By Dean Kalahar
With the fiscal
cliff, $16 trillion deficit, and bankrupt entitlement programs dragging down
our way of life; businessmen and conservatives take heed. If you want to be
successful, you better know who you are dealing with and be prepared to fight
an opponent that does not think like you.
The psychology of
the American liberal is based on a set of perceptions of how the world works
that is the antithesis of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Recognizing the new majority and realizing what
makes them tick is an important examination for anyone who wants to understand
America in the 21st century and fight for survival.
What is a modern liberal? James Q. Wilson explained
that “in the early 19th century a liberal was a person who favored
personal and economic liberty; that is freedom from the control and power of
the state. A conservative was originally a person who opposed the excesses of
the French Revolution and its emphasis on personal freedom and favored a
restoration of the power of the state, the church and the aristocracy.” Today
that has been flipped; liberals want the restoration of power in the state, secretly
masking their shame by sincerely claiming they are fighting to protect your
liberty.
The name of the liberal vision changes each and every time its precepts are
discredited but the ideology never wavers. As such liberals have called
themselves Communists, Progressives, Collectivists, Keynesians, Historicists,
Socialists, Democrats, and Leftists at one time or another. Today the term
“progressive” is being recycled. Tomorrow we’ll hear other lofty oxymora to
hide their true intentions.
At the heart of
liberalism, as defined by Thomas Sowell, “is the naïve belief that people are
basically good and that humans can be perfected
through the rule of self anointed experts who should be telling the rest
of us, through the power of government, what we ought to do, what we can do and
what we cannot do.”
Unfettered individual judgment and conscience known as secular humanism,
moral relativity, and non-judgmentalism are at the heart of the liberal vision.
And since they do not subscribe to and are least habituated to existing
institutions, traditions, and values, they feel especially suited to act as
social change agents.
Liberals wish to define for us what is good and what is bad in order to
remake us in their image; because they
believe they hold superior wisdom and virtue over the rest of the “society”
they view as ignorant. They express their arrogance of a self imposed
superiority through self congratulatory actions and smug condescending
rhetoric.
The irony
according to Peter Berkowitz is that progressives see
themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people and
yet when the people make choices contrary to progressive
dictates we see contempt among the experts for the very people whose interests
they claim to alone represent.
Sowell says the
left “believe ills such as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive
primarily from “society,” rather than from individual choices and behavior. To
believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role
of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people
treated unfairly by “society.” As a result of this belief, according to Dennis
Prager, liberals rarely blame people for the evil they do. Instead, they blame
economics, parents, capitalism, racism, and anything else that can let the
individual off the hook.”
And yet the left speak in democratic terms to create authoritarian outcomes.
In order to carry out what they blindly believe are compassionate and good
intentioned plans, the left has as its core a never-ending expansion of the
arbitrary powers of the federal government. “Do-gooders,” based on dreams of lollypops and
unicorns in a wonderland they envision, direct decisions on others who need
“fixing” while ignoring costs and paying no personal price for their grandiose
schemes. In short, as Sowell describes the madness, “liberalism is
totalitarianism with a human face.”
Liberals deal in feelings and emotions not
reason and reality. They passionately speak
in terms of innovation and excitement and read their childish feelings as
principled thought. It never dawns on a liberal the possibility that passion without principle is
just the raw emotion of human nature.
Liberals have a tendency to be infuriated and lash out at anyone who does
not agree with their Pollyannaish worldview. As Jonah Goldberg states: “Liberalism
is never wrong, because essential to the concept of liberalism is the idea
that it must always be right.” As such they must become masters of white wash,
blame shifting, and talking out of both sides of their mouths. Liberals never
apologize for actions they take that cause calamity. Instead, morally outraged
liberals demand a right to results instead of defending the morality of
property rights, personal freedom, and liberty.
What outrages the left is resistance or even non-compliance with their
agenda. Their motto is: If you are not with us, you’re against us; which means
we are against you and will do any and everything in our power to silence you.
The ends justify the liberal means and they will wage war on anyone challenging
their utopian worldview that ironically believes war is wrong.
For a liberal, according to Sowell, “it is desperately important to win, not
simply because they believe that one policy or set of beliefs and values is
better for society, but because their whole sense of themselves is at stake.” “It
is not hard to find an attitude” with liberals because it is the “threat to
their egos that they hate,” which comes from anything that challenges their
cause as “saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks.”
It is no wonder the lefts’ agenda takes on a
pseudo-religious faith in their certainty (i.e. global warming, GMF’s, DDT,
pink slime, windmills?) and
reacts to any alternative viewpoints not only as wrong but as a sin against the
church they worship- themselves. This is why
they advance their beliefs from a purely emotional and ideological dogma. Their
anger is misdirected fear that their worldview might come crashing down, if anything
indeed was allowed to challenge their false reality. The liberal’s vision
affirms a life of identity confusion being played out as self-assuredness. This
forces their arrogance to grow with every opposing viewpoint because, as John
Stossel points out, “the conceit of the anointed knows no bounds.”
