After a speech in Romania last week, I was asked a question by a young member of the audience that, remarkably, I don’t remember ever having been asked: What is leftism?
The question seems so simple and so basic to understanding contemporary life that you would think it would be posed frequently — and if it weren’t, the reason would be that almost anyone who cares about society would already know how to answer it. But the question is rarely posed, and few know how to answer it.
“What is leftism?” is not at all the same as “What is liberalism?” Leftism and liberalism share almost no values. Indeed, perhaps the greatest tragedy of America today is that liberals do not vote their values. Leftists vote their values, and conservatives vote their values. But liberals vote for left-wing values, almost none of which they hold.
To cite but two examples: Liberals do not believe in racial segregation, whereas the left does: all-black dorms, all-black graduation exercises, different standards for blacks, etc. And liberals do not believe that males who say they are females should be allowed to compete in women’s sports; only leftists do.
If you ask people, “What is leftism?” most will respond by listing left-wing positions, not by defining it. People confuse identifying left-wing positions with knowing what leftism is. But naming left-wing positions is not the same as defining leftism.
To be fair, many people, including conservatives, cannot define conservatism either. In fact, the inability of millions of American conservatives to define conservatism is a major reason so many conservative parents don’t have conservative children. (See my two-part column, “Explaining Conservatism”)
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
