What is the liberalism that must be toppled for the West to be saved?
The ex-leftist Dylan fan in England sent me an
article about a Muslim school in Lancashire, with the comment, “Insane! Beyond insane, how has it come to this, how indeed!”
I replied:
Two things: letting them in, and allowing them freedom here. Take away either of those, and this wouldn’t be happening.
But it’s not insane, it’s the inevitable consequence of the modern mainstream beliefs of the West.
He then wrote back under the subject line, “I’M LIBERAL, TO A DEGREE”:
Of course you’re right (about the “letting them in” and “giving them freedom” syndrome) but changing that scenario is a lot easier said than done. No, I’m not talking about the out-migration part, let’s leave that. I’m talking about changing the mindset of the majority (while it is a majority) from liberalism to NOT LIBERALISM. Liberalism of course is associated with the disastrous policies of near open immigration and multiculturalism. But it also (in modern times) was (and is) associated with positive policies and lifestyles from the Civil Rights Movement in America and legislation to better workers’ pay and rights everywhere in the West to the Women’s Movement and legislation for sexual equality to a general sense of tolerance and better treatment of groups such as gays, hippies, foreigners, folk singers! etc. The Welfare states in Europe for all their flaws also did a lot of good things (various National Health services, pensions, welfare payments) and they too are part of a Liberal framework. In other words not all Liberalism was bad though of course it went way too far. Way, way too far. But whatever your belief about the rights and wrongs of Liberalism (and I reiterate that it too must be properly defined) it will be difficult to shake it out of the Western psyche. It is an important part of each Westerner. Even so called Conservatives. But like the term Western Civilisation it can mean many different things to many different people.. So it’s not just a matter of dealing with immigration policy and/or the immigrants themselves. In order to deal with the broader problem you have to deal with the inculcation of Liberalism in the Western mindset/soul and that won’t be easy. Any thoughts on this?
My reply:
I speak predominantly not of New Deal liberalism, in which the state helps direct the economy and maintain a general level of well-being, but of post-World War II liberalism, which declares that discrimination is the greatest evil and must be eliminated. The elimination of discrimination inevitably means—via non-discriminatory immigration laws—the elimination of the national culture. A person could be in favor of the welfare state and still believe in the preservation of his national culture. Look at FDR, who was more nationalistic than any mainstream politician today. Similarly, the Japanese economy is hierarchically controlled in some areas. Yet the Japanese are intent on maintaining their historic identity as a people.
So, while I greatly fear the sort of unaccountable and deadening bureaucratic rule that prevails in Europe and believe strongly in the original federal constitutional structure of the United States, the precise degree of government involvement in the economy is a practical determination that can vary from place to place. It is not the ultimate issue facing us. Government programs can come and go. But once a culture or a people goes, it can never come back. So the issue that matters above all is the preservation of the spiritual and ethnocultural basis of the society. The attack on discrimination, if pursued consistently, means the destruction of the society’s spiritual and ethnocultural basis. Modern liberalism does not in principle allow any historic social arrangement, traditional institution, ethnic group, culture, or nation to keep existing, because all such entities are inherently discriminatory, favoring the in-group over out-groups. This is the liberalism that must be toppled from its dominant place in the Western psyche and the Western society. That doesn’t mean rejecting such cherished values as equality of citizenship and freedom of speech. But tolerance and non-discrimination and the search for substantive equality of outcome between different races can no longer be the ruling principle of society. Other values must be higher than such liberalism.
If you remove the irony from that Dylan line you quoted and use it seriously, it gets close to my idea:
Now I’m liberal, to a degree
I want everybody to be free
But if you think I’ll let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I’m crazy
I wouldn’t let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.
Dylan was making fun of someone who is hypocritically liberal, inconsistently liberal (though it gets more complicated because he’s using the standard idea of a white not wanting his daughter to marry a black and playfully turning it back on the liberals, saying that despite their protestations of tolerance they are prejudiced against conservatives.)
