Tag Archive for: Liberalism

The Deadly Sins of Socialism, Fascism, and Progressivism

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Politics isn’t exempt from the allure of the deadly sins. Some political systems even magnify the allure…

The nineteenth-century philosopher Joseph de Maistre once wrote “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” This is true in a sense because, as Ludwig von Mises later wrote, “public opinion is ultimately responsible for the structure of government.” The beliefs and values of a people determine the institutions they embrace or accept.

The influence goes the other way, too. Different systems of government create different incentives. Some institutions foster virtue, while others foment vice.

Let’s consider some historically important political ideologies and the moral qualities they reflect and promote.

Socialism is, as Winston Churchill put it, “the gospel of envy.” A people afflicted with envy and resentment will gravitate toward socialism.

Psychologist Jordan B. Peterson discussed the connection between envy and Marxist socialism in particular:

“There is the dark side of it, which means everyone who has more than you got it by stealing it from you. And that really appeals to the Cain-like element of the human spirit. ‘Everyone who has more than me got it in a manner that was corrupt and that justifies not only my envy but my actions to level the field so to speak, and to look virtuous while doing it.’ There is a tremendous philosophy of resentment that I think is driven now by a very pathological anti-human ethos.”

Socialists are wrong to think that “leveling the field” will lift up the have-nots. But even if they are disabused of that economic error, envy may drive them to cling to socialism anyway, out of a malicious desire to harm the “haves.”

As Mises wrote of socialists:

“Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g., socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it.”

Just as envy advances socialism, socialism stimulates envy by inviting the masses to participate in “legal plunder” (as the French economist Frédéric Bastiat put it) of the rich and affluent.

In the twentieth century many countries fearfully turned to fascism to protect themselves from communism. Many in those countries believed that if communists and their ideas were violently suppressed, their revolution would be nipped in the bud. Fear turned to wrath, as anti-communist fascists violently cracked down on any dissent that might destabilize the state.

“The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism,” as Mises wrote, “lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence.”

The wrath and violence of fascism is ultimately self-defeating.

“Repression by brute force,” Mises wrote, “is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall.”

Wrath drives fascism, but fascism also stirs up wrath by fomenting tribalism and inviting members of society to use political violence to settle their differences.

Progressivism is alluring to those who imagine they can “optimize” people through social engineering. But, as Leonard E. Read illustrated in his classic essay “I, Pencil,” society is so vastly complex, that this is a pipe dream. To think one can centrally plan society, one must fancy themselves to have quasi-divine omniscience. In simple terms, progressivism is an ideology of excessive pride. As Sen. Ron Johnson put it:

“The arrogance of liberal progressives is that they’re just a lot smarter and better angels than the Stalins and the Chavezes and the Castros of the world, and if we give them all the control, and they control your life, they’re going to do a great job of it. Well, it just isn’t true.”

Progressives are incorrect in their assumption that they know how to run other people’s lives better than those people themselves. Even if they were hypothetically smarter and more ethical than any single member of the rest of society, they would still be wrong.

The amount of information any expert can handle at a given moment is infinitesimal in comparison to the sum of information all individuals have. Letting individuals be free to cooperate through the price system decentralizes the use of knowledge and actually results in more information being used than a centrally planned system of experts. As Friedrich Hayek explained:

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naïve mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”

Thus, the progressive’s faith in technocratic power stems from supreme epistemic arrogance.

“It is insolent,” Mises wrote, “to arrogate to oneself the right to overrule the plans of other people and to force them to submit to the plan of the planner.”

Progressivism not only stems from pride, but stimulates it, because overweening power tends to go to people’s heads.

Must we pick from among political systems that are afflicted by one vice or another? Thankfully not. There is a virtuous alternative: namely, classical liberalism. Whereas socialism, fascism, and progressivism are dominated by the “deadly sins” of envy, wrath, and pride, classical liberalism embodies the “capital virtues” of charity, temperance, and humility.

Where socialism is based on envy, classical liberalism fosters charity. Classical liberals believe in voluntary exchange of goods and services which provides avenues for philanthropy. One can only be charitable when there is a choice to donate or help others. Forced charity is not truly charitable, for there never was a choice, just as giving away something you don’t actually possess is not a sign of selflessness.

As Murray Rothbard wrote, “It is easy to be conspicuously compassionate when others are forced to pay the cost.”

Where fascism is wrathful, classical liberalism has temperance. Fascists see dissent and difference as dangerous. Classical liberals see peaceful debate and competition as the key to progress. Classical liberalism embodies temperance in the way it upholds the rights of everyone, even those who are illiberal. Under fascism, violent hostility toward differences is the rule; under classical liberalism, peaceful voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit is the rule.

Where progressivism is prideful, classical liberalism has humility. Classical liberalism is humble because it doesn’t presuppose what society should value; it assumes that all individuals have goals that they alone know best how to achieve. Classical liberalism knows the limits of what any individual can know and consequently finds no reason to bestow power to any expert over the rest of society. As Hayek wrote, “All political theories assume […] that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ […] in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.”

As it says in the Bible, “the wages of sin are death.” And indeed, the sin-ridden ideologies of socialism, fascism, and progressivism have yielded a staggering death toll. In contrast, the blessings of liberty include, not only peace and prosperity, but the encouragement and freedom to lead a virtuous life.

AUTHORS

Axel Weber

Axel Weber is a fellow with FEE’s Henry Hazlitt Project for Educational Journalism and member of the PolicyEd team at the Hoover Institution. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Connecticut. Follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and Substack.

