I agree only partially.
One of my favorite conservative thinkers described Liberalism in terms that made perfect sense. I cannot exactly duplicate those beliefs, but he sure seems to have been correct.
I followed his line of thinking that Liberalism, while extolled by the Marxist Left, is promulgated, many people nonetheless WILLINGLY adopt it. They adopt it because, for a time, it FEELS GOOD. I know this feeling personally, because I went through it when younger. Being shed of all the “old fashioned” morals that holds civilization in check feels like freedom. Only when something happens that jars people out of this false siren song can one see through the lies.
He warned that the West has two choices. Either a total rejection of the tenants of Liberalism, or people go on and on until civilization and freedom are destroyed, and we return to a new dark age of poverty and slavery.
I believe that Liberalism has advanced to that point. What scares me is that people sure seem to be making the wrong choice...
“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh.”“But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”
— Hilaire Belloc
You could be right.
Who was the thinker; Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn?