Common Sense v. Liberal Dogma

You can't make this stuff up

The other day, I posted an inventory of propositions that would strike most people, even most Liberals, as perfectly reasonable, indeed irrefutable, principles, but are in fact, whether explicitly or by logical implication, radically incompatible with Liberal precept. I thought it would be a good idea to post an annotated version of the list explaining just how and why.

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1. Some people are stronger, smarter, or wealthier than others, whether by virtue of innate talents, hard work, plain good luck, or all three, and that’s just how life is.

(Liberalism on the contrary has it that all human beings were originally created equal; it logically follows that inequality among people as we find them can only be the result of violence, exploitation and oppression, or of irrational and unjust forms of political or economic organization that unfairly “privilege” some at the cost of others (“feudalism”, “capitalism”, “structural racism”). If people as we actually find them are unequal, it is our duty to make them equal once again, by the power of the State, or violent revolution).

2. People you don’t know or have any dealings with shouldn’t get to vote on what you have for dinner when you’re the one paying for it, just because they too are human beings with human rights.

(Liberalism holds as a fundamental article of “constitutional” government that the democratically-elected government can legitimately direct the use of what you have to the extent that it perceives a “public interest” in doing so. This government can, and actually does, vote on every matter deemed to concern the “public interest” without excepting any aspect of life- including what you eat, which is in fact regulated by the State to an astonishing extent).

3. A decent person feels a moral obligation to reciprocate favours done for him, and that he freely accepted or asked for.

(This sentiment is the basis of the natural human patron-client relation, which Liberalism despises as odious “corruption”).

4. The more power you have, the more good you can do.

(For Liberalism, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”; the more power you have, the more dangerous to your fellow man).

5. If you hire somebody to do a job, you may legitimately give him orders concerning the performance of the duties agreed upon in the employment contract, and he has a binding obligation to obey those orders while on the clock.

(Here again, this sentiment is the basis of personal power based on patronage, including Monarchy, which according to Liberalism is categorically illegitimate. Hence everywhere Liberalism strives to limit the enforceable contents of employment contracts to the extent possible).

6. What you legally have is yours, and reject any claim to the contrary.

(As a corollary of rejecting article 1 above, Liberalism holds that what you think you rightfully own really belongs to somebody else, from whom you are fictively deemed to have stolen it: the descendants of slaves, or some other oppressed persons. Historically, this fiction served as the very foundation of the Liberal State as it exists today).

7. You have a right to set binding rules for the use of what you have by others, should you see fit to allow it, and they have an obligation to abide by the rules you lay down.

(This is the basis of Feudalism, which for Liberalism is the apotheosis of ignorance, superstition, and tyranny, and can never be legitimate).

8. The confidence you place in the authority of a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other professional or practitioner you might rely on rests first and foremost on the hard-earned expertise that he has and you need, which expertise doesn’t derive from the elected Legislature that grants him legal authorization to practice.

(Liberalism maintains that all legitimate authority is delegated, never inherent in the person; a doctor has authority as a doctor because he has a license to practice, not because of his skill-set, which is merely incidental in that the qualification for licensing can be whatever the professional college and the State thinks it should be).

9. If you hire and pay a guy to paint your house or fix your plumbing, he doesn’t acquire a say in the disposition of your house by having done it.

(What you think is yours is really communal property in that, if somebody else contributes something to it, he has a share in its ownership and a “democratic” say in its disposition- for his rights, being “unalienable”, are something he can’t forfeit in exchange for cash, which would be “corruption” of the highest degree. This doctrine was central to the abolition of Monarchy and its replacement with Liberal democracy in politics, and, applied to private or economic life, the basis of subsequent Marxism and notions like “workplace democracy” today).

10. In life it’s generally a very good thing to have friends who are much more powerful than your enemies, and sometimes it’s a good idea to win such friends by making yourself useful to them in some way.

