Fatal Purity Tests

Positive social change is often derailed by purity tests. These demand that everyone hold some specific view, often a religious view, but here we are interested in demands that everyone support a particular political position or face ostracism.

Just to give you a taste of roadblock to progressive chance, consider this purity test:

“Reject the 1%, since they are all corrupt.”

You could argue about that endlessly, or you could check ZFacts. For example, Bernie Sanders’ #1 political hero is FDR (“We embraced the bold and visionary leadership of FDR.”) But the 1% purity test says that we must reject FDR as corrupt, because FDR was not only high up in the top 1%, he was probably the most establishment president we’ve ever had.

Conclusion: FDR was a great president, and the 1% purity test is bonkers.

The purity testers will I am saying all of the 1% are good people so I am on their side against the 99%. But I obviously didn’t say that. Fanatics always get trapped into using such deceptions to support their positions.

Maximilien Robespierre Sat on the Left

Robespierre was a leader of the French revolution, which initially took the side of democracy and the “third estate,” the 98% who were neither nobles nor clergy. They were the poor and the only ones pay taxes.

But slowly, the revolutionaries took over and things went haywire. In 1790 Robespier became closely identified with the Jacobins, a political club, something like a political party. In the National Assembly, they sat high on the left side of the Chamber.

Eventually, Robespierre’s edicts were responsible for about 17,000 people being beheaded, mostly for failing to pass picky purity tests.

Believe it or not, there is a sizeable group in the US (sitting on the left, as it were) who call themselves the Jacobins, and seem to think that the French Revolution just didn’t get picky enough. When extremists lose, their solution is always to get more extreme — and demand that we all become more “pure.”