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Understanding Liberal Politics
John Podhoretz, son of the great Norman Podhoretz, wonders why the left abandoned The Jews and Israel. It wasn’t the DSA.
It started back in the 1980s, he writes, when Jesse Jackson came out against the Jews.
“In 1984 [Jackson] had grown powerful enough to keep the Democratic convention from considering a resolution against antisemitism.”
But it wasn’t just black leaders going against the Jews. Back in the day, Zionism was considered anti-colonial. No after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Zionism was reframed by radical thinkers in the 1970s as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians—the idea that gave rise to the notorious 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Then came “intersectionality.”
In 1989, UCLA professor Kimberlé Crenshaw devised the theory of “intersectionality,” according to which all political oppression stemmed from an imbalance between the powerful and powerless. Its application to the Middle East conflict was obvious: Israel was powerful, the Palestinians powerless, and therefore Israel was, by definition, an oppressor.
Then in the mid 2000s came the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. It was modeled on the anti-apartheid movement of the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, former Presiden Carter published a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006. Then came Obama and his Iran deal. Then in 2018, Nancy Pelosi had to redraft a House resolution against antisemitism to include Islamophobia.
Podhoretz seems to be asking us to be shocked, shocked, that the Democrats have gone antisemitic.
I don’t agree. To me, it’s in the jeans. Of left-wing politics.
Left-wing politics in the 19th century starts with Marx and the workers as the victims. The socialists were going to create a new world that ended the oppression of factory workers. And then it was women who were oppressed, and the blacks. And now Palestinians.
It took until about 1990 to generalize this political ideology into “allyship” where the left is always the ally of the oppressed in their fight against the oppressors. Grok:
Allyship ideology refers to a framework within contemporary social justice activism that encourages members of socially dominant or “privileged” groups (e.g., White, male, straight, cisgender) to actively support and advocate for members of marginalized groups. It emphasizes recognizing unearned privilege, deferring to marginalized voices, engaging in ongoing self-critique, and taking actions to dismantle perceived systemic oppressions such as racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.
Do you see that Allyship is not just political, but religious? It allows believers to confess their sins of oppression and obtain absolution by joining in the fight as allies of the oppressed.
This is not unusual. Most wars and politics are not just fights against the enemy, but just wars against an evil enemy.
But, the genius of our lefty friends is to combine politics — the fight against the enemy — religion — the fight against evil — and the cause of the helpless into one secular ideology. It justifies the power of the educated elite because they are using their power to help the helpless.
And the war is endless, because there are always helpless victims needing the allyship of the Allies to fight against the powerful. And there always will be.
But back to the Jews and Israel. Do you see that when the Jews were being killed in Nazi death camps they were helpless victims and thus the left was all in to fight for them. Do you see that Zionism in the late 19th century was an almost hopeless effort to rescue the Jews from antisemitism and form their own nation state in the ancient land of Israel. So, back then, the Jews fit the bill as an oppressed people suffering under the knout of vile oppressors.
And then there was the genocide to end all genocides, the Holocaust.
But once the Jewish state got established, and fought off the Arab states that tried to conquer it, and then got a right-wing government and became a successful technological miracle. Not a victim, any more.
And somehow, our liberal friends aren’t quite as energized about the Holocaust as in the olden time.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians and the Gazans lost their battles against the new Jewish state: again and again. And Gaza has been leveled by Israel blowing up Hamas military tunnels. So Gazans are helpless victims and the Israelis are committing “genocide.” Is it true? Are the Palestinians helpless victims? Is Israel committing genocide? You are missing the point.
The point is that the whole political and moral framework of our ruling class, the educated class, is based upon the political formula that
We, the wise rulers, rule in order to fight for the oppressed peoples — anywhere in the world — against the (usually white) oppressors that are oppressing them.
The notion of “political formula” was invented by Gaetano Mosca in his book The Ruling Class.
A political formula is the moral or legal basis for the ruling class’s power.
And really, the Allyship formula says it all. I think the real genius is that it clearly appeals to women: helping the oppressed. Of course! Who doesn’t want to help the oppressed?
