http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/02/22/liberalism-101

Liberalism 101

Posted By Alan Roebuck

On February 22, 2008 @ 5:00 am In Political Theory, Humanities,
Language, Academia, Histo, Features | 18 Comments

We American conservatives are all, in a manner of speaking, recovering
liberals, and we must constantly fight the temptation to relapse.

Conservatives, by definition, oppose liberalism. And well they
should, because liberalism, with its foolish utopian schemes based on
false or impractical understandings of equality, liberty and
tolerance, is inflicting serious, possibly fatal harm on America. But
since, as I argue below, the worldview of the Left has near total
control over the thinking of Americans, including many conservatives,
it is vital that we understand liberalism so we can oppose it more
effectively. And effective opposition to liberalism must begin within
our own minds, as we free ourselves from pernicious forms of thought
that have become conventional.

It must be noted up front that there is a valid distinction between
liberal and leftist, but the distinction is one of degree rather than
of kind. Leftists are consistent liberals, and liberals temper the
principles of the Left with common sense and common decency, making
themselves inconsistent in thought and deed. Nevertheless, and in
keeping with common usage, I generally use the word "liberalism" to
denote the basic way of thinking.

The first point to establish is that there even is such a thing as
liberalism. Since leftist thinking is ubiquitous, there is a
temptation to react only to its most outrageous manifestations, while
failing to recognize its most basic tenets. Indeed, since most of us
conservatives are temperamentally, well, conservative, we have a
strong desire to affirm the status quo. But if liberalism has become
the unofficial state religion of America, then the status quo must be
challenged.

And liberalism, being the status quo, often masquerades as common
sense. How many times have you heard someone say, in effect "You have
an irrational bias toward conservatism, but I'm not biased. I just go
where the evidence leads." Since liberalism is taught by most of
America's highest authorities (chiefly the schools, the news media,
and entertainment), it is the position that requires the least
thought. In fact, many people are unaware that liberalism is a
philosophical system that could possibly be wrong, depending on the
evidence. For them, liberalism is simply the way things obviously
are. And this serves as a useful defensive strategy for liberalism: If
we cannot identify it and locate it, we cannot fight it

So how do we identify liberalism? To begin, imagine the following
thought experiment:

Assemble a list of 20 specific issues that are currently in dispute,
each of which has two well-defined positions (basically "support it"
and "oppose it"). For example, the list might begin with these
issues:

1) Legalizing same-sex marriage.

2) Opposing gun control.

3) Outlawing abortion.

4) Establishing a comprehensive, federal-government-run system of
socialized medicine.

Make sure that for each issue, a typical person would label the two
sides "conservative" and "liberal."

OK, so we have 20 well-defined current issues which divide along right-
left lines. Now imagine choosing someone and asking him for his views
on the first 10 issues, and suppose he has taken the liberal position
on each of these 10 issues.

Question: What are the chances that he will take the liberal position
on most, if not all, of the remaining 10 issues? Clearly the chances
are very good. But why?

Because liberalism really exists. That is, there exists a
comprehensive system of thought commonly called "liberalism," and
since this worldview has a certain integrity (that is, it is not just
a random collection of unrelated assertions), we can make predictions
about what people who hold to it will believe. Since people, as
opposed to philosophical systems, are often inconsistent, we cannot
expect that John Q. Liberal will take the party line on all issues.
But to be a liberal, he only has to think and act for the most part in
accordance with liberalism.

Given any specific and well-defined issue with political
ramifications, it is usually pretty clear which side is the liberal
side.1 So examine as many specific liberal views as you can, and
attempt to discern the basic beliefs that they have in common. In
other words, determine what basic ideas provide the logical foundation
that supports the views that abortion and same-sex marriage should be
legal, that we should have government-run health care, that there
should be no religion in government-run establishments, and so on.

What then can we conclude about liberalism? I will presume that the
reader has enough experience to recognize the essential truth of the
following summary without having to be provided with the myriad
examples and discussions that would be necessary to convince someone
with no knowledge of American society:

I. Liberalism is a worldview.

That is, liberalism is not just a randomly-chosen collection of
unrelated beliefs. It has a philosophical consistency to it, which is
why, in the thought experiment described above, we can have confidence
that somebody who is liberal on the first 10 issues will be liberal on
most of the others. People do not form opinions at random; they
generally hold views that are consistent with their fundamental
beliefs about how reality operates.

II. Liberalism emphasizes freedom, equality, openness to the outsider
(i.e., multiculturalism) and nonjudgmentalism.

"Freedom" is, of course, another word for the liber in liberalism.
Liberalism certainly emphasizes freedom when it can, but freedom
cannot be an ultimate good, because it is only a negative condition:
the absence of restraint. Much more important to the contemporary
American liberal is equality, both as a moral imperative ("we need to
treat all people the same") and as a description of man's condition
("We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal . . ."). From the belief in the inherent equality, at least
potential, of all people, come the imperatives to be open to the
outsider and to be nonjudgmental.

