Saturday, June 12, 2010

Liberalism: Thinking Inside The Closed Loop



The essential problem at the core of liberalism is faith-based epistemology. (1)  It is not a problem at the personal level where a set of strongly held core beliefs may be a great source of security, comfort, confidence and -- above all -- a sense of control in evaluating and understanding the self and the world.  It is an enormous problem, however, where there is no openness to the consideration of facts that conflict with pre-conceived beliefs. When verifiable realities are rejected in favor of a rigid system of ideological verities, survival and prosperity are inevitably at peril.

The importance of the liberal belief-system cannot be overstated. Among many persons, it has existential significance -- without it they are cast adrift in a world suddenly become dangerous and suffer unbearable stress.  For that reason they cannot permit anything to challenge it; neither facts nor evidence, not reasoning, not persuasion not observation.  Liberal post-modernist secularism has at its center a faith that enlightened groups can work out the salvation of mankind.  That faith has all the characteristics of traditional Western religions, but in their most extreme (pathological?) manifestations. (2)
For example liberal core-beliefs include the notion that all persons are inherently good (3) and the world is a safe place.  That all "good" persons share their values, and differences can be resolved by reasoned persuasion.  The use of force is never justified -- even in self defense.  This is clearly seen in liberal foreign policy, particularly in the West's temporizing with Iran and North Korea.  In both cases years of negotiation and appeasement have caused those regimes to become more dangerous, unstable and threatening, yet faith in the efficacy of talking continues undimmed.  Ideology trumps fact, but facts hardly matter if intentions are good.  Hardly matter until disaster strikes; then it will be "unexpected".  The difficulty (and the irony) lies in the fact that the protected illusion of personal and group security leads to the dangerous behavior of denying the existence of real peril.

I can hardly think of a better example of the exclusion of fact from belief than the left's position on the 2nd Amendment.  All the mass killings in America have occurred in "gun-free" zones where citizens were denied the right to armed self-defense.  In most cases the shooters were illegally in possession of their weapons.  Further, and most telling, is the fact that violent crimes decline in states that issue carry permits; the more liberal the law, the greater the reduction in violent crimes.  Conversely, states and nations that have restrictive gun laws see increases in armed violence following the imposition of restrictions and continuing thereafter. (4) 

How can a world-view so at odds with reality be sustained?  It can't.  Liberalism has been in the ascendant in America and the West for more than a century.  It is now the dominant force in politics and policy, and the consequences of maladaptive behaviors are abundant and plain in Europe and America.  Moral, cultural and economic decline have undone Europe, and the US is only a few paces behind.  How and why did it happen that so clearly destructive an ideology managed to prevail?


My short answer is prosperity on the one hand, and relative security on the other.  Sheltered living. Ignoring reality became affordable.  The boom years following the Second World War allowed two generations to come of age in the midst of an abundance so great that the consequences of bad or non-adaptive behaviors were obscured.  The linkage between illegitimate births, the growth of welfare, the decline of public education and the explosion of protected entitlement classes and the Great Society programs of Johnson are clear.  The same generations gave little thought to the possibilities of war in the West.  Those were seen as third-world phenomena.  Because they were poor and deprived -- victims of our prosperity. (5)  Moreover, the West under multicultural delusions began to imagine that other societies were like our own, differing only in the circumstances of their birth.  They attributed to other cultures the same desires for peace, liberty, republican government, rule of law and the values of civil society. (6)  Most of the world is a violent and dangerous place in which the exercise of brutal and lethal force is the rule.  Our failure to recognize that fact points to a dangerous want of ordinary prudence.



The points I want to make in this essay are these: that human beings cannot adapt (survive) in a world where, because of willful ideological blindness, reality is not taken into account; that Western Civilization and its traditions -- perpetually under attack by the left -- is a unique and grand achievement in the history of the world; finally, and perhaps most importantly, the West flourished most because of its empiricism -- the willingness to test beliefs against evidence.  On the masthead of this blog is a quotation from Sir Isaac Newton that says it best.  





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1.  The theory of knowledge: what do we know and how do we know it?  Dominant for centuries -- certainly since Plato and Aristotle -- have been the opposing schools of rationalism, on the one hand, and empiricism on the other.  In the former knowledge is based upon logic, authority and hypothesis; in the latter upon hypothesis tested by evidence of the senses.  
2.  The intimidating and often violent tactics of the left are frequently compared with those of Islamists.  The violence of jihadis surpasses, in scale at least) anything in the history of Western religions, and some historians reckon that Christian inquisitions were modeled on Islam.  See Holy Warriors by John O'neill.
3.  Notably excepted are those who challenge their world-view and are seen as hateful, selfish, bigoted and violent.
4.  a. John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime provides exhaustive documentation.  b. A further example of denying reality (including that of human nature) is the federally-caused financial meltdown; once again, good intentions coupled to terrible outcomes.
5.  The left, despising capitalism as it does, devoutly believes (facts be damned) that economic wealth is a fixed quantity; one person or group who has wealth has it at the expense of others.  The constant creation of new wealth in free markets is something they don't (or won't) understand.  Worse, they don't understand that without capitalism there can be no free democracies.
6.  I will say here that I believe all humans (as individuals) have more in common than differences.  What ideologues overlook is that the West has been successful in unprecedented ways because of the manner in which its societies have chosen to organize themselves in the traditions of the Western heritage.  The enormous achievements of Western Civilization are the achievements of its own structure and values.  Outside the West the world is predominantly Hobbsean where killing, theft and tyranny are the norm.  That is a reality that multiculturalism denies.  Liberals will argue that with China's emerging command capitalism that nation is an exception.  It remains a totalitarian state -- better than under Mao, to be sure -- but a study of the Laogai prison camps is not encouraging; nor is the Chinese government's stated position: 
“Our economic theory holds that the human being is the most fundamental productive force. Except for those who must be exterminated physically out of political consideration, human beings must be utilized as productive forces, with submissiveness as the prerequisite. The Laogai system's fundamental policy is 'Forced Labor' as a means, while Thought Reform is our basic aim."

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