- What we call today "liberalism" was born in
New England. In 1864, Orestes Brownson, a New Englander himself, wrote
an essay contrasting Southern and Northern societies. His description of
the New Englander describes exactly the modern liberal. "The New Englander,"
Brownson wrote, "has excellent points, but is restless in body and
mind, always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has,
and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as
himself." This desire to make everyone like himself is a major characteristic
of the modern liberal.
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- This is what paradoxically leads him to be anti-democratic,
for the desire to make others conform to his opinion causes him to cast
dissidents into the outer darkness. He is so self-righteous that he honestly
believes that anyone with a different set of opinions must be either stupid
or evil. Brownson continues his description of the New Englander: "He
is smart, seldom great; educated, but seldom learned; active in mind, but
rarely a profound thinker; religious, but thoroughly materialistic: His
worship is rendered in a temple founded on Mammon ... he is philanthropic
but makes his philanthropy his excuse for meddling with everybody's business
as if it were his own, and under pretense of promoting religion and morality,
he wars against every generous and natural instinct and aggravates the
very evils he seeks to cure." We can certainly agree with that. Five
trillion dollars spent to eliminate poverty has, of course, not eliminated
it, and if you look at the great liberal cities of the North, where every
conceivable liberal social scheme has been enacted and funded, what do
you find? Slums, crime, high taxes, less freedom. Alas, the liberal nirvana
continues to elude its busybody seekers. Some old-time Southern preachers
say the New Englander became a busybody meddler after he lost his faith
in God. No longer believing in a heaven after death, he was compelled to
create a heaven on earth.
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- As Brother Dave Gardner used to put it, a Northern Baptist
says there ain't no hell, and a Southern Baptist says, "The hell there
ain't!" I have read learned papers from high-toned academics making
this same point, so if you want to investigate the proposition, the information
is out there. Liberalism, new or old, fails for the same reason that its
logical conclusion, socialism, fails. It flies in the face of human nature,
and human nature can't be changed. Some years ago, on a visit to a kibbutz
in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin's sister told me that the kibbutz -- theoretically
a perfect communist society -- hadn't changed anything. There were natural
leaders and natural followers and a certain percentage of folks who were
just parasites. A few people did most of the work. They were equal according
to the rules, but in little else. And so it is in every society and country.
Even socialist countries develop a rich elite. Coming from a conservative
Southern family, there were three phrases I heard extremely often -- phrases
one almost never hears today in our liberal society. They were: "Mind
your own business"; "It's none of your business"; and "Don't
stick your nose in other people's business." The chief characteristic
of the true conservative is a willingness to let other people be what they
are, for good or ill, just as the chief characteristic of the modern liberal
is the compulsion to make others conform to his ideas of what's good for
them. It should be obvious which of the two is the friend of liberty. We
are enormously less free today than when I was a boy, and in every instance,
the loss of freedom has been justified as "good for us." It's
too bad more people aren't concerned about that loss of freedom. They will
find that security will prove to be illusory, but the loss of freedom will
be quite real.
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- c. 2002 King Features Syndicate
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20021118/index.php
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