Do leftists believe what they say they believe?  And if not, how would we know?

On key issues, the evidence shows that their positions cannot be taken at face value.

In "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model", David Horowitz quoted an SDS radical who wrote, "The issue is never the issue.  The issue is always the revolution."  In other words, when the left picks an issue to demonstrate on, the issue itself is seen as a step to bigger goals.

Let us look at a few such issues.

While many undoubtably believe in the dangers of man's contribution to global warming, consider Christine Stewart — former Canadian environment minister — who said, "No matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral environmental benefits. ... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

So if you were to debate Christine Stewart on E.V.s or wind turbines, for example, you would not persuade her, because you would not be arguing against "social justice," which is the deeper issue.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted that the true motivation behind her Green New Deal, which proposes transitioning the U.S. economy away from all fossil fuels in ten years, is to overhaul the "entire economy."  Note that AOC didn't call the Green New Deal the "Socialist New Deal," even though the Green Party site says it is a "major step towards ending unemployment for good and a tool to fight the corporate takeover of our democracy and exploitation of the poor."

Sometimes the deeper agenda reveals contradictions.  For instance, Jane Fonda, a famous (and very left-wing) actress, said this:

[L]et us commit to freeing ourselves, our country and its institutions from white supremacy, the enabler of climate destruction. And let us all work to truly understand why the two are inseparable.

Jane conveniently ignored the fact that China, which is certainly not run by white men, is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases today.  Pointing this fact out to her would get you nowhere because of a deeper worldview.  (Jane also once said, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.")

What about the issue of increasing welfare payments?

Richard Cloward and Frances Piven were both professors at Columbia University.  They had a goal, and they had a strategy.  The goal was "to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income."  To achieve this goal, the strategy was to overwhelm the welfare system with applicants until it failed and caused divisions in the coalition that a Democrat government relies on, thus forcing the Democrat administration to solve poverty with a guaranteed income.

If you were to argue with Piven about welfare eligibility, you would get nowhere, because her agenda is a guaranteed income, not tinkering with criteria for eligibility.  (You might spot a practical problem: if the government can't pay the welfare burden, how will it afford a guaranteed income?)

We can agree with leftists that we should take care of children — their hearts must be in the right place — it is just a question of means, not ends.  Right?

Well, no.

Ellen Willis — progressive, journalism professor, and writer for Rolling Stone and the Nation, said this: "The object of every feminist reform ... [including] child care programs, is to undermine traditional family values."

So arguing with Willis about pros and cons of daycare centers would be a waste of time.

At least the advocates of more immigration feel we would be enriched by the aspiring entrepreneurs of other nations, right?  The huddled masses yearning to breathe free?  We can agree with them on part of their agenda, right?

Well, no.

In the U.K.: "The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by [Labor] ministers to radically change the country and 'rub the Right's nose in diversity', according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair."

The motivations of the left can be truly hard to fathom.  Karl Marx, who developed a whole theory of class that convinced many an idealistic adherent, actually laughed at those who believed in "that class s---."  So if Marx himself didn't believe it, why write books about it?

Apart from hiding a real agenda, even when the agenda is transparent, there is what Dr. Susan Crockford calls "noble cause corruption."  The idea is that people lie to advance what they believe is a noble cause.  One of the lies was how polar bears were dying because of global warming.  Dr. Susan Crockford was fired from her job after she pointed out that the population of polar bears was increasing.

To sum up this article, if you are a conservative arguing with the left (assuming that's even possible nowadays), it is not possible to have an honest debate when the "cause is not the cause" and you are debating a goal put forward as part of a strategy, instead of the real goal behind the strategy.

Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).