The self-styled intellectual class is growing excitable. Under the onslaught of Trump, Brexit, Europe-wide populism, and Jordan Peterson, can we be certain, they ask, that the open society will continue? The only way on from liberalism, they believe, is backward into the darkness whence we allegedly emerged. Even those who are not enthusiastic about liberalisms tender mercies are required to moderate their hopes for its demise, lest the new nurse turn out to be worse than the serving one. A lot of people, including people who call themselves conservatives, appear to be concerned about the future of liberalism, and this concern is causing the age to be misread.
For the discussion is bogus to begin with. What is called liberalism here is not liberalism at all, but its direct opposite. It is liberalism only in name, and therefore offers no guarantee of an open society at all. By corrupting the meanings of terms like equality, tolerance, and human rights, the liberal ascendancy of the past three decades has overburdened the skeleton of our civilization, leaving it weakened and susceptible to collapse.
We should stop using words like liberalism as though they were not already subsumed in irony, as though the sense of virtue and good intention that they are supposed to connote remained valid. I believe it has become necessary to prefix certain words in our political lexicon to alert bystanders to their hidden corruption. For three decades I have referred to pseudo-liberalism. What we call liberalism is no longer to be thought upright. If it dies, it will be a cause of celebration, not dismay.
This pseudo-liberalism is founded on a lie: the idea that freedom resides in getting whatever you demand and doing whatever you desire. In the words of the diabolical occultist Aleister Crowley: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. A moments thought reveals such ideas as civilization-threatening. By definition, what one person demands must be taken from someplace where it already benefits others, and doing exactly what you want will invariably be a cost to someone else or, ultimatelybecause of the complexity of the human instrumentto yourself. There are libraries of philosophy and theology on these topics, but as far as contemporary conversations are concerned, it is as though not a word of this is relevant.
The Sixties generation, which introduced these incoherencies into the bloodstream of modern societies, has not been honest about its own experience of these much-vaunted freedoms, which have left a trail of devastation behind them. One symptom of this is that there is virtually no lucid witness to the errors of pseudo-liberalism, not just in the intimate areas of human relations, but in relation to economics and the movements of people in the modern world. For half a century, these converging strands of insipid thinking have dominated Western societies, steamrolling everything and everyone with the help of corporate money and devious propaganda, their incoherencies protected from scrutiny by the influence and dollars of Big This and Big That, by corrupted media and the force field of political correctness. Self-styled liberals have hijacked the idealism of the young, enlisting them for a project that has the outward appearance of virtue but is rotten to the core. They have convinced even our own children that globalism is an unequivocal good and that human safety and well-being can be maintained without the assistance of the civilization that made all these qualities possible in the first place.
Thus, pseudo-liberalism seeks to turn upside-down the value system of the civilization that once was Christendom, attacking its core institutions and mocking and censoring its history. It justifies genocide in the form of abortion and is clearly intentsometimes unwittinglyupon engineering the cultural and moral demolition of the West itself, by dint of godless relativism, induced migration, the elimination of distinct nations, and the destruction of the nuclear family.
And although this is quite clearly the most intolerant ideology to have emerged in the West since World War II, signs of the demise of this liberalism are met with handwringing from people who ought to know better. All right-thinking people must agree that populism is a bad thing. We must, while admitting its minor blemishes, still accept that what is called liberalism offers the one best way forward for Western societies.
Liberal-progressivismto give it its most informative nameis actually an advanced form of colonialism, imposing itself not just on territories but also claiming dominion over all future time, brooking no dissent and remorselessly punishing recalcitrant doubters. In this sense it is deeply totalitarian, insisting on one best way that cannot be questioned.
In his 1987 essayStories and Totalitarianism, Vclav Havel defined the mechanism of totalitarianism as the assassination of history to achieve both nihilisation of the past and mastery over the future. The instrument of this process he identified as the removal from history of the possibilities of human choice, mystery, and autonomy: History becomes a fixed sequence of unfolding inevitabilities, and the role of human beings is merely to acquiesce and embrace what is pressed upon them.
