Tranzis

This article from Wikipedia on transnational progressivism highlights the war many of us are fighting these days. Let me examine each of their themes.

• Transnational progressivism focuses on groups rather than individuals, which means that the individual who doesn’t toe the line of the group is an outcast. Isn’t this just the infamous 1950s conformism all over again?

• People are either privileged or marginalized, the implication being that they have to be one or the other but not both. This entails that no one who is marginalized can possibly be privileged in any way, which is ludicrous. Some people from the Third World had high status within their countries, men will have been more privileged than women, and so on.

• Proportional representation in the professions doesn’t allow for individual interests, inclinations, and even histories. And no one who pushes for this is bothered that whites are badly represented in basketball or that Asians are even worse represented.

• Changing institutions in the West so that they reflect every group’s distinct worldview might be impossible and anyway would be counterproductive. How would we accommodate the views of both Sunnis and Shi’ites, given that they hate each other?

• Demanding that immigrants not assimilate has not worked well for either women or gays in immigrant communities. Enough said.

• Power sharing among both citizens and non-citizens is ridiculous since the countries from which the non-citizens come would not themselves want this. Moreover, the non-citizens would easily make their new country into a basket case, which would negate the whole point of their leaving the old country in the first place. Finally, the onus is on the countries that they come from to make their country attractive enough in terms of jobs and political equality so that their citizens don’t feel they have to leave.

• Finally, deconstruction of Western national narratives and symbols in favor of postmodern multiculturalist views has not worked in Syria. We in the West have left the Middle East alone for forty years. I don’t mean we haven’t been interfering there, but rather that we haven’t lectured them about adopting Western ideas, and the result is Syria. Pushing them to be tolerant of each other might have worked, but those pushing for transnational progressivism have always made us feel guilty for doing so. The West is best, and even if countries in the Far East are doing well enough to challenge that slogan, it is still the case that most countries in the Middle East are hopeless. In addition, as I have often said, postmodernists should really be called pre-Islamists since their main effect is to allow the Islamists to gain power in the West.

Comments

[Terry]

I think a good descriptive word for these leftists (it also would apply to those in your post about names) is sophomoric.

They are so sure they know what they are talking about yet have little knowledge of how reality actually works, nor do they have much of a capability for critical thinking.

[Borepatch]

John, Europe has shown that they can go from Zero to Jackboots in five years. As you point out, they're doing it again.

And what was that political party in Hungary that asked for a list of all Jewish citizens? There's the best argument for the Second Amendment ...