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Going Beyond The Culture Wars

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How Western culture has been moulded by faith.

Faith Challenges Culture: A Reflection of the Dynamics of Modernity
Paul O’Callaghan | Lexington Books | 2021, 142 pp

In this terrific book, Dubliner Fr Paul O’Callaghan, a lecturer in the school of theology in the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, presents a succinct and insightful analysis of a daunting topic: the interaction of faith and culture.

He sets himself the task of examining how Western culture has been moulded by faith (by which he means faith in the strict sense of revealed religion, and not religion in general) and in particular how this is true of four realities key to contemporary culture: rationality, freedom, equality and (surprisingly) conquest.

As we might imagine, the faith-culture relationship will of necessity be a complex one. They are two very different realities: faith stems from a divine initiative, indeed an “interruption” into human history, while culture is the fruit of human endeavour. And nevertheless as the author points out, the West has developed without either element erasing the other; rather they “seek each other out”, each respecting the contribution of the other (for the most part):

“Christian revelation and grace are not meant to ride roughshod over reality, over the world as we know it, over the lives and dreams and projects of its inhabitants, over the traditions and civilizations consolidated over the centuries…”

And yet we know that Modernity (the period dating from around the 16th or 17th century) has been predicated on an elevation of man accompanied by a diminished view of God and a disregard for the West’s Christian roots — an unfortunate over-correction of the mediaeval world’s bias for the divine over the human.

The effects of the secularising tendency of modernity are apparent in the impoverishing effect on those four key areas of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest, distorting them in the direction of rationalism, licence, reductive egalitarianism and rapine respectively.

The interaction of faith and culture

O’Callaghan discusses briefly a number of core tenets of Western civilisation which have their roots in the Bible, such as the notion of intrinsic human dignity, the centrality of human freedom, and the sanctity of marriage.

He cites the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ most interesting distinction between the Judeo-Christian concept of “righteousness and guilt” and the pagan “honour and shame” culture. The former places man’s intrinsic worth on something interior and not immediately apparent, something at the realm of freedom and conscience, and ultimately a person’s interior relationship with God.

The latter on the other hand looks to the external actions alone, for which a person earns honour or shame from others. Such a culture easily (perhaps excessively) exalts its heroes and unequivocally and even brutally condemns its enemies (think “cancel culture”). Lacking the classic Judeo-Christian distinction between sin and sinner, it equates the sinner with their apparent sins, and so is merciless in shaming (and “cancelling”) offenders.

Many core elements of Western culture come from an “intelligent and practical assimilation of Christian Revelation” which is complex and ongoing. There has never been, nor can there ever be, a “purely Christian culture” (despite the nostalgia of some for a Medieval Golden Age of Christendom): sin is a constant in human existence, and has always been present in human culture. Modernity itself, despite all its secularising tendencies, is a “highly positive phenomenon”. As Pope Benedict has reminded Christians, Modernity’s own intrinsic merits as well as its “material fidelity to Christianity” must be acknowledged.

While the theme of the modern world’s fundamental indebtedness to Christianity has recently been revisited and popularised in Tom Holland’s highly successful Dominion, this is not Holland’s discovery: it has been covered in the past by the likes of Dostoevsky, Guardini, T.S. Eliot, and even Jürgen Habermas (for whom the West’s sense of personal conscience, human rights, equality and democracy is built directly on “the Jewish ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love… All the rest is postmodern chatter.”)

Unfortunately of course, the Christian roots of Western values are increasingly being ignored and forgotten, and it would be, in the words of the Dutch reformed pastor Wim Rietkerk, modern man’s biggest mistake if he thought “that he could keep enjoying the fruits without the roots, without walking humbly with his God. … There is no future for a Western civilisation cut off from its roots.”

The four key tenets

O’Callaghan then focusses his attention on those four concepts so central to the West’s very identity: rationality, freedom, equality, and conquest. The last, “conquest” is an unusual concept, and the author explains it as follows:

We assume that what we obtain, what is at our disposal, we have a right to, as if it were our very own and belonging to no-one else. Whether we are talking about children, or property, or space travel, or instant telematic communication to the other side of the world … we see the world around us as a terrain of conquest, of achievement, of success.

He examines how these four notions as we understand them in the West, are essentially the fruit of Christian revelation.

The first, rationality, was already much prized — as logos — by the Greeks. For them rationality could not be understood without reference to the divine. Nevertheless the Christian conception of reason is even more elevated and optimistic than that of the Greeks, for whom reason was marred by very significant limitations.

Human reason for Christians receives a greater trustworthiness on account of the trustworthiness of its author: God. Nevertheless the secularising tendency of Modernity has lost the vastness of the power of reason as glimpsed by the Greeks, and boldly affirmed by Christianity. It began by reducing reason to a merely “computational and mathematical” power, and even now tends towards a radical scepticism which jettisons all confidence in reason.

O’Callaghan goes on to discuss how much the Western notion of freedom owes to Christianity. For Christianity freedom is essentially the filial freedom of those who are called to become God’s children: it is the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” in the words of St Paul. This is the ultimate goal for freedom to aspire to, a true “freedom for”.

However, this Christian-inspired concept of freedom came gradually to be eclipsed by a reductive “freedom from” — which reduces freedom to the mere capacity to choose one thing over another, without any intrinsic direction or dynamism. This reductive freedom is developed by the likes of Ockham, Bacon, Luther and more recently Foucault. Nevertheless, there has been a recovery of the richer conception of freedom, in particular by the Personalist movement for whom freedom is inseparable from man’s fundamental relatedness to others, and to God.

