[Zyke]

Interesting read.

[RockinRight]

I saw this. Very interesting, indeed.

[Fintan]

Wow, that's a lot of big words.

 

[HardStarboard]

>>>Since people are unequal in their ability to accumulate property, as Hayek argued in the Mirage of Social Justice, equality of results can only be pursued by treating people unequally. This is the origin of the double standard.

Brilliant. I have never read Hayek. I'm going to now.

[Yaelle]

Bump. Excellent.

But equality between unequals cannot be just (because it involves the expropriation of the justly earned fruits of more talented labor) and is incompatible with liberty (because it requires force to achieve).

Just one of the golden nuggets within.

[DrDavid]

ping for later reading....

Reminds me of Allen Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind"...

[gakrak]

BUMP. "a bigot or a cynical political manipulator" that would be me. We must fight against the left and there desire to destroy our country with all of our might.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

The article doesn't answer the question though, although I think it's over the target. It gave examples of just the sort of answers I hear conservatives give that don't work. What does work?

[Dumb_Ox]

The basic reason for the "liberal" double standard has already been alluded to. It is that today's "liberals" are really leftists who have rejected the older liberal belief in a shared equality of citizens before the law and have embraced the socialist vision of "equality as a fact and equality as a result," as Lyndon Johnson famously put it. Since people are unequal in their ability to accumulate property, as Hayek argued in the Mirage of Social Justice, equality of results can only be pursued by treating people unequally. This is the origin of the double standard.

Bingo. Wish I had seen this first. The blogger Lawrence Auster has talked about the "unprincipled exception" of liberalism. It seems that perhaps that exception is not so unprincipled after all.

[Jaysun]

This is a great evaluation of the left. However, I have a question about one part:

"Modern liberalism is a leftist and nihilistic rebellion against the inherently unequal nature of the human condition. If we conservatives named this ideology for what it is, we would have a fair chance to defeat it or at least stem its advance."

The writer obviously acknowledges that the term "liberal" has been twisted from it's original meaning, but is he suggesting that a winning strategy includes redefining "liberal" into it's original meaning? If so, I think it's the wrong approach. The term "liberal" changed during the Vietnam era, and the negative connotations now associated with the word are thanks to the radical nuts of the day.

Wouldn't it be easier, and wouldn't we increase our chances of success, if we simply left that alone for now? It seems to me that it would be difficult and time consuming to shift the meaning of "liberal" back into it's original form. Why not come up with a new term to describe people that would fit into the traditional meaning of liberalism and continue ostracizing the modern day nuts as "liberals"?

[headsonpikes]

Nutshell version: Liberals are self-hating pussies without any apparent link to the real world.

[jonno]

bump