And I also don't know if what we are witnessing in the West can also be observed in the rest of the world.
But I strongly have the impression that in Western Europe and the Anglosaxon world the behaviour of the Left is more and more reminding of rabies in mad dogs.
Contrary to all historical evidence that leftist dogmas cause RUIN, economically, sociologically, and morally, the Left is actually stepping up its efforts to force its insane agenda upon everyone. They continue to advocate Keynesianism yet fail somehow to see that wherever it is applied the economy goes bust. They continue to implement their immigration dadas and pet social engineering projects, then don't understand why crime goes up or the number of people living on foodstamps is skyrocketing. And they are merrily breaking down traditional institutions like the nuclear family, or legalize marijuana, then wonder why our young people suffer increasingly from mental disorders or end up in rehab centers.
But perhaps the greatest anomaly is that, while leftist repeat over and over again that bigotry, racism and intolerance are perpetual hallmarks of the Right, it is they themselves who prove time and again that hatred of the Other and the refusal to accept him as he is, is something quintessentially leftist.
Three very obvious illustrations of this registered on my radar last week.
The first was the appalling spectacle of Mr Brendan Eich's forced resignation from Mozilla, a company he co-founded and was appointed CEO of only last month. Mr Eich was forced to quit for no other reason than that in 2008 he had donated 1,000 US$ of his own money to a group advocating traditional marriage.
As per usual, one of the best takes on the subject was Mark Steyn's:
"On Wednesday, I wrote about the Mozilla CEO in trouble for a five-year-old donation to Proposition Eight, the successful California ballot measure that banned gay marriage - if only until America's robed rulers declared the will of the people to be "unconstitutional". Brandon Eich is a tech genius: Aside from co-founding Mozilla and creating Firefox, he also invented JavaScript. Apparently, the disgusting homophobic hatey-hatey-hateful belief that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman is not incompatible with knowing your way around a computer.
Nevertheless, unlike Hollywood director Brett Ratner, Mr Eich declined to eat gay crow. And so yesterday he was fired. Mozilla's chairwoman Mitchell Baker issued the usual tortured justification:
"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech," Baker said. "And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard."
I heard a lot of this stuff during my free-speech battles in Canada. The country's chief censor, the late Jennifer Lynch, QC, was willing to concede that free speech was certainly a right, but it was merely one in a whole range of competing rights - such as "equality" and "diversity" - that needed to be "balanced". What the "balancing" boils down to is that you get fired if you are an apostate from the new progressive groupthink. Underneath the agonized prose, Mitchell Baker is a bare-knuckled thug."
Then, it was the turn of a certain Andrew Miller, the Labour chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Labour? Labour? OF COURSE the following sinister garbage must come from someone from Labour:
"Ministers who question the majority view among scientists about climate change should “shut up” and instead repeat the Government line on the issue, according to MPs.
The BBC should also give less airtime to climate sceptics and its editors should seek special clearance to interview them, according to the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said that appearances on radio and television by climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be accompanied by “health warnings”.
Mr Miller likened climate sceptics to the Monster Raving Loony Party and said that the BBC should limit interviews with them just as it restricted the coverage it gave to fringe political parties.
In a report published today, the committee criticises the BBC’s coverage of climate change, saying that its news programmes “continue to make mistakes in their coverage of climate science by giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight”.
Except, you FOOL, the BBC HAS already be limiting interviews with sceptics of its own. Far from giving warmists' and skeptics' opinions 'the same weight', it's like with everything else in BBC coverage a pretty one-sided story. Stocked choke-full with leftist zealots, al-Beeb IS already doing basically all that Miller advocates, with the exception of the "health warnings" - although that may change soon, now that he has given the Beeb Creeps an idea. Never mind that slowly even some at the IPCC are cautiously beginning to concede that the skeptics mayhaps haven't gotten it all wrong over the past decade, what with acknowledging the 'hiatus' and advocating that in the event it might be better to prepare for whatever warming is coming than to try to stop it, at the cost of ruining the Earth's economy. Heck, even admitting that biofuels actually are harming the food situation of the world's needy seems to be an indication of saner heads prevailing.