To put this another way, under the new colonialism the future is a city already constructed, waiting to be moved into. There is no space for human discussion or disagreement. It is already decidedand not, we are archly informed, by some arbitrary human authority but by the mechanistic mind of time, which ordains the course of history according to immutable and unchallengeable laws.
We are now, it is certain, seeing the early stages of the disintegration of this pseudo-liberalism. This liberalism has promised untrammeled economic growth, itself an example of its incoherence: Increasing growth never delivers increasing happiness. Moreover, in ignoring the inevitability of boom-bust, this promise provides an example of pseudo-liberal dishonesty.There is no final glorious destination.
This pseudo-liberalism also promises free speech, while curtailing it in the name of civilityemploying sophisticated abuses of language to impose censorship so as to protect its own incoherence, and arrogating to itself the right to stifle anything that offers a significant threat to itself.It also promises increasingly purer forms of democracy but in reality is pushing us ever closer to mob rule.
Pseudo-liberalism lays claim to the universalization of human rights, but it requires just a moments reflection to realize that what is meant by this is not universal in the least, but a highly ideological recalibration of the balance of power between establishments and minorities, which provide human shields for the prosecution of an undeclared war on what is.
Moreover, it is precisely the pseudo-liberal insistence on a selective understanding of human rights that lies at the heart of the current threat to Europes future. For if universal rights are to trump rights of culture, history, place, locality, home and hearth, the outcome will be the destruction of all culture, loyalty, and trust, creating an intercontinental incontinence that will sweep all order and coherence before it.
What is called liberalism attacks what is most precious in our tradition of community solidarity, opposing those values we have held dearestlove of God, nation, and familyin favor of an empty and faithless materialism and the pseudo-laws of the new ideologies. The flaws of this pseudo-liberalism amount to an indictment that far outweighs even the sum of the promised benefits, for it amounts, in truth, to the negation of democracy, free speech, and meaningful liberty.
It is true that there are actors waiting in the wings who represent something even more illiberal than the present dispensation. But we should not cling to a nurse for fear of something worse.Perhaps somewhere about the precincts of this paradox lies the explanation of why liberals have so far supported the influx of Muslims into Europe: This is part of the liberal program of disintegrating the culture, traditions, and civilization of the West. Often one is forced to wonder if liberals know anything about the nature of Islam and its ambitions, whether they are aware that the Islamic concept of the infidel disqualifies all such peoples from what they think their entitlements. No sane person could ever have accused these pseudo-liberals of being far-sighted. Still, here they have surely surpassed themselves with their willful myopia and stupidity. If they wish to imagine how it will end, I recommend they have a quiet read of Michel HouellebecqsSubmission, which tells of the capitulation of a future French establishment to the blandishments of Islam.
But the problem does not lie merely with pseudo-liberalism. Paradoxically, a dangerous tendency of thought has arisen in late times among conservatives: the idea that any flaws of liberalismsuch as, one presumes, its blind utopian globalism and politically correct excessespale compared to the barbarism to be observed elsewhere in the world. They take this to mean that we should not raise a fuss about what is happening in the West, but rather express gratitude for the openness we enjoy and the tolerance liberals extend to their opponents. This, too, is bogus. Tolerance here, like equality, means something different than it used to. Once, tolerance meant not interfering with, or attempting to suppress, beliefs that contradicted ones own, but this response has given way to a dictatorship of intolerance wherein everything is tolerated except the views of those who do not subscribe to the tenets of pseudo-liberalism.
Liberals speak of what they call the liberal order as though its virtues were self-evident. This allows them to adopt a tone of moral sanctimony. Those who disagree, therefore, mustipso factosuffer from some kind of pathological perverseness: They oppose the good out of fear, vexatiousness, or worse. But the pseudo-liberal sense of the good is selective and self-serving, and has no good plans for those who dissent from it. We have seen this, again and again, and what we have seenat the hands of social justice warriors, LGBT activists, #MeTooers, and the likeprovides evidence of what the liberal end of history would actually look like.
So let us not be frightened into shoring up that which is finally disintegrating. Pseudo-liberalism is finally disintegrating under belated retaliation from those it treats with contempt, as well as the weight of its own senselessness. The liberal state of affairs is a bit like the current state of rock n roll: Though on its last legs, no one can imagine what, if anything, comes next.This for a time appeared to be the strongest card of the self-proclaimed liberals: that they did indeed represent the end of history.Now, what is (often pejoratively) calledpopulismhas arisen to put paid to that idea.
