The modern Left resembles the house that Jack built. In the past fifty years, the Left--once an earnest warrior for Marxist socialism--has morphed into a competing cluster of causes and beliefs. It is riddled with contradictions and irrationality. As time passes, however, it reveals more and more clearly the ideological animus upon which the madhouse is built.
Peter Hitchens became a committed Trotskyite in his youth. He has travelled Left for a good deal of his adult life. He has occupied Jack's house from within. He is a compelling tour guide.
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| Jack's House |
The foundations of the House-Left were laid in secular rationalism; its twin foundation stones were rationalism (the mind of man is the ultimate authority) and secular materialism (matter is the only reality). Upon these foundations the floor of Marxism was laid. Then building the superstructure began.
The modern Leftist is now a stew of contradictions. For example, most Leftists have a bizarre and conflicted loyalty toward Islam.
The enlightened Leftist is outraged to the point of incandescence by Muslim attacks upon Manhattan, but equivocal about Muslim attacks on West Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, and silent about the Muslim persecution of Christians throughout the Arab world. [Peter Hitchens, The Broken Compass: How Left and Right Lost Their Meaning (London: Continuum, 2009), p. 98]The internal mess of contradictions within House-Left explain why few Leftists argue their case any longer. When confronted they much prefer a response of incandescent rage against their opponents. Hitchens thinks that this reflects the deep unease and doubt that lurks in the corridors.
As time has passed, the Left's focus has changed and developed to where its true character is now finally starting to emerge. The Left's cluster of causes is more taking the shape of lawless libertinism. Accompanying this is a greater and greater hostility to the Christian faith. Finally the overall shape of the house is emerging from the fog: House-Left hates Christ and all His followers. It is Christ Who stands against the lusts of the Left. He both warns and condemns their lawlessness. He calls for, and commands repentance.
Social and political causes like workers' rights have been replaced by the sexual libertinism that was always present in House-Left from the very beginnings. Hitchens points out that the Soviet Union--a Leftist state--was always at war against marriage and the family.
Even Stalin's Soviet Union, while it reacted against the early sexual liberation promoted in the 1920's by such campaigners as Alexandra Kollontai, ensured that divorce remained cheap and easy. It also attacked parental authority through the grotesque cult of Pavlik Morozov, the (probably mythical) child-martyr who denounced his own parents to the secret police and was killed by his grandfather. This cult was one of the most important features of Soviet life, yet remains largely unknown to Westerners who have only the vaguest idea of the extent and cruelty, rage and fury of the Soviet state's war against the married family and religion. Yet it foreshadows many of the laws and attitudes which increasingly limit the powers of Western parents to discipline or control their own children, and which will readily classify them as "abusers"--presumed guilty by the legal system--if they try to do so. [Ibid., p. 101.]In the Fabian socialist West, it is not surprising that House-Left, in its craving for licentious liberty, is now frenetically building more and more rooms whilst tearing down Christian marriage and the Christian family, replacing them with abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, serial sexual activity, homosexuality, and gender anomie. The modern Left lusts after such licentiousness, and foams at the mouth against Christ and His Church--which is its last, greatest, and final constraint. On this Rock the Left will finally dash itself to pieces.
One of the ironies of these new rooms built upon the top of House-Left is that the old revolutionary causes have been long since forgotten.
. . . the sexual revolution is, by a great paradox, a revolution against political consciousness, discontent and rebellion. The sexual revolutionary climbs over the barricades and straight into bed with someone he is not married to, and quite possibly someone of the same sex. He is not seeking the overthrow of the existing order. He is seeking the existing order's permission to pursue pleasure at all costs. The idea that sex is necessarily connected with reproduction and parenthood is actually repulsive and shocking to him. . . .House-Left commenced by calling for economic and social justice. It stood for the powerless and the exploited. Now it is predominantly interested in state sanctioned licentiousness and libertinism. Its hatred of Christ is more powerful and virulent. All vestiges of Christ are to be removed from public life. More and more it is taking the shape of our Old Enemy, unmasked.
This is why, sooner or later, the Western sexual radical is bound to attack Christianity, because it is his own religion and the basis of the guilt and self-restraint which he wishes to discard. He may simultaneously be happy to give sympathy to other religions, but this is because they are practised by migrants whom he sees as allies against the monoculture. It is also because he did not meet these faiths in his childhood or learn them from his parents, and so does not feel that they bind him as Christianity would, if he accepted it.
He may take some years to arrive at this direct anti-God position, since first he will have been busy smashing the outer fortifications of Christian sexual morality--disapproval of pre-marital and extra-marital sex, prohibitions on abortion and divorce, misgivings about homosexuality. But once these are out of the way the inner fastness of Christian belief lies exposed and open to attack. The likely end of the culture wars will be an enraged smashing and desecration of the altars. [Ibid., p. 102f.]
He Who sits in the heavens laughs. (Psalm 2: 4-5)
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