Keep Right – Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Black or white, light or dark, good or evil, true or false: there is no middle ground. Fanaticism of this kind abides no compromise, tolerates no deviation, and is insatiable where monomaniacal fidelity is concerned.
To such zealots, opponents must be enemies: stupid and evil. Such intransigence is un-American. It is an echo of the ancient world. It is Manichean.
Mani was a third century Zoroastrian prophet. His faith was Persian dualism, with two coequal gods, a lord of light (Ormazd/Ahura Mazda) and a dark lord (Ahriman/Angra Mainyu). When these equal and opposite powers touched, the resulting explosion became our universe. Human choice will resolve this creation into either a perpetual heaven of light or the eternal darkness of hell.
Mani clarified Zoroaster’s vision of dualism, adding elements from Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Manicheans believe that everything that exists and every choice that we make serves either light or dark. Like many prophets, Mani was killed for speaking the truth of his conscience, which varied from Zoroastrian orthodoxy.
Manichean ideas influenced and challenged early Christianity, as well as the Gnostic movement and eventually Islam. Ultimately rejected by mainstream Christianity, echoes of his ideas still percolate through the intellectual life of the West and the Middle East to this day.
Like the notions of many subtle thinkers, Mani’s ideas have been simplified by advocates into a distortion, out of context from their original intent.
Intolerant fervor is not the exclusive domain of the Left. However, today Leftists control every institution in our society. They engage in persecutions that make Joseph McCarthy seem gentle. They cancel dissenters more enthusiastically that any 1950s era Hollywood blacklist.
Today’s Left is fundamentally Manichean. They are abandoning the principles of plurality and of the loyal opposition that have heretofore characterized free societies.
We who dissent from their dogma are not treated as fellow Americans who happen to hold differing views. Instead, we are treated as enemies of truth, thought-criminals who must be disgraced, defeated, and even destroyed.
This is not how the American system is supposed to work. It is not how Republics have ever functioned, past or present, here or abroad. Not for long, anyway.
Saving the world’s climate, they assert, demands an unwavering adherence to their ESG (Environmental-Social Justice-Governance) agenda. Heavy-handed regulation will reduce carbon emissions by reducing the Western standard of living to third world norms.
Energy and food production will be reduced to near pre-industrial levels, along with the worldwide human population. Indeed, activists who crave to play at being god with the global climate mean to reduce common humanity to a desperate poverty and even to starvation.
For this very reason, farmers from all over Europe are in open revolt against the environmental hyper-regulations of the European Union. These policies on mechanization, fertilizers, and chemicals are destroying the capacity of people to earn a living growing food in Europe.
Food production is being severely undermined as a result of these policies. Soon, food shortages must inevitably result. However, to the true believer, nothing must interfere with their establishing totalitarian control; what they call “sustainability.”
The environment is but one small front in their jihad against the West’s traditions of freedom, liberty, heterodoxy, and human rights. Another front is the full normalization of homosexuality, its introduction into all forms of entertainment and into the consciousness of elementary school aged children. This is being carried out with vigor.
In the name of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), the free marketplace of goods, services, and most importantly of ideas is being replaced by quotas that deconstruct truth and ration “success” based upon unchosen birth characteristics. Their new bigotry is picking winners and losers.
Nothing must be permitted to confuse the public about the righteousness of their cause. So, the normal rules for debate in a democracy are being suspended. Free speech cannot be allowed to disrupt their agenda.
In service to the acquisition of raw power to enact this agenda, they prosecute President Trump, try to keep him off the ballot, designate Conservatives and Libertarians as being domestic terrorists, call news that disagrees with them “misinformation,” and demonize “ultra-MAGA-Republicans.”
Their Manichean frenzy is the true threat to “our democracy.”
