Posted on 03/21/2002 8:05:45 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
The author of this piece conflates classical liberalism (which he defines correctly) with modern American liberalism (where his definitions become evasive and disingenuous). The classical liberal contemporary of our Founding Fathers believed in individualism, in a society of free individuals organized as far as possible through mutual consent. The individualism that informed the Founder’s ideas regards every man as an independent, spiritually sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life. This right to live is derived from Man’s nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a rational society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights–and that a group as such, has no rights other than the individual right of its members.
It’s a simple question, really - to whom does your life belong? Upon the founding of the American Republic and for the first time in human history, it was possible to state that your life belonged to you; that it was yours to make of it what you will, for better or worse. Considered against the entire sweep of human history, this idea of universal self-ownership was unprecedented. The concept of an entire nation based upon that principle - and everything else that proceeds from it: the rights, the duties and the responsibilities - could scarcely have been imagined until then. Yet, that is what America’s founders – those dead white males – were willing to put literally everything they had on the line to achieve. And this is what in fact what we did achieve for a short time.
Now, modern American liberals believe in precisely the opposite; they are advocates of an authoritarian paternalism; they seek to create a society organized primarily through the use of coercion and the suppression of dissent. In the modern American liberal’s ideal, the individual is looked after by the state, and ‘rights’ as such are no more than government-granted privileges.
There are modern American liberals who mean well, but who are too mentally or spiritually lazy to consider the consequences of their misplaced 'compassion' and wrong-headed egalitarianism.
There are modern American liberals whose irrationality and self-hatred is projected outwards onto the rest of us - they seek destruction for destructions' sake. It's the all-consuming irrational hatred held by those who are driven to destroy what they cannot understand. It's the manifestation of unbridled envy. It’s the hatred of the good for being good.
Then there are those who cynically employ the others I've described here in the service of tyranny - for power at any price. These are the truly evil ones, for there is no limit to their lust for dominion over every sphere of human existence and endeavor. For these modern American liberals, any means can be justified to realize their utopian dreams. Their various and sundry utopias all require a mental and spiritual uniformity, a quelling of dissent, that can only be achieved by the most brutal and atrocious means.
Most of all, men of reason and good will despise modern American liberals because they are not content with the 'management' of our economic lives - they demand the submission of our conscience, our innermost selves. Worst of all, they demand that we applaud them for it. Historian and philosopher Robert Conquest, in his Reflections on a Ravaged Century referred to it as mindslaughter. That last is why people like myself hate them, for they represent the darkest aspect of the human condition - they are murderers of the best that lies within us. That last is why we’re willing to fight and win the next American Civil War.
As Solzhenitsyn has said, we can tolerate a physical tyranny and still retain some sense of our inner, or spiritual sovereignty. But when we surrender our inmost selves to the lies these monsters preach, we can no longer call ourselves human. Economist G. Warren Nutter pointed out that the greatness of a society does not come from its monuments but from the kind of people it produces. Justice, responsibility, and humanity - these are the qualities of greatness in a people. Only the humane can remain free, and only the free can remain humane.
My family and I choose freedom. We choose life.
We despise liberals because we believe that we are fit to govern ourselves.
Modern American liberals don’t.
We despise liberals because we believe that the disposition of the fruits of our labors are and should always be a matter of personal conscience.
Modern American liberals don’t.
We despise liberals because we believe that we have the fundamental right to live according to the dictates of our most deeply held values.
Modern American liberals don’t.
These are conditions and prerequisites of human dignity and freedom that the religious believer and non-believer alike can recognize. The corollary is that the individual or institutional use of force to deprive any of us of these rights and conditions is a crime against Man, nature, justice and reason and must always be resisted lest we give those who commit those crimes our sanction.
Modern American liberals of all political parties and persuasions stand ready to 'improve' the judgment of others they deem less enlightened than themselves with the barrel of a gun. If you believe that Democrats and socialists are humanity's saviors, then you are nothing more than an idolater in the same church as Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and every other totalitarian monster who left slaughter, misery and mass murder strewn in the wake of their trajectory through the history of the last century. Each and every one of these killers without conscience had their applauders, their sycophants, and their appeasers. Most of them were voted and openly cheered into positions of power. History's very clear on this point, as it is on the consequences.
Think carefully, therefore, about the nature of those whom you applaud, aid and abet. I believe that we have arrived at one of those great watersheds of history where the course of human destiny will descend into a nightmare of slaughter, slavery and misery from which it may well never recover, or it may veer towards a great philosophical and moral renaissance - a rebirth of our respect for life, liberty and individual rights.
In closing, I offer you the following thoughts:
We’re willing to fight for it.
What do you choose?
Ward Dorrity
Product Development Manager - Software
F5 Networks, Liberty Lake, WA.
t 509.343.3527 | f 509.343.3501
c 208.755.8628 | e w.dorrity@f5.com
"The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages and mathematics.
Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn.
But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots."
Robert Heinlein
Perhaps more important, there is absolutely no movement among conservatives to lower federal spending by so much (more than 40%) that all taxes on personal income (including the capital gains tax) could be eliminated completely.
In fact, conservative G.W. Bush is actively involved in EXPANDING the federal government (proposed a 9% increase in federal spending in FY 2003).
The Founding Fathers (that is, the 55 men who wrote the Constitution) clearly weren't Libertarians, because Libertarians are 100% opposed to slavery...and the Founding Fathers allowed slavery to be written into the Constitution (requiring runaway slaves to be returned).
So clearly the Founding Fathers weren't Libertarians. But of course, NO modern party approves of slavery...or if they do, they sure won't admit it! So in that manner, the Founding Fathers weren't like ANY modern party.
