Quote of the Day
Normally, we have thought outward based on the rules of reason: the law of noncontradiction, modus ponens, Occam’s razor, etc. Not so for the socialist. Based on Bloch, the socialist thinks from utopia backward. Reality is made to conform to the utopian ideal, not the ideal to reality. As the root of all things, all man needs to do is make the necessary changes to bring utopia about.
Thus, the facts of failure do not matter because, as Kolakowski explains, “‘facts’ have no ontological meaning [to the Marxists] and may be ignored without hesitation: what matters are the premonitions of the anticipating fancy.” Simply put, the socialist puts feelings over facts. If there is sufficient belief, it can be so.
Connor Appelboom
August 6, 2026
Why are socialists unfazed by their abysmal historical record?
This QOTD was specifically to trigger Kathy Jackson (of Cornered Cat fame) “favorite feature” of my blog. She said, “My favorite feature is when you quote the anti-gun folks. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying.”
While this is broader that an anti-gun quote, it is certainly congruent with what appears to be their line of thinking. And while I think it is mostly horrifying, I can see more than a little humor in it.
There is more from the article that particularly resonated with me but needs some more background:
If man is the master of both reality and his own nature, then everything is subject to the collective conscience. If enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved. Past failures merely indicate a lack of one or both.
Back in the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s I subscribed to a magazine called, Skeptical Inquirer. For a few years I even purchased a subscription for the local King County Library in Kirkland Washington a few hundred feet from where I lived.
The magazine still exists. but I expect most people just read it online. Probably the article which stuck with me the most was The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon from the Summer 1985 issue. This phenomenon is also called the Hundredth monkey effect – Wikipedia. The gist of it (from Wikipedia):
The hundredth monkey effect is an esoteric idea claiming that a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. The behavior was said to propagate even to groups that are physically separated and have no apparent means of communicating with each other.
That describes the socialist (and to a certain extent the anti-gun people) mindset as explained by Appelboom above.
Both involve the notion that sufficient collective belief or adoption can override ordinary constraints of evidence, transmission, or human limitation:
- In the monkey story, once critical mass is reached, the idea/behavior “jumps” independently of normal learning or contact.
- In the article’s diagnosis of socialist thinking, once enough people share the utopian conviction (and the will to remake human nature), reality itself is expected to conform; historical counter-evidence becomes secondary or dismissible.
In both cases the mechanism is quasi-mystical or consciousness-based rather than strictly empirical or institutional: belief/numbers generate a transformative threshold that ordinary causal processes cannot explain or resist. The article’s emphasis on “if there is sufficient belief, it can be so” and “if enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved” maps closely onto the critical-mass logic of the hundredth-monkey claim.
Of course the domains differ (political ideology vs. a primatology anecdote turned meme), and the article is making a critical philosophical point while the monkey story was more New Age folklore. But the underlying intuition—that a tipping point of shared conviction can magically dissolve stubborn facts or barriers—is recognizably the same.
I find this both horrifying and hilarious.
Prepare appropriately.
So, there’s a more literal case for the statement that it is their religion? I mean, that’s what I’ve considered that stuff for years – it certainly fills that slot in their lives.
InstaPundit had a link to a Javier Milei quote just recently… let me find it…
Javier Milei: “I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that it never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.”
“But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, and unequal treatment under the law. They are very violent, and since they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.”
Not exactly the same thing but very, very closely related.
Yes. Communism is a religion according the SCOTUS test. Ironic.
The “tipping point” for spread is when there are enough spies to make getting caught for non-compliance nearly certain, and they have enough power to ensure punishment. Que the Flock (and other brands) of mass surveillance camera, and all other individual tracking that would enable selective vigorous enforcement against non-compliance. Communists and Islam both treat apostates as greater enemies than those who are in “normal disagreement;” that should tell you something. There are so many things that totally fail the “Jews in the Attic” test the government (and government-adjacent companies) are doing these days.
You can’t argue with them using facts or logic and get anywhere. You have to use rhetoric. Sad, but true. They are like wicked children throwing tantrums. Some need prison. Some need deportation. Some need exorcism. Some simply need a good thrashing by reality, where we stand back and let the natural consequences of their actions take their painful, or even fatal, course.
“Some simply need a good thrashing by reality, where we stand back and let the natural consequences of their actions take their painful, or even fatal, course.”
I do not disagree, even to the slightest amount; the path to that point, however, is so frought with disaster to the rest of us that I must support much more direct means of delivering it.
To that end, their uninterrupted, continual, and severe, abject failures absolutely must be a cloak of greatest weight from which they, and their fellow travelers, cannot escape the burden thereof; mere “casting out” from successful society must never be the sanctuary of relief they crave, the many examples of their failures must be the constant, painful reminders of placing any amount of trust in their beliefs, to them and especially and foremost, to us.
“Remember the Alamo” is still heard in Texas; “Never forget what Liberals did to us” must persist at least as long.
If everyone in the audience believes, then Peter Pan can fly!
Standard child level thinking.
The chilling part is when they try it and it doesn’t work… they decide killing the non-believers is also necessary.
And when it still doesn’t work, then they clearly need to expand to the rest of the world and kill all of THOSE non-believers, too!
Yep, a horrible, twisted religion of pain and suffering, worse than even their worst caricatures the free market.
The New Man workers utopia? Making a mountain of skulls since the 19th century.