When you realize that liberals don’t care if America lives or dies
This is an e-mail conversation, just discovered in my Sent folder, that took place at the beginning of 2007. Clayton R. wrote:
Recently, I sent a friend of mine some of the recent blog entries from VFR concerning Rep. Virgil Goode and his statement that we must reduce Muslim immigration if we didn’t want to become Islamized. My only comment was that I thought the whole issue was very important, and had far-reaching implications. I thought this sufficient for anyone to get the drift about what’s so important about it. But my friend replied: “I don’t see why this is important at all.”
Now, given that Rep. Goode’s comments are about how to go about preserving our society and way of life, the importance is plain as day to me because I actually care about our society and way of life. My friend, however, is rather liberal (he calls himself a “classical liberal”), and so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to learn this, but his comment really caused something to hit home with me: liberals don’t particularly care about preserving our society and way of life, or at least they don’t care about anything other than its liberal, universal elements.
If almost all modern Americans are liberals, then this means that very, very few Americans actually care about preserving our society and way of life. To them, our nation is like a blank slate, upon which it doesn’t really matter what is written.
I know all of this is old news and plain as day to you because you discuss this sort of thing all the time, but, again, it really hit home with me this time. I find it so distressing, and it’s almost enough to make one want to thrown up one’s hands and surrender to the hopelessness of it all. So, I’m wondering, how can one respond when someone says, “I don’t see why this is important at all”?
LA replies:
I agree that it is very distressing that people feel this way. What you are realizing to your distress is the real extremism of liberalism. It’s hard for us to see this extremism, because we still think of liberals as being rational people inhabiting the same country as we do, and because liberalism is the mainstream, normal belief system of our time. Realizing how extreme mainstream liberalism really is, is maybe the single most important realization a conservative can have.
Let’s consider why your friend might hold these views.
Almost all people are liberals, meaning, almost all people subscribe to principles of equality which if followed consistently must lead to the end of country and of every other traditional institution and value; but, at the same time, all liberals have varying types and degrees of unprincipled exceptions to their liberalism, meaning, non-liberal attitudes and feelings that make them want to preserve various institutions and values from the liberal reaper.
Looking at the various liberal groups from right to left, most right-liberals, meaning neoconservatives and mainstream conservatives, would not respond the way your friend did. They still believe in America and its values, even though that belief is inconsistent with their belief in total non-discrimination (e.g. Dennis Prager). Others right-liberals, like the Wall Street Journal types, for example, have no real loyalty to America. So your friend may fit with that group.
As for left-liberals, meaning your average Democrat, a large number would respond the way your friend did, because they don’t make an unprincipled exception for the preservation of the country and its values. However, their lack of loyalty to the country doesn’t necessarily take the form of a positive desire to destroy the country, but rather a passive indifference to the survival of the country, such as is expressed by your friend. (I will return to this in a minute.)
Finally, there are the radical liberals and hard-leftists, most of whom have a positive desire to destroy the country and its values.
Now, let’s get back to the “extreme” right-liberals and the “moderate” left-liberals, those people who like your friend do not positively desire the end of America but nevertheless react with indifference to the prospect of America ceasing to exist. Why do they react this way?
For the right-liberals, the country just doesn’t matter. It has no particular value beyond its function as a temporary carrier and transmitter of the things that do matter: global capitalism, total global freedom of movement of goods and persons.
For the left-liberals, the fundamental thing about America is that it is guilty for its past and present crimes against liberal equality. It is impossible to defend, love, or care about something built on so much discrimination, inequality, and just plain nastiness. That is why one of the left-liberals’ typical responses to a call to defend America against some enemy or threat is, “Well, we’ve done a lot of bad things, too.” Notice the structure of that statement. They don’t come out and say, “America is a guilty country and doesn’t deserve to survive.” No. They say, “We’ve done a lot of bad things too.” Without being explicit, the meaning is the same, that in any given situation, faced with a threat coming from some enemy, they will say that America has no right of self-defense. But by not stating (and in many cases not thinking) this principle explicitly they manage to disseminate that anti-national feeling without actually having to defend the proposition that the country doesn’t deserve to survive. Without ever saying, “America doesn’t deserve to survive,” all the left has to do is keep repeating variations of “We’ve done a lot of bad things, too,” and that leads step by step to national suicide just as surely as if the whole country publicly signed an oath saying, “We don’t deserve to survive and we should be destroyed.”
That is why the implicit meaning of various liberal slogans must be identified. Such statements must never be allowed to stand unchallenged. Their underlying principle and direction must be exposed, then it can be resisted. And that is the answer to your question about how to respond when someone says, “I don’t see why this is important at all.” These liberal attitudes are so ubiquitous that most liberals have never consciously said to themselves, “I am subscribing to ideas that are incompatible with the survival of America as a country.” We need to confront them with the real meaning of what they’re saying. Will that get them to change? Maybe in some cases. In most cases not. But conversation with liberals is not about persuading the liberals to our view (though that would be a nice bonus); conversation with liberals is about exposing what liberalism really is, so that at least some people will see it and start to resist it.
* * *
It would be useful to compile a list of various right-liberal and left-liberal slogans that imply that America has no right to preserve its existence without actually stating it, and come up with answers for each of them. Real conservatives—which means, conservatives who are prepared to confront liberals on first principles and not just on this or that issue of the day—must never sit quietly when such nation-destroying slogans are emitted. They must jump in instantly and expose the real meaning of what the liberal is saying.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 09, 2007 10:15 AM | Send