The notion of the fundamental equality of human beings so central to Western values is equally something stemming from Christian revelation. Man’s social and relational nature is presented throughout the Bible as constitutive of his very being. Against this is a non-Christian understanding of relationality as a sign of weakness, insofar as it implies dependence on others; a lack of the autonomy so valued by Modernity (and to a degree even by the Greeks).

The equal dignity under God of all men receives an unequivocal affirmation throughout the Bible. And yet the manifest inequalities between men are not a scandal for Christianity in the way they are for modern culture (for which all “inequality” must be ultimately stamped out), because the presence of neediness is a divine call to the others to live out the charity which must be at the heart of all social relations.

There follows a most illuminating consideration of the fourth tenet: the idea of conquest (by which we see “the world around us as a terrain of conquest”). What O’Callaghan shows here is that the now dominant “anthropology of the self-made man who designs and constructs himself down to the last detail” has lost sight of the Christian notion of gratitude.

The radical individualism that has developed in the West rejects as “childish”, indebtedness to others. Dignity requires that the self must be “self-made” and autonomous. This produces a great incapacity to receive from others, and with that a systematic ingratitude.

However for the Christian, absolutely everything is a gift from God, and man is a receiver of gifts before anything else. This then allows us in our turn to give and receive from others — there is no shame, nor subjugation in receiving understood in Christian terms.

Modernity, on the other hand, is marked by a systematic rejection of gift and so is marked by a striking ingratitude. What is needed is a return to the sense of gratitude gestured at by Heidegger when he said that “denken ist danken” (“to think is to thank”); that even “thought itself is a grateful receptiveness to the giveness of being”.

And so the ungrateful West is faced with the important task of rediscovering true gratitude, also gratitude towards God. The secular world’s “eclipse of worship” (to coin a phrase from Charles Taylor in his work A Secular Age) means that “humans have stopped recognising God as the source of all good and intelligibility. They have stopped thanking God, they no longer recognise the world they live in as a gift, they no longer live ‘eucharistic’ lives.” And such ingratitude is a serious state of affairs: “the most abominable of sins” for Ignatius of Loyola. The author concludes that:

“This has led many of those influenced by modern culture to a generalised loss of faith and to a pathology of individualism and ingratitude, as they attempt to live out their lives in isolation from their fellows, unprepared to recognise the world they live in and the privileges they enjoy as so many gifts they should be profoundly grateful for.”

The question of the gratitude leads on in the Epilogue to a very interesting discussion on the integration of conservatism and progressive liberalism. O’Callaghan shows that both the conservative and liberal tempers are embraced by Christianity: it is conservative insofar as it is conscious of being the receiver of gifts from God, and handed down by others by tradition; the Christian is by definition a conserver of these gifts.

At the same time, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin necessitates the liberal dimension since certain elements from the past will of necessity be tainted by sin and in need of reform and purification; not everything merits conservation. But there is need of a delicate balance of these two opposed tendencies: too much conservatism produces a lazy complacency that is fearful of change, while too excessive liberalism fails to appreciate what has been received from predecessors.

Conclusion

It is hard to overestimate the value of this book. O’Callaghan shows how our contemporary culture simply cannot be understood without a deep grasp of its Christian roots. And furthermore, he shows what damage our culture has already suffered because the key tenets of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest have to the degree to which they have become unmoored from their Christian roots.

At the same time, these affirmations are never simplistic; O’Callaghan takes into account the great complexity of the relationship between faith and culture. And even though it is quite a short book, the author does not oversimplify the issues involved. For that reason, parts of the book will be challenging for someone unfamiliar with the issues involved.

Certainly, this book would make a wonderful basic text for a college course on faith and culture. It would also very beneficial for anyone interested in the deeper issues at play in our current “culture wars”, where much of the discussion is unfortunately as heated as it is uninformed by philosophy and theology.

AUTHOR

Fr Gavan Jennings

Rev. Gavan Jennings studied philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome. He is co-editor of the monthly journal Position Papers. He teaches occasional… 

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Censorship Is an ‘Unjustifiable Privilege’ by Chris Marchese

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Free Speech Is about the Power to Challenge the Status Quo!

Free speech is the great equalizer in our society. It doesn’t matter about your race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, class — you get the point — the First Amendment protects your right to speak freely. Despite this, some student activists — perceiving unequal social conditions, including at institutions of higher education — are fighting for social change at the expense of free speech. The sad irony, however, is that free speech only becomes privileged when it’s restricted, which is why free speech must remain a right equally applicable to all.

To understand why, consider Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s commencement speech at Wellesley College in 2015. In it, she said, “You, because of your beautiful Wellesley degree, have become privileged, no matter your background.” But, she added, “Sometimes you will need to push [this privilege] aside in order to see clearly,” because “privilege blinds” you to those who are different.

Students calling for speech restrictions are particularly blinded by their privilege, which leaves them unable to see the unjust privilege that restricting speech would further confer upon them. This is dangerous and counterproductive to their cause.

Restricting Speech Is an Unjust Privilege

First, to support restrictions on certain kinds of speech, activists must have (or at least project) unwavering confidence in both themselves and the system in which they are operating — the university in this case — to discern what’s offensive. Even if they see gray areas in expression, they are forced to present issues in absolutist terms if they are to have the perceived moral authority to police and punish those who offend.

