Do Liberals Crave a Master?

[SubGod22]

Well, do they?

Some interesting points made.

[Maggie]

It is an interesting article. He is correct that the primary driving force (whether they realize it or not) behind most “modern” liberal/progressive thought is a desire, through political mechanisms and other means, to create positive liberties – or what the government can give the individual to "empower" him or her to achieve equality in society. In order to progress toward this overall goal (which I, of course, reject as fantasy) most fair minded “modern” liberals/progressives will concede that the concentration of power in the State will need to be profound in order to facilitate the transformation of society toward their ultimate end. Hence, in some respects they do seek a “master”. This also explains their fascination, and at times down right envy, with fascist/socialist/communist regimes.

With regard to this notion of equality, “modern” liberals/progressives talk a good game, but I don't think it's inaccurate to say they have a very narrow and constrained vision of what they mean by equality. Equality often means "justice for my kind." Equality often means "make the bad people pay." Even the equality of economic populists such as John Edwards, for example, is not real equality; it's rhetoric to sell an agenda of "social justice" for the have-nots at the expense of the haves.

Meanwhile, conservatives or individualists as this author prefers (which is fine, but he didn’t invent the term – it has been used widely in the past) emphasize a very different kind of equality, one which recognizes equality in the eyes of God and the law, but has few or no objections to differences based on merit, wealth, creed, etc. Interestingly, President Obama explicitly overturns the notion of equality before the law by arguing that judges must have sympathy for, and take care of, the little guy. Simply because he invokes equality, doesn't make him more of an egalitarian than your typical federalist society lawyer. Indeed, I would argue it makes him less of one.

[pogo]

I would submit that there is a certain segment in any population that feel the need to have a master. In this way they don't need to take ownership for their actions, lack of ambition or their lot in life. There are segments on both sides liberal/conservative willing and eager to provide this leadership and many times I have a hard time differentiating between them. Maggie, you have got to feel displaced living where you do.

[RoyalShock]

If you have a hard time differentiating, then I question whether you're seeing a true conservative.

[pogo]

That is the problem.

[Maggie]

I would submit that there is a certain segment in any population that feel the need to have a master. In this way they don't need to take ownership for their actions, lack of ambition or their lot in life. There are segments on both sides liberal/conservative willing and eager to provide this leadership and many times I have a hard time differentiating between them. Maggie, you have got to feel displaced living where you do.

Not really but in this regard I have a story that I think I might tell – but it might be more appropriately placed in the SCOTUS thread.

You should really try not to get stuck on party labels but you should think for yourself. There is no reason for you to be confused.

Drop the party labels (no Democrat or Republican) and stop and think for a moment about this whole Individualism v. Collectivism thing this author was basically writing about. Personally, I think there is a bit of both in everyone. We all believe in both the sovereignty of the individual and the importance of the collective. What distinguishes left from right in this regard isn't the natural human desire for individual respect nor the natural human yearning for community. These yearnings are written into the human heart. Where the left and the right come in is how you (mis)apply these yearnings. Collectivism seeks to use the State to maximize and totalize its conception of community. Everyone wants to live in a family. Everyone wants to belong to a community. However, he or she commits the category error of believing you can make the State into your family or use it to make your nation your village. This is what Mussolini's famous definition of Fascism amounted to: "Everything in the state, nothing outside the state." A conservative should understand that that is an impossibility — an undesirable impossibility. So when I write about Individualism v. Collectivism, I'm referring to statist collectivism.

What I generally (though not absolutely) oppose are efforts to build the state while invoking the language of community as if the two are the same thing. The state isn't the community and the community isn't the state. And what I passionately and absolutely oppose in almost every instance (freeing slaves, smashing Jim Crow, are good exceptions to this rule) are efforts to destroy traditional community with inorganic state-imposed customs all the while claiming to be on the side of community.

While I would still classify myself as a conservative, I have become more and more libertarian in recent years. Why? Well, the simple answer is that the one thing libertarians seem to grasp better than conservatives or liberals is the danger of the category error when it comes to the role of government. While there are certainly plenty of radical individualists swelling the ranks of libertarianism, libertarianism is not in fact an ideology of radical individualism. Or at least it need not be. A fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not.

Now, I would invest more cultural authority in the government than a typical libertarian might. And generally speaking, conservatives, because of their patriotism and faith in a culturally coherent and sovereign nation, are prone to over-romanticizing the government, at times. But libertarians are simply immune to this temptation. This immunity sometimes blinds them to the poetry — for want of a better word — inherent to politics, but it also blinds them to the totalitarian temptations hardwired into human nature. And that's not a bad trade-off.

Meanwhile, most libertarians I know believe passionately in the Burkean little platoons of civil society. They support their local communities, churches, associations, whatever. This is real community. This is the real collective. The category error comes when you try to translate that sense of community to the national level. It cannot be done, save perhaps in time of war (hence the eternal liberal desire for the moral equivalents of war). And even in wartime, what you have isn't community, so much as unity of purpose. Many on the left seem tone deaf to this distinction. Real community is diverse, local, particular, quirky, organic and grown from the bottom up. You can have something like a national culture, but the idea of a national community makes me very nervous.