But the problem is that our beloved educated class can create an oppressed people out of anything. And they do.
We, the real wise ones, need to develop a pushback against the rulers’ endless search for helpless victims. Although the Mikado says it should have boiling oil in it, I say that it should be in the form of a devastating joke when you are talking to a liberal man, and “I can’t believe you said that” if you are talking to a liberal woman.
| Tue, 30 Jun 2026 02:01:04 GMT |
Analyzing DSA Through a Schmittian Lens
If you read the issues page of DSA grad student Darializa Avila Chevalier’s campaign for Congress in New York’s District 13 you see it is all about the fight.
We’re fighting to stay here and live full, dignified lives in the city we call home.
She has a Day One Agenda:
Darializa will sign onto these bills to secure housing as a human right, universal healthcare, union protections, a $15 minimum wage and more.
I say that this understanding of politics and human life profoundly misunderstands the nature of human life and human society. Let us use the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach to illustrate the point. Feuerbach experienced religion with: “God is a projection of idealized human qualities.” I am using a Grok inquiry “summary of feuerbach’s philosophy.”
Feuerbach grounds philosophy in sensuous, material human existence—the real, embodied individual in community with others.
Day to day, hour after hour, moment by moment.
But Marx, in his Theses on Feuerbach, didn’t like the passivity of “community with others.”
[He argued] that Feuerbach’s materialism was too contemplative and passive. Marx extended it into historical materialism, focusing on social practice, class struggle, and changing the world rather than just interpreting it.
What Marx and Chevalier and all people with a political agenda believe is that the answer to our problems is government force. That’s what “We’re fighting” means.
If “housing is a human right” enforced by government, it means that politicians and administrators will spend other people’s money to create housing for poor people. What happens down the road, as politicians set up contracts for their contributors and the bureaucrats mismanage the whole business?
We already know that “universal healthcare” doesn’t work. The Brits tried it; the Canadians are doing it. It ends up as an expensive rationing system with poor service that eats the government’s budget. And the rich set up a parallel system, even if it means traveling to another country to get surgery.
We already know that “union protections” don’t work. They didn’t work for US auto workers that priced US auto manufacturers out of the market, and they don’t work for government employees that demand tax increases to pay for their pensions. The best way to protect workers is to help them know the market rate for their skills and make it hard for powerful special interests to game the system.
We already know that “minimum wage” doesn’t work. The City of Seattle has a $21/hr minimum wage and its Uber rates are the highest in the country. Thomas Sowell said: “The real minimum wage is zero.” The point is that if you offer a wage under the legal minimum and someone is willing to work for that wage, then the minimum wage is just a political fraud.
I get it. With politics, from Marx onward, we are going to go about “changing the world.” But that means with force. We already had a century of experiments in “changing the world” with politics. It always changes the world for the worse.
If I ruled the world I would force all the little kiddies at Freshman Orientation to recite the Schmittian Creed:
I believe there is no politics without an enemy.
I believe morality is the distinction between good and evil.
I believe the economic is the distinction between useful and harmful.
And I would add to that:
I believe that culture is the distinction between our way and not our way.
The point of reciting these distinctions is to drum sense into the bear of very little brain and raise the question: when you say this or that is a human right and society must provide it with government, you are saying that it can be provided by force.
Clausewitz: “war is the mere continuation of politics by other means.”
When you decide to do something with a government program you are declaring that the only solution is war — or more politely, like Candidate Chevalier, a fight.
Get it? Politics, rights, fight, war. All the same game. But only appropriate for demolishing an enemy. And most of life is lived in the moral world of good and evil, in the cultural world of doing things our way instead of their way, and the economic world of doing things that are useful and profitable rather than wasteful or harmful.
It’s really not that hard. But why do so many people insist on doing things by force?
| Fri, 26 Jun 2026 23:11:58 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
People that deny they have a religion are the most religious of all.
In a culture war there will be casualties, just like in real war.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: The Human Rubble from the Rulers' Failures