(Once again, this is the natural basis of patronage systems, hence the germ form of Monarchy, hence for Liberalism cravenly servile and morally reprehensible; you should strive to be totally independent, even if that means making yourself a walking target).

11. You’re not an oppressor of those weaker and less powerful than you just because you exist.

(Liberalism: Yes, you are. You may not have actually oppressed the weaker; but you could. Hence, as both Haller and Nietzsche observe, the distinguishing feature of Liberalism is that it doesn’t seek to unseat this or that particular powerful man, as did traditional rebels, upstarts, and usurpers, but rather to do away with powerful men altogether through social levelling).

12. You are the rightful superior of your rightful subordinates, not the other way around.

(Liberalism: The powerless and oppressed are the rightful superiors of their superiors, precisely because they are the inferiors of their superiors. And, in perfect fairness to the Liberals, from a logical point of view their democracy could be made operational on no other grounds, manifestly absurd as they are).

13. It would probably be a bad idea to pay tuition fees in order to take a class that would be taught by you and the other students, not the prof, even though the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal.

(Liberalism: only a Nazi or other enemy of democracy and freedom would point this out).

14. At the end of day, the owner of a bar has the right to eject unruly patrons from the premises because he owns the place, not in order to secure the greatest good of the greatest number, or any other higher purpose posited by philosophers. The right to bounce a drunk may very well serve such purposes, but does not derive from them; for if it did, everybody would have that right, not just the proprietor.

(Should the Liberal State deign to authorize the private use of force in this situation, it can only be on grounds of public utility, the greatest good of the greatest number).

15. Most men don’t in fact beat their wives and children or want to, even though they easily could; on the contrary, most men like to think that they stand ready to use their superior physical strength to protect their wives and children from being beaten.

(“Patriarchy” is inherently abusive, not only because men could easily beat on their wives and kids, even if they don’t, but also because they feel have a duty to protect them; the resulting relation of dependence is an odious form of corruption that robs women and children of their rightful and unalienable “autonomy” and “self-determination”.

16. A fair fight between men ends just as soon as one of the combatants submits; a brawler who keeps whaling on a manifestly defeated opponent is a common criminal who probably belongs behind bars.

(Here Liberalism all of sudden stops being Feminist and makes sophistic appeals to a misplaced conception of manly pride: a real man, we are told, never submits to another man, no matter how much stronger, because he must recognize no man as a superior; all men are equal, after all, even when they have just incontrovertibly demonstrated that they aren’t. Mutatis mutandis, it would be an affront to the spirit of democratic equality for the victor to show mercy, since mercy can be bestowed only by a superior. It follows that every fight should be a fight to death; in this light, the incredibly homicidal total wars and mass slaughter for which the Liberal State is infamous becomes intelligible, as does the penchant of its urban lower classes at home for bringing guns instead of fists to bear in every quarrel).

17. There’s less of a chance of getting mugged in the street by a rich and powerful than a poor and needy man.

(That’s just racist, citing crime stats like that; and the mugger is just doing justice, taking back what the rich and powerful man stole from him. The inequality between them proves it; it’s true by definition, and even though you’re the one getting mugged).

18. A society that maintains the right to punish criminals or take prisoners in wartime is one that practices slavery, and it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise.

(It’s not slavery when democracies do it, but “rehabilitation” that helps an under-civilized person become fully human and hence fit for the enjoyment of his human rights).

19. The full complement of voting and other civic rights in a Republic probably shouldn’t be extended to babies, even though we’re told that they are universal rights enjoyed by all human beings.

(See Liberal rejoinder to Art. 13 above. Some Liberals will add that the baby isn’t really human and hence doesn’t enjoy human rights, including the right to exist, but this is a point of contention amongst the Liberals).

20. There’s something inherently wrong with sexual perversion, drug abuse, self-mutilation, hardcore pornography, public drunkenness or nudity, etc. that doesn’t disappear when the State permits those things, when the participants “consent”, or when there is no force or fraud involved.

