Thomas Sowell writing on “The Anger of the Left”:
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans? How often have conservative students on campus shouted down a visiting speaker or rioted to prevent the visitor from speaking at all?
Or beat their teacher to death with sticks, for that matter. Here’s an example from China’s Cultural Revolution of what results when that anger is taken to its pathological conclusion and made into state policy:
“What is your name?” the Great Helmsman asked a young student as she pinned a Red Guard armband on him in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. “Song Binbin,” she responded enthusiastically. The name her parents chose meant “properly raised” and “polite,” qualities that Mao Zedong found unappealing. “Be violent!” he ordered the girl. A short time later she changed her first name to Yaowu, or “Be Violent.”
It was Aug. 18, 1966 and the 72-year-old Chinese leader had called male and female students to assemble on Beijing’s Square of Heavenly Peace to launch his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands waved Mao’s little red book and cheered the old man.
Mao’s call to violence fell on willing ears among many young people. Thirteen days earlier Song, 19 at the time, was presumably present when the female students at her school, which was part of the Beijing Teachers University, killed their teacher, Bian Zhongyun. The girls brutally beat the 50-year-old woman to death using wooden sticks spiked with nails. On the day before the killing, members of the Red Guard had already maltreated the teacher, who was the party leader at the school — they suddenly viewed her as a “counter-revolutionary revisionist” who they believed had gambled away her life.
Bian went down in history as the first victim of the Cultural Revolution — the bloody mass movement Mao used to eliminate his enemies within the party. The teacher’s murder was followed by the killings of millions of Chinese people. The ten-year campaign destroyed entire families, irreplaceable cultural treasures and centuries-old traditions. In August 1966 alone, about 100 teachers were murdered by their own students in the western section of Beijing.
Thomas Sowell sums up his point:
If it is hard to find a principle behind what angers the left, it is not equally hard to find an attitude.
Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left, the political melodrama starring the left as saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks that they have taken on.
It seems to be the threat to their egos that they hate. And nothing is more of a threat to their desire to run other people’s lives than the free market and its defenders.
And here’s an example of what free market capitalism has been teaching the children of China’s great Asian competitor, India:
During the mid-1990s, the first Internet cafes began opening up in Bangalore, with one going into operation nextdoor to Gopinath’s house. “My brother Shreyas took me there. I was fascinated. The Internet changed my life,” he says. He spent every spare minute online.
He taught himself how to build Web sites. “He spent every rupee he had in the Internet Café,” says his mother, disapproval still evident in her voice. Gopinath admits, “I had been a good student up until then. After I discovered the Internet, I was an average student.” Before finding cyberspace, he had dreams of becoming a veterinarian.
So what did he become instead? How about this:
Suhas Gopinath started a software company at age 14 and has since become one of the most remarkable success stories of the Indian IT boom. Now he’s 21 and runs a world-class business with 400 employees.
Nice one, Suhas!
