In these challenging economic and political times, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the volume of new proposals and the accompanying focus group tested disinformation campaigns. People often get so caught up in arguing the details of a program or slew of new entitlements that they can no longer see the big picture. The result of arguing policy instead of principle in this manner is that too many of us simply cannot see the forest because of all the trees. This level of granularity in the policy arguments is exactly what the statists in government want. In fact, they love to keep the proles busy arguing over false choices. It keeps them in power. While we stay busy arguing the details we do not notice that we are becoming serfs.
The title of this post makes the provocative statement that liberalism is not simply wrong, it is inherently immoral. To examine this argument we must first define some terms.
Though they are often lumped in with each other as the same thing, the fact is that liberals and democrats are not necessarily the same thing. Liberalism is a freedom-loathing philosophy, whereas the Democrat party is simply the vehicle that statists use in an attempt to force their flawed anti-freedom agenda on the rest of America. It is very important to note that liberalism is not different in kind from the other slave-to-the-state “isms”. It is simply different in degree. Liberalism shares an anti-individual agenda with its cousins of socialism, collectivism, Marxism, Maoism, etc. It is simply a watered down version of statism that the left feels is palatable enough to ease otherwise freedom-loving Americans into living under a soft tyranny. All of these anti-freedom ideologies, including rank and file liberalism, involve a reverence for centralized control that is anathema to historical American freedoms.
As many have noted, and Mark Levin so eloquently pointed out in his fantastic book, the best umbrella term to use when describing all of these immoral leftist “isms” is statism. Statists (when I use that term I absolutely include people like the President and every single member of his party in Congress) believe that you are not a free individual but are instead owned by the State. Virtually all of their harmful entitlement programs and wealth redistribution schemes are premised on an un-American and unconstitutional view of the appropriate relationship between the government and the individual. One simply cannot believe that the government has the power to take over your health care choices, even forcing you to purchase health insurance under penalty of law, without accepting the implicit premise that we are all just livestock living on the government collective. In the eyes of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, you are just another cow living on the government farm and you will be milked according to the whims of nameless, faceless statist bureaucrats who genuinely believe that they know better than you. Even worse, they do not give a rodent’s posterior about the people they claim to represent. They simply seek the power that flows from increased government dependency. Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama cares about the quality of any American’s health care? If you do, you are simply a naïve, Kool Aid drinking myrmidon… or a loser who just wants someone else to subsidize your lifestyle. In either case, this quote from Sam Adams is for you:
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! – Samuel Adams
In a rather long post that I wrote last fall titled On Taxes and Socialism, I put it this way:
I mentioned earlier that I believe collectivism to be inherently immoral regardless of the results of an implementation of that system. Churchill once said that “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” In practice these results have proven to be true time and time again. To Churchill’s first point, we will always have an unequal sharing of “blessings” when those blessings are based upon a free market meritocratic system, but we also always have incredible opportunity to better ourselves. But Churchill’s second point properly points out that the results of socialism are better for a few people at the expense of everyone else. In this sense collectivism is immoral because it turns the entire system upside down, structuring things to be best for and most conducive to the needs of the least productive, least successful, and all too often least ambitious among us. Often lost in the debate is the sad fact that often the mere reality of government involvement results in a worse situation for all involved, including the unavoidable creation of less ambitious people with no incentive to work harder.
Socialism is immoral because at its core, once you strip away the camouflage of false compassion, it requires an acceptance that the government owns you, that when the rubber hits the road you are simply a number, and that if you are more productive than most other people you will be regarded as a cash cow to be milked for what some group of statists considers The Common Good. You can dress that up in the “party dress” of alleged compassion but it remains un-American and immoral.
Statism (i.e. liberalism) is immoral. Independent of debates on spending or the size of government or even Constitutionality, statism is inherently anti-freedom and anti-American. I know not what course others may take; but as for me I choose to fight these statist elitists, their myrmidons, and their immoral slavery to the state until the end. To do anything less would be cowardly, un-American, and a slap in the face to the people throughout our history who laid down their lives for the idea that is America.
This peice is so perfectly written. While my opinion may be biast because I share the same opinions at Rob, I just feel there is no arguing this article without sounding like the immoral unproductive person he describes.
“….statism that the left feels is palatable enough to ease otherwise freedom-loving Americans into living under a soft tyranny.”
