And by this I do not mean the average, run-of-the-mill liberal (usually a decent, reasonable person who is merely wrong) -- I mean the chronically discontent activists who would not be content with the actions of the United States and the current Administration even if George W. Bush went on national television, announced his capitulation to their policy demands, beheaded Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and then lit a match after dousing himself in gasoline.

Feminism and Marxism and other similar movements "have the ambitions of a monotheistic faith, offering a feminist [or Marxist] answer to every moral and social question, a feminist [or Marxist] account of the human world, a theory of the universe....It drives the heretics and half-believers from its ranks with a zeal that is the other side of the inclusive warmth with which it welcomes the submissive and the orthodox."

I'm not so sure about that last part. I don't think the protesters have a coherent world view that answers all questions; rather, I think they are suffering from debilitating, free-floating resentment that paralyzes them and makes realization of their ideas -- or indeed having any ideas -- impossible. The best examination of the problem of resentment came in the 1914 book Ressentiment (the French spelling is in the original) by Max Scheler. Scheler, a forgotten genius, was a philosopher whose work influenced the future John Paul II. According to Scheler, resentment is "an incurable, persistent feeling of hating and despising" that happens in certain people due to certain "psychic, mental, social, or physical impotencies, disadvantages, weakness or deficiencies of various kinds." It's less about social problems than mental illness.

James Hitchcock, interpreting Scheler, broke it down further: Resentment, he wrote, is about moral values themselves. It was the role of certain people, whether through mental problems or some other disadvantage, to hate the idea of morality itself. This is why resentment is incurable, and different from hatred or jealousy. If you're jealous of your neighbors sports car, you get over it when you by your own. If you resent him because he's a Christian -- well, there's really nowhere to go with that, other than to this year's protest march. It's also why resenters can't forge a coherent philosophy. If you're problem is with the natural law and morality itself, you're not going to be happy in this life. Yes, yes, we all know Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman et al hate Bush, the war, etc. But what are they for? The world may never know.

This lack of vision distinguishes resenters from terrorists; indeed, it is the Left that likes to talk about the resentment of terrorists -- because of the evil USA, they are forced to murder innocent people, and so on. In fact, terrorists have an absolutely clear plan. The want to conquer the world and set up sharia law. They don't hate morality, they just have a demonic understanding of it. They are evil. Yet if they ever attained their (impossible) goals, they would no longer feel hatred. One gets the sense that unlike them, Maureen Dowd just cannot be made happy. This is why the remarks about her problem not being political but a resentment at her failure to attract a man -- remarks I for a long time considered out of bounds -- may have some validity. If this attractive woman has not been able to get and keep a mate, perhaps the fault lies not in the stars or the Republicans.

And that is what differentiates my wife or Dan (a regular commenter here and author of Gone Mild) from the ranters and ravers like Cindy Sheehan and Harry Belafonte -- the latter suffer from a pathological resentment of those whose disagree with them.

And yes -- I will concede that we on the right have a few of that ilk in our midst as well. Just not as many.

Posted by: Greg at 11:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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