For example, as is clear to anyone who has paid any attention to the
debate over immigration, even most conservatives take the position
that America has no right to simply declare a halt to all immigration,
because that would be an egregious violation of the sacred principle
of openness. Aside from appeals to utility ("Immigrants do jobs
Americans won't do"), the basic position of all liberals and most
conservatives is that refusing to allow foreigners to immigrate to
America is inherently wrong, and that's just all there is to it. And
please note: Here we see many conservatives thinking like liberals.

As for the moral imperative to be nonjudgmental, it follows from the
belief in equality, and from the imperative to be open to the
outsider. If we were to judge people, we would conclude that people
are actually unequal in nature and ability: Some are smarter, some are
more diligent and some are more violent and antisocial than others,
for example. Furthermore, if we were to judge societies, we would
notice that some societies are more compatible than others with our
American values and way of life. And from all these judgments it
would follow that we would have to treat people and societies
unequally, which would be unacceptable according to liberalism.
Therefore we must not judge.

III. The foundational principles of liberalism.

What basic beliefs are necessary to justify the liberal emphases
described above? It would seem that the following are required:

1. Liberalism holds that the God of the Bible does not exist. This
does not necessarily mean outright atheism; liberals have varying
concepts of God. Most liberals believe in some sort of god, but their
god is usually "mystical," that is, a god about whom nothing can be
known with certainty, and therefore "God" for them has no ultimate
authority. But liberalism definitely denies the existence of the God
described in the Bible, because to be compatible with liberalism,
"God" must not be "judgmental," must not require belief in any
particular religion, must not send people to Hell (unless they are
spectacularly wicked), etc.

How do we know the nonexistence of the God of the Bible is one of the
foundations of liberalism? Primarily in two ways: Liberalism (as
described below) assumes man is the Supreme Being, which would be
absurd according to the biblical worldview, and the intellectual
leaders of liberalism are all either outright atheists or at the very
least not biblical theists.

2. Therefore liberalism holds that man is the Supreme Being. This
supreme being could be either man the group (according to postmodern
liberalism), or man the individual (according to "classical"
liberalism). More specifically, man determines what is true and false,
what is (morally) right and wrong, and what is beautiful and ugly.
Therefore, truth, goodness and beauty are subjective, not objective,
and this naturally leads to relativism, the doctrine (or perhaps just
the attitude) that truth, morality and even existence itself vary from
person to person.

3. Liberalism must believe that man is naturally good, for otherwise,
without a God to set things right, we have no hope. And if man is
born good, it must be society that makes people bad, in which case we
must remake society. Liberalism thus holds that all human societies
up to those that currently exist have been deeply flawed, at the level
of their basic premises, and accordingly liberalism pushes for a
fundamental rethinking of every aspect of society and its ordering:
laws, rules, customs, traditions, schools of thought, etc. All must
be changed in order to remove from society every trace of the false
ways of thought that have allegedly produced so much misery.

4. Liberalism also leads to nominalism: Since there is no transcendent
realm (at least no transcendent realm about which we can know
anything), things mean whatever we say they do, and so there are no
objective limits, standards, rules, categories, etc. Therefore,
according to liberalism, we have permission to make the changes
discussed in point 3 above. Thus, for example, we have the "living
Constitution," which means only what today's Supreme Court says it
does, and which accordingly embodies the latest leftist fads.

5. This imperative to change society also leads to totalitarianism.
Since the imperative to promote equality all across the board is non-
negotiable, liberal authorities will not tolerate any significant
expression of anti-liberalism, even if it originates from a legitimate
part of the process of government. If an executive order, or a bill
passed by the legislature or the voters, violates liberalism, it must
be nullified by the courts or the bureaucracies, which would be the
two branches of government that are almost entirely controlled by
liberalism. This nullification of the normal process of democracy is
not seen as undemocratic (and therefore invalid) by liberals, because
it is carried out on behalf of liberalism's most sacred duty.

IV. Liberalism is a religion

Since liberalism is a comprehensive system of thought that describes
the nature of reality, answers the big questions of life, and provides
a code of conduct for both individuals and societies, it qualifies as
a religion. Calling liberalism a religion sounds a little less odd
now that Ann Coulter has published Godless: the Church of Liberalism,
and this way of thinking emphasizes the comprehensive and fundamental
nature of liberalism: It isn't just a collection of ideas, it's a way
of life.

An example showing the religious nature of liberalism is a [1] blog
post by the Norwegian blogger Bjorn Staerk (who is known as a
conservative) that includes the following:

Brave is sitting down calmly on a plane behind a row of suspicious-
looking Arabs, ignoring your own fears, because you know those fears
are irrational, and because even if there's a chance that they are
terrorists, it is more important to you to preserve an open and
tolerant society than to survive this trip. Brave is insisting that
Arabs not be searched more carefully in airport security than anyone
else, because you believe that it is more important not to
discriminate against people based on their race than to keep the
occasional terrorist from getting on a plane. [Emphasis added.]

Staerk later [2] defended these sentiments against criticism, thus
showing his words to be more than a passing fancy.

Although Staerk is known as a conservative, these comments clearly
mark him as a liberal: Only a liberal would regard the ideals of
tolerance and non-discrimination as more important than his own life.
More specifically, only a liberal would say that taking prudent action
to defend his life and the lives of others from the credible
possibility of a terrorist attack, by asking the authorities to
investigate suspicious behavior, is so immoral that it would be better
to die in a terrorist attack than to take the chance of humiliating
and inconveniencing an innocent Arab.