Victor Davis Hanson further explains that “Liberals feel
terrible about their own exclusivity and the abyss between what is professed
and what is lived.” And explains why “angst over their voluntary segregation …
is ameliorated by loudly and cheaply alleging that someone else is racist,”
bigoted, sexist, fascist, or any emotional bomb throwing nomenclature that
seeks to destroy another so as to avoid self awareness.
Sowell states: “many, if not most, people on the left find
it inexplicable how any decent and intelligent person could be on the right.”
While “Most people on the right have no problem understanding people on the left
because many, if not most, were on the left themselves when they were younger.”
The conservative views the liberal as fine, just uninformed, while the liberal
views the conservative with distain and contempt. In short, liberals have yet
to grow up, mature, and realize the world for what it is, not what they
fantasize.
Sowell explains:
Most of us learn that from experience
but experience is precisely what the young are lacking. "Experience"
is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were
making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for
being wrong. Those who are insulated from that pain; whether by being born into
affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure
in academia or in the federal judiciary can remain in a state of perpetual
immaturity. Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in
their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded
people. Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through
talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise
find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to
grow up or not. Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent
must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world
of childhood. No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was
seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities
and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all
sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions. Should we be
surprised that the strongest supporters of the political Left are found among
the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities,
and federal judges?
To liberals
it is always “societies” fault or America’s fault for any and all ills. Heaven
forbid the liberal mind take personal responsibility and grow. Self awareness
is far too painful and thus external blame is the default setting that protects
their fragile cognitive house of cards. Liberals misperceive and distort the
world in lieu of answering the difficult yet fundamental question of life, “Who
am I.” Since they do not know who they are, they want to control what you are to
make them feel as if they are “something special.”
The liberal
lives in a world where reality is deconstructed into a matter of perceptions. These
perceptions, mind you, can never be misperceptions. Liberals live in a world
where pompous self indulgence separates and insulates “the special” from
accountability and suffering of the type those who live in the real world know
all too well.
And liberal leaders who sit in their academic
“ivory towers” or endless “collaborative” meetings have little contact with the
knowledge of the people. Their world of style over substance symbolism insulates
them from the harshness of the human condition and allows them to bask in the
warm glow of self approval. Yet, sadly, they are the first to proclaim they
“feel your pain” and “understand your needs.” It’s an ironic condescension that
is an all too typical reaction from a group who deals in feelings instead of
facts.
Sowell argues correctly that “no one
can really understand the political left without understanding that they are
about making themselves feel superior, however much they may talk piously about
what they are going to do to help others.” Therefore they must psychologically
believe they are the “thinking people” who are “the brightest and the best.” As
such they must play a special role in society by outlining the moral stand.
Proof of this is that “the left's lack of interest in testing the actual
results of their bright ideas against hard facts betrays what their real
interest is.”
Victor Davis Hansen points out that to liberals “our mastery of nature must
extend to human nature as well. A society that can call anywhere in the world
on a cell phone, must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if
these pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the
soul.”
And Michael Knox Beran explains, “Modern liberalism regards suffering not as
something inherent in the very nature of life but as an anomaly to be
eradicated by reason and science and social legislation.” The left thinks it
has a right to a perfect life free of pain. This lack of even a basic
understanding of human nature and history makes their denial of reality all but
certain.
And while the left dominates the
academic world, Sowell documents they are found in the “soft humanities, where
there are no facts to challenge the fantasies that abound. Leftists head for
similar fact-free zones outside of academia.” The faith of “science” is
heralded by the left, while the actual use of science is ignored.
Yet
the liberal vision, according to Friedrich Hayek, has a fatal error in thinking.
Leftists believe they can alter forces more powerful than they and can
comprehend and reason without limits. In short, the liberal mind does not
believe it is held back by such fussy things as limits, costs, scarcity, and
natural laws.
Liberal
faith is placed in “reason” and the unlimited potential of an infallible
ego-centric man; not in a faith of a greater power and a humbled acceptance of
the limits to man’s reason because of a flawed human nature. They believe if it
can’t be “reasoned,” it does not exist. In short, liberals can’t see something
greater than self, so a power greater than self does not exist, which makes
their power absolute.
Sowell states: "Many on the political left are so
entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality
they are creating in the real world.” “Good Things have costs, often costs out
of all proportion to whatever good they might do. But notions like trade-offs
and diminishing returns seldom deter zealots, whose own egos are served by
their zealotry in imposing their vision, however costly or counterproductive it
may be for others.”
The elite left of today, Sowell says, are hardly “Karl Marx's proletarians,
who were supposed to bring on the revolution.” In contradiction, “the working
class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the Left.”