(The “general will” of the people made manifest in positive law alone decides right and wrong; its judgments are final, and can never be questioned or held to scrutiny against the standard of any higher, Natural or Divine law that doesn’t derive from it. If it’s legal- it’s licit).

21. You have rights, because you pay taxes.

(You have rights by virtue of membership in the species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, not because you perform civic obligations).

22. It sometimes seems that people who gush about “our democracy” don’t mean your democracy.

(Only an enemy of our democracy would say that; and an enemy of our democracy, as Locke (in his Second Treatise) had it, has quit the social contract and forfeited his humanity, and may legitimately be hunted down and destroyed as a wild animal, with no legal process. See the execution of Ashli Babbitt for a highly instructive example).

23. One way or another, the State, as the final authority in a given territory, always decides who gets to reside in its territory, and a State organized as a Republic furthermore always decides who is to be admitted to the privilege of citizenship; there is no getting around it, since whoever has the power to open borders can also close them, and whoever admits new citizens can also refuse to.

(See Liberal rejoinder to Art. 13 above).

24. The principle of the consent of governed means individuals can consent to be governed by a King nobody ever voted for, and hence would be no less free than if they consent to rule by a “democratic” government.

(Monarchy is slavery by self-evident definition, and it is impossible to consent to to slavery, although individuals have consented to be governed by Kings in exchange for reciprocal benefits since time immemorial; they just didn’t know they weren’t consenting when they gave their consent).

25. Individuals should have a right to bear arms to do justice for themselves, but ought to exercise it prudently, and with respect for the legitimate rights of others at all times.

(Two perpetually-warring Liberal schools of thought here. One holds that, since the State, according to Liberalism, is founded entirely upon overwhelming military power, and must have a monopoly on violence, it follows that “private” individuals must be completely disarmed as well; the other, that individuals may have small arms deemed suitable for “civilian” use by the State as a democratic bulwark (“well-regulated militia”) against the possible ascension of a new King, but never, ever the right to exercise self-help or private judgment in their own cases- something “uncivilized” and fundamentally incompatible with the existence of States, even though past States got along just fine without debarring this right from “private” individuals).

26. The State can never legitimately expropriate private property, since it doesn’t belong to the State; but it may make rules concerning the use of private property, if that use touches upon the rightful property and rights of the State, or of other private individuals.

(Under Liberalism, since all title to property issues from the State, guaranteed by the irresistible military capacity or monopoly on force enjoyed by the State, it can also be revoked by the State, and expropriated at will in the name of a “public interest” defined exclusively by the State).

27. Power isn’t harmful because it exists, but when it is abused. Just like a gun, it can be used for good, neutral, or evil purposes, depending on who uses it and why.

(The only way to prevent harm is to neuter individuals and render them incapable of doing harm, by banning guns and other means of projecting personal power, along with personal power itself. See also Nietzsche’s important critical observations on this particular article of Liberal faith).

28. Those who say they want to abolish all power and all States from the Earth often really seek to seize it for themselves, and then exercise it in a much more despotic fashion than those they seized it from ever did.

(Liberals: This admittedly happens sometimes, when such noble and well-intended experiments as the French Revolution or Soviet Communism tragically get infiltrated and corrupted by powerful men who introduce illiberal contaminants into them. But real Communism has never been tried; humanity just isn’t advanced enough for it yet, and perhaps, and unfortunately (some Liberals will add), never will be).

29. Weak men who have things to prove are more likely to abuse positions of authority than strong men secure and confident in their authority.

(What are you, some kind of Fascist?” Strongmen are inherently dangerous to democracy).

30. It is much more degrading to one’s self-respect to have take an order from an equal or inferior than from an acknowledged superior.

(For Liberalism the opposite is necessarily true. See Liberal rejoinder to Art. 12 above).

31. If supreme power really does rightfully belong to those over whom it is exercised, as democratists have it, then the army would undeniably have a democratic right to overthrow the civilian power that created it and equips, houses, feeds, and pays the troops, and install a military government in its place, which probably wouldn’t be a good thing.

