LEFT CAN’T ABANDON ITS VIOLENCE: Richard Pollock says the Left will not, indeed cannot, abandon its addiction to deadly violence against its political opponent because it’s permanently embedded in its ideological DNA. Among much else, Richard cites this passage from Saul Alinsky, who literally wrote the Rules for Radicals:

“Alinsky felt the doctrine of revolutionary change means that ethical standards are not important. ‘That perennial question, ‘Does the end justify the means?’ is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?” (Italics in the original).

“Again, showing that ethics doesn’t govern the revolutionary activist, Alinsky counseled, ‘in war the end justifies almost any means,’ adding, ‘Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.'”

Alinsky’s rationalization for doing whatever the Left thinks it can get away with in its pursuit of absolute political power vividly reminds us that politics is downstream from morality, which is downstream from theology. If you are your own higher power, sooner or later you will practice “anything goes” as your morality.

Richard Pollock is particularly insightful on these matters as he came out of the same New Left that put the Democratic Party on the road to its present and growing fascination with revisiting the French Revolution, Stalin’s genocides, Mao’s purges, and so, so much more blood in the modern era. One of his first Substack columns was on this very topic and is well-worth re-reading today.