Turning again to Adichie’s speech, we can see why this is wrong. As she said, “I knew from … the class privilege I had of growing up in an educated family, that it sometimes blinded me, that I was not always as alert to the nuances of people who were different from me.”

Sometimes, people are genuinely racist (though what’s considered racist varies widely from place to place) and their speech is identifiable as such. But what about the student who isn’t aware of the offense he or she may cause by wearing a sombrero at a party, which some consider cultural appropriation? How about the student who is aware but disagrees that it’s offensive? Should he or she be censored and punished based upon some activists’ standards of right and wrong? Different people have different experiences and different views. Because of this, nuance matters.

Second, while it can be tempting to argue that free speech maintains inequality because it protects offensive speech, this argument fails to distinguish between people and their views. That is, when you censor people — even for offensive speech — you are denying them equal access to, and protection of, the First Amendment and you are doing so from a position of privilege.  The right to free speech gives everyone an equal right to voice his or her opinions — but it does not mean that such opinions will win or even register in any given forum.

Restrictions on free speech, on the other hand, make both people and ideas unequal by subjugating them to someone else’s understanding of what’s right and therefore allowable. Indeed, to assume one’s views are so infallible as to warrant imposition on others and to assume there is no legitimate debate left to be had on certain topics — and the language used in discussing those topics — is a privilege that oppresses not only the hated racist, but the honest dissenter and everyone in between.

Lastly, some students claim that free speech is about power — that it enables and sustains privilege for some but not all. Let’s be clear: free speech is about power. It’s about having the power to challenge the status quo, question society’s deeply held beliefs, and call others to task. But free speech only becomes privileged when it’s restricted.

Understanding the Would-Be Censors

Of course words can have consequences. (If they couldn’t, nobody would bother speaking.) It would be hypocritical to argue that offensive speech will never cause harm, at least to feelings or interests, while also maintaining that speech is so vital it requires robust protection. One could also argue that the marketplace of ideas — like all markets — has negative externalities. The most evident, as campus activists assert, is that offensive speech is protected and those it’s directed at — typically thought to be minorities — are disproportionately burdened by it.

Moreover, restricting or punishing speech provides instant gratification. It’s an immediate and swift response to views one finds abhorrent. It gives the impression that justice has been served. For those who believe society is stacked against them, it’s a small beacon of hope. Restricting speech, then, isn’t seen as infringing upon someone else’s liberty, but rather righting a wrong. The emotional appeal is understandably strong.

But this is not right.

A Just Alternative

The best way to counter hateful, offensive speech is with more speech. Think of it this way: restricting speech treats the symptoms of bigotry by making its manifestations less visible. Conversely, more speech acts as a cure by attacking the underlying disease. The former method may seem effective in the short term, but it’s dangerous in the long run.

As FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff has argued, when offensive speech is banned, it drives those with potentially dangerous views (however determined) underground, making them harder to identify, while also potentially making them more extreme. It also gives a false sense of social progress. And who ultimately pays the price? The people the bans were meant to help, when it turns out society wasn’t as friendly as they believed.

Countering hateful speech with more speech is not seamless. It’s hard work, and it’s not instant. It doesn’t guarantee the flushing of all bigoted and hateful opinions from society, and it often works slowly. Nevertheless, it is the only method that is both just and that makes progress last. Engaging with people who express views different from one’s own moves beyond the superficial to challenge core beliefs, assumptions, and biases — and can help a person identify and recognize his or her own. Consider the case of Megan and Grace Phelps, granddaughters of the pastor who founded the Westboro Baptist Church. After interacting with a Jewish man by email and on Twitter, the sisters decided their views were wrong and decided to leave the WBC, which also meant being excommunicated by their family.

The marketplace of ideas won’t always work this way, and not everyone is destined to see the light. But restricting speech is a privileged response that neither makes society more equal nor has any tangible benefit other than providing a false sense of justice, which, in the long term, only fuels underlying problems. We cannot afford to be blind to this reality.

None of this should be construed as a plea to accept the status quo or to disengage. Rather, it’s a call for college students who support restricting speech to recognize their own privilege. Education is a gift, and college students should use the privilege it confers to advocate for change. But this means realizing free speech is not the enemy of progress, and that restricting it will not make society more equal. To do otherwise — to restrict and punish speech — is to be so willfully blind to privilege as to become the oppressors.

This article first appeared at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Chris Marchese

Chris Marchese is a communications assistant at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

You Can Take the Word Liberal From Me When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Mouth by Jeffrey Tucker

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I was in the middle of  a nice discussion with the man behind the counter at the firing range. He was surrounded by semi-automatic weapons and hundreds of handguns in the display case that separated us. I used the opportunity to tap his expertise, mostly because I don’t keep up with gun issues enough.

He explained to me the absurdity of the ban on automatic weapons, how and why it is that there is really no such thing as an “assault rifle,” and a bit about regulations on magazine size. He informed me that Clinton’s partial ban on assault rifles expired in 2004 due to a sunset clause.

This is where the conversation became interesting.

I asked: “So the law has been liberalized since Clinton?”

He raised his eyebrow and there was a long pause.

Finally he said in a deep Southern drawl, “I don’t know about no liberalism. I don’t like liberals.”

“Ok,” I said, “that’s not what I mean. I mean ‘liberalized’ in the sense of more liberal: like more freely available.”

That didn’t help. He just said, “I’m just saying that I don’t like much about what liberals are saying or doing.”

So I tried again.