(See Liberal rejoinder to Art. 13 above).

32. The reason people put up posters of champion athletes or guitar heroes as opposed to faceless crowds or the weak and vulnerable in their rooms is because human beings have a natural tendency to admire and attach themselves to the great, those with proven superiority in some field.

(This is so much atavistic mental pathology, so many symptoms of a diseased proto-Fascist “authoritarian personality” yet to be cured by progressive educators and psychotherapists).

33. Human beings shouldn’t be treated as livestock to be improved or alternately, culled by the State in the interest of perfecting the race, creating a new man, making the world safe for democracy, social justice, civilizing putative savages, or any of the other grandiose purposes intellectuals say the State exists only in order to fulfill.

(The Liberal State is the very incarnation of Reason writ large on Earth, the great civilizing force which uplifts unthinking brutes from a barbaric “state of Nature” and makes conscious, thinking beings and men of them (Rousseau, Hegel). Since your existence as a rational and fully-realized human being derives from the State, your very being belongs to it. In any case, you freely gave yourself over in entirety, surrendering all your natural or personal power to the State upon leaving the state of Nature and entering the “social contract”; the fact of your residence on the national territory alone suffices to prove it. This civilizing process can never, as Kant taught, be completed, only approximated; it follows that the progressive march towards human perfection and away from the state of Nature is incessant. Along the way the State might encounter some atavistic or defective populations who are incapable of Progress, or refuse it; these obstacles in the path of Progress can and indeed, must be eliminated, and with no moral reservations, since they are incapable of Reason, hence inhuman. The State itself is not at liberty to refuse its grand purpose and duty to serve as the instrument and flagship of Reason; and it is the task of intellectuals to use their superlative powers of reasoning in order to discern what its duties are).

34.It is legitimate to spend one’s own money on oneself, to use it for one’s own benefit, as long as one does no wrong to others in the process, and the same is true of any other form of personal power, including political power.

(Since personal power is, for Liberalism, categorically illegitimate, and can in any case never be legitimately exercised for one’s own benefit, only the good of “the people”, it didn’t take very long for the more internally-consistent schools of thought such as Socialism or Anarchism to propose the abolition of money; only the demonstrated impossibility of doing so led to the project being abandoned, even in the Communist States).

35. There’s bound to be serious problems with any government founded on a doctrine which holds that governments exist only to protect individual rights, and then gives governments unlimited power to restrict individual rights as far as they deem necessary or expedient in order to do so.

(No silly, the Founding Fathers invented a whole system of constitutional safeguards and “checks and balances” to keep the clashing political factions that arise from this unresolvable contradiction at bay; and the system like, totally never leads to crippling gridlock or civil war or anything like that).

36. The State should administer things more than it does people, as long as they refrain from violating the legitimate rights of the State and one another, and from doing other things that are also inherently wrong.

(See Liberal rejoinders to Arts. 2 and 33 above).

37. Questions concerning the legitimate powers of the State and the rights of individuals shouldn’t be answered by recourse to avowed theoretical fictions, but on the basis of sound appreciation of how real-life people and social relationships actually are, as opposed to what intellectuals think they should be in imaginary systems.

(I’ll let Haller, commenting on the obstinate Liberal recourse to fictions Liberal ideology itself freely acknowledges to be empirically false, take this one):

Behold the progress of enlightenment! Until now, fathers doubtlessly had children, and that's their historical origin; but according to their juridical origin, the children should have had their father. The boss gives orders to his workers, because he was there before they were, and took them into his service, and that's the historical origin of his workforce; but according to its juridical origin, the employees should be boss, and the boss the employee; and this is what they call reason, even though it contradicts the first rule of reason, which holds a thing cannot be and not be at the same time. Trees have all their roots in the ground and branches in the air, that's the fact; but according to the rationalist conception, the branches should have been in the ground and the roots in the air, or at least philosopher-gardeners should try to bring trees into as close an approximation as possible to this most rational ideal.