The liberal anointed also romanticize about earlier peoples
who they believed were, as Sowell describes, “noble savages” …”who supposedly
lived in some sort of Eden before evil was introduced from outside by modern
Western society. Of course the left conveniently forgets facts about the
carnage, oppression, or brutality in such societies have been gilded over,
totally ignored, or brazenly denied.” The left wants American society to go
back to a more simple and sustainable time. Sadly, that was a time of greater
poverty, crime, death, disease, and suffering not just for American’s but for
everyone. John Milton said, Better to reign in hell
than serve in heaven. Going further, liberals would sooner live in hell than
share in heaven.
Not
only is their ignorance, but the hypocrisy of the ideology is breathtaking. Liberals
hold evolutionary theory as a cornerstone of reason and yet feel the need to
ignore its principles and supplant natural law with man as the social engineer.
And according to Sowell, “People who believe in evolution in biology often
believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the
universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that
the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by
politicians.” What is even more
intellectually inconsistent is the same demigods who blame institutions for
man’s evil nature dismiss the fact that men, like themselves, created the
institutions.
Ludwig von Mises exposed the
hypocrisy by stating: “they call themselves progressives, but they recommend a
system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a
resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but
they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but
they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they
want to make the government omnipotent.”
Sowell explains, “the dirty little secret of liberal politics is that it is
not about the poor or ‘social justice’ but is about the political careers and
moral exaltation of liberals themselves.” In other words, “idealism in words is
not idealism in deeds.”
Sowell continues by pointing out that for liberals, who champion
for the people and cry for equality, “there
is remarkably little concern with allowing those other people to live their own
lives as they see fit” Instead, they shamelessly promote “the most
dangerous of all inequalities; the inequality of unaccountable power.” “Ever increasing and ever more minute
regulation of other people's lives has now reached the point where we cannot
even take a shower, flush a toilet, or take out our garbage the way we want to.”
Sowell reminds us that: “the left’s ideological bigotry has become the norm
on even our most prestigious campuses, where students can go for years without
reading or hearing anything that challenges the left vision.” Universities no
longer espouse the universal freedom of ideas. Instead, speech codes, political
correctness, and censorship permeate what are supposed to be our most open
forums of thought.
And liberals have distain for “crass material
things.” But these same materialistic things “has released hundreds of
millions of human beings from the curse of grinding poverty, endless toil, and
given them longer lives,” according to Sowell. This hypocrisy is unseen or
ignored by the left who thrive in the insulation of a self congratulatory fog.
What
will be the Results of the new American Liberalism? Hayek
said, “The vision of human limits offers a best case view, while the vision of
ever expanding human capacity pushes civilization in a direction that will
ultimately create a scenario of human decline.” Sadly, the left has won the
culture war and we have past a tipping point in America. The results of the
last 50 years of liberal warfare have left the nation scarred. Take a look at
our family, economic, religious, educational, and government institutions, and
the only a conclusion you can reach is one of American decline.
History
is full of examples of collectivist failures: Jamestown, East Germany,
Plymouth, Chavez’s Venezuela. Glen Risley states “The Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, and
North Korea are all examples of oppressive failures based on wealth
redistribution.” He asks, “How can modern liberals embrace the tyrannical
system that robs incentive and dooms an entire society to a mediocre standard
of living dictated by central planning?
Sowell offers a simple question for liberals who emerged in the 60’s and
rule today. “Do people on the left ever wonder why we do not suffer the poverty
of India, the oppression of North Korea, the anarchy of Liberia, the slaughters
of Rwanda, etc.? Would it ever occur to them that it might have anything to do
with those very values and traditions which they are striving so hard to
undermine or dismantle.” How can the left come to terms with the “undermining of such basic institutions as the
family, law enforcement and education? Food stamps are no substitute for a
father, busing is no substitute for a decent education and racial
breast-beating is no substitute for being able to walk the streets without fear
of hoodlums and murderers.”
It does not matter if Liberalism’s foundations are from a genetic nature or environmental
nurture. It does not matter if liberalism’s dogma is a natural occurrence for
humans who have not yet moved through the sequential and orderly process of
maturation. It does not matter if liberalism is an outward expression of inner
turmoil masking their neuroticism. The bottom line, liberalism’s cognitive
reality is void of the brutal lessons of life’s reality coupled to human
nature, scarcity, and the infinite dynamics of a universe we can’t possible
begin to understand.
If you are not prepared to defend your nation, your business, and your
family from the liberal mind, be prepared to live in barbarism. The new
American liberal wants to go off the fiscal cliff, bankrupt the nation, and
redistribute wealth until we are all equally living in poverty. It is time to
understand the foe you are up against. Protecting their psyche at all costs is
at the core of the liberal existence. Until that utopian view is demolished by
an equal amount of focus, energy, and fight, liberalism will continue to win
the battles and destroy the nation.
