choose? What the hell do I know?”
Will America, the land that has overcome so much – the British royalty, a bloody Civil War, the Nazis, the Japanese, the Cold War, a Great Depression, 9/11 – likewise overcome this latest invitation to disaster? That chapter of American history – indeed, world history – is now being written. Those of us living will be the ones to write it.
So what’s your verdict?
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