This populism may represent the future, in one form or another, or simply the precursor to something we are not yet able to imagine.Butwhatever it is, it seems our only hope. The choice we face is not between left and right, orstill lessliberal and far right. Certainly, the choice is not between a continuation of the present pseudo-liberalism or a descent into Islamismthe first willinevitably give way to the second. Rather, the choice is between civilization and its antithesis. It could hardly be more serious.The time has come tolet the delusions of the Sixties finally die in their dilapidated beds.
John Watersis an Irish writer and commentator, the author of ten books, and a playwright.
More here:
The End of Pseudo-Liberalism | John Waters - First Things
- Fox News Anchor Comes Unglued, Berates 'Dumb' Liberal Colleague - The Daily Beast - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Mathew Chandy '24, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - UConn Today - University of Connecticut - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Will No One Rid Me Of These Meddlesome -Isms: Thinking and Rethinking Liberalism - Front Porch Republic - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Why market demand doesn't capture the value of the liberal arts | Letters - Tampa Bay Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- See what the students were wearing for the School of Liberal Studies at Savannah High prom - Savannah Morning News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Is a $330000 liberal arts education still 'worth it?' - Los Angeles Loyolan - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Judge installed by liberal Democrats over centrist Hochul pick responsible for Harvey Weinstein ruling - New York Post - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal Cities, Conservative Towns Seek Supreme Court's Help on Homelessness - The Wall Street Journal - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Luke Grimes on Yellowstones liberal critics: A lot of people see a cowboy hat and think, thats not for me - The Independent - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Liberal pundits really do have weekly meetings to 'shape' message on Trump - Washington Times - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Trump slams 'Bidenomics' ahead of court, claims to have a 'good chance' of winning liberal state - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ones a Conservative, Ones a Liberal. Heres Their Secret to Friendship. - InsideHook - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Bill Cotterell: What? NPR is liberal? Say it ain't so - Tallahassee Democrat - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Orban: Hungary is island in the European progressive liberal ocean - bne IntelliNews - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- NY Times keeps spotlight on NPR crisis on heels of Uri Berliner blowing whistle on liberal bias - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- CPAC Hungary: ex Polish PM Morawiecki warns of "destructive ideas of liberal elites" - Notes From Poland - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- The biggest threat to freedom in the West is liberalism itself - The New Statesman - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Letter: NPR Editor Berliner reveals liberal bias of network - Arizona Daily Star - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Chicago native says residents livid over liberal mayor's new migrant funding, ready to vote for Trump - Fox News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Ontario Liberal leader says Dresden landfill project could be nixed with 'stroke of a pen' - The Chatham Daily News - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Opinion: The Liberals' immigration policies have accomplished the opposite of what was intended - The Globe and Mail - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- At Issue | Was the Liberal budget a bust with Canadians? - CBC.ca - April 27th, 2024 [April 27th, 2024]
- Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? - The New Yorker - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Letters to the Editor: 'I see myself in Katie Britt' what liberal critics missed in the senator's response - Los Angeles Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Even when it criticizes Israel, the liberal world is not against us - opinion - The Jerusalem Post - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Former Trump Aide Alyssa Farah Griffin Becomes a Liberal Favorite - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Renowned author, liberal arts proponent to deliver annual Lester Lectures - Mercer University - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- NYU to Host Zaheer Ali at the Annual Liberal Studies Student Research ColloquiumApril 5 - NYU - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Power to the Neighborhoods!: New York City Growth Politics, Neighborhood Liberalism, and the Origins of the ... - Joint Center for Housing Studies - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Canada's Conservatives back NDP-Liberal anti-scab legislation that undermines the right to strike - WSWS - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments in Suburbs - The New York Times - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- PARKER: Clarence Thomas, liberal racism and the ongoing denigration of Black conservatives - Kankakee Daily Journal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Hollywoods freaks over Trump - Washington Examiner - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Why liberals failed in the fight against antisemitism - JNS.org - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Renew manifesto sneak peek and bits from Bucharest congress - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Katie Britt calls on liberal media 'to pay attention' to border - 1819 News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal truck wash cited $171k