If one talks about the founders (with a small "f") the number of people being talked about would expand...certainly to include Thomas Jefferson (primary author of the Declaration of Independence). Again, a slave owner. But it wrote a document that has been called (by a libertarian) the "greatest libertarian document in history."
And Thomas Paine, author of the Revolutionary manifesto, "Common Sense," would certainly qualify as a founder. He was an abolitionist.
And of course, there's Patrick Henry, who was invited to the Constitutional Convention, but declined because he "smelt a rat" (fearing that Madison would make the federal government much more powerful than Mr. Henry desired). Henry owned slaves...but clearly was SOOOO fond of Small Government that even the relatively small federal government allowed by the Constitution was too big.
Of course, Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, as you point out. Fervent abolitionist...but basically an American monarchist. Certainly no Libertarian (or libertarian).
For ALL these men--with the exception of Alexander Hamilton--the modern Party that comes CLOSEST to their philosophy is probably the Libertarian Party. A slight case could be made--not a winning case, I think--that some of them might be closer to the Constitution Party, especially on local issues. But for NONE of these men--with the exception of Alexander Hamilton--does the Republican Party come even CLOSE to their philosophy of government.
If you read their works and what they actually did while in office, you will see that they were NOT Libertarians.
You'd have to give specifics for me to comment on that. For example, Jefferson was involved in the Louisiana Purchase. Government buying land from another government doesn't really fit in with the Libertarian Party philosophy, but the cost was fairly small, and it ensured that the western borders of the original 13 states wouldn't have a potential hostile power (France) on the border...and made sure that the Mississippi River couldn't be taken during a war. So while not being a strictly Libertarian act, I don't think Libertarians would go ballistic about that action alone.
Let's put it this way: If those men were running the current federal government the way they ran it when they were alive, I'd be a very happy Libertarian. You probably would be, too.
The majority of Republicans and conservatives are socialists. The sooner everyone opens their eyes and realizes that, the better off our country will be. If you like Small Government the majority of Republicans and conservatives aren't your friends...they're your enemies.
You do not need to attack them at every single turn. Only when they start floating socialist ideals do they deserve a spanking :).
Pick up a copy of the (conservative and Republican) Weekly Standard. Socialism and imperialism on every page. Makes me want to vomit. (They tricked me into subscribing by pretending they'd publish a letter of mine wherein I noted that no one in the Bush Administration gives a @#$% about the Constitution. If I'd read their magazine before I sent the letter, I would have known they'd never publish it. They are every bit as Big Government as Democrats and liberals.)
Agreed, the LP or the Constitution party are a much, much better fit for the Founders than either of the two main parties today.
. . .clean water and air act Bush is now eroding by decree. . .
Now George W. is trying to deny it to the world's poorest women while his own upper class has easy access to whatever contraceptive they choose. Remember the campaign word "compassionate"?
So let me get this straight. The author is saying that liberals are being "libeled" by we on the Right, and that even the mainstream media is behind it. Yet, the author does not want us to see the hypocrisy of his lying and slanderous criticisms of W. in the exact same article? I have that right, don't I?
Sorry, Graham, I ain't buyin' your brand.
Yes, John Stuart Mill was definitely a libertarian. But he was a Brit. I'm talking about the guys who started the American revolution, and founded this country: Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and others. The closest modern Party to what those revolutionaries and founders were would be the Libertarian Party.
What they say, and what they do.
And they were pretty much to a man heavily influenced by the politcal theories of Locke, Mill, Rousseau, and some others.
In some ways that is true, but our Founding Fathers believed in a moral compass, something today's Libertarians lack.
This has been posted and commented on before, but this is too important to let go.
There is absolutely no commonality between out liberal forefathers and the liberals of today. If the author expect people to buy that, then the liberals of today have done their job in the education system. It all works togather.
And the liberals accuse us of a vast right wing conspiracy.
I think liberals are so hated for their hypocrisy, revisionism, preference for government control, racism (affirmative action), destruction of the nuclear family, annual election frauds, stone-walling for the scandals of Democrat office-holders (Teddy is STILL a murderer in need of a trial), preference for the rights of animals over those of humans, reversing of basic Constitutional principles, subversion of "the will of the people" by using/abusing the courts to further their agenda, unconscionable silence on any black-on-white crime, preference for abortion over other means (birth control/adoption), preference for unnecessary and unConstitutional government interventions, hatred of our brave military personnel, and for their preference for a free-ride over Freedom....
just for a start...
then they get really annoying when they start whining and posting factually-challenged opinions as if they are meaningful pronouncements.
That's BS. The Libertarian Party is THE party of personal responsibility and PERSONAL morality.
Which is more immoral: 1) to support everyone's freedom to put into their own bodies whatever drugs they want--or need, as in the case of medical marijuana--while absolutely opposing government support of any kind for addicts, or 2) supporting the federal government's completely unconstitutional laws against drugs, including trampling both States' rights and human decency to prohibit using marijuana for medical purposes?
Libertarians argue (correctly!) that #2 is far MORE immoral. Many, if not most, conservatives support the federal government breaking The Law (the Constitution) by continuing the War on Some Drugs...even to the point of hurting or killing sick people (people who need medical marijuana).
It's Republicans and conservatives that lack the moral compass: the moral compass that our founders had in abundance, and that Libertarians have today.
1940
Graham R. Hodges and his wife, Elsie Russell Hodges (Nursing, ’41) were recently honored for their service to the Democratic Committees of Onondaga County, New York, and of the Town of Clay. Both have been active in the committees since Graham’s retirement in 1979 as pastor of Emmanuel Congregational Church, Watertown, New York.
Also has written some books for children:
Did Jesus Go To Church? And 51 Other Children's Sermons - Graham R. Hodges
He also appears to be active in the White Guilt Industry
That's all I could find on short notice and I do believe I've got the right guy.
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