So here we have a liberal saying he'd literally rather die than
transgress the liberal imperative of non-discrimination by taking what
would have been regarded in the not-so-distant past as simply
commonsense precautions. What could possibly explain his position?
We observe that an individual's religion contains those principles (if
any) for which he would be willing to die, so there is only one
possible conclusion: liberalism is a religion, and is accordingly
regarded by serious liberals as something they would be willing to die
for.

V. Liberalism is the unofficial state religion of America

There is nothing improper in making this claim. Every society must
have some sort of (at least unofficial) state religion because a
religion is primarily a system of thought that describes reality, and
leaders must always have a philosophical system to guide their
decisions. Furthermore, the majority of the population needs to
approve of the reasons the leaders give for their decisions, or at
least to find those reasons tolerable. Therefore it is no insult to
liberalism to call it a religion. On the contrary, to do so is to
take it seriously as a system of thought and governance. It is not
its status as a religion that makes liberalism illegitimate; it is the
specific doctrines of liberalism that make it a menace.

What is the evidence that liberalism is our state religion? Just ask
yourself, "What philosophical system do most teachers and professors
(and even, God help us, many clergy) teach? What way of thinking is
taught as (or assumed to be) true by most journalists? What ideas are
portrayed as true, good and beautiful by most artists?" If you
answered anything other than "liberalism," you have not been paying
attention.

And what system of thought do most of our leaders use to make their
important decisions? When the Supreme Court says that anti-sodomy
laws are unconstitutional even thought the Constitution says nothing
about homosexuality, when the President signs legislation outlawing
incandescent light bulbs, and when a state governor signs legislation
legalizing same-sex marriage, they are following the dictates of
liberalism. And in a sense they have no choice in the matter, at least
most of the time: If America's intellectual leaders mostly say that
liberalism is true, and if America's populace mostly agrees (or at
least doesn't openly disagree), then America's political leaders must
generally go along with liberalism, or risk the wrath of the people.

One big question, though: If liberalism is as false as I have said it
is, and as dominant, how is it that America continues to function as
well as it does? After all, if a largely false way of thinking is the
basis for most of our important decisions, we ought to have committed
the collective equivalent of suicide long ago. Yet America is still
relatively healthy, albeit headed in a bad direction

The answer is provided by what blogger Lawrence Auster has dubbed the
"[3] unprincipled exception." When faced with the necessity of making
important decisions, Americans frequently violate liberalism, whether
by supporting the death penalty for a particularly heinous crime,
taking steps to make life harder for illegal aliens, or withholding
approval of homosexuality. Conservatism may be in trouble, but at
least in America, it still has the ability to win some fights.

But exceptions to liberalism are generally unprincipled. That is,
they are not accompanied by any understanding, let alone repudiation,
of the fundamentals of the liberal creed. In order for our life to be
tolerable, common sense and common decency demand that we make plenty
of these exceptions to liberalism. But in many cases, probably most,
this opposition to liberalism is purely ad hoc, and does not proceed
from a comprehensive rejection of our religion of liberalism. A
particular application of liberalism just feels like it's too much,
but the feeling is all there is; it does not lead to a fundamental
reappraisal of one's system of thought.

And this leads to an even more alarming point, to which I alluded
above: Many conservatives are basically liberals who just happen to
oppose a few of the important specific initiatives of liberalism. They
have the courage and the understanding to oppose, for example, mass
immigration, socialism, or the legitimization of homosexuality, but
they do not oppose liberalism in toto, or per se.

This is, unfortunately, only to be expected. Thinking about one's
fundamental beliefs is difficult and frightening, even for those
(i.e., conservatives) with enough wisdom and courage to doubt the
state religion that we have all been indoctrinated in for our whole
lives. As David Horowitz describes so vividly in his autobiography
Radical Son, rethinking one's attachment to the Left involves a
reorientation of one's whole being, and therefore it triggers a dark
night of the soul. Those not so attached to the Left may not find the
path to enlightenment quite so earth-shaking, but one can never change
one's fundamental way of thinking, and go against most of the powers
that be, without considerable fear and trembling.

But conservatives should take heart. If you have the insight and
wisdom to doubt at least some of the liberalism that people all around
you believe, and the courage to maintain your beliefs in the face of
the unremitting scorn and ridicule that the Left directs against even
the most mild apostasy, then you certainly have what it takes to go
all the way, and uncover liberalism in its essence. If you are a
conservative, I encourage you to carefully examine the liberalism you
oppose. If you oppose the effect (mass immigration, same-sex marriage,
socialism, etc), you should oppose even more the fundamental cause
that makes the effect what it is.

Since liberalism is all-pervasive, you must study it carefully so as
to be able to distinguish it from the correct thought that should be
your goal. Being a conservative is a full-time business, and the
effort to think more clearly and accurately is a lifelong process. We
American conservatives are all, in a manner of speaking, recovering
liberals, and we must constantly fight the temptation to relapse.