The Eternal Lure of Mommy

Many women have a tendency to be natural socialists. I would not go so far as to say all women, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 90% of them.

To be accurate, there are men who are natural socialists. Teddy Kennedy was one of them, as are Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Yes, I know...but Hillary is not a woman.

I'm sure that people in the past noticed this tendency in women. Hence, it is possibly the main reason that women have traditionally been denied the vote. When feminine socialism moves into the political (the political being defined as the attempt to rule others by force), it can do little more than destroy any society in which it becomes dominant -- and it especially destroys men through its attempt to turn them into little boys or babies. We need do no more than look any further than the Mommy State as it exists in America today.

Notice that I wrote, "moves into the political." I've come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as a good leftism (and the feminine socialism of the Mommy State is pure leftism). This leftism belongs in one place only: the home. And even then it should be balanced by the father.

Friedrich Hayek, among others, has written that socialism is an attempt to take familial/tribal values and impose them on society. It's an attempt to make society "one big family." One of the biggest problems with this is that citizens remain children instead of growing up.

And what is one of the things that children do? They blame their problems on everyone else. Blaming everyone else for all your problems is one of the main characteristics not only of children, but of immature adults.

These days, this "blame everyone else" attitude has infected society in general: "It's the gun manufacturers' fault I shot someone...it's fast-food restaurants' fault I'm fat...it's tobacco companies' fault I have lung cancer...it's McDonald's fault I spilled hot coffee in my lap."

This is what happens when "family" values are imposed by force on society: many "adults" still have a great deal of child in them, always pointing their fingers at someone else and crying, "You made me do it!"

I understand the desire to impose family values on society. Ideally, it would be a society without envy, without violence, and without anxiety. It's why leftists always want everyone to "share," even though this kind of sharing in any society can be imposed only by force. It's also why they are for gun control -- little kids cannot be allowed to play with dangerous things. This desire for force, for power over others, is why leftists are so enamored of the idol of the State.

Leftists believe if everyone is totally equal through sharing, then there would be no envy. Unfortunately, it is not possible for everyone to be totally equal. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn pointed out in “Leftism Revisited,” the only way people can be totally equal is if they are totally identical. Two quarters are totally equal because they are identical. The same does not apply to people and never will.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn has also written about leftism as "the attempt to overthrow the father," and uses as an example the "patriarchal" monarchies of Europe, which were overthrown by leftists, thereby ushering in the genocide of the 20th century. He pointed out that not one monarchy went down fighting.

If people are supposed to be children under leftism, who are supposed to be the parents? Those who plan and run societies, of course. These are the kind of people that Thomas Sowell mocked as "the Anointed." They are the people who believe that they are so intellectually and morally superior to everyone else it gives them the right to impose their vision on the unwashed masses.

A world without envy, without violence, without anxiety. Sure sounds good, doesn’t it? It does exist in one place: the womb. It is a place to which we cannot return.

I suspect this eternal lure of the Mommy State is, more than anything else, an attempt to return to the womb. It's an attempt to avoid not only envy, violence, and anxiety, but self-consciousness. After all, babies in the womb are unconscious. And in that unconsciousness, there is no envy, no violence, no anxiety. Just the safe, blissful oceanic feeling of being one with Mommy.

Most political scientists appear to be clueless about this desire to return to the womb, but good artists certainly aren't. In 1953 the writer Philip Jose' Farmer wrote a truly creepy story called -- yes, you guessed it--"Mother."

In it, an explorer on an alien planet ends up being trapped inside one of the planet's female inhabitants. She is little more than a gigantic immovable womb, in which everything he needs is given to him. At first he tries desperately to escape, but as time goes by, he gives up. And finally, when the Mother opens her "door" to allow him to leave...he won't. He has returned to the bliss of the womb, escaping all the problems of the world. Of course, he gives up his self-consciousness.

This story not only describes the baby in the womb, but the way children relate to adults: what they want is just supposed to, somehow, "be there." Unfortunately, it's the way a lot of "adults" relate to the Mommy State. What they want is also just supposed to "be there." High-paying jobs should just "be there." Cheap, plentiful gasoline should just "be there." Universal health-care should just “be there.”

The scariest of the leftist mother/wombs is "Star Trek's” the Borg. The Borg cube is essentially a gigantic womb flying through space. The members of the Borg are equal and identical. They feel no pain, no envy, no anxiety. They are unconscious in the womb of the Borg cube.

In a stroke of genius, the creators of the Borg have as the ruler not a King, but a Queen. A mother. In the movie, it's played by Alice Krige, who portrays the Queen with equal combinations of regality, sensuousness and motherliness. It's truly frightening combination, because she is both repulsive and desirable. As is the Borg womb.

For men, this return to the womb means to cease to be men. This, unfortunately, is one of the functions of (leftist) feminism -- to literally make them children, even babies.

At the risk of coming across as a crackpot Freudian, feminism is the desire to castrate men, to return them to being little mama's boys or babies always dependent on the Mommy State. Leftism is ultimately an attempt to return everyone to being that original, unconscious fetus -- a return to the womb -- like Garden of Eden, a place in which Adam and Eve were, like babies, utterly safe and unconscious of evil.

In literature the Borg Queen fits the archetype known as the Temptress. In the book, “Myths and Motifs in Literature,” the Temptress is described as follows: "Women seen as destroyer created many taboos as to where and when females might appear within the tribal territory, what foods they might touch, what relations they might have with men. But male fantasies about women were equally matched by her erotic attractiveness...women who were seductive and beautiful, but who would bring about the destruction of those they ensnared." This is a nearly perfect description of the Borg Queen. It’s also a description of the goddess Kali, half of whose arms give. The other half of them kill.

We certainly shouldn't return to silly tribal taboos about who can go where and who can eat what, but it should be kept in mind that that myth about the "feminine as destroyer" is an accurate description of what happens when feminine-socialist leftism moves into the political: it superficially appears to be attractive, but in the end it only destroys. Socialism is always the eternal Temptress: an unattainable womb that is eternally seductive, eternally destructive.