Sadly, I fear that this is not even close to the end of the beginning, since the closet totalitarians à la Andrew Miller are simply ubiquitous. I was actually baffled to hear the IPCC backing down a little, given that its Vice Chair is none other than Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele de Strihou, a Belgian climatologist, who last year basically advocated exactly the same as Miller. Van Ypersele actually went further, saying in an interview with the extreme leftist MO magazine: "continue to discuss with climate sceptics is a waste of time".
These are guys who would send you to a concentration camp in a heartbeat, if they could.
Thirdly, in my own country, Yvan Mayeur, the Parti Socialiste mayor of Brussels, prohibited a Vlaams Belang meeting. Via HLN, April 2:
"Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur (PS) forbids a VB meeting taking place in Vaudeville Theater. He fears public order will be disturbed. Vlaams Belang calls it a mockery of their constitutional right to a meeting and asks the Raad Van State for nullify Mayeurs decree [in Belgium, the Raad van State - Council of State - is a special court with top jurists which is outside the judiciary powers (sui generis) - MFBB]). Mayeur already on Monday evening briefed the City Council of his intention to prohibit the VB meeting, which would take place in the Vaudeville Theatre, a prestigious hall in the Koninginnegalerij (Queen's Gallery) in the heart of Brussels.
He was quoted as saying that he tried to get into contact with the proprietors of Vaudeville Theatre to get them to cancel the meeting, but that they did not listen to him.
In the newspaper De Morgen the owners declared that they did not want to take sides and wanted to fulfill their contractual obligations with Vlaams Belang.
'I deplore the attitude of the owners' says Mayeur. In the beginning we thought that they had been fooled by Vlaams Belang and did not know to whom they had made available their facilities. But that does not appear to be the case. Despite our repeated efforts to talk about it, they refused' says Mayeur."
There's a chilling aspect to the way HLN reports on this issue, giving a forum to Mayeur to talk about forbidding a political meeting taking place as if doing so is the most natural thing imaginable. But we are talking here about a political party, a rightwing, conservative party with a party program that is nowhere violating human rights (to the contrary), and has a great many very sound and decent goals. Now this Parti Socialiste mayor, successor to the infamous Freddy Thielemans, is basically violating the rights of Belgian citizens - and the offhand way in which he can pursue his goal, not merely getting away with it but actually acting as if this is his god-given right, is truly cause for very serious concern.
Episode II in this 'vaudeville' was a bit more heartening since in an actually lightning-quick verdict the Raad van State indeed confirmed Vlaams Belang's right to have a political meeting in said premises.
However, when the VB parliamentarians, VB Chairman Gerolf Annemans and those invited wanted to enter Vaudeville Theatre two days later, they found themselves facing closed doors, with the proprietors nowhere to be seen.
THERE IS NO DOUBT Yvan Mayeurs brownshirt thugs exerted enormous pressure on them to turn away the VB at the last moment. So much for the democratic rights of people of a rightwing persuasion in Belgium!
But that was not all.
When the VB delegation and the invitees in extremis found an alternative location on Brussels' famous Grote Markt, they were confronted by a large extreme leftist mob who were not shy to use physical violence. Among those on the receiving end were Filip Dewinter and Anke Van dermeersch, well known VB parliamentarians:
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And lookie look who was there:
A lovely group of persons of tolerance and diversity in action!
This is 2014. It should by now be crystal-clear to each and everyone - I mean EVERYONE - that the REAL Hatred of 'the Other', the REAL Intolerance - is to be found almost exclusively on the Left.
I could actually already add two more items which merely confirm the above - Brandeis University turning down Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Condoleezza Rice's appointment on the Board of DropBox sparking an outcry among (leftist) internet activists. Hat tip longtime reader Jan.
It simply does not stop anymore, to the contrary, like I said, the Leftist Hate Machine is actually picking up steam.
MFBB.