Origin Of Liberalism

What we call today "liberalism" was born in New England. In 1864, Orestes Brownson, a New Englander himself, wrote an essay contrasting Southern and Northern societies. His description of the New Englander describes exactly the modern liberal.

"The New Englander," Brownson wrote, "has excellent points, but is restless in body and mind, always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has, and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as himself."

This desire to make everyone like himself is a major characteristic of the modern liberal. This is what paradoxically leads him to be anti-democratic, for the desire to make others conform to his opinion causes him to cast dissidents into the outer darkness. He is so self-righteous that he honestly believes that anyone with a different set of opinions must be either stupid or evil.

Brownson continues his description of the New Englander: "He is smart, seldom great; educated, but seldom learned; active in mind, but rarely a profound thinker; religious, but thoroughly materialistic: His worship is rendered in a temple founded on Mammon ... he is philanthropic but makes his philanthropy his excuse for meddling with everybody's business as if it were his own, and under pretense of promoting religion and morality, he wars against every generous and natural instinct and aggravates the very evils he seeks to cure."

We can certainly agree with that. Five trillion dollars spent to eliminate poverty has, of course, not eliminated it, and if you look at the great liberal cities of the North, where every conceivable liberal social scheme has been enacted and funded, what do you find? Slums, crime, high taxes, less freedom. Alas, the liberal nirvana continues to elude its busybody seekers.

Some old-time Southern preachers say the New Englander became a busybody meddler after he lost his faith in God. No longer believing in a heaven after death, he was compelled to create a heaven on earth. As Brother Dave Gardner used to put it, a Northern Baptist says there ain't no hell, and a Southern Baptist says, "The hell there ain't!" I have read learned papers from high-toned academics making this same point, so if you want to investigate the proposition, the information is out there.

Liberalism, new or old, fails for the same reason that its logical conclusion, socialism, fails. It flies in the face of human nature, and human nature can't be changed. Some years ago, on a visit to a kibbutz in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin's sister told me that the kibbutz — theoretically a perfect communist society — hadn't changed anything. There were natural leaders and natural followers and a certain percentage of folks who were just parasites. A few people did most of the work. They were equal according to the rules, but in little else. And so it is in every society and country. Even socialist countries develop a rich elite.

Coming from a conservative Southern family, there were three phrases I heard extremely often — phrases one almost never hears today in our liberal society. They were: "Mind your own business"; "It's none of your business"; and "Don't stick your nose in other people's business." The chief characteristic of the true conservative is a willingness to let other people be what they are, for good or ill, just as the chief characteristic of the modern liberal is the compulsion to make others conform to his ideas of what's good for them.

It should be obvious which of the two is the friend of liberty. We are enormously less free today than when I was a boy, and in every instance, the loss of freedom has been justified as "good for us." It's too bad more people aren't concerned about that loss of freedom. They will find that security will prove to be illusory, but the loss of freedom will be quite real.

always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has, and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as himself."

There are a great deal of similarities between the do-good abolitionist, and the modern day liberal.

Many slaves to sobbed at their masters graves, and blacks are quite happy self-segregating into their own neighborhoods. These are dirty little politically incorrect secrets.

To the smug-a$$ed liberal, this laissez-faire attitude toward the pursuit of individual happiness just can't be tolerated. Same with Yankees who were bent on reconstructing the South. Their ant colony culture was the way everyone should behave.

Irrespective of the etymological origins of the word, the favorite sport around here seems to be categorizing those derisively called "liberal" as dictatorial, authoritarian and worse.

Yet, there seems to be a certain irony to those portraits when the category of those fervently opposed are the same folks who want to censor books that libraries put on their shelves, movies that anyone can choose to see or avoid, television programs that are subject to the remote channel changer or the on-off switch, and generally tell others what is "good" for them and enforce that advice by force of law.

Five trillion dollars spent to eliminate poverty has, of course, not eliminated it, and if you look at the great liberal cities of the North, where every conceivable liberal social scheme has been enacted and funded, what do you find? Slums, crime, high taxes, less freedom.

Durn Federalists/Whigs.

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