A key difference between liberalism and traditionalism is that liberalism treats non-discrimination as an absolute, unqualified principle, unrelated to any particularities. All discrimination is wrong, period, and, furthermore, all discrimination is equally wrong. To the liberal mind, a proposal to stop admitting Muslim immigrants to the U.S. is on the same moral continuum as Auschwitz. (Of course, liberals, or at least left-liberals, are very inconsistent on this idea, as they promote pro-minority discrimination, but that is a separate issue to be dealt with at length on its own terms. The important thing to understand is that as far as we are concerned, as members and defenders of this nation and this civilization, any discriminations in our treatment of other groups is wrong.)
Traditionalism, by contrast, does not treat discrimination as an abstraction, but rather in relation to the concrete character of our society. Given that our society has certain characteristics, the question becomes, which kinds of discrimination are necessary and valid, and which kinds aren’t?
Thus a liberal will say, “We must admit all peoples and groups into our country, since all human beings have the same equal dignity and the same worth before God.” A traditionalist will say, “Some peoples and cultures are more similar to us and more assimilable, and some are more different from us and less assimilable, so we will discriminate in favor of the former.”
That doesn’t mean that a person opposing such discrimination is a liberal on all issues. But his ultimate adherence is to the liberal principle that any discrimination by group membership is morally wrong and must be eliminated. And that principle, followed consistently, means that no distinct society can morally preserve its own existence. Liberalism, at its heart, is a recipe for non-existence. But, again, this principle is only applied to white, Western societies.
Here is list of some articles on liberalism. Start with the first three which may particularly address your questions. Also see the article further down, Why I fight (other conservatives), which is about non-discrimination.
Liberalism general
The only way the West can be saved [Good explanation of what I mean by liberalism (with references to the three stages of liberalism), with main theme that only terrible sufferings will induce Westerners to give it up.]
Why are people attracted to liberalism? [Jeff in England asks: “If liberalism is/has been so flawed, why have people chosen to live under it?” I reply, going into the three stages of liberalism, also replying to a followup by Jeff, “If some liberalism is good, why not include it within the definition of liberalism” My answer is that in early America, liberalism was a feature of a traditional society, not its exclusive and ruling principle, and that that type of liberalism was not (necessarily) destructive.]
George Fraser, the ruin of Britain, and the possibility of true resistance to liberalism [How criticizing political correctness is inadequate. We must understand what liberalism is, what liberals really believe in and seek, how they seek the destruction of tradition, then by standing for tradition we stand against liberalism.]
The difference between liberalism and leftism [There are objective criteria that distinguish these two categories. In this entry I discuss Gregory Curtis’s illuminating essay, “The Essential Liberal.”]
How procedural liberalism leads to substantive liberalism [When neoconservatives hearken back to the “dream” of M.L. King, they don’t understand that it really WAS a dream, i.e., it never existed.]
Human rights as the path to global tyranny [Previously, it was considered non-debatable that states should not torture people for their political views. Now it is considered non-debatable that states must eliminate parental authority, open their borders, and make all their citizens economically equal.
Why liberals see normal people as Nazis [on Cronulla, Australia]
Pure liberalism, invoked by Pope Benedict, shows us the way out of liberalism
The remorseless destroyers [how liberalism cancels society out of existence by seeing only the autonomous individual actor as real]
The meaning of official nihilism [By Jim Kalb. What does it mean that our society has officially rejected the notion of a common moral reality in which all participate?]
Philosopher says we must create meaning and goodness [My letter to philosopher Susan Neiman who denies inherent moral meaning and then says we must created meaning.]
Thoughts on gyneocracy and liberalism [See my comment, beginning at “I respectfully disagree with Margaret,” in which I explain what liberalism is: “Liberalism means seeing the world as a single collection of individuals, all possessing the same rights, and distinguished only by their ‘individual worth.’ Liberalism rejects, as a fundamental principle, the idea that individuals may belong to different categories—categories not chosen by the individual himself—that may affect the individual’s rights.”]
What is liberalism? [This contains just my comment from “Thoughts on gyneocracy and liberalism,” above.
Why liberals never think about the consequences of liberalism [“But for the liberal, no value that actually exists, in and of itself, can ever be truly legitimate, unless it be equally distributed. But since values by their very nature can never be equally distributed, they can never be legitimate. Liberals therefore cannot conceptualize the meaning and value of the goods of their society, and therefore they cannot imagine the permanent loss of those goods.”]
Why liberalism prohibits conceptual thought [exchange with Jim Kalb. “the denial of the transcendent makes disagreement dangerous because there is no objective truth or objective standard by which disagreements can be resolved.”
What the attempt to banish “Islamophobia” really means [“Western peoples do not need protection under the modern liberal order, because modern liberalism, in its very premises, has already defined the Western peoples out of existence.”]
How the liberal advance of minorities and women makes society more and more guilty in its own eyes [How Pelosi’s arrogant celebration of “breaking the marble ceiling” shows how each advance only means that up to this point we’ve been bad.]
[Full address: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/007038.html#progress]
The white status competition theory of white suicide [My tripartite theory of liberal society is explained in comment starting at “What this points to is the articulation of the white population into two distinct groups.”]
How actual or sympathetic embrace of sexual freedom destroys the capacity to make moral judgments and turns people into Eloi. [A comment by me in the original “Eloi” thread: http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001148.html#3700]
Non-discrimination as the core of liberalism
Why I fight (other conservatives) [This thread is about the central place in liberalism of the non-discriminatory principle, and how my insistence on that point makes other conservatives dislike me. Wade Coriell’s explains why I am right to attack the very thing in the modern conservative mind, subscription to the non-discriminatory principle, that disarms the conservative opposition to liberalism. As long as conservatives fail to oppose the non-discriminatory principle, he says, their other conservative beliefs do not matter, because the liberal, non-discriminatory principle will swamp all. Gintas says that conservatives don’t like it when told that they are missing the heart of the issue and that not all explanations are equal.]
A liberal speaks [A reader’s liberal correspondent admits that different races can’t get along, and that only solution is intermarriage. This decisively shatters the liberal belief in non-discrimination.]
Ticket agent “embarrassed” about his suspicions of Atta [Ticket agent Michael Tuohey thought Muhammad Atta looked like a terrorist. “Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this.” Entry also quotes Mark Steyn’s account of how Atta threatened to cut the throat of Agricultural Department official Johnelle Bryant, and threatened to destroy Washington, D.C., but she didn’t report him, because “I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from. I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could.”]