“Well, more precisely, what I mean by liberalization is that American citizens are now more free from restriction than they once were to import and use certain kinds of weapons. We are more liberated to choose than we were before.”

Still, he stood there in silence, staring. Finally a co-worker walked by and said to him, “This customer means liberal like in the old way: a different way than you mean the term.”

I piped in and said, “yes, just the English-language ‘liberal’ meaning less government control over what we do.”

Even then, this nice man couldn’t understand what the heck I was talking about. The word “liberal” to him was like the Mark of the Beast. He somehow thought I was standing there promoting evil. Nothing I said would overcome his sense that I was somehow on the enemy side, simply because I was uttering this word.

Are we really so far down the path? Has our political terminology become so confused that we can’t even use regular English words and be understood?

Demonizing Liberals

Maybe this was an extreme case. Maybe it is not so bad all over. But I do wonder.

For years, right-wing radio commentators have been using “liberal” as a swear term: the worst epithet you could ever hurl at someone, indicating an individual hell-bent on destroying your life. They have contrasted the malice of “liberals” with the greatness of “conservatives,” who favor God, country, and free enterprise (with a bit of war thrown in). And book after book are published for conservative consumption using the term “liberal” to identify the most depraved values.

To be sure, this is not new. It has gone on since after World War II, when Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind appeared and was promoted on the cover of Time Magazine. This  kicked off a long-running demonization of one of the great words in the English language.

Now, you might correctly point out that the “liberals” started it. About a century ago, everyone knew what a liberal was. A liberal favored free speech, freedom of action, a free economic order, and religious freedom. A liberal opposed war. A liberal favored the ever-increasing liberation of the world from oppression, poverty, suffering.

That began to change in the Progressive Era and especially with the New Deal. Liberals had to make a choice between the free economy and the fascist model of the New Deal. They chose poorly. Yet they kept calling themselves liberals. Ten years later, it had begun to stick.

Conservative Is Not What We Are 

So when William F. Buckley set out to, as he alleged, “stand athwart history and yell stop,” he needed a different name for his “anti-Left” movement. The name he chose was Kirk’s “conservative.”  The new “conservatism” differed from that of the old English Tories in that it had affection for free enterprise. Yet it harkened back to those bygone reactionaries by favoring war, the cops, and social control. The new “conservative movement” co-opted the classical liberal remnant of the time.

Already distorted, the conservative acquiescence to the left on terminology made a bad situation worse. And it has only worsened further over the decades, to the point that today the word liberal has become practically unusable in some corners, in spite of its rich and glorious history.

And yet this is mostly true just in the United States. In most places in the world, the word “liberal” still means what it is supposed to mean. More substantially, it is the right word. It has a beautiful tradition. And I agree with Mises who said there is no suitable replacement.

“This usage is imperative,” he wrote in 1966, “because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals from slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage.”

I’ll say it again: Don’t give up the term liberal. You might even be one.

Despite the gruff gun salesman behind the counter, I won’t give up the term “liberal.” The way I feel about that grand word is the same way he feels about his guns. You can take “liberal” from me when you pry it from my cold dead mouth.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email.

VIDEO: Young Frankensteins at the University of Missouri

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Radical students at the University of Missouri are turning on the university which created them. They are neo-Frankensteins.

Michael A. Kline from Accuracy in Academia writes:

Most of the coverage of recent college demonstrations has been largely sympathetic to the demonstrators. Indeed, few sources were consulted who would speak any evil of them.

mizzou president tim wolfe

Nevertheless, our November author’s night speaker—William Barclay Allen—saw in them the culmination of a disturbing trend. “I have spent my whole life in academia and I can tell you I have witnessed the deterioration over the course of time,” Dr. Allen, a professor emeritus at Michigan State University, said in November. “It is no longer to be assumed that freedom of speech prevails on a university campus.”

“Instead, there are codes of speech.” Dr. Allen is the former chairman of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission.

“What I am suggesting to you is not that there are outliers, a few extremists who at college campuses especially in elite institutions who the rest of us can look at as perhaps, in their own way, testaments to our virtue because they are so unlike us,” Dr. Allen said. “No that is not the case.”

Read more.

Here is a different perspective on the problem.

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Liberalism Created the WDBJ Killer

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Barack Obama won’t be saying, “If I had a psycho son, he’d look like Vester Lee.” But he might as well. Because Vester Lee Flanagan II, the bigoted maniac who murdered the WDBJ reporter and cameraman Wednesday on live TV, was a philosophical offspring of the Left.

It’s well known now that Flanagan was a professional victim, nurturing grudges against all and sundry based on his “status” as a homosexual black man. He had an axe to grind with white women because they supposedly made racial statements to him, and against black men because they supposedly directed anti-homosexual remarks his way. And it didn’t seem as if he liked anyone very much.

Of course, most of the bigotry he perceived from others was in his head, a function of his own prejudice, inculcated via decades of liberal indoctrination. When you dislike others, you view them through tinted lenses and ascribe negative motivations to everything they do. Where a fair-minded individual might interpret a comment as innocuous, simply a misunderstanding or an example of the issuer merely having a bad day, you see malice. “Of course it was racial! That’s the way white people are.” And, “That had to be ‘homophobic’ in this society, which macro and microaggresses against everything that I am!” (of course, certain things are supposed to be stigmatized). These notions, again, were put in Flanagan’s mixed-up head by liberals and liberals alone. They disgorge hateful, pure and utter nonsense such as microaggression theory, “white privilege,” critical-race theory and 1000 other things designed to divide with lies. It is evil.

