Rosie O’Donnell made a comment today about how we shouldn’t fear the terrorists:

Faith or fear, that’s your choice. You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world, or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking.

I figure most people are going to key in on the ‘we shouldn’t fear the terrorists’ line. Whatever. It’s expected from her. What I personally find noteworthy is how in one short sentence she has exposed both the hypocrisy and the innate instability of the leftist worldview.

“You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world…” is the choice she wishes us to believe she has made. ‘Faith’ in her fellow man. I consider myself a freethinker. And a tireless seeker of the truth. Are people fundamentally good? Every day in the news they shows us otherwise; rather, greed, anger, and pettiness seem to be innate characteristics. Are people fundamentally evil? Thousands of acts of kindness both large and small–many going largely unrecognized and unrewarded–would seem to belie this assertion. I submit instead that people are neutral. Neither good nor bad until we make that choice.

To have faith in the goodness of the world is to invite yourself to become a victim. Should girls at college parties get drop dead drunk assuming that all men are perfect gentlemen? Should the elderly couple entrust their life savings to a shyster? Should a person walk down the streets of Camden Town at 2 am assuming that no one will assault them?

To do so is not only the height of stupidity, but if Ms. O’Donnell truly behaved in such a fashion and truly lived in the real world, she would quickly be disabused of such lofty and inane notions.

…or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking. Here Ms. O’Donnell seems to be talking about the Right, religious and otherwise. But what about herself and her own politics? She rails against firearms, yet if people were truly good, she would have nothing to fear would she? She bangs her meaty fist upon her desk screaming at the camera about the need for social welfare. Yet if people were truly good, would we have need for such things? Ms. O’Donnell compares Christians to the Taliban and tells us that Christianity is if not evil, at least a danger to be carefully guarded against.

She openly derides those who seek limited government, and seeks to impose her leftist will upon us through government. She campaigns for the erosion of freedoms that could be used to cause harm and demands that government force us to be charitable.

Rosie and her ilk have no faith in the goodness of people or they wouldn’t campaign so hard to limit our freedoms and coerce us into making the social choices they want us to make. They have no respect for opposing viewpoints or they wouldn’t work so hard to silence voices like mine. Or, at best, compel us to act as they would wish through the use of government fiat, making us unwilling cogs in their machine.

What is it they fear? The evil that lies in the hearts of men. The pettiness. The greed. Just as everyone else does. This is why they fight tirelessly to control how we behave. They fear that a morally neutral tool would inevitably be used against them. They see the freedom of others as innately threatening. They fear that left alone, we would let others starve as we pad our own pockets. They fear that we have no capacity for goodwill toward others. If they do not fear such things, why do they work so hard to legislate them?

What is it they have faith in? It’s clearly not the people, or they wouldn’t try so hard to direct our every move. Yet, feeling as they do about our capacity for evil, they willingly give power to government to control us. They find little to be apprehensive about in this granting of enormous power because it will be ‘used for good’.

And yet when non-leftists are in control they briefly don the anti-establishment cloak that never leaves the shoulders of liberty-minded individuals, wearing for a time the mask of someone who sees the implicit danger of concentrated power. Faith in big government by fellow leftists, but not in big government by those other than themselves. What is this but fear of others that believe differently from you. We are left to the inescapable conclusion that what the leftist elite have faith in is in their own ability to justly preside over others.

I choose neither faith nor fear, but simple rationality. People are neither good nor bad, but will act in either fashion as their own self-interest dictates. Unlike the leftists, I do not fear others to the point I wish to control them. But neither do I have faith in them to always act in a goodly manner. More importantly, whereas the leftist has faith in ‘the right people’ and their ability to rule over us, I have faith in no one to do so. I am not an elitist, believing I operate on a level of righteousness unparalleled by ‘the common people’. I have within me the same capacity for evil as they do. And so I wouldn’t trust myself with such power, nor anyone else of a like mind. I do not hold myself above others, as the leftist elite seems to.