Via Vox, there is this confession of what it is to be leftist royalty. One wishes to pity them. for they live inside a horrid world. It resonates, because it is from my country, and I grew up around such. Grew up around them, but was not one of them. I was a class enemy. I have always been a class enemy. The train is fine.
I was born into a working-class socialist family in New Zealand in 1960. Democratic socialism had been established by popular reforms in the 1930s. By the late ‘50s, almost every working-class child in New Zealand was raised socialist.
But we didn’t call it socialism. We called it “workers’ rights.” In my family, my older siblings and I were the third generation of socialists. We never chose socialism, we inherited it. In the late ‘60s, the younger middle-class joined us.
It is especially in the British Commonwealth that millions have been raised by leftists, who were raised by leftists, who were raised by leftists, and so on. Some leftist families have been so for more than a century. They consider themselves leftist royalty.
For the millions raised as leftists, it is not an ideology; it is a culture. Since childhood, they have lived and breathed it every day in the home. They know nothing else. Like any culture, it is a way of speaking, thinking and acting, with its own narratives and rituals. Narratives are held sacred, repeated, reinforced and, over time, added to. That which challenges sacred narratives, even reality itself, is met with confusion and hostility. As with any aggressive, intolerant culture, if you enter it, it enters you.
Contrary to opinion, leftism isn’t just about hate. Leftists are more complex than that. From my time as a red diaper leftist, I can tell you that a whole range of emotions are involved. Hate, anger, fear, bitterness, jealousy, envy, rage, greed, pride, smugness and paranoia (not technically an emotion, but it is widespread among leftists).
The author is my age. In our youth New Zealand was centrally planned. By the time we were getting our own jobs, this planning ensured that jobs were scarce. I recall my kid sister spending months knocking on every firm’s door where we lived then, and eventually getting a job making clothes. WHich disappeared, because the next government was neo liberal, and New Zealand lost all tarrifs and trade barriers.
The leftist is a great example of how ideology builds a false Jerusalem. In the wrong land, with the wrong agenda, and worshipping the wrong Gods. In Lamentations Jerusalem is envisioned as a grieving woman: wailing. The idols and ideologies that she loved have fallen and fallen greatly There is no one to help her.
All are dead or in exile. The rituals of May Day and Labour Day and the virtue signalling have not helped. The buying of indulgences (carbon credits) has made no difference. The model of their life has fallen, and they are sitting in the ruins.
Zion stretches out her hands, but there is none to comfort her;
the LORD has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be his foes;
Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.“The LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word;
but hear, all you peoples, and see my suffering;
my young women and my young men have gone into captivity.“I called to my lovers, but they deceived me;
my priests and elders perished in the city,
while they sought food to revive their strength.“Look, O LORD, for I am in distress; my stomach churns;
my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious.
In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.“They heard my groaning, yet there is no one to comfort me.
All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it.
You have brought the day you announced; now let them be as I am.“Let all their evildoing come before you, and deal with them
as you have dealt with me because of all my transgressions;
for my groans are many, and my heart is faint.”(Lamentations 1:17-22 ESV)
I live in a red city. Dunedin has voted Labour from the time the party was formed, and the upper common room abandoned the liberal party to support the idea of Progress and its prophet Marx. In the 1890s. [1] I know the narratives of the left.
That the colonialists are to be shamed. That the pioneers were racists. That we should pay recompense for the land. That one must support the intrusion of refugees (the people must be replaced with an amenable group). That heterosexuality is oppression. That the world should fit around my fears and neuroses.
But it does not work. For it is based on lies: beginning with the greatest one. We consider ourselves to be as God. Removing God, and denying that he exists, we think we can be immortal and perfect and unchanging.
And this is a lie. A lie. We are not beautiful for long. We are not young for long. At my age (I was born in the same year as the author) the aim is to maintain function. You will lose most competitions. You are in the special divisions.
And in this life we may not see justice. God cares more about our souls and that we spent an eternity of bliss with him. He uses suffering to discipline us: as Lewis said, in pain God shouts.
So that we may return to him.
But I fear and pray for those born into the high church of Marx. For they have been blindfolded from birth. Even the collapse of socialism (When the nominally Tory bur functionally cuckservative government of Muldoon drove us to bankruptcy in the 1980s) they did not change.
Instead they took over the institutions.
May their eyes be opened. May we repent. Before we also are sitting in the wasteland.
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1. The electorate is safe Labour, but the party vote is not. Labour lost that, in both Dunedin electorates, in the last two elections.
