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What It Means to Be a Former Liberal |
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Dear reader, |
Four years ago, in the wake of the plague and its vast excesses, I authored an article — "What Happened to Liberals?" |
From which: |
Liberal: A supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy and free enterprise. |
There you have Mr. Webster's liberal — the liberal of lore, the liberal of common understanding. |
This liberal is a spacious and tolerant fellow. He is all right. |
His liberalism is… if you will indulge me… the liberalism of this publication. We are with Jefferson: |
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." |
Nor does it pick my pocket — or break my leg — if a man lists politically to starboard or if he lists politically to port… |
Or if he believes Donald John Trump is an angel of God or an angel of Satan. |
It is all one to me. |
The Transformation of Liberalism |
Yet I fear today's "liberalism" is not Webster's liberalism. I fear pirates have hijacked her. And they steam under false colors. |
In the identical spirit, Freedom Financial News contributor Jeffrey Tucker has authorized a fresh piece, "What It Means To Be A Former Liberal." |
Begins Mr. Tucker: |
[Liberal] meant being for freedom generally and opposed to despotism and dictatorship by church or state. |
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Our Founding Fathers were considered liberals in a classical sense. |
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They wanted free speech, free elections, free enterprise, free formation of community, and so on, and wanted government restricted in its power. |
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That meaning of the word… lasted mostly until the Great War… |
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Matters got worse during the New Deal when even more "liberals" threw their weight behind industrial planning and corporatism. |
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Emerging out of World War II, there was nothing much remaining to the term. It had been completely co-opted by its enemies. |
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And after World War II? |
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The Long March Through the Institutions |
As I wrote before: |
In the 1960s "liberals" decried and denounced "the man" — the oppressive man. They sang their songs of freedom. |
Yet they have since taken their long march through the institutions…and became the man they once despised… |
Goose-stepping through the universities… through the government bureaucracy… through the newsrooms… through the production studios… through the human resources departments… through the philanthropic organizations. |
Once safely ensconced therein, they raised the drawbridges and pulled up the ladders. The commanding heights were theirs. |
Is it any wonder that trust in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is greatest among self-identified liberals in recent years? |
Yet many liberals could not quite come into camp. They found themselves, in many respects, politically homeless. |
'That's It, I Can't Take It Anymore!' |
Mr. Tucker: |
I'm surrounded by people who call themselves "former liberals"... |
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They weren't fans of the Cold War and really didn't like the War on Terror. |
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They still champion civil liberties but gagged at woke ideology and especially the transgender agenda. |
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"Liberalism" became way too ill-liberal for them to stomach. |
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It was the COVID experience that really shattered them. |
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Once again, I am with Mr. Tucker. The excesses of the plague year horrified many "liberals." |
And so scales began falling from eyes: |
All their friends in media, academia, and the corporate world went nuts. They were demanding that everyone lock themselves indoors, make the working class deliver food, cover the faces of children, close schools, censor speech, and then let medical workers inject the entire population with an untested substance of uncertain origin. |
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There was nothing liberal about any of that. So my liberal friends felt a great sense of alienation. It was not just that their communities abandoned their values. They began to wonder if their whole ideological outlook was wrong. |
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Maybe government won't save us from corporatism after all. Maybe the media is not really a check on power… Maybe this has been going on for a long time and no one knew it. |
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And so? |
Many Became "Red-Pilled" |
As a result, many of these people feel homeless both intellectually and politically. They are warmer to Trump than they ever thought they would be but not uncritical. They still browse their old media venues with interest but often it turns to disgust… |
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They have become, in popular parlance, red-pilled… |
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I was speaking with a person the other day who referred to a friend of mine as having been red-pilled on some subject. It made me laugh because, so far as I know, the person in question pretty much held far-left views all his life… Today, he is hoping the Trump administration will save the nation from his former tribe. |
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My point is this. We live in very unusual times when the terms left and right have become enormously scrambled. |
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The Courage to Face Reality |
What then is to be done? Do we require fresh terminology to transcend the left/right schism, Mr. Tucker? |
Terms are always subject to mischaracterization and capture, as we see with the word liberal (and the word conservative actually). |
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What we need instead is open minds, the courage to look at facts and reality, and the willingness to say in public what we believe to be true. We can do all that without carrying the baggage of legacy ideologies. |
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In conclusion: |
We know who the dissidents are from woke ideology, from Covidianism, from NPRism, from the matrix of mainstream media. Their legacy commitments are all over the map. We can encounter and learn from each other… |
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Still, my heart also breaks for those people who thought that they had found their tribe until it turned out that their tribe is dominated by crazy people. It's a bit like losing a beloved pet or even a spouse. The comforts of familiarity have been taken away and we are left to fend for ourselves. |
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Now no thoughtful person is in a position to outsource his worldview to any leader or institution. Perhaps that is a good thing. |
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Why We Don't Really Believe in Ourselves |
Perhaps it is a good thing that no thoughtful person is in a position to outsource his worldview to any leader or institution, Mr. Tucker. |
And this publication likes to think it holds out a beacon to such individuals. |
We proudly accept outcasts and heretics from all existing orthodoxies. |
Yet as Henry Louis Mencken styled it, we are entirely devoid of messianic passion. We hear no voice from the burning bush. |
And we are better at raising questions than answering them. Most importantly perhaps, we refuse to take ourselves too seriously. |
Thus we are with Chesterton: |
"The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." |
Alas, the lunatic asylums are full. |
Brian Maher |
for Freedom Financial News |
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