This is my chief complaint about the New Deal and why I find the current nostalgia for it so troubling. At the heart of the New Deal, was the resurrection of the national idea, the renewal of the vision of national community. President Roosevelt sought to pull America together in the face of its divisions by an appeal to national duty, discipline, and brotherhood; he aimed to restore the sense of local community, at the national level. I see President Obama trying to do the same thing.

The problem is I don't want a "new New Deal" as so many liberals do, precisely because I don't want the State to foster a single one-size-fits-all conception of a healthy community on the entire nation.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. But you hope you get my point. Besides, lunchtime is over and I am sure this was more than you wanted to read. It probably served to edify few and annoy many.

[RoyalShock]

While I would still classify myself as a conservative, I have become more and more libertarian in recent years. Why? Well, the simple answer is that the one thing libertarians seem to grasp better than conservatives or liberals is the danger of the category error when it comes to the role of government. While there are certainly plenty of radical individualists swelling the ranks of libertarianism, libertarianism is not in fact an ideology of radical individualism. Or at least it need not be. A fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not.

:good:

[wu_shizzle]

Liberal Messiahs?

[Capitol Shock]

I do not understand the liberal mind. They want to invoke their policies on everyone except themselves?

Does not compute...

[notmyeye]

As one of ShockerNet's few liberals (and since I was feeling bored), I decided to take a crack at this. Sorry for the essay, but hopefully we can have an in-depth discussion on the issues that this piece presents. I'm not trying to offend, I just want to provide another angle on this. I went paragraph by paragraph, but I didn't want to just post the whole article here, obviously.

Contemporary liberals, having abandoned the belief in God-given inalienable rights, .... by requiring painful sacrifices and bestowing government-created rights onto obedient and acquiescent groups of left-leaning masochists.

I'm not sure where this is coming from. Although I don't believe in God (and thus I don't believe in God-given rights), I do believe that everyone is born with rights that are inherent to the human condition. I firmly agree that government is never the granter of rights (that is to say that the Constitution and its amendments act as a government guarantee of recognize rights, not as a means of granting rights). And to that extent, I also believe that the Constitution does not go far enough in recognizing other rights humans inherently posses. (The biggest example being a right to privacy - which is implied but not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution). In this respect, I think we're all much more like minded than we would ordinarily admit.

... the recognized psychosis of moral masochism. Large segments of the population, and even entire nations can suffer from this ...

I see the idea that moral masochism requires a need to love an 'other' (in this case government) who hates/despises you. And I think a compelling case can be made for this actually occurring with respect to governments like the USSR and North Korea as there is a lot of corroborating evidence. However, I contend that it's a bit of a stretch to say that such is the case regarding American liberalism in general.

First, some re-definitions: In the same derogatory fashion liberals refer to contemporary Conservatives as "neocons", I will label this group as "neolibs" going forward. ....

What is his warrant for using the term 'neolib'? He simply states that the left has become more radical in the last few years, but he never addresses in which way this is true. Neo-conservatism as a movement was first named decades ago and many conservatives since then have embraced the title. Similarly, there was a time when the word liberal didn't have such a large negative connotation.

... I believe a more appropriate label for conservative philosophy is "individualist", and I will refer to it in this manner for the remainder of this article.

The problem with this article is that the author is freely defining any and all terms to shoe-horn his argument into a nice pretty package. I can just as easily make an equally compelling case as to why the liberal philosophy is "individualist" in nature. Liberals, in general, seek to promote individual rights and they typically don't fit into one category. For example, the democratic party is comprised of a wide variety of people: whites, blacks, Hispanics, straights, gays, lesbians, Christian, atheist, rich, poor, middle class, etc. While the republican party seems to largely center around white Christians. So yeah, the conservative philosophy is "individualist" as long as you fit their mold.

... I believe that many individualists tend to be effective phenomenologists due to their ability to separate themselves from group-think and emotional judgment. Therefore, let's use the phenomenological process to analyze the "Neolib as masochist" theory.

Are you kidding me? In what way does the neo-conservative mindset detach emotion from decision making? That's why gay marriage is outlawed, the United States is a Christian nation, torture is O.K. as long as it gets the job done, abortion is murder, Evolution is 'only a theory', and you're a terrorist if you don't support your president. I agree 100% with the notion that the law should be emotionally detached, but I disagree with the notion that the conservative philosophy is what leads us down that path. I know you will say that liberalism is just as bad at injecting emotion into the equation, and you'd probably be right, but to say that conservatism has a monopoly on rationality is ridiculous.

...Objectively listen to Janeane Garofalo in the Youtube video linked to her name. In listening to neolibs such as Janeane speak, it is evident that they appear to be driven predominantly by emotion rather than logic...

