Diseased Liberalism

I have hardly looked at my blog in the last year. It is quite obvious that I stopped posting just prior to final exams before I graduated. Within days of graduating, I moved to Cincinnati and started a new job. I did not have the internet for months, and then it was dial-up until last week. I will now post.

I married a wonderful lady about four weeks ago, and now I live in my own house, and pay taxes, and do the real-world thing parents’ talk about. It’s not very exciting. To me, the most fulfilling part is that I can do pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want, for whatever reason I want (or for no reason at all). My only constraints, in descending order of importance, are my limited financial means, religious requirements, and law.

These are indeed substantial restrains. I cannot afford many of the things I want, but I can afford many of the things I do. Traditional Roman Catholicism actually provides an abundance of freedom to a normal individual, but it does restrict some activities, requires that I do certain things on certain days, and pray. Most of these things I want to do anyway. Law attempts to restrict my activities to a large degree. Fortunately, law is one of the easiest restrictions to escape (as long as you don’t break any big laws like failing to pay your taxes or murdering a postman). I regularly exceed the speed limits, buy wine for my nineteen-year-old wife, and scrape leaded paint.

I can definitely see why various thinkers, most of them heretics, like Friedrich Nietzsche found this “freedom” so intoxicating. I must confess that simply doing something like purchasing mesquite charcoal rather that the regular kind is thrilling in a small way simply because my father, my church, and my wife have absolutely no say in the matter. The state has even erected legal structures that permit this consumer choice. It is sweet that I purchased charcoal which I hope will impart a delicious flavor to my London Broil (recipe here), but sweeter knowing that I have the power to make such decisions, and I even take wicked delight in knowing that if somebody told me to do otherwise, I could (and would) dismiss them with TAKE a HIKE!

The human will is a funny thing. God gave lions big teeth, claws, and powerful muscles. He gave humans a will. It is what makes humans (and other things with wills) a powerful influence in the world. Angels, having a stronger and better-informed will due to their great intellects, are more powerful than humans. When one exercises their will, even on a small or trivial thing, it empowers. Sometimes, exercising the will leads to pride, especially if the person perceives the fruits of their action, directed by their will, as good. It is therefore important to always temper feelings of accomplishment (the result of good action) with the recognition that circumstances, which are arranged by God, often play a larger role in most accomplishment than the human will does.

Action is rightly related to the will. Exercise of the will leads to human action, which leads to some accomplishment (good or bad), which is also influenced by circumstance and the talents of that particular human. When a person perceives sensation as being directed by their will they will fall prey to liberalism. This is due to a false relationship—that of sensation and the will—and it leads to endless contradiction and misery. Sensation now becomes the primary task of the will. It now becomes abundantly clear why liberalism has always been associated with drug abuse, sexual fetishes and deviance, and placing all problems into the framework of a disease. Drug abuse is perhaps the simplest association to demonstrate. The will directs the ingestion of some substance that results in prompt sensory pleasure. Sexual abuses are a little bit more difficult and complicated, but are essentially the same—the will directs some activity that results in immediate sensory pleasure, but results in no lasting accomplishment. In both cases it is the lack of accomplishment that is problematic. Rightly prescribed medicines accomplish good outcomes like the curing a malady. Rightly ordered sex accomplishes the begetting of children. The reason why liberalism is bad is because it focuses on the sensory pleasure rather than accomplishment. Libertarianism on the other hand focuses exclusively on action (right or wrong) and usually ignores circumstance. This is why famous libertarians like Ayn Rand found drug abusers weak and pathetic (you can’t accomplish much while high), and this is why too many libertarians the that the ends justifies the means. The traditional, conservative standpoint is the soundest—that the will directs action, which should be for good, and it recognizes that circumstances (a.k.a. reality) play a role. The traditional, conservative standpoint does not operate in a vacuum like Rand’s syllogisms, and it does not place sensation as the pinnacle of human achievement.

The third liberal association, placing all problems into the framework of “disease” is all to common but warrants definition. I remember humorously the movie West Side Story when one of the youths tells Officer Krumpke the reason why he is a delinquent is because he suffers from a “social disease.” Of course he learned this phrase from the presumably liberal psychologist. This framework accommodates the inherent contradiction of liberalism. Since liberals believe that sensation is the goal, but are often unable to achieve it because individual circumstances thwart it, they turn to the state to provide the action, and blame it on some invented disease. Is this not perverse? They direct the state to accomplish things that individuals should because they believe that individuals cannot accomplish the necessary things because they are deprived of the sensation they need. It’s mind-bendingly contradictory and silly, but it is alarmingly common. Let’s take welfare as an example. An individual cannot obtain the goods and housing they need to be sensorarily satisfied, so the state gives (action) money to this individual that it took (more action) from other people, who rightly earned it though their own individual human work (action). It’s an individual problem with a social solution. It should be like this: an individual cannot obtain the goods and housing they need to be sensorarily satisfied, so they use their will to earn money (action) to satisfy their needs, or consign themselves to being unfulfilled. An individual problem with an individual solution. And no public theft (a.k.a. taxes) is involved. The “diseased” invention merely makes the silly liberal system seem more palatable to the sound-minded. Oh, certainly the individual that is on welfare cannot help themselves because society doesn’t give them what they need to accomplish things! The sad fact is that they will never accomplish anything because of liberalism.