There is a John Ruskin quote which I have long thought summed up the Leftist creed admirably, but I can’t find the damn book. It’s from his essay–an apparently pivotal influence on Gandhi–“Unto this last”. The net of it is that one must be held accountable to one’s principles, and not to the outcome of actions based upon them.
That is the sum of the problem. It is perfect since he was in fact an early and very influential advocate for Socialism, who was constantly advocating for morality in a strident voice; and yet he was a pedophile, who drove a young girl–I believe his niece–mad. She literally spent most of her life in a mental institution. He eventually went mad himself. Go to San Francisco: those are his people.
If one says that one’s principle is to be guided by principle, what one has actually said is that one is to be guided by ideas which can neither be vindicated nor negated by outside events. They connect to the external world not at all. This is why Leftism is so popular among intellectuals: all they have to do is think, talk, and write about; no one ever, within their community, feels the need to measure any concrete result.
Detroit is Detroit because of “urban renewal” policies. Some renewal.
This post is a bit of a repeat of things I have said before, but this point is critical to grasp clearly: if you are not naming in advance your desired outcome, then verifying your success or failure subsequently, and making intelligent changes as needed, then the actual principle upon which you are operating is solipsistic narcissism. The rest is words without referents.
This would patently apply to most academics in fields in which nothing ever actually gets physically done. They are not used to measuring anything–how do you measure an essay?–and see no reason to change their mindselt when it comes to their politics. That is how Fascist nations like China and Cuba get their approval.
To say “my principle is my principle” is to say “there is no there here–I am the world and all that matters in it.”
One extension of this baffling stupidity is that Leftism does not work well as a creed in building happiness even for Leftists. You want to find a lot of screwed up, confused, nihilistic people, look for heavy concentrations of Leftists.