[nothingnew]

Liberalism is not a personal disease. A man confined to solitary confinement can still get sick and die from the plague, exhibiting the same essential symptoms and disease progression as a man in the public light. But the essential qualities of the Liberal disease that afflicts our cultures are not manifestly present in that solitary confinement cell, even if it be Hitler, Mao, Stalin, or Hillary Clinton wishful thinking ;) who resides there."

You state that liberalism is not a personal disease. I say liberalism is a personal disease. The disease they have is actually hypocrisy. The only way liberals could say one thing but do the opposite is because they are hypocrites. They have one standard for themselves and another standard for others ie a "double standard".

To say that it is not a personal disease is to confuse cause and effect. The person in the solitary confinement cell still has the disease (hypocrisy the cause), he just doesn't have a group to operate with (liberalism the effect).

By the way thank you for posting this wonderful and insightful article ThePythonicCow. And thank you johnjayray for the tremendous amount of research and thought it took to produce what I consider a masterpiece.

[ThePythonicCow]

I did not make myself clear. I am not trying to excuse liberals by finding social causes to excuse their destruction.

Nothingnew would blame liberalism on the hypocrisy of liberals. Despite his emboldened assertion that liberalism is a personal disease, he then goes onto argue not that liberalism is a personal disease, but that it is caused by a personal disease, that of hypocrisy.

John J Ray would blame liberalism on the needs of liberals for power, attention, praise and fame, which I will term powerlust here, for convenience. I hope John will not mind the abbreviation for a moment.

And I would blame liberalism on the weakness of liberals, as I say on my Freeper home page:

Liberals en masse are not Darth Vader. They are rat poop. They spread disease and stink in my pantry not because they have deliberately joined the forces of evil, but because they haven't risen to a sufficient level of personal integrity, social responsibility, intellectual competence or spiritual awareness to resist being carriers for disease and pestilance (of our culture, our communities, our families, our schools and the body politic, in this case).

We agree that liberalism is caused by the malfeasance of liberals, and while we might seem to disagree as to whether it is due to the hypocrisy, powerlust or weakness of liberals, we are not likely to debate that issue much, because I suspect that we would agree that there is truth in all three variations.

I am not denying the essential blame that each liberal must personally shoulder for the enormous destruction that liberalism has caused, perhaps the greatest plague ever wrought on humanity, as John so clearly chronicles.

What I am suggesting here is something quite different. It is to identify the common structure and patterns of change and interaction, seen in the body politic, schools, churches, media, workforce, bankers and other groups. While each liberal will personally be held to account for his contribution to the destruction in the final reckoning, still liberalism per se is not that individual hypocrisy, powerlust or weakness, but a consequence thereof, writ large on the public stage.

Since my initial terse note failed to communicate, I ask your patience for a more verbose presentation.

Underlying my thrust is a mental framework that I have found to be valuable, time and time again, which I first took from Susanne Langer's work Mind:An Essay on Human Feeling. This framework is essentially layers, each layer built on the one below. For example, cells are built on molecules, which are built on atoms, which are built on subatomic particles. The study of each layer often seems to be a world unto itself, quite different in flavor from the study of the layer above or below. In the above example, cellular biology is quite distinct from organic chemistry, which in turn differs from classic atomic physics, which in turn differs from quantum mechanics and the Standard Model. I see this layering in many places. Musical instruments and much training of the human facilities produce notes, which are composed into symphonies. And in my current area of expertise, computers, there are many layers, such as semiconductor physics, various mathematical studies (Boolean logic and more), operating system kernel design, system services and libraries, GUI applications and web services, languages (C++, Python, ...) and so forth.

In the present case, of liberalism, I consider the events and institutions of society as the layer which manifests the essential elements of liberalism. That layer is built on the actions of individuals. The failings and diseases of the individual, whether hypocrisy, powerlust or weakness, can lead to their aiding and abetting, creating and leading, following and condoning, failed and destructive liberal causes.

The examples of liberalism that John examines are writ large across the history of human kind this last millenia or two. While they have, as we agree vigorously, an essential basis or precursor in individual weakness or sickness, they aren't simply a disease of the individual, rather caused by such disease.

My essential criticism of John is that having so delightfully, succintly, compellingly surveyed the grandest examples of this liberal pox on humanity, he does not then seek to discern the common structure of groups, and flow of events, shared by these liberal tragedies. Rather he just asserts that these liberal plagues are caused by personal failings of powerlust or such, as if that were sufficient to our understanding. While personal failings may be an essential cause of liberalism, they are not sufficient to our understanding. Carbon is essential to organic molecules, but understanding carbon is not sufficient to understanding organic chemistry. Ones and zeros are essential to present day digital computers, but an understanding of Boolean algebra will not gain you a job as a system programmer.

Perhaps a more compelling example is AIDS. While the spread of AIDS is mostly caused by individuals having sex with strangers and sharing heroin needles, still the epidemiology of AIDS is one of the valuable ways in which we can understand this pox on humanity and find better ways to combat it.

If we study liberalism in the large, how it waxes and wanes across the human landscape, I think we will find a compelling and productive theory in its own right. We will find that there are several different roles such as the early theorizer (Marx, e.g.), the tyrannical leader (Hitler, Mao, et. al.), the rabid follower, the sheeple, the clueless. We will discern the dynamics of interaction between the social, political, economic, academic, media, labour, and other elements of this plague that are seen time and time again, in various disguises. We find patterns in the evolution of liberal institutions over time.

Having done this, I predict we will find far more compelling roles available to each of the hypocrite, power thirsty and weak, in these recurring tragedies.

And having done this, the link that John repeatedly asserts between liberalism in the large and lust for power in the individual will become far more compelling, for it will tie in directly with one of the common roles available each time liberalism is enacted in the theatre in the large.