A recent obituary by Philip Terzian in the Washington Examiner [February 12, 2019] looked at the life of Morton Sobell who died in 2018 after once serving a 30-year sentence for espionage. Sobell, an engineer and expert in military technology, betrayed his country by turning over American industrial and military information to the Soviet Union. His actions and those of Alger Hiss, as well as the executed Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosen Rosenberg set the cold war tone for the country. A sympathetic Left at the time denied the existence of a spy problem and dismissed it as conservative hysteria. The truth of the matter is that the secrets stolen by Sobell and passed to the Soviets, led to American combat deaths in Korea. Other stolen classified information by Klaus Fuchs during WWII led to the Soviet development of the atom bomb.
What allows a person of the Left to betray a democratic country? Before a 2008 admission to the New York Times Sobell had never confirmed that he was a spy. Terzian writes, “Neither he [Sobell] nor the Rosenbergs had ever been spies, he insisted, and their sympathy for the Soviet Union was based on admiration for its socialist ideals and the wartime alliance with Moscow in the fight against fascism.” The Soviet era during the long domination by Joseph Stalin was a time of starvation, war, and persecution that cost the lives of 50 million people. The mythology of the Marxist ideal was tied up with the phantasy view of the perfectibility of man. The Marxist utopia wasn’t even possible in a police state where as a Soviet citizen your life was always hanging on the thin thread attached to the party line.
Ideals are normal for most people—even desirable, but the argument falls apart after the person with the ideals seeks to enforce them on someone else. It starts as a simple verbal nudge and ends in a police state when the lack of humility predominates and transforms into moral certainty.
When individuals form groups with the same morally certain principles, it becomes a movement. Some movements die out as too narrow such as Williams Jennings Bryan advocacy for silver coinage and his anti-evolution stands. Others, such as the democracy of the early United States as embodied by the Constitution have lasted. What these different stands have in common is a religious fervor that moves masses of people at the politically correct moment in time.
Morality based causes are notably religious in nature. The religious quality of the cause grants the moralist permission for extreme actions. The extremist relies on martyrs, saints and symbols to support and represent in simplified form the cause they advocate. For Christianity it is the cross; for Bryan it was the cross of gold; for peace groups in the 60’s, it was the peace symbol; for Nazi’s it was the swastika; for the #metoo movement it is the #metoo hashtag representing an organization identifying female victims without justice, and on and on. The use of symbols is a source of self-identification and a unifying factor among members of a group. It is a shorthand method of identifying members with the same political, social, or religious identity.
If a cause is religious in nature the individual is thinking of a higher power than the self. A religious nature allows martyrs to die for a cause. Christ dies, the martyrs die, men and women die in battle, the flesh is gone, but the cause remains. The cause is related to the future. The cause lives on at the sacrifice of the individual. If a person is arrested, the cause goes on. If true believers suffer harm for the cause, the cause goes on. Until it evaporates in history. No one today advocates for a cross of gold.
Following martyrdom comes sainthood. Saints become the focal point of the moralist’s view as a paradigm for the younger generation. Focusing on a human being allows the follower to relate to the cause, especially if the saint and the follower perceive themselves as victims. Thinking in terms of a religion allows the fanatic to commit murders, fight just wars (the union side of the civil war), fight unjust wars (the Confederate side of the Civil War) cut off the heads of enemies, and say anything no matter how untrue because the cause is at stake That brings us to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She is a young woman of self-proclaimed superior morality focused on tarring money hoarders among the 500 billionaires of America. As a 29-year-old Democrat Party barista turned Representative of the people of New York’s 14th congressional district, Ocasio-Cortez has made national news upstaging with ease wily veteran politicians trying with great difficulty to distinguish themselves during the current presidential mad dash toward the nomination of their party. All this for the privilege of unseating President Trump in 2020. She is too young according to the Constitution to run for the officer herself, but find the right 9th circuit court judge, and all things become possible.
Opinions are inflated currency these days, but she represents a paragon of the spoiled, entitled class of youthful true believers[1] who lack any sense of embarrassment when confronted with their own ignorance. The four Pinocchio’s she received from the otherwise friendly Washington Post did not stop her. The reason she does not feel pain the way most politicians do is simple: she tells us she has a higher morality. From whence comes this gift? Religious true believers find the source in a deity who is willing to share. Her gift seems to be self-generated as if sprung from a demi-god enjoying a promotion. We know this from an interview with Anderson Cooper on television’s 60 Minutes during which she announced her superior morality.
If that is all it takes, the
Democrats should definitely hold her in position to assume the presidency at
the next opportunity. If the 9th Circuit Court idea doesn’t work,
try a new amendment to the Constitution on her behalf for an earlier
presidential run. Let’s not wait. Due to the current conflict in America, the
woman of superior morality should be our leader. Unless . . . there is another
person out there who can trump her bid for highest moral standing on the
planet. If that is you, speak up. Please.
[1] See The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer