nourishing obscurity

Steve Hayes has written a post about C.S. Lewis and makes a good point that some try to press gang his name to their ideology.  Steve then falls into the same error as many, IMHO, when he attempts to define political terms, particularly that of “the liberal”.

However one likes to define that mass of people in The States who broadly support peace marches, the Democrats, [formerly] Obama, green politics, do-gooderness, sandals, tree hugging, political correctness, state solutions to problems in the name of “fairness” [always as defined by them], emotion rather than reason, “positive” discrimination towards minorities and women, feminist misandry, suppression of the white male and so on, they call themselves “liberals”, a hijacked term meaning “people dedicated to freedom”.

In fact, they are supporting the realpolitik of anything but freedom.

They are often, unknowingly through undeveloped awareness of realpolitik, actually supporting the expansion of the state – the moment they use the term “they”, as in “they should ban this or make a law about that”, it’s tacit support of the state and the policy of statism, i.e. the expansion of the state, its ultimate default position being the control and direction of all aspects of our private lives, in the interests of the highsounding health, safety and the wellbeing of society, just as the Soviet rhetoric stated.

The fact that a person professes not to support this at all, that the above is a misrepresentation – this is what characterizes the naive “liberal”. Everyone would like to think that he/she is on the side of good and that his her political theories or assumptions will lead to the greatest good of the greatest number – even the Soviets believed that.

The “liberal” holds a banner for freedom and indirectly accepts that the best way to get this for the homosexual, black, disabled woman is to oppress the majority group in its own nation.  He protests against Iranian totalitarians [rightly so] and against all manner of overseas oppression [rightly so] but has a blockage when it comes to EU totalitarian oppression, via overregulation, surveillance and the nanny state.

On that, he is strangely silent.  The female of the species is silent on oppression of Muslim women, whilst demanding her own over-equality.

The other side of politics is seen, by him/her, as uncaring and unfeeling and yes, those people are there in numbers but that is not the defining characteristic of that side of politics.  What is central in non-statist politics is that if you work hard, then what you make is yours; if you pay off a mortgage over a long time, your place is yours; if you wish to do something, providing it does not directly hurt someone else, then in realistic terms, the state should keep TF out of it and let people find their own level.

No good ever came out of monopolies and oligarchies but by the same token, no good ever came out of big spending government, huge debt, both public and personal, an out-of-control, artificial public sector which administers administrators, thought and speech control, rampant corruption and the sluggishness and lack of incentive induced in employees by public monoliths, to say nothing of the welfare underclass.

The “liberal” quietly ignores all this and points to Them [without knowing that Them is a separate entity with the movers and shakers as a subset], e.g. Exxon, Trafigura etc. [rightly so], somehow thinking that the external threat is vastly more important than the internal.  It is this simultaneous embracing of good causes whilst ignoring the destructive effects of the domestic policies he embraces which makes the “liberal” so dangerous at the ballot box and in society in general.  Again, he truly believes he’s the gentle, tolerant “good person” in this discussion and that his policies are efficacious for good, when in fact the opposite is true.

The waters are very muddy indeed when it comes to what the the “liberal” supports in his own head, as against what this demonstrably results in, in realpolitik.

Filed under: Politics & economics