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To: Destructor
My response to this piece of stupidity was as follows:

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:

My family and I choose freedom. We choose life.

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  

 

61 posted on 03/21/2002 1:30:00 PM PST by Noumenon
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To: Noumenon
My sentiments exactly! Thanks for elaborating on those points so eloquently!!
75 posted on 03/22/2002 4:23:20 AM PST by Destructor
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