The representatives of the Liberal Right expect to be judged on their exquisite feelings, not their murderous acts; they expect to be commended exactly for this gap between what they would like to do (nice things), and what they believe they must do (nasty things). It is mark not only of a lack of imagination, but also of a lack of understanding of how the world works—of immaturity—to point out the distance between their professed values and what they actually accomplish. It is pettiness, pedantry.

One might go further and say that what is at issue is not even quite the feelings of the Liberal Right, but how they might reasonably be believed to feel. So we hear in the Irish media that the Green Party or the Labour Party (when it existed) have a set of core values at odds with the rightwing parties that they constantly support and enable. No matter the evidence against—the total lack of achievements of these parties when it comes to their professed causes—we are required to believe that they care about things like the environment, or poverty. Macdara has written before of a family member saying that Varadkar was against the ban on abortion, despite his being very publicly in favour of it until he saw that he was about to be on the losing side of a referendum. Similarly, when Obama started his presidential campaign, an American friend of your correspondent assured him that Obama did not actually have any regard for religion, despite the candidate’s evident and grating religiosity. This phenomenon is irrational, though not inexplicable. It falls within the set of normal irrationality that we all display in the unnatural conditions under which we live. 

The representatives of the Liberal Right always expect to be given the benefit of the doubt about their intentions, which of course extends to their rule that everyone must settle for the lesser of two evils. Now if one was to apply the lesser of two evils rule pragmatically, it might lead to many conclusions that the Liberals do not intend. For example, undoubtedly Hamas is the lesser of two evils when compared to zionist terrorists. It is not hard to think of other examples. For this rule to work to their advantage, the Liberals must restrict the available options to themselves and the Far Right; they therefore have the strongest interest in maintaining and promoting the Far Right. If a voter insists on choosing another party to the left of the Liberal Right, they are regarded as apostates; they truly belong with—belong to—the Liberals, but have made a mistake, possibly being blinded by some kind of prejudice (which is to say, sectarianism, an infection by Politics) or pure naivety. In opposing the Liberal Right and the Far Right together, a Leftist must be accused of effectively supporting…the Far Right! Critical thinking—for the Liberal Right—demonstrates a perverse nature already tending towards Fascism in its opposition to common sense.

Those of us opposed to common sense know that we must oppose everything. And we must never fight on the battleground of the feelings of the dishonest.