I'm not about to step up and defend Janeane Garofalo (personally, I never found her all that funny anyway...). I could find countless youtube clips of moronic neo-conservatives but that doesn't make them representative of the entire movement. Politics is a subject that a great many people are passionate about (and for good reason), and I think when some people speak on an issue that they are passionate about that they have a tendency to let their emotions run wild.

Anyone who views the world through these emotions would naturally feel threatened when interpreting individualists' behavior. The neolib typically projects hatred, bigotry, selfishness, and greed onto the individualist when there is no physical evidence to support the interpretation. The strong passions exhibited by neolibs, coupled with delusions of persecution, foster these masochistic tendencies.

I think the number one emotion that dominates the neo-conservative mindset is fear. Fear of change, fear of the 'other', fear of isolation, and fear of what's different. That's why they oppose the idea of a progressive government. Additionally, every group advocating an agenda feels persecuted in some way. Whichever group is out of power at the moment always feels persecuted and portrays themselves as such in the media. As liberals acted under the Bush administrations, so to did conservatives under the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Now let's objectively review the initiatives in the neolib agenda: Environmentalism, global passivism, overpopulation, socialized healthcare, and promoting government intervention into all aspects of life...

I think most people agree that we should treat our environment better. We might not all agree on how to do it, but we can agree that it's a good idea in principle. Honest disagreements regarding the science surround it should be treated as such and not a reason to demonize the other.

Liberals don't argue in favor of global passivism. We argue that the US cannot run the world. Whenever we try to run the world it blows up in our faces (sometimes literally) and there's no sense repeating the same mistakes that didn't work for the last ~50 years. We argue that the US should protect the moral authority it has earned throughout its life and exercise it with caution to advance US interests around the world. You can't force democracy on others, it's a contradiction in terms. However, you can do everything in your power to demonstrate what's so inherently good in democracy so that others have no reason to fear or hate you.

I'm all about government healthcare, so guilty as charged I suppose. We have an abysmal record on health care compared to other developed nations and it's time we adopt a system that works. I believe that all people, not just the wealthy or well connected, have the right to health care. In a society as rich as ours on so many levels it seems cruel for that not to be the case. I don't think that makes me a glut for punishment though.

This past week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted, "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory..." in order to sacrifice ourselves to the gods of global warming. As presidential candidate Obama said, "We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times..." He seems to indicate that he wants us to starve and freeze.

Remember what I said about feeling persecuted? The author seems to have that in spades. If the entire world was as developed as the United States, it could not sustain itself even if it maintained the same population. The US has its population growth in check, which is great. Given the relatively small percentage of the world's population we make up, we still use a disproportionately high percentage of its resources. We could easily just keep going as we are, but I don't want to worry that my children or grandchildren will struggle through a world in which clean water and food are a scarcity. The United States has it great and other countries aspire to be like us, and that's why we need to do something before it gets too late. Personally, I have no idea what we should do to alleviate these problems, but I don't think it's the end of the world for us to consider ways to reduce our impact on the world's resources.

Most of these initiatives involve the inflicting of pain and misery. Tom Daschle, in his book "Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis" says health-care reform "will not be pain free" ....

I think we can all agree that fixing social security, as an example, will require some group to give something up. But as voters we have punished anyone (regardless of party affiliation) who has tried to do something about it. I contend that if we set up a better form of national healthcare (socialism oh noes) that it would cease to be an issue. This is an area where it's easy to criticize the 'liberal agenda' but it's not easy enough to provide a workable alternative.

As a final phenomenological exercise, impassively observe the level of neolib support for this agenda. It has not appeared to wane. In fact, neolib fervor continues to increase as the promised level of suffering increases.

I think that whatever 'suffering' this 'neolib' agenda entails it would be far less than the suffering inflicted by maintaining the status quo or living in a neo-conservative utopia.

...The conclusion to this analysis is that as neolib moral masochism increases, so does the emotional need for an all-powerful master to govern them. As the governing master becomes more dominant and disciplinarian, the masochism is reinforced and the spiral continues.

While this cycle of abuse is logical, I think the underpinning assumptions that liberalism possesses a moral masochistic mindset are flawed as I illustrated above.

...This is probably an impractical solution. Since 45% of the nation thinks we are going in the right direction, there are too many neolibs and too few cattle prods.

This article has presented a caricature of liberalism as if this is what every single left-of-center voter believes (or even that a very small subset of voters believes), but I don't think that's the case. I can't speak for all liberals, but for what it's worth, I don't want to live in this 100% socialized society that gets painted for liberals. I believe in the values of hard work and self determination, but I also believe that a society is judged by how it treats those least well off among it.

[Maggie]

notmyeye,

Which part would you like to discuss? You raised many issues.

[Maggie]

Interesting article:

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/06/03/americas-socialist-future-martin-j-sklar-vs-john-b-judis/

[SubGod22]

Obama's Attack on Achievers and Individual Rights