The Left's Exodus

I feel like I've seen a lot of articles in the past few months written by lifelong members of the "progressive" political left who are fed up with the blindness to the nature of the 21st century world and the rejection of traditionally liberal values (such as, oh I don't know, liberty) that now characterize the left. But this one by Keith Thompson I particularly like. He sums up just about all the reasons why I am not, as he is no longer, a member of the Western cultural left. This includes their refusal to call a spade a spade in the case of evil, their defense of terrorists who are the antithesis of goodness and honor, their support for equality at the expense of equal rights in the form of unjust discrimination, their abandonment of free speech in the form of campus speech codes, and their rejection of the ideas of personal responsibility and moral culpability (phew).

America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition.

Normally this article is the kind of thing that I love to read, but despair of it ever reaching the necessary audience -- that is, those members of the left who haven't completely lost their sense yet. But look where it was published -- the San Francisco Chronicle.

I would like to put Mr. Thompson's concluding paragraph next to one of my favorite bits of wisdom from C.S. Lewis. Mr. Thompson:

...I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

Mr. Lewis:

If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.