The Rise and Fall of Liberalism (Part Two)

How the West Was Infiltrated

Previously: The Rise and Fall of Liberalism (Part 1)

The Course of Empire: Destruction by Thomas Cole (source)

Given that the decline of the West has tracked with the replacement of classical liberalism with “social liberalism” (really socialism by another name), it might be tempting to argue that classical liberalism did not “fail” as such… it was merely subverted.

But philosophies, in the sense of the word that classical liberalism is a philosophy, function as moral, ethical, and social structures to order and unify the societies that create them. And as such, one of the essential functions of a philosophy is to protect itself and its society from ideological subversion.

A philosophy which contains weaknesses that allow it to be turned against the civilization it was created to serve, is a failed philosophy, requiring modification or replacement.

So, how was classical liberalism attacked? And in what way was it vulnerable to these attacks?

Classical liberalism was attacked in two ways.

By leveraging some of its principles (individual rights and equality) against others (political and economic freedom).

In order to implement socialism, you must first erode political and economic freedom, which socialism is incompatible with. But if you are in a society where liberalism is very successful, and very popular, you’re going to have a hard time arguing that political and economic freedom are not good things.

The solution, of course, is to make the society you wish to subvert live up to its own principles… not to its own principles as it understands them, but to whatever twisted version of them you can pass off as the genuine article.

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So, for example, the first thing you might do is argue that we must close all the insane asylums. After all, every human being has the right to individual liberty, does he not? We cannot a priori assume that someone will wander the streets harassing passers-by just because he is a schizophrenic who believes that aliens walk among and are plotting to steal his soul.

Perhaps you could make an entirely fictional film wherein all the schizophrenic inmates are merely quirky weirdos who are really the salt of the earth, and the doctors and staff are petty, vicious sadists who delight in the exercise of power over the helpless.

Just hypothetically speaking

Then you argue for legalization, or decriminalization, of addictive substances. After all, every human being has the right to individual liberty, does he not? What business of ours what another man puts into his body, which belongs to him.

We cannot a priori assume that someone will break into people’s houses and steal their possessions for the price of a fix, just because he is an addict who cannot hold a job. It’s utterly insignificant, in classical liberal philosophy, that this is what the overwhelming majority of junkies actually do, because in this philosophy, rights and rights, and they cannot be violated on the mere basis of empirically predictable outcomes.

Then, when the streets of your city are full of crazy hobos and junkie derelicts, you relabel them “the unhoused,” as if the basic problem with them is economic… they simply cannot afford a house.

Then you argue, under the liberal principle that all humans have rights and worth, and society needs to help them economically.

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Which, of course, is the socialism you wanted in the first place. Better yet for your cause, it is an unlimited amount of socialism, because no amount of cash or subsidies will ever turn a schizophrenic or an addict into a normally functioning member of society. So long as the drugs are flowing to the addicts, and the asylums are closed, there will always be a population of roaming derelicts to support arguments for the next socialist policy.

And once the precedent has been set that it is “liberal,” rather than a fundamental violation of property rights, to take property from one who has earned, and give it to one who needs, then the basic premise of socialism has already been accepted by society, and all that remains is to continue moving the window of acceptable discourse towards greater and greater levels of robbery.

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Obviously, to a classical liberal, such as those who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the right of a crazed hobo to wander freely did not trump the right of a young mother to be free from harassment as she walks down the sidewalk with her children, or the right of shopowners to do business with customers who aren’t being driven away by feral and depraved squatters.

The problem is, such ideas were common sense to them, and they did not, therefore, explicitly incorporate them in their recording of classical liberal philosophy.

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The second way classical liberalism is attacked:

By leveraging its principles to prevent societies that embraced it from defending themselves against other societies which did not.

A society is unable to defend itself if its philosophy requires it to treat all human beings equally, with no preferences or value judgements between them.

This is because the very act of defense is the act of playing favorites. A society under attack must treat its enemies differently from its members and its allies, not based on their behavior as individuals, but on their membership in a hostile group.

Once again, this is an idea that the early framers of classical liberalism regarded as common sense, and thus failed to write it down. But, centuries later, when their ideas about common sense have faded from the world, what remains are simply the explicit principles of classical liberalism.

The Declaration of Independence does not say “all classical liberals, who agree a priori to respect the rights of others, are created equal.” It says that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.

Declaration of Independence, John Trumbull (source)

If other classical liberal documents then specify that freedom of speech and expression is among those rights, then you have no philosophical tool to justify silencing your enemies when they call for your death and the destruction of your society.

If they argue for the right of any man to bear arms, then you have no philosophical tool to justify disarming your enemies of the weapons with which they have stated their intent to kill you.

If they argue for the right of any man to roam where he will, respecting only the boundaries of private property, then you have no philosophical tool to justify stopping legions of your enemies from crossing your border, as they use their right to free speech to declare their intent to kill you, and their right to bear arms to bring weapons for that purpose.

Common sense does not protect civilization.

It would be easy to wave a hand and dismiss these attack scenarios with statements such as “that’s ridiculous,” or “no one would argue that.”

This is not only utterly false, because societies have enemies who can and will argue anything that will further their goals of destruction, and utterly irrelevant, because a philosophy whose basic functions require us to ignore its precepts according to unwritten, and mutable, precepts of “common sense,” is a broken philosophy with no immune system.

It can last precisely as long as is required for enemies to discover philosophical attacks against its weak points, and to use those attacks to subvert its culture, and prevent it from acting in its own interest.

For Western Civilization to survive, classical liberalism must be replaced.

Some philosophers, such as Eric S. Raymond, argue that it can be “revised,” or “refactored,” but this is reification.

A philosophy is not a home which can be remodeled, or a set of software functions which can be refactored. There is no meaningful distinction between altering a philosophy and replacing it, except that the first metaphor implies there will be less work, which makes the speaker feel better.

… But with what?

It’s easy to talk about replacing or fixing guiding principles. But in order to actually do this, you must come up with a new set which not only fixes the problems with the old set, but is palatable to the people you expect to embrace them as a replacement.

In part three of this series, we will discuss why classical liberalism was designed with its particular set of weakness, which can help us understand how they might be fixed.

Continue this series:

The Rise and Fall of Liberalism (Part Three)

The Rise and Fall of Liberalism (Part Four)

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Previously…