Flanagan had described himself as “human powder keg,” but what was he so angry about? He lived in the most prosperous nation in the most prosperous time in man’s history; he could walk into any supermarket and avail himself of thousands of delicious foods from the world over at reasonable prices, a luxury that would have made the jaws of people existing in former ages drop. He was living, as we all do, in Shangri-la. But his attitude was hardly inexplicable.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Goods look a lot better when they come wrapped as gifts.” Everything is a gift, but the Left teaches just the opposite: to have a sense of entitlement, to believe you’re owed, to ever and always view our very large glass as half empty. Some have asked, quite naively, how it is that despite Flanagan’s pathetic performance as a reporter, he was hired by more than one media outlet and given chance after chance to right the ship. Well, golly gee, Cletus, it’s a mystery.

Flanagan was clearly an affirmative-action hire, enjoying the daily-double victim status of being black and homosexual. And that was part of the problem: too much was given to him on a silver platter — because of liberalism.

There have been many articles in recent years about how college graduates today enter the workforce with unrealistic expectations about their economic self-worth and starting salary. We hear about how so many of them can’t tolerate criticism and rejection; act as if their own feelings are inordinately important and should command respect; and how they lack a sense of propriety, a grasp of their place in a workplace’s hierarchy. As a consequence, they may barge into an office to vent their feelings, even if it’s neither the time nor the place.

This is all the result of liberal parenting, of the psychobabble disgorged by the likes of Dr. Benjamin Spock. It’s no wonder many young people today have little sense of just hierarchies — their permissive liberal parents didn’t establish a just hierarchy in the home. Instead, they acted as if their family was a dysfunctional democracy and junior a special-interest group that political correctness dictated must be coddled and catered to. Junior seldom heard the word “No!” uttered in exclamatory fashion; junior seldom had to delay gratification; junior got participation trophies just for showing up. He was treated as a little prince around whom the world revolved. He was marinated in “self-esteem” pap in schools, telling him how great and special he was. The result? Junior and many of his peers (not that he imagined he had any peers) grew up to be narcissists.

As for Flanagan, it has been reported that his refrigerator was covered with pictures of himself. We know what this means. A mother may display numerous pictures of her children because she loves her children. And a man would display numerous pictures of himself because…?

It all reminds me of the Satan character’s line in the film The Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity is my favorite sin.” “Pride” is probably even more accurate. But it all gets at the matter’s heart. We don’t need some hard and fast psychological diagnosis here. Whether Flanagan was most correctly characterized as a “narcissist” or just a self-centered, entitled jerk, the bottom line is that his state was attributable to a philosophical disease, a disordered way of thinking that masquerades under an ideological banner:

Liberalism.

Of course, liberals will blame guns. This is partially because, unlike with Dylann Roof, they can’t blame Confederate flags or 19th-century statues. But it’s also because they’re incapable of putting the blame where it really belongs: the man in the mirror.

Guns don’t kill people. Liberalism does.

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EDITORS NOTE: You mAY contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

The dirty little secret no one wants to admit about Baltimore

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The population of Baltimore is 622,000 and 63 percent of its population is black. The mayor, state’s attorney, police chief and city council president are black, as is 48 percent of the police force. But as 36-year-old Robert Stokes says, “You look around and see unemployment. Filling out job applications and being turned down because of where you live and your demographic. It’s so much bigger than the police department.”

Everyone wants to have an honest conversation about race, so let’s us endeavor to do just that. Now, of course, when you speak the hard truth about race issues in America – and not just the liberal progressive talking points – and you’re white, you’ll be branded a racist. And if you’re black, well, y’all just watch the comments below and see the denigrating drivel.

As posted on Breitbart.com by John Nolte, “Contrary to the emotional blackmail some leftists are attempting to peddle, Baltimore is not America’s problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem.”

“Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor. In 2012, after four years of his own failed policies, President Obama won a whopping 87.4% of the Baltimore city vote. Democrats run the city of Baltimore, the unions, the schools, and, yes, the police force. Since 1969, there have only been only been two Republican governors of the State of Maryland. Elijah Cummings has represented Baltimore in the U.S. Congress for more than thirty years.”

“As I write this, despite his objectively disastrous reign, the Democrat-infested mainstream media is treating the Democrat like a local folk hero, not the obvious and glaring failure he really is. Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat. Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. It is the free people of Baltimore who elect and then re-elect those who institute policies that have so spectacularly failed that once-great city. It is the free people of Baltimore who elected Mayor “Space-to-Destroy”.

Mr. Nolte is white and we all know the invectives which will be hurled his way — but he is absolutely correct.

I was watching the news reports from Baltimore and hearing all the condemnations from some about being kept down and the lack of jobs, opportunity, good schools — then why do these blacks keep voting for the same people? And this isn’t a phenomenon isolated to Baltimore.

Every single major urban center in America is run by Democrats — more specifically, liberal progressives, black or white. The morass that became Detroit. The killing fields of Chicago. The depravity of Washington DC. The shame of South Dallas. And yes, even the place that was once my home, Atlanta — even with all the successful black entertainers.

Now, I remember the first black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson. That guy was a leader and even spoke at my high school Baccalaureate. But today, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has done such a bang-up job that the Atlanta Braves are moving to Cobb County!

Just do the assessment yourselves, who are the elected officials heading up the urban centers? And where does one find the most dire socio-economic statistics?

