The Democrat Party’s Abandonment of Critical Thinking in Favor of Rage

It’s a paradox that Democrats see themselves as the Party of tolerance.  There is intolerance on both sides but … the Democrats are much less tolerant of someone holding different political beliefs.  The tribalism and the orthodoxies are much more insidious in the Democrat Party.  … Republicans or conservative these days are much more inclined to critical thinking, [which] used the be the purview of the Democrat Party.  [M]yself, Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard] did not leave the Democrat Party.  It left us.  The Party of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy doesn’t exist anymore.  Today the Democrat Party is the Party of war, censorship, Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Data, banking and the Military Industrial Complex. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., former Democrat, son of assassinated former Democrat Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, nephew of assassinated Democrat President John F. Kennedy, now Trump supporter, Oct 18, 2024

The study [carried out by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute] shows [that] Democrats were almost 3 times more likely than Republicans (24% vs. 9%) to have unfriended someone after the election. [An even greater] disparity [3.5 times more likely to unfriend someone] for self-identified liberals versus conservatives (28% vs. 8%).

Fortune Magazine, Dec. 20, 2016

The problem [is the] double standard.  [Leftist] professors writ[e] about “detonating white people,” abolish[ing] white people, denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer,  strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, killing Trump supporters, supporting murder of conservative protesters [and so on].  University of Rhode Island professor Erik defended the murder of a conservative protester [and] said he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis was later made Director of Graduate Studies of History at Rhode Island).  At the University of California campus, professors rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.  [Such] support was … muted or absent when [the free speech of] conservative faculty [was threatened because the] vast majority of faculty today run from the left to the far left.

GWU Law Professor Constitutional Scholar Jonathan Turley, Oct. 18, 2024

For a decade, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney [were] regularly compared to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and other tyrants. … Bush [was called] a war criminal, a fascist and a Nazi, an immoral beast who killed women and children to get his bloody hands on Iraqi oil.  The Bush years [witnessed] CODEPINK protesting on Capitol Hill, anti-war activists [on] the streets of New York and left-wing commentators beating their chests with self-righteous indignation …. But in the morally murky afterglow of the Obama years, the certainty of these secular saints has melted away.  Obama … tripled troops in an unending war.  CODEPINK did nothing.  Obama backed down on Guantanamo Bay.  Anti-war protesters stayed at home.  America invaded its 3^rd Muslim country in a decade. The American Left meekly went along.

Joe Scarborough, “The Hypocrisy of the American Left,” Politico, March 29, 2011

Many Americans feel that the country is more polarized than ever.  This dangerous condition cannot be reversed until one understands why/how this has happened.  The problem is complex but certain features of the present impasse can be understood.

Anyone who has tried to talk to most leftists (most Democrats and “liberals”) rapidly become appraised of their intolerance.  This may be surprising because back in the 60’s the Left seemed to be the party of individuality (“Do your own thing”), the Berkeley “free speech” movement (opposed to censorship) and opposed to hate and violence (“Peace and love”), in favor of inclusivity and equality for all.  What could go wrong? 

Unfortunately, the current Left has morphed into the party of collectivism:   Joe Biden (May, 2020): “If you have a problem deciding whether to vote for me or Trump then you ain’t black”.  The Left now seems to think it the racial and other minorities are obligedto vote for Democrats.  It’s about the group-identity, not the individual.  Indeed, Democrats appear to think they own these various minority groups.  Didn’t slavery end in 1865?

Further, whereas, in the past, the Right was seen as the dogmatic side, the current Left will simply not brook dissent.  One has no problem going on a university campus and declaring that one is a Marxist, but Ann Coulter is forced to cancel her talk at her alma mater, Cornell, due to threats from disruptors.   Although the Left gives lip-service to freedom of speech, in practice they believe in “Free speech for me, not the thee.”

There certainly are haters on the Right, but many leftists, even professors, openly express hate and celebrate violence, sometimes even celebrating the deaths of their political opponents.  Cornell University professor Russell Rickford said he was “exhilarated” by the Oct. 7^th attacks on Israel.   Rickford is already, after a brief suspension, back on the Cornell faculty.   Many on the left openly revel in threats against Donald Trump’s life. 

The Left gives lip service to inclusivity except for all the groups they exclude, conservatives, Republicans, many Jews and Catholics, anti-abortionists, etc.

The astonishing thing is that the Left seems completely blind to their own transparent hypocrisy.  How did this sorry situation come to pass?

Part of the answer likes in the Left’s astonishing level of self-righteousness.  The Left  seem absolutely convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority to the vast swath of uneducated knuckle-dragging “deplorables” with which they must, unfortunately, co-exist.  It would appear that the feeling that they occupied the moral high ground back in the 60’s has translated into the Left’s present absolute sense of their own superiority. 

But this does not entirely explain the current sorry state of the Left.  For self-righteousness is a standing threat to virtually all persons and movements.   Usually, one can, with much effort, pull oneself back from self-righteousness by this thing called “critical thinking,” that is, by appeal to objective standards of right thinking that enable one to see, in a humbling experience, that the other hated side is right sometimes.  This is why RFK, Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk were able to see, eventually, that the Left has lost its way.  Unfortunately, most of the Left appears absolutely incapable of self-reflection.  Why is this?

The other essential component of the problem is that the Left has been poisoned by the reason-destroying philosophy of “post-Modernism”, originating largely in France in the late 20^th century, that aims to “deconstruct” (reject) the notions of objective truth, reality, reason and morality in favor of the notion of competing narratives – which has the curious consequence, among others, that “understanding is a form of misunderstanding”.  Since the “deconstruction” of the concepts developed in Western philosophy for 2500 years since Socrates, Plato and Aristotle makes genuine reasoning, as well as meaningful language, impossible, the modern Left, trapped inside their sophistical free-association parlor games, cannot reason their way out of their intolerance, hate and immorality.   All they need to do is “reimagine” their intolerance as tolerance, their hate as love and their immorality as morality.   It all becomes very simply once one abandons the notions of objective reason, truth and morality – just like it was when one enjoyed the childish irresponsibility of the playpen.

Agree/Disagree with the author(s)? Let them know in the comments below and be heard by 10’s of thousands of CDN readers each day!