Sacrificial Lambs and Blond Beasts

Ever so often a Democrat will say something like, “We need to stop being nice guys. We need to be mean like the Republicans.” It sounds funny coming from the party that invented Borking, but they are sincere when they say it. They see themselves as moral and their opponents as immoral. They see themselves as victims of evil right-wingers. As I wrote in another post, a Democrat I know,

…used to express the fear that Jerry Falwell and the moral majority would put her in a concentration camp because she divorced her husband. Now, if you think about this for 10 seconds, you see how absurd her fear is. Concentration camps for divorcees? Those would be some mighty big camps. Among the prisoners would be Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. That 10 seconds of reason was effort she never spent analyzing her fear.

She wasn’t interested in logic; she drew greater comfort in fantasizing about being a victim of right-wingers.

They see two moral alternatives, altruists or cynical egoists -- those who sacrifice themselves to others or those who sacrifice others to themselves. Since Republicans do not support socialism, but talk about a free market (or they used to talk about it; now they mumble about it sometimes), they must be cynical egoists, willing to walk over a mountain of dead bodies to get what they want. Every Republican success just confirms their immorality to the Democrats.

Leftists believe one can either be a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered by the collective or a Nietzschean blond beast. Some on the left, such as the little Robespierre called Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Kos), have decided to stop being sacrificial lambs and to become blond beasts. They think they are imitating Republican success by doing so. Woe unto America if these people ever claw their way to power.

There is a third moral theory, one that eludes both socialists and religious conservatives, rational egoism. By this theory, one should neither sacrifice himself to others nor others to himself, but treat others with reason. Anyone interested can read about it here.