In any case, my point is that liberalism is only non-lethal when it is inconsistent. There must be limits on tolerance and non-discrimination. Those limits are determined by the substantive things we really care about. What kind of society do we want? Do we want to go on living in a familiar environment with links to the past, or are we indifferent to the whole thing being transformed by aliens? Do we want our children and grandchildren to look like our parents and ourselves, or are we indifferent to their being black or Indian? (Dennis Prager says that if you want your children to look like yourself you’re a racist.) Do we want our society to continue being Anglo-form and European in its culture, or do we want it to become non-European in its culture? Do we want to continue living in a basically Christian society with a Judeo-Christian morality, or do we want it to become a level playing field of all the religions on earth? Do we value a society where vigorous debate is possible because of an underlying cultural commonality, or do we want a society where debate must be shut down because it will offend certain religious groups or spark ethnic conflict? Do we want a society where monogamy rules, or do we want a society with polygamy? Do we want a society where animals and pets are loved and valued, or do we want a society where millions of people regard dogs as either food or filth akin to feces and urine? Do we want a society in which other people regard us as fellow humans, or do we want a society in which millions of people regard as as godless infidels to be brought under the submission of Allah? Once we determine our substantive values and attachments as a society, that becomes our guide for what kinds of liberal non-discrimination are acceptable, and what kinds are not. The highly beneficial 1924 National Quota Act was based on such substantive considerations. The Congress said, America has a certain historic ethnic composition, we like it the way it is, and we intend to maintain it. This eminently non-liberal law (based on a desired substance, not an abstract procedure) helped maintain America as a unified culture and country through the next 40 years of Depression, World War, and Cold War.
But liberalism prohibits, as invidious discrimination, all such reasonable considerations about the substantive good of society. It makes “neutral,” non-judgmental procedures the organizing basis of society. Such liberalism cannot produce or maintain a society that anyone would actually want to live in—except of course for the liberal elites who thrive on the disappearance of the organic and self-governing aspects of society.
The same principle applies to foreign policy. We have sought to spread procedural electoral democracy to Muslim countries, without determining what would be the substantively good outcome in those countries from our point of view. When substantively bad outcomes occur, our leaders are left at least temporarily speechless. It is liberalism that renders them speechless, by forbidding them to think about substantive goods (which requires discriminatory value judgments) as distinct from thinking about liberal procedural goods (in which we profess our formal indifference to any substantive outcome). Rampant liberalism in foreign policy leads to confusion and chaos abroad. Rampant liberalism in domestic policy leads to our society’s undoing.
Carl Simpson writes:
Interesting exchange between the English lefty Dylan fan and yourself. My only comment is that one of the constitutional principles that used to hold liberalism in check was freedom of association. Thanks to the march of Federal control over nearly every institution across the land, public and private, only a few privately-owned entities can actually discriminate. Their number dwindles every year, unless they happen to be private institutions in the hands of one or another of the officially designated “other.”
Freedom of association used to be a strong limit on liberalism. It was largely negated through the very anti-discrimination laws of the 1960s your correspondent holds up as a positive contribution from liberalism. There is a difference between state-enforced discrimination and discrimination applied by individuals. As it stands, such anti-discrimination laws are applied only against members of the majority population and culture in practice. A simple idea that can attract many people is that if such laws are necessary to begin with, they should apply across the board. Pointing out that they do not often starts people questioning the prevailing dogma.
My reply:
Yes, what a perplexing thing.
Freedom of association is the very core of liberalism as once understood. In some ways it is THE most fundamental liberty, the most basic to ordinary human living. Yet it is quintessentially a liberty belonging to the older liberalism of the 19th century, the liberalism that sought freedom and equality by limiting the power of the state over individuals, families, local associations, and other institutions. 20th century liberalism, by contrast, sought freedom and equality by expanding the power of the state; the freedom to be admitted or hired anywhere trumped the freedom of being able to choose whom to hire or admit. The single greatest such attack on freedom of association was, I suppose, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which gave the the federal government the unprecedented power to intrude directly into the ordinary hiring decisions of businesses.
Since, as I’m always saying, the core of modern liberalism is the imperative to eliminate all discrimination,—but only discrimination exercised by the majority, of course—the attack on freedom of association of the Western majority people is central to modern liberalism. This applies both to individuals and to the society as a whole. The 1964 Civil Rights Act said that businesses and individuals could not discriminate in the choice of whom to associate with in various contexts. Following the spirit of the ‘64 Act, the 1965 Immigration Reform Act said that the United States as a whole could not discriminate in the choice of what national groups it allowed to enter the United States.
The right to liberty that we require by our nature as human beings includes the liberty of association. But the right not be discriminated against, the right to be admitted anywhere, the right to be accepted by everyone, is most certainly NOT required by our nature as human beings. Modern liberalism, in the name of a bogus, immoral “right,” has deprived us of the most fundamental right. To deny an individual, an institution, or a society the right to decide whom to associate with is tantamount to destroying him or it as an individual, institution, or society. To eliminate Western individuality and Western society is thus the true and final purpose of modern liberalism.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 02, 2006 09:45 PM | Send