That is a perfect description. Soft tyranny is truly what this administration is after. They may not be looking to recreate the catastrophe of a Hitler nation, but they are certainly looking to seek control over our freedoms by making us dependent on them. Just as a child is dependent on their parent to provide a roof over their head as well as food, in exchange for being obedient to the parents.
I fear liberals truly are blind to the lack of compassion in Obama’s plan. I find the immorality plaguing our nation to be a serious show of the 1960′s hippie generation not only coming into power, but raising their own children to follow such immoral ideas, who then raised THEIR children the same way, none of them having a fighting chance to know better, because after all, we only know what we are taught to believe.
“there is no arguing this article without sounding like the immoral unproductive person”? So you have both painted any differing opinion as not just different or even wrong, but immoral and unproductive. How telling. This is EXACTLY the type of hypocritical judgment that makes most of the world laugh at you pseudo-intellectual conspiracy theorists. And the rest of us are simply appalled at having to share what’s left of this country with you.
I suppose you consider laws “FORCING” education upon your children or “FORCING” you to obtain auto insurance to be foreshadowing of the evil socialists plan…it is. The plan is to educate your children until they can actually think for themselves, beyond your brainwashing rhetoric…while avoiding excessive costs from uninsured accidents. Yes, evil, isn’t it. Education. Health care reform. And now he’s trying to regulate the horrid financial practices that lead to this recession? (and your puppet master’s bonuses?) What’s next, controls on unfair foreign trade? ending useless killing in the middle east?
You can sit and smugly debate any number of twisted theories you feel supports your inane point of view, but let me shine a little light on your elite chatter: the rest of the country, indeed, THE WORLD, thinks your INSANE. Because here’s what THEY SEE, WITH THEIR OWN EYES:
1. Your party & it’s leader relaxes banking and finance regulations, directly contributing to the worst recession in 3 generations, solely to benefit themselves and their richest contributors. YOU (the supporters and defenders of that party, current anti-obamists and tea party fanatics) all cheered and clapped.
When our party does what HAS to be done to fix your DISASTER, you scream and point fingers, blaming us for YOUR mess.
2. Your team starts endless pointless wars based on lies and greed for private contracts for your subsidiaries. YOU wave flags.
When this president tries to end these wars, and change your policies that CREATE TENFOLD the terrorists it ever stopped, you call him Muslim and SATAN and depict him as weak or evil.
Where was your outrage at Bush’s trouncing of our freedoms in the name of patriotism? His torture policies and wire taps and corruption were FAR more damaging and controlling than a health insurance mandate or banking regulations. The free-thinking world sees the most CENTRIST president in 50 years bending over backwards to try and gather bipartisan support and ideas. Meanwhile, YOUR side has never shown more SPITE, LIES, HATE, HYPOCRISY, PROPAGANDA, and LACK OF HINDSIGHT.
Clinton, Carter, LBJ, and Kennedy were all MUCH more liberal leaning than Obama. And less likely to seek republican support or ideas. They were not commonly labeled Marxist, Communist, or Socialist. They certainly weren’t depicted as Hitler or the Joker. Even your criminal Nixon, your feeble racist Reagan, and your father-son tag team oil tycoons turned war profiteers weren’t as publicly demonized as this president has been.
THAT is why your cause is labeled racist. Because there is NO OTHER EXPLANATION for your hypocritical behavior. You can’t STAND being beaten by a man of color, ESPECIALLY when it seems he’s intelligent and likely to enact important improvements that might just show the American people how change can work when it’s not written by the rich and corrupt and enforced by the ignorant and hateful.
Or maybe you’re truly colorblind, but just so spiteful over losing that you’ll just say and believe ANYTHING to be back in the driver’s seat again.
Either way, we’ve had enough. We won’t tolerate your hate of all which differs from you, your fear of real progress, or your mess that you constantly spew forth from your mechanisms of greed and corruption. And if your politicians don’t wise up and start focusing on real issues and stop braying NO at everything like spoiled, little, obese children, they might just find that future ballots have two parties…and republican WON’T be one of them.
(And since you’re clearly incapable of sensible debate, I won’t bother reading your replies…I’m sure they’re “immoral and unproductive….” )
Jeff,
Clearly you have not been paying attention to this debate because all of your shallow talking points have been blown out of the water countless times.
Accusations of racism are the most popular ad hominem attack from the Left – it shows that you are both out of ideas and losing the argument.
Your historical revision is breathtaking. Did you notice that Mr. Obama reauthorized the PATRIOT Act? How does that fit into your narrative, comrade?
I am guessing that you are a “911 truther” as well.