What Lies at the Heart of Our National Division? - Andrew Klavan

[Geee]

City Journal

We didn’t need a new poll from The University of Virginia Center for Politics and Project Home Fire to tell us that many Democrats see fascists when they look at Republicans and many Republicans see Communists when they look at Democrats. Forty-one percent of Biden voters and 52 percent of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that the time has come to split the country into red and blue states. There is a widespread feeling on both sides that we are not friends but enemies. All this, we could have guessed.

That our divisions have their origins largely on the left has nothing to do with the number of righteous people on either side. It’s simply a question of cultural power. The Left dominates the news industry, Hollywood, the academy, social media, big tech, and the minds of corporate leaders. Leftism commands all the heights that shape our culture, except the besieged and dwindling redoubt of reality.

Because socialism is the Left’s ultimate goal and because socialism is immoral and can’t be rightly argued for, the leftist shapers of culture peddle hatred and division instead.

Socialism is immoral because it rests on a benign fantasy that masks a malignant truth. The fantasy is that a nation’s production, distribution, and wealth can be entrusted to a benevolent state dedicated to the common good. There is no such state. There are only people with power. Long centuries of constitutional restraints have schooled these naked apes in the habits of decency. But as the restraints weaken, the habits fall away. Not sometimes—always. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Socialism, which centralizes power, leads to oppression and human misery. Like the t-shirt says, you can vote your way in, but you have to shoot your way out.