{"id":65213,"date":"2024-01-10T01:00:47","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=65213"},"modified":"2024-01-09T10:30:44","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T15:30:44","slug":"qotd-the-root-of-leftism-is-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/01\/10\/qotd-the-root-of-leftism-is-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The root of leftism is envy"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>&#8220;Social justice&#8221; is sacralized envy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which fits a lot better on a Pepe the Frog meme, you must admit.<\/p>\n<p>Note also the slight, but important, change in emphasis \u2014 from &#8220;hate&#8221; to &#8220;envy&#8221;. Recall that [<em>Economics in One Lesson<\/em> author Henry] Hazlitt was writing in 1946, when material deprivation was still a thing, even for Americans. Back then it was assumed that the hate sprang from the envy, which meant that the hatred could eventually be dissipated. It implied an endpoint. Hazlitt, like seemingly everyone else on the Right, took Lefties at their word \u2014 that some level of &#8220;equality&#8221;, by which they meant <em>material prosperity<\/em>, would cause the Left to finally hang up their jocks and hit the showers.<\/p>\n<p>Three quarters of a century later, we know that&#8217;s not true. There&#8217;s nothing you could give them that would ever satisfy them. Go ahead, do it Jesus-style \u2014 turn the other cheek, give them your coat <em>and<\/em> your cloak, walk with them two miles, all that jazz. You know as well as I do what will happen \u2014 they&#8217;ll <em>still<\/em> hate you. It doesn&#8217;t matter what the &#8220;reasons&#8221; are. Before, they hated you because they didn&#8217;t have a coat and cloak. Now they&#8217;ve got yours, but they still hate you, because you&#8217;re right-handed, or blonde, or have webbed toes. Or because you don&#8217;t have webbed toes.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever, something, anything. I won&#8217;t bother repeating the O&#8217;Brien quote from <em>1984<\/em>; you&#8217;ve heard it enough by now to know what I mean when I say that for the Left, the point of envy is envy. They don&#8217;t envy you for what you <em>have<\/em>. They don&#8217;t even envy you for what you <em>are<\/em>. They just envy. The mere fact that you exist, a separate entity from them, means that they&#8217;re not all there is in the world. In other words \u2014 French judges, take note \u2014 we&#8217;re down to three words:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Leftism is solipsism.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They envy your mere existence, since you are the walking, talking proof that not everything in this world is as shriveled and petty and miserable as they are.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/crossing-the-bar\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">-->&#8220;Crossing the Bar&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2021-04-06.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Social justice&#8221; is sacralized envy. Which fits a lot better on a Pepe the Frog meme, you must admit. Note also the slight, but important, change in emphasis \u2014 from &#8220;hate&#8221; to &#8220;envy&#8221;. Recall that [Economics in One Lesson author Henry] Hazlitt was writing in 1946, when material deprivation was still a thing, even for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,53,41],"tags":[1524,1020,139,1462],"class_list":["post-65213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-envy","tag-progressives","tag-psychology","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gXP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65213"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86672,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65213\/revisions\/86672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}