An intriguing post at the Daily Wire asks the question, “Can leftism lead to a happy life?”
Leftism refers to a political or social view. Political and social views are consequences of deeper, more subconscious and more personal views, attitudes, core beliefs and premises.
Generally speaking, leftism paints a picture of a world filled with people needing to be rescued and with those determined to rescue them. So far as it goes, there’s a certain romance and inspiration in such a view. But when you consider the hard reality that leftism involves coercion, the romance begins to diminish pretty quickly. “Will you please help me?” inspires a little different vision than the tanks, guns, armies, gulags, slave and concentration camps — not to mention the resulting and widespread poverty and despair — that are always required to enforce the leftist view of things, in the end. It doesn’t sound very compatible with happiness to me, no matter how you define happiness!
The Daily Wire article states, “The divide between the two worldviews comes down to this – own your own life or give your sovereignty over to someone else. Choosing the former will inevitably lead to a better, happier life.”
I agree. Leftism presents a worldview where man is helpless and doomed to his lot in life. Leftism means determinism. Determinism is just another word for fatalism. Fatalism is an old and primitive form of religion. It’s ironic, because leftists like to present themselves as the spokespersons for the progressive, forward-looking and secular view of rationality and order. Yet in order to buy into leftism, you must, in some way, acknowledge its overriding principle that, “You don’t have the final say over your life. Someone else or something else does.” Wow–that does not sound progressive to me!
A happy life does not require a particular political allegiance. But a happy life does presuppose a thirst for liberty and freedom. Liberty and freedom are the psychological equivalents of oxygen. Without a free social setting in which to develop yourself, take responsibility for yourself, challenge yourself and to love and live life to its fullest, there’s no possibility of following any particular approach to life in any credible or coherent way.
When you’re healthy, you embrace life from the driver’s seat. You willingly and hopefully take on all the challenges you face. You know solutions exist, that you can and usually will find them, and you insist on the freedom as well as the responsibility for pursuing them. That’s a happy life, and leftism will never lead to it.
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