Opinion

Confederate Statues Are Just The Beginning

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

John Conlin Contributor
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David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, once noted “I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder – as another exercise in self-involvement – rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe”

At the age of 60 he meet first conservative thinker.  Upon closer examination he discovered that most conservative thoughts were based on real-world facts while “Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.”

Sadly, he captures the reality and emotional allure of modern liberalism.  You don’t have to defend your beliefs since those holding opposing beliefs aren’t just wrong, they are morally inferior.  This thus proves those holding the proper views must be morally superior.  It can logically be no other way.

Mamet’s “rewarding myself for some superiority…” and “affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little to no cost” is simply his attempt to capture the inherent “logic” of this bi-polar moral paradigm.  And it is truly cost-free.  All you must do to have this moral superiority is to think the right thoughts.  Or at least let others tell you what these right thoughts are and voilà, you are morally superior.

But for those true believers, it is not the right ideas which makes one morally superior but rather that holding these ideas is simply an outward expression of actually being physically morally superior.  It is in the blood.  Thus your very presence has with it a moral and “human” superiority; “you” at your most biological basis are superior.  Thus one would logically have to conclude that most of your beliefs and ideas are also morally superior, especially as reinforced by a large group of similar thinking people.

Even more, not only are you morally superior to most of your present day citizens, you are morally superior to all who have lived before you across the globe.  The logic of your position demands this be the case.

  1. All who do not think the right thoughts (these being ipso facto evidence of the moral superiority which generates such thoughts) are morally inferior, thus proving your moral superiority.
  2. No one in the past remotely thought these right thoughts.
  3. Therefore everyone in the past is morally inferior and you are morally superior to all who have lived before.

Those who think the right thoughts are thus the pinnacle of human advancement!  That’s a pretty good return on a cost- and effort-free investment.  Think of it.  If you accept these thoughts you are the finest example of human-kind to ever walk the planet.  If this thinking is coherent in any fashion this must be the case.

This thinking must therefore drive one to practice Presentism.  This is “the application of current ideals and moral standards to interpret historical figures and their actions.”  Liberalism and the morally superior position upon which it rests demand it be so.  It can’t logically be any other way.

So if all who came before you are morally inferior then the entire past must be reexamined.  Right now it is Confederate statues but it will not remain so; it can’t.  Based upon its own logic this complete and total reexamination of history will find all those who came before as lacking.

Obviously suppression of other ideas and even violence is not just called for but ethically sanctioned as the morally superior attempt to fight back against the forces of darkness.

But where does it lead?  All tyrants believe themselves to be morally superior.  It can be no other way.  Some like Kim Jong-un take it a step further and reach again, the somewhat logical conclusion they are more god-like than human.  And they act accordingly.

The further this thinking spreads, the more the pain that’s racing our way.  We too should act accordingly.

John Conlin is an expert in organizational design and change.  He is also President and founder of E.I.C. Enterprises, www.EICEnterprises.org, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to spreading the truth here and around the world primarily through K-12 education.