for OSHA violations - KSN-TV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Over 30,000 Killed in Gaza, but Even Israel's 'Liberal Left' Says: That's War - Opinion - Haaretz - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Man Injured in Beaver County Accident - KSCB News.net - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What is the Market's View on China Liberal Education Holdings Ltd (CLEU) Stock's Price and Volume Trends Monday? - InvestorsObserver - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- German liberals send defence expert into tripartite EU election leadership team - EURACTIV - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Ramaswamy warns liberal justices 'buying political latitude' with 9-0 ruling as more Trump cases lie ahead - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- How much of this is propelled by white liberal guilt from executives?: Gutfeld - Fox News - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberals and the Libel of Christian Nationalism - The Imaginative Conservative - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts & Science Academy - Austin extends home winning streak to seven - MaxPreps - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Liberal Racism and the Denigration of Black Conservatives - Daily Signal - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- Watchdog group exposes radical, liberal ideology of school-based health centers - The Lion - March 12th, 2024 [March 12th, 2024]
- What happens when a liberal learns her family owned slaves? - Leader & Times - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Is it Liberal Arts, Without the Arts? - Xavier Newswire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Quebec Liberal Party would be more popular with Denis Coderre at the helm: poll - Montreal Gazette - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Maine's Liberal Members of Congress Stand by Biden After Disastrous, Confused Press Conference - The Maine Wire - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal Media Scream: Kristen Welker likes to lecture Republicans, too - Washington Examiner - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Australia's only Liberal government lives on - for now - Yahoo News Australia - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Liberal institutions are the threat to liberal institutions Claudine Gay is warning about - Washington Examiner - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Elon Musk, the "free speech absolutist" kicks liberal journalists off Twitter - Daily Kos - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal Arts and studies in humanities under attack on college campuses - The Community Word - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Liberal candidate for federal byelection planned to run for Conservatives last year - National Post - January 10th, 2024 [January 10th, 2024]
- Bill Barton: 'The Liberal by the Bay' - Redheaded Blackbelt - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- OPINION | Female-dominated liberal arts imperative in male-dominated tech world - Tulane Hullabaloo - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts job with Tarleton State University | 37572379 - The Chronicle of Higher Education - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Laughing Stock: 'A liberal agenda' may not be what you think - Tucson Weekly - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Justin Trudeau plays the Trump card - POLITICO - POLITICO - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, Producer Of TV's 'All In The Family' And Influential Liberal Advocate, Dies At 101 - Newstalk 750 - 103.7 ... - KFQD - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Kremlin Taps Liberal Businessman to Oppose Putin in 2024 Election Report - The Moscow Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - WV News - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- MoveOn Carries Out Layoffs as Liberal Groups Struggle to Raise Money - The New York Times - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - El Paso Inc. - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- UW System President suggests universities with high numbers of low income students should shift away from liberal arts - Wisconsin Examiner - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Norman Lear, producer of TV's 'All in the Family' and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101 - The Caledonian-Record - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Israels representative in New York resigned to protest Netanyahu. Now hes got some tough words for liberal New York Jews. - Forward - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- Neal Milner: Watch That Swinging Door, Liberals, Lest It Hit You On The Way Out - Honolulu Civil Beat - December 7th, 2023 [December 7th, 2023]
- The Liberal Answer to Cancel Culture - Manhattan Institute - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Study: Liberal US priests facing 'progressive' extinction - The Pillar - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Jewish U.S. Groups Are Walking an Oh-So-Thin Tightrope - The New Republic - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Why a liberal arts degree is often a ticket to career success - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Open Forum: In their time, founding fathers were liberal - The Winchester Star - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberals announce National Campaign Committee Co-Chairs - Liberal Party of Canada - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- UT College of Liberal Arts hosts panel about Senate Bill 17 - The Daily Texan - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Liberal Arts student uses platform to educate others on the ... - Pennsylvania State University - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]
- Stanford celebrates 50 years of Structured Liberal Education ... - Stanford University News - November 8th, 2023 [November 8th, 2023]