Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

It never fails. Sooner or later, in a gathering of conservative/libertarian writers or artists, someone asks the same question “How come in all the creative professions, everyone is leftist. Are right wing people just not that creative?”

I get very tired of it. Okay. I get very angry at it. It is a bit of internalizing of enemy propaganda that drives me up the walls and tears divots off said walls on the way. Particularly since the explanation that someone immediately comes up with is that “liberals” have to be more creative, since they’re going against what is established, while “conservatives” are by nature less creative, because, of course, they’re just going with established conventions.

That particular piece of nonsense has only one answer, really “Say what?” followed, possibly by “Are you nuts?”

For the entirety of my life, the left HAS been the establishment. All the art works, all the news reports, all of the social sciences shout the beliefs of the left. It is those of us who challenge the base assumptions of Marxism who have to figure out things from first causes, and to step out of conformity and make ourselves targets to everyone. So that’s an explanation that works fine, maybe for another world and another reality with a completely different history, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our current reality. Which, now that I think of it, is a lot like most Marxist theories.

So, what explains the “greater creativity” of the left.

Greater creativity? Prove it, tovarish.

I mean, Hollywood has seemed to lose creativity and get more enamored of remakes in the same proportion that it’s got rid of all its conservatives, or even from anyone to the left of Lenin. What remains of the fields they have taken over, and whose skins they wear demanding respect is as creative as a kindergartner who paints the circle blue instead of green.

Second, let me see, how do we explain that fields where all the gatekeepers are leftist are dominated by leftists? Dur. I don’t know, it must be a mystery.

Seriously, that is the only explanation needed and in most cases the absolute truth. Only in most cases? Sure. Sometimes they hate us for things that are neither craft nor politics based. (Note I’m not sure that’s NOT the case with me, since I seem to have people love me or hate me on site for no reasons I can discern.)

This is when people say “but they don’t ask your politics.”

Sure. They don’t. Only sometimes they do. As an older, not in the closet rightish colleague told me when I was complaining that the things that happened to my books were uncanny, but it couldn’t be political animosity, because I was deep in the political closet: “they know what you laugh at. They know when you look offended. You’ve given yourself away a thousand times without even realizing it.”

And it’s true. The left, in control of any field, will make the most inappropriate political jokes, the most outrageous statements against anti-Marxists. They will perjure themselves on the consequences of their philosophy, and they will abjure known facts of history without a qualm.

It’s almost impossible for anyone who has fought free of that miasma not to react to its being displayed so openly. And I’m not going to tell you those tests aren’t intentional. Witch hunts are a permanent fixture of the left side, like any intransigent religion.

Heck, lately they tend to assume if you’re not singing in the choir and proclaiming the silly cause du jour from the mountain tops you must be a “right wing extremist” or whatever they’re calling people not exactly like them today.

So, there is an effort to keep libertarians/conservatives off the field, and amazingly the field is full of liberals. You’d have to be a Marxist to invent some self-flattering cause.

The good news in a lot of these fields is that the worm is turning and turning fast. The official gatekeeper picked offerings are in fact less and less palatable, while the indie or well less than official side picks up speed.

That is because we, thank heavens, retain creativity. We’ve had to, in order to form the opinions we do have in the face of an intrusive and unforgiving establishment forever on the hunt for heretics.

Other things we had to develop include resilience and the ability to debate. Note, it’s not our side claiming that words that disparage us endanger us, or that we need safe rooms. We might now and then opt to stay away from the crazy people, but that’s because they’re so tiring, and besides, as grandma said “with the insane, I’d not even go to heaven. They might push me down from there.”

We’re battlers, not afraid of trying new things, not afraid of experimenting with new ways to reach the public.

So, yeah, the creative establishment in every field is leftist now. Doesn’t take much to figure out why. It is leftist because the gatekeepers selected for Marxists confusing “leftist social message” with “artistic worth.”

But a million pathways to success open every day. And we, the goats, who have always operated differently from the rest of the band, are the ones better equipped to exploit them.

I feel like saying with Elizabeth I “This is the day the Lord has made, and it is wonderful in our sight.”

But instead I say: Build under, build over, build around. Stop wondering why so many leftists are in positions of power. Political nepotism does that. It also destroys everything it takes over.

So be ready for taking the weight when the traditional institutions crash.

Now go and create.

 

Posted on April 18, 2018 According to Hoyt