As lefty online dictionaries  showcasing their lefty words of the year to review 2018 -- such as the “toxic” in toxic masculinity, toxic culture, and toxic environment -- I redeclare the following from 2015, without fear of contradiction:

The only privilege in America is Liberal Privilege.

Item: Michelle Alexander of the New York Times. Reported by Christopher DeGroot, she writes that none of us deserve to be Americans by the privilege of “birthright” citizenship. Okay, Ms. Privileged Times Writer, then prove your bona fides by giving up your privileged job to an educated migrant.

Item: AntiFa protesters in Portland and San Francisco, reported by Kevin Williamson. There is no greater privilege than for police to stand by and fail to enforce the law while the little darlings of the ruling class destroy the property of innocent citizens that are not licensed and bonded little darlings or the ruling class. Hey, AntiFa, why not try your mostly peaceful protesting where the police actually enforce the law -- even, Gaia forbid, on mostly peaceful lefty protesters.

Item: An anti-Semitic lefty group tweeting to kick a Jewish cafe owner out of San Francisco for supporting Israel. Anyone an inch right of center-left would be kicked off Twitter for that. Hey Jack, how about cracking down on those lefty haters?

Item: Catherine Blasey Ford's cock-and-bull story about being assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh nearly half a century ago when they were both teenagers. Do not try this tactic if you are a conservative woman attacking a liberal Supreme Court nominee.

And so on.

I'm in India right now, and back in the day, the Mughal emperors had audience halls, divans, at which they heard the petitions of the people. I don't expect that these demi-gods believed too much in the notion of justice for the people, but they knew enough to keep the natives from getting restless. They at least pretended to care.

But here we are in America 2018, and if there is one thing we know these days is that the left doesn't believe in justice for people like you and me. That's what all the rubbish about toxic masculinity and white privilege is all about. Justice is only a thing for the ruling class and its little darlings. That is the point of left-wing politics ever since Marx. There are the good guys, the activists and intellectuals, dedicated to the holy work of bending the arc of history towards justice; there are the necessary victims for whom the activists selflessly advocate and mostly peacefully protest. And then there are the bad guys, starting with the bourgeoisie, followed by the racists, then the sexists, the homophobes, and now the transphobes, the white supremacists, and the toxic fill-in-the-blanks. But don't entertain for one moment that you deplorables have the right to appear in the audience hall of your liberal lord and expect anything approaching a redress of grievances. You will notice that the rulers’ governing philosophy precludes this possibility, because they have already convicted you of toxic masculinity, white supremacy, or whatever the current activists have decided upon as the social crime du jour.

So here we have the kings and lords of old, who apparently felt that part of the art of ruling was to give their subjects the idea that their liege lord cared about hearing their grievances and even delivering equal justice under the law.

And we have our modern progressives, who do not believe that the people they have branded as toxic or as supremacist have a right to a hearing or to justice. That is because their politics has already determined who has a right to be heard and who has already been heard from too often. Simply put, activists and victims have a right to be heard, and a right to the redress if grievances; everything else is negotiable.

My line is that this attitude misunderstands the nature of justice and the nature of government. You can see it playing out in the yellow vest riots in France. The French ruling class had decided to fight climate change and was monstrously offended when the French people objected. Now, much too late, President Macron realizes he has a problem. Maybe if the president had held regular audiences -- as kings did in olden times -- at which ordinary people could air their grievances, he would not have been blindsided.

When you think about it, it is obvious that left-wing politics is fake politics. Instead of allowing the grievances of the people to develop organically, our modern elite creates an artificial politics with its activists -- who do not represent the people but are instead the bribed apologists of the ruling class pretending to be the voice of the people. That’s why I say:

The only privilege in America is Liberal Privilege.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.