Narcissistic Self-loathing – As promised, we'll begin our examination of the dynamics that animate the behavior of liberals by looking at what most informs their emotional state. At its core, liberalism is both an elitist and a radically individualistic belief system, which is to say that the fleeting desires of a select liberal elite are seen to outweigh the pressing needs of the larger society. Liberalism’s adherents view themselves as archetypes of civilized society and see their way of life as the cumulative result of man’s strivings. They assume that reasonable people around the globe have a world view similar to theirs and want to be like them. Liberalism itself relies on “perfectable” institutions to serve as entry points into its ranks. (This explains liberalism’s appeal to people who see themselves as arbiters of liberal orthodoxy, such as college professors, Hollywood stars and producers and print/TV journalists among others.)

But beyond their own self-aggrandizement, they regard their bounty of wealth, security and intellect as much more of an entitlement as opposed to something that accrues through effort. And by extension, they as well regard America’s wealth, security and intellectual capital as entitlements. At the same time however, they are able to look at their relative affluence and recognize how little they did to bring it about. Deep within themselves, they are acutely aware that they are the beneficiaries of the efforts of those who came before, those who laid up monetary and cultural treasure for their descendants.

Today’s liberals look at themselves in relation to their forebears and see their own deficits and lack. They are aware that all they will leave of any lasting significance for their offspring is a nagging self-doubt, and their psyches are understandably riddled with guilt (in as much as their innate conceit will allow.) It is this awareness that fuels their anxiety, which liberals wear almost as a badge of honor. Their guilt also impels their pursuit of validation for themselves and their beliefs.

In order to balance the tension between their plentiful self-obsession and their fretful self-doubt, progressives aggrandize their otherwise tedious agenda into a life-and-death struggle against external forces that would threaten the world. Global warming, “big oil”, “vast right wing conspiracies,” there’s no tilting at windmills for this lot. Everything that they oppose represents to them no less than a threat to mankind’s existence as we know it; for the Left to acknowledge anything else would betray the emptiness and futility of their schemes.

Next time, Presentism