Yet we hear these rioters blame whites — well, they need to make sure they’re specifically blaming the correct whites — those on the left. Blacks have been herded into these inner city clusters, a new economic plantation and in this 50th year of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society — well, the unintended, or maybe intended, consequences are deplorable.

But Mr. Nolte does bring up an interesting comparative analysis. He writes:

“Poverty has nothing to do with it. This madness and chaos and anarchy is a Democrat-driven culture that starts at the top with a racially-divisive White House heartbreakingly effective at ginning up hate and violence. Where I currently reside here in Watauga County, North Carolina, the poverty level is 31.3%. Median income is only $34,293. In both of those areas we are much worse off than Baltimore, that has a poverty rate of only 23.8% and a median income of $41,385. Despite all that, we don’t riot here in Watauga County. Thankfully, we have not been poisoned by the same left-wing culture that is rotting Baltimore, and so many other cities like it, from the inside out. We get along remarkably well. We are neighbors. We are people who help out one another. We take pride in our community, and are grateful for what we do have. We are far from perfect, but we work out our many differences in civilized ways. Solutions are our goal, not cronyism, narcissistic victimhood, and the blaming of others.”

The truth is that it is a culture of dependency as promulgated by the race baiters and new plantation overseers of the inner city that has created what we’re seeing play out in Baltimore. There is where the blame lies, but there are very few who are willing to admit just that.

Remember what ESPN sports commentator Stephen A. Smith said? He wished that for one voting cycle, the black community would vote Republican. Heck, they could do no worse — and look, even the people of the state of Maryland decided to try something different and elected a Republican governor. Who, when finally asked, immediately activated the National Guard to quell the violence and chaos which the Democrat Mayor of Baltimore failed to comprehend, and control. Perhaps what we’re witnessing in Baltimore is the pure definition of insanity — continuing to do the same thing and expect different results.

Yes, the dirty little secret that no one wants to admit is that Baltimore, and so many other urban areas and inner city communities in America are a reflection of the abject failure of liberal progressive socialist policies as advanced by the Democrat party.

The preeminent question is whether or not those in Baltimore and other places will recognize who is truly responsible for their plight. Or will they continue to be manipulated and propagandized by the liberal progressive media and the poverty pimps like the one supposedly heading down from New York City.

John Nolte’s piece was spot on and this is not about an American failure, it is about a Democrat failure. And ask yourself, who were the ones who developed the concept of urban economic empowerment zones — as opposed to the ones who have produced urban depraved enslavement zones?

Is Liberalism a Cult? ABSOLUTELY!!!

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The other day, I was watching a program about the Church of Scientology. The program was not particularly flattering to Scientology. In fact, the documentary was downright disparaging. In the conclusion of the documentary, although the producers did not come out and actually say it, was that Scientology was nothing more than a flashy, well-funded cult. That got me to thinking about religion in general. You see, all of the worlds’ major religions have one thing in common. That commonality is the fact that there is a greater being outside of yourself and humanity. Some call that factor God, The Great Spirit, Gaia etc.

Cults have one thing in common. Their commonality is that the leader or leaders of the order believe themselves to be the great being that has come to live in human form. Indeed, they often call themselves God. For the most part, true religions have an uplifting message. Even if you don’t agree with that message, it is still there. Cults would have you believe that there is nothing positive to look forward to outside of the cult leader.

This is where politics comes in. You see Liberalism is nothing more than a cult. It is probably not the worlds largest cult but it is a cult non the less. Liberalism doesn’t believe in a greater being outside of themselves. Often Liberals are atheists or agnostic and thus they only believe in themselves and those who lead the cult. Liberals believe that there is no hope outside of the cult, or government. That the cult has to be grown to ever bigger levels in order to achieve the utopia that is, in reality, impossible to achieve.

We are told, that if we do not believe in this cult, that we have no soul, no heart. We are told we do not care about our fellow citizen our fellow human being. We are told that only the cult leaders, the political leaders, have the ability to help those who are in most need of help.

Liberalism is born out of the idea that man is helpless without those deemed to be smarter than the masses. In fact those so-called smart leaders are only smarter than the masses because those leaders tell us they are smarter. There is no real evidence that those leaders of the Liberal Cult are actually smarter than a 5th grader.

Liberals tell us that in their cult, and only within their cult, will man get the best health care, the highest wages, the best housing, the cleanest planet and the safest non-violent and completely united world of nations  under one government. Liberals tell us that basic human rights, such as the right to defend thy self against bodily harm is wrong and should be left solely to those whom the Liberal Cult deems as its guardians. The Liberal Cult tells us time and time again that the right to freely speak your mind should be limited to ideas in which the Liberal Cult agrees with. Forget having a deviating opinion. That is frowned upon by the Liberal Cult.

The Liberal Cult believes that the right to massive assembly should not be infringed upon unless you are assembling to oppose what the Liberal Cult believes to be in your best interest. So Occupy Wall Street and the Baltimore Riots, according to the Liberal Cult is fine. But a small gathering of TEA Party members assembling quietly in a local park is very bad. The Liberal Cult demeans and debases the rich yet the leaders of the Liberal Cult are often rich themselves. Many of them have more wealth than the people they are decrying as the “evil rich”.

