What motivates a terrorist, an anti-Western dictator or a communist revolutionary? What motivates someone like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il or the Iranian Mullahs? Look at their anti-Americanism. Look at their socialism. What is the common thread? The gullible swallow big clumps of it. Conspiracy theorists will twitch and quiver. Extremists will identify with the rhetoric of anger and resentment. It is apparently logical, mildly academic as well as anti-capitalist. What is the spirit behind this rhetoric?
If you look at America's enemies (even those who momentarily feign friendship) you will find a common thread, a common underlying pathology. Those who want to study extremist politics should take note. The psychologists who warn of the dark side of human personality, who note the rising tide of narcissism, who see ten sociopaths where yesterday there were two, have given us part of the answer. The Seven Deadly Sins (described by Pope Gregory the Great) include sloth, gluttony, wrath, pride, lust, greed and envy. It is envy that is most relevant today. Envy is a serious problem, says Helmut Schoeck, author of a book titled Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour. If you want to understand the politics of the dictator states and the terrorists, then read Schoeck's book. Envy is, according to Schoeck, "a sociological problem of the first order." From the perspective of power politics and economics, the United States is the world's most enviable country. And yet, it is the country that has, in a cultural sense, overcome envy to an unprecedented extent. Schoeck states that, "Most of the achievements ... of modern, highly developed and diversified societies ... are the result of innumerable defeats inflicted on envy, i.e., on man as an envious being."
The politics of Hitler made a subtle and calculated use of envy. The same can be said for the ideologies of bin Laden, Marx and Lenin. Envy, of course, can be mobilized against any government - capitalist or socialist. Those who have power are enviable. Those who want power may easily give way to envious musings. With regard to the "hegemony" of capitalist America, the world revolutionary movement retains a modified socialist rationale. To overthrow a power you must become a power, and you must employ an argument that masks your lust for power, and your envy for those who have what you want. What is most deplorable, says Schoeck, is the socialist revolutionaries bogus claim that he wants to build a world free of envy, a world free of "hegemony" that is "multi-polar." The left-wing agitator - whether he is a terrorist or rogue dictator - wants hegemony for himself. The problems that revolutionary ideology harp upon form a pretext for seizing power and overthrowing existing structures that have evolved over many centuries. And here is the nub of the Great Fraud: The cure is worse than the disease.
Revolutionary ideology holds out the promise of a better society but delivers, in practice, backwardness and bloodshed. Envy is a form of hatred, and hatred applied to politics always comes to this bad end. So look about you, and take account. Resentment and envy are critical to certain political parties and movements, and to regressive policies that promise economic disaster to peoples and nations. If the United States adopts such policies through the agitation of extremists, or succumbs to the machinations of international terror and revolution, the progress of the last two centuries might be lost and the developed world could find itself living in early 19th century conditions. The appearance on earth of mass destruction weapons, and the importance of these weapons for rogue regimes and terrorists, suggests the approach of an era of mass destruction in which civilization finds itself utterly defenseless against a dark power that cannot be deterred.
Sometimes readers write and ask why a foreign power would put its hopes in destructive war. The most succinct answer is "envy." Notice how the radical agitator, of the far left or right, harps on the advantages of the wealthy elite. He is incensed by everything the ruling power does. Even when the ruling power does something reasonable, the agitator projects a dark motive onto his object of envy. He hates those with power because he feels their possession as a personal affront and injustice. It is exactly this type of person, and this type of political rhetoric, that is dangerous to liberty and to human progress. It is exactly this type of rhetoric that animates the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.
"The victims claimed by a revolution or a civil war are incomparably more numerous among those who are more gifted and enterprising," notes Schoeck. Blood lust against the leading members of a community has stimulated massacres and genocides. "There can be little doubt as to the economically inhibiting effect of the envy-motive," writes Schoeck. "When it succeeds in establishing itself ... envy, or the envious man, endangers any group and any society. By definition, envy threatens every individual who can never be sure that, somewhere, an envious man is not waiting for an opportunity to avenge the fact that the other is doing better than himself."
Imagine the next world war as the child of envy. Imagine the irrationality of naked hatred unleashed upon the world by those who care nothing for culture or progress. What I describe is not inconceivable. What I describe is already history.
