The Weimar States of America

 

With its reaction to Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, at least a large portion of the left has surely shown themselves to be delusional, and a danger to themselves and others. Neither logic nor evidence can penetrate their “narrative.” Even after the trial and verdict, many are insisting that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist” who transported a weapon illegally across state lines in order to kill blacks. Assuming it was an expression of left-wing ideology—we do not know yet—what could be a more dramatic image of pure evil attacking good than the video of an SUV ploughing into a Christmas parade? It has become this stark. Now parents who complain about their children’s schooling are “domestic terrorists.” Anyone who defends the doctrine that all men are created equal is a “racist” and a “white supremacist.”

This poses an eternal problem for a liberal democracy. What do you do with a popular movement that itself denies liberal democracy? What happens if, as in Weimar Germany, it manages to attract a plurality of voters?

Ed Driscoll has put out a video, based on Harold Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, that posits that America was seeded with the same ideas as Weimar Germany beginning in the 1920s. It all came originally from German thinkers like Nietzsche and Freud—not to mention Marx. Bloom summarizes it as “value relativism.”

History tells us where that ends. It would seem to be an inevitability.

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!