The Liberal Cult demands that we stop the war on drugs and make most drugs currently illegal, legal. While at the same time they call for ever increasing amounts of money and trained professionals to deal with those who have become hopelessly addicted to the drugs that the Cult wants to now make legal. The Liberal Cult continues to blame everyone but the Cult for the failures of their own ideas. In no way can the Cult admit to failure. Their claim is always that there is not enough of others people’s money being spent on the program they say will cure the ill. If a child fails a math test, the Liberal Cult will tell you it is not the fault of the Cults idea but that a child should be allowed to think that 2+2=5. The Cult will say that we did not spend enough money on the administration, the school building, the teacher and text book and that because we won’t spend double what we are already spending, it is the fault of everyone not in the Cult.

In the Liberal Cult there is no room for dissenting thought or actions. In fact if you don’t believe as the cult does, they will brand you a racist, a sexist, a bigot, a homophobe. You will be labeled a greedy, money loving capitalist even though you earn less than and give more to charity than the Liberal Cultist. Your religion will be labeled stale and outdated and that newer religions that are more violent and hateful are the way to go. If you are a Liberal Cultist you don’t believe in logic, in facts, in true history. You only believe in feelings, your own feelings, and you force public and private policy upon everyone based on your feelings alone. Simply because you believe you are smarter and wiser than anyone else who is outside the Cult.

We all can look at cults and say that cults in general are a bad idea and are bad for the individual involved. So why is it we fully accept the Cult of Liberalism even though it is probably the most dangerous cult the planet has ever seen?

Something to think about.

Liberalism is on Trial in Baltimore

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Baltimore and Ferguson, symbolically represent the failure of liberalism throughout the U.S. Liberalism has been weighed in the balances and has been found wanting. Liberalism has been tried in the court of public opinion and now it’s time for its public sentencing.

As I am fond of saying, when all is said and done, there’s more said than done. This is very appropriate for the crisis surrounding the city of Baltimore after the murder of Freddie Gray.

Have you noticed that with all these riots over the past year, the Black businessman has been totally invisible?  They know what it takes to deal with the pathologies that affect the Baltimores all over the country, but tragically no one ever reaches out to them.

Am I the only one that noticed the irony of Baltimore being the city where the national headquarters of the NAACP is located?  Did they not notice the unemployment rate in the Black community, or the teenage pregnancy rate, or the high school dropout rate, or the housing problems in Baltimore until Gray’s murder?

Isn’t it amazing that groups like the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Congressional Black Caucus have spent more time promoting homosexuality, amnesty for illegals, and increasing the minimum wage than they have dealing with issues that directly affect the very communities they claim to represent?

In pondering the spate of deaths of unarmed Black males during the past year, there are some striking similarities that can’t be ignored.

You have had recent killings by the police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York, Oscar  Grant in Oakland, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles and now Freddie Gray in Baltimore, just to name a few.

The common thread among all these cities is that they have been controlled by liberal Democrats for decades, both Black and White. In the case of Baltimore, you have not had an elected Republican mayor since 1967 and what’s even more ironic is current day Baltimore has a Black mayor, a Black police chief, a Black prosecutor, a black president of the city council, a Black congressman and an almost fifty percent Black police force; yet the Black unemployment rate in Baltimore among those 25-64 years of age is 41%.

According to the latest census: 25% of the residents of Baltimore live in poverty compared to the national average of 17%; 18% of Baltimore’s housing stock is vacant compared to the 13% national average.

It’s not about party, it’s about agenda. Most reasonable people would agree that the liberal approach to urban policy has been put on trial and has been found guilty in the court of public opinion.  Guilty of being an abject failure. So, doing more of the same is definitely not the solution.

The above indicators don’t just show up overnight; but rather are the culmination of gross negligence with malice aforethought. Remember, the core tenet of liberalism is intent; not results.

So, what was the liberal response to Baltimore?  It was very predictable, “we need more money spent in our communities.”  If money was the solution, then Baltimore would be a shining example of the virtues of liberalism.

They spend almost $ 15,000 per student for education, the second highest in the country; but yet remain near the bottom of every index for results (only 10% of Baltimore’s residents have a college degree).

Maryland is the wealthiest state in the country in terms of income according to the latest U.S. Census ($ 70,000 median household income). In 2007 and 2012 then governor and former Baltimore mayor, Martin O’Malley raised taxes on the wealthy and wondered why the wealthy started leaving the state.  In 2014, he then raised the minimum wage from $ 7.25/hr to $10.10/hr.

So, let me make sure I understand this liberal approach. Liberals want to further tax those who are generating all the jobs and paying the most into the state’s coffers; then they want to increase the cost of labor for those who have the least amount of education and skills; thereby guaranteeing that employers will hire fewer of them.

Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland, etc., present a great opportunity for the Republican Party to speak directly to the Black community about Republican solutions to the pathologies that plague these communities.

The first thing the Republican Party, especially the congressional leadership, should do is meet with key Black businessmen.  In the Black community, the businessman is typically the head of the trustee board and the deacon board within the church.  So, if you get the businessman on your side, he will bring you the preacher and the congregation.

Under Obama, the Black business community has been devastated. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that under Obama, “1.7% of the $ 23 billion in SBA loans went to Black owned businesses in 2013,” the lowest level on record.  The Journal went on to report that under George W. Bush the rate was 8%.

The other issue that plays to the Republican’s strength is education. I have previously written about how Obama’s policies have decimated Black colleges.  Based on conservative estimates, HBCUs have lost $150 million in funding during his presidency and caused at least 28,000 students to drop out of school due to lack of money.

Why the Republicans don’t use their congressional majorities to address these issues is perplexing to me.

I have said before and I will say it again, Blacks are begging Republicans to give them a reason to vote for them.