On Responsibility, Elevation of Victimhood, Ecumenical Niceness, and Puffed Up Vanity

Dr. Robert Godwin has an amazing post today at his blog, One Cosmos. He notices that elites of the left emphasize rights, but do not equally emphasize responsibilities.

But why are there no "civic responsibilities activists," and why do we call the champions of irresponsibility, impulsivity, narcissism and sloth "civil rights activists"? Pomographic liberalism is obsessed only with rights, entitlements, and the unearned specialness of the oppressed victocrat.

He notes of the elites of the left:

"In their puffed up vanity and pseudosophistication, they have lost even the capacity to despise themselves, so they have no reason to aspire spiritually and surpass themselves.

He quotes author Thomas Hibbs.

Hibbs notes that the Last Men in our midst are not the courageous rebels of their narcissistic imaginations, but "timid, enervated, self-enclosed, and self-satisfied," conforming with "the dictates of common opinion.''

Then, Godwin provides this brilliant analysis and summary.

Fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution, and what has it wrought: spiritually withered New York Times Man, so insular and hermetically creedbound in his views, and yet, like a pinched little sulzberger, so confident of his childish superiority!

These Last Men hate to be reminded that there is something higher or deeper, something transcending their own rootless and self-generated meaninglessness. They are all sheep and no shepherd. And they don't believe in wolves at all. Brawndead leftists with no mametary glands hate the notion that the work -- the manly work, not just the endless party on mom's government teat -- of history is incomplete, that there are real enemies and real heroes -- superior men like General Petraeus who will name and kill the enemy so that the Last Men may sleep soundly in their beds. They believe that there is nothing to be afraid of but the hero!

In a way they are right, for the hero is a painful reminder of their own existential shrinkage. The society of the Last Man "is adept at satisfying nearly all desires for pleasure, but it cannot satiate, indeed it positively frustrates, the will to excel, to prove oneself superior to others" (Hibbs). They are afflicted with spiritual envy, the Satanic Eucharist of secular fundamentalism. Kill the hero is their motto. The victim is the new God, Master of our domain is their creed.

These are some of the things I was trying to say in my comments on my pastor's blog, (comments that were deleted by my pastor, but which for some reason I copied and pasted in a blog post here on March 10).