GUEST EDITORIAL FROM SELWYN DUKE: Yes, Leftists are “Evil.” Here’s How They Got That Way—and Why You’ll Never Change Them

“They are programmed…,” Soviet defector and ex-KGB man Yuri Bezmenov warned decades ago about the ideologues we call “leftists.” “You cannot change their mind…. You are stuck with them.”

It’s common for people to say today when contrasting our two major ideological groups, “Conservatives think leftists are misguided; leftists think conservatives are evil.” I, though, am different.

I know leftists are evil.

That is, practically speaking. Theologically speaking, I’m not judging their souls or inborn nature. Putting it plainly, however, and alluding to the reality that leftists have embraced evil, I will say they are so. I’m going to now explain how they got that way, too, and why Bezmenov was right: You will never, ever change their minds. 

One more caveat: Because what’s true in principle is not always true in the particular, there are exceptions to the above rule. This is evidenced by the leftists who get “red-pilled.” Now let’s proceed.

It’s common to hear warnings about the effects of modern education’s left-wing indoctrination. We’ve all heard the stories, too, about young people entering college seeming normal and then going haywire—and even, sometimes, disowning their parents over political differences. Yet believing education is the only, or even main, culprit misses much.

The proverbial saying goes, “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.” Psychologist Nicolai Sennels, who worked with delinquent Muslim youths in Denmark, once explained that what’s inculcated into a kid during his first seven years can become almost unchangeable (i.e., you’re “stuck” with it). And the “age of reason” has traditionally been considered seven.

The point is that by this age a person’s foundation (emotional and in other dimensions) is already largely formed. This means, too, that most formation occurs before the child has any schooling. But what is happening, mainly, during this period?

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato explained it well. Children must be raised in an atmosphere of nobility and grace, he stated, so that—and this is the crux—he will develop an erotic (as in emotional) attachment to virtue. (Note: Virtue is “that set of objectively good moral habits.”)

This is important because during these tender years, the child is too cognitively immature to grasp virtue’s importance intellectually. Once this emotional attachment is established, however, upon reaching maturity the individual will be much more likely to accept the dictates of reason. (For example, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” or “You’re not owed other people’s money.”)

This is just common sense, of course. We all know how significant the formative years are (ergo the term “formative”); thus is abuse, especially sexual, during this period so devastating. Little children are as sponges, absorbing whatever truths, tastes or toxins surround them; they are as wet clay, too, highly malleable.

And whatever the negative influences, the point is this: Do the opposite of Plato’s prescription and raise a child in a degraded atmosphere, and the result is the opposite: He develops an erotic attachment to vice. Upon then reaching the age of reason, he will generally be very unreasonable. He not only will be less likely to accept reason’s dictates, but they may be anathema to him.

Unfortunately, too, forging a child in vice is far easier than inculcating virtue because, left to themselves, things naturally move towards disorder. (Think here of a house or car left to sit for years without maintenance.) In the case of individual moral development, this leads to what theologians might call “disordered thinking.”

As you might’ve guessed, too, the weaned-on-vice children tend to become what we in our time call “leftists” (or low-virtue people, LVP). And this explains a common experience normal people often have when debating them:

You present a logical point and factual evidence—and the LVP rejects it, responding emotionally.

Bezmenov referenced this phenomenon thus: You cannot change such a person’s mind even when exposing him “to authentic information. ...The facts tell nothing to him.”

It also explains why two young people will attend the same college, exposed to identical propaganda, but respond very differently. The first will perhaps go along to get along, but roll his eyes and emerge with his degree—and with sanity (and politics) unchanged or even improved, having been spurred on to growth via exposure to error.

The second will become a raving, perhaps violent “leftist.”

Most would say the latter changed, and perhaps he did. What’s for certain is that each young person embraced ideology that corresponded to his early-years-forged emotional/moral foundation. The first student retained ideas that aligned with virtue because he was essentially virtuous.

The second easily gravitated toward ideas aligning with vice because he was essentially vice-imbued, an LVP. You could say that his college “transformation” was just a matter of what with animals is called “instinctual drift.” Only a catalyst was necessary—and the professors and their “teaching” were it.

This helps explain, mind you, the “red-pilled” leftists who experience political conversion. They are very often not LVP, just temporarily deceived people. And when finally witnessing leftism’s ugly face—such as merciless “cancel culture” or unjust political violence—they are viscerally repelled and then gravitate toward where they finally realize the greater virtue resides: the so-called “right.” (Note: “Greater” doesn’t mean “complete.” It means those in question are higher-virtue people, HVP.)

This also explains findings such as those presented in Peter Schweizer’s 2008 article “Don't listen to the liberals – Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.” But they are “nicer” because they are HVP.

Philosopher C.S. Lewis framed this LVP-HVP difference very well in his 1943 book The Abolition of Man.

“No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous,” he warned. “Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.”

“Conservatives” are more likely to be bred believing “a gentleman does not cheat”; leftists are more likely to have “been brought up among sharpers.”

Anyone fancying this mere partisan prejudice doesn’t have to take my word for it. Just listen to LVP Democrat operative Scott Foval. He himself admitted on hidden camera in 2016 that there “is a level of adherence to rules on the other side [Republicans] that only when you’re at the very highest level, do you get over.”

So this is why I say, and know, that in principle leftists are evil. If this sounds uncharitable to anyone, I’ll offer hope: Leftists, you don’t have to wallow in wickedness. You can begin that journey into the light and seek virtue anytime you wish. The choice is yours.

On another charitable note, you don’t have to be a “sharper” to raise a sharper-like child. Why not? Well, harking back to Plato and raising kids, does an “atmosphere of nobility and grace” at all describe our culture today? With vulgarity and perverse sexuality infusing virtually everything now, with “Bad Bunny” truly epitomizing a bad collective sense of virtue, we now have a culture of vice. You don’t need abusive parenting or corruptive schooling to yield an LVP (though it helps). Just expose the child, unfettered, to enough TV, internet, and popular music.

And this is why, my friends, I’ve said that we can’t MAGA unless we MAMA: Make America Moral Again. A vice-ridden culture begets vice-ridden people—who then gravitate toward vice-reflecting ideology.

It’s so simple, perfect and demonic a scheme for creating citizens “of intemperate minds” who’ll invite and deserve tyranny that the suspicious could almost think it’s a conspiracy, and suspicious theists could almost think it’s a conspiracy transcending man. For we’ve heard that “politics is downstream from culture,” but the cleverest beings know that culture is downstream and upstream from human hearts.

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