Well, so have I. I'm fascinated at the tendency of "progressives" to reject the concepts of good and evil.
It seems that it's the convenient thing to do. The moral-and ethical-relativity thing they appear to practice all the time.
It appears to enable them to be illogical, stupid, insane, and to promote incredible, astonishing, inexplicable, unrealistic worldviews and policies, such as seeing the "Palestinians" as the good guys and Israelis as the bad guys. After all, a failure to appreciate the difference between good and bad (or evil) tends to render one incapable of making proper judgement based on available facts. No wonder "progressives" make the wrong judgement so frequently, favoring what we know to be bad/evil so much more frequently than that which we know to be good.
To reject that there is such a thing as "evil" enables "progressives" to actually pursue and embrace evil ideologies, policies, individuals and organizations without feeling guilty, actually believing that they're being "progressive", as if simply doing something different is a good thing just because it's different, never mind whether that which is different is good or evil, helpful or harmful. They perversely deem evil things as "good". Like "Palestinian" terrorism, abortion, discrimination, lying, cheating, stealing, murder, etc... (And they automatically condemn any reasonable and just opposition to their incorrect choices to be "hateful", "racist", "intolerant", etc...)
Here's an article that discusses this topic further. Read it all... food for thought... and it'll help you better understand the nature of Leftists.
The root problem with the liberal mentality is that it has no viable theory of evil and little conception of its tangible presence in human affairs. However we may wish to define it—as a privation of being, the effect of an original sin, the condition of the natural world, a predilection for violence and domination inscribed in the gene plasm—evil is a reality, and it is in the world as it is in us.
(...)We may all be members of “one family” in terms of our biology and the neurological structure of the brain—we all develop cultures, we all use language, we all employ basic mathematical categories. But we are manifestly not “one family” in terms of our personal desires, canons of belief, moral and religious doctrines and political worldviews. More likely, several feuding families, a world of Hatfields and McCoys.
This does not mean that we should refuse to work against our own worst impulses; quite the contrary, these should be candidly acknowledged and met on the plane of realistic expectation. But in so doing we must not succumb to the illusion of ultimate perfectability, the possibility of a sea change in the structure of the human psyche or the belief that people necessarily operate in what we conceive to be their own best interests.
(...)
The conviction that we all share a mutual hankering for concord is the liberal version of the Rapture. In contending against a real enemy who has blood, infiltration and conquest in mind, liberals are at a loss. Let us sit down together, let us “talk” without preconditions to those who are dedicated to our complete destruction, let us assure them of our good will and our sympathetic understanding of their resentment and distress, let us offer them no end of incentives. Surely we will arrive at an accommodation, and disquietude will be banished to the history books—the very same history books, obviously unread, in which such outreach to thugs, rogues and moral degenerates has led inevitably to disaster.
Like I said, read it all.
Ah... reminds one of the political ideologies of such folks as Taliban Jack Layton (a neo-Communist) in Canada and Barack Hussein Obama in America (another neo-Communist). They both believe that merely talking to those who hate us and plot to murder us will necessarily yeild positive results and make our counterparts stop hating us and not want to kill us. Let alone the plain truth that this isn't true and that it's too naive and dangerous a way to proceed, as Neville Chamberlain proved when he believed that he had made Hitler into a nice man just by talking to him and getting a written promise of niceness.
Simply dialoguing with enemies isn't going to work. Because it ignores the reality that our enemies are motivated, not by solvable/negotiable issues, but actually by evil.
One needs to understand the nature of evil and how it motivates human beings if one is to understand how to deal with evildoers. "Progressives" don't possess this understanding, and this is why they're not qualified to lead the Free World as long as there's an Axis of Evil threatening our very existence.
"Progressives" erroneously believe that everyone is the same and that the same approach will work for everyone. They believe that merely being nice and talking nice with everyone will always yeild the same positive result. No matter how many times they're proven dead wrong, they continue to believe in the same debunked myth. Of course, they're insane, so...
What "Progressives" need to know is that people, though born essentially equal, don't end up equal, and can end up quite different, including different in terms of polar opposites, ie. good and evil.
"Progressives"' failure to accept this inconvenient truth is the root cause of their failure in dealing with our enemies. They're taking the wrong approach, laboring on a dogmatic philosophy that rejects polarity in human beings and delusionally holds that we're all the same and will respond to the same things the same way. How marvellously naive and simplistic!
In short, "Progressives" do not understand human nature. They prefer to fabricate an unfounded dogmatic philosophy of humanity and cling to it despite the undeniable (by sane folks) reality that it simply doesn't work because it doesn't conform to reality in the first place!
It's important to understand human nature, ie. that there's both good and evil within all humans, and that different individuals possess differing proportions thereof, sometimes to such extremes as to render one or the other opposites completely dormant.
Blind, unquestioning faith in the "Progressive" ideology and worldview dooms the practitioners thereof. And dooms those they overrule as "leaders". Think about Obama and the Democrats in charge in America today...
Now consider the difference between the approach of the "Progressive" Liberal Left and the Conservative approach.
Broadly speaking, the conservative project is what is known in philosophy as an “axiological” ethic, in which the determination of the rightness of an action is contingent upon the value or goodness of that action as embodied in results, however deferred. It is concerned with consequences. The liberal ethic on the other hand is “deontological,” that is, it holds that an action may be considered right if it conforms to a prior set of values even if it does not bring as much good into the world as some alternative action may have. It is concerned with motives.Indeed, that sounds exactly correct, if one has been carefully observing the two sides over the years and marvelling at the striking differences.
Naturally the reasonable person will therefore see the Left as unrealistic and dogmatically ideologue, and the Right as realistic, pragmatic and caring about consequences and results, not merely with "the right intentions". After all, realism is more important that dogmatic ideology, and should be of primary importance in assessment of a situation and selection of course of action to deal therewith. Leftists don't understand this way of going about things, therefore they don't understand the Conservative approach. And they're wrong to reject it just because they don't understand it!
Myself, I've previously actually tried to be a Leftist because I was surrounded, as it happened, mostly by Leftists and, being young and naive, naturally went along with the Left, thinking that that huge movement must be right because it was older than I. But I simply couldn't continue practicing, brainlessly, unquestioningly, that prescribed ideological mode of living and thinking, because when reality struck and invalidated yet another claim the Left had made to me, I realized that I'd have to be insane to continue to think and live against undeniable reality. This happened over and over and over, and each time I left, moving ever further away from that movement. Eventually I became a conservative... and I can confirm that conservatism is the result of learning from experiencing and observing the real world. This is the opposite of being Leftist, in which everything is a priori (without experience and observation), and in which being a Leftist entails that you don't know what you're talking about.
Letting others tell you what's what is risky. Therefore you must question them. If they respond in a manner that makes you suspicious that they don't know what they're talking about, or even are lying to you outright, then you're better off finding out the truth yourself the hard way, via experience and observation. Oh, and, as to the lurking Leftists herein, it's no good to delude yourself that you've actually had experience or observed, and that you learned from it. Because it's also possible to delude and deny... and this is what Leftists do when they don't want to accept inconvenient reality.
