Liberal

What is a liberal, you ask? This is perhaps one of the most complex questions in social and political science.

It used to be that liberals were in favor of maximizing human freedom. Today, we would call those folks "libertarians." Nowadays, "liberals" are in favor of restricting human freedoms, evidently because they've figured out that human beings don't use their freedoms responsibly, and so they need to be told what to do and how to live. Up until recently, these people were called extreme monarchists, and their leader was called a king or an emperor.

If the reader notices a certain, rather puzzling, disparity between these two definitions, it may help to realize that the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of political liberals is not their ideology, but rather their personality. In other words, the issues with liberals are primarily psychological, not political.

As it happens, there is another political grouping which goes by the name of progressive, or, more to the point, scientific socialist, or even Marxist, which has taken note of this peculiarity of a major segment of the voting age population, namely, its malleability and its openness to emotional blackmail via the mechanism of guilting.

Through the mechanism of guilting, liberals were convinced that Blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans and other minorities were oppressed by "the man" and needed to be liberated, which meant in practice that they had to be free to enroll their children in White schools, they had to be free to apply for, and be given, jobs without respect to the details of their qualifications or their criminal record, and they had to be free to apply for, and be given, mortgage loans and other major credits without respect to the details of their credit histories. Thus, liberals were persuaded to support some aspects of libertarianism and they came to see themselves as being in favor of maximizing human freedom. And, although women, as such, are technically not a "minority" in any numerical sense, it was discovered that they were an oppressed minority who had to be free to kill their children (or have a qualified medical doctor or technician kill their children) at any point up until birth, and sometimes after.

Later on, it was discovered that homosexuals, transvestites, etc., were oppressed sexual minorities and they had to be free to couple (or multiple) in any way they chose and they had to be free to enter into a covenant union (or a contract, as the case may be) given the name of "marriage" two or more at a time. Again, the emphasis has been on maximizing human freedom, and many people who describe themselves as libertarians even find these social innovations congenial to their ideology.

All of these innovations, of course, were, and are, managed under the able leadership of progressives (of various and sundry political stripes), who are guided by principles that typical liberals would find alien, perhaps even frightening, at least for the nonce.

Of course, not every voter, or even citizen, is a liberal or any stripe of progressive. Thus, conflicts inevitably arise in the implementation of these innovations. For example, people competing for jobs were upset when objective criteria of selection were rejected in favor of promoting diversity in the workplace. People providing the capital necessary for loans were upset when they were forced into high-risk investments with little prospect for compensation. People sending their children to public schools were upset when, first they were required to have their children bused to distant neighborhoods, and, later, they were not consulted about "diversity education" curricula.

They say "one man's meat is another's poison." Just so, one person's expansion of liberty often requires the contraction of the liberty of others. For a king to be maximally free, he must oppress his subjects. For a sexual pervert or a paranoid schizophrenic to be maximally free, he must terrorize the neighborhood. For a female athlete to be maximally free, resources that might be employed to build sports that are popular with fans must be diverted, thus making serious competition virtually impossible for once-hallowed home-town or college teams. For homosexuals to be free to marry, children must be taught that Genesis begins with the story of "Adam and Steve," often at the expense of the liberty of the parents to raise their children as they see fit.

Most recently, progressives have persuaded liberals that everyone must be free from want and risk. This means that they must have government assistance in areas such as housing, food, clothing, cell phones, Internet and medical care. Of course, these "freebies" (especially freedom from risk!) are expensive, and to manage the costs, progressives have persuaded liberals that it is necessary to enforce dietary and reproductive and parenting restrictions. Entrepreneurs, whether individuals or companies, must be increasingly restricted in what they are permitted to invest in, and they must subsidize government investments at increasing rates. Airline passengers must regularly be subject to what used to be termed "illegal search and seizure (even, perhaps of unmentionables)." No one must be allowed to own a gun, at least not one purchased on the open market. No one must be allowed to graduate from high school without the equivalent of a doctorate in artificial birth control or without the proper safeguarding vaccines. To minimize the costs and risks of commuting to work, everyone must use public transport and live as close as possible to the center of their closest megalopolis. This, of course, opens up large tracts of land for free ranging deer and other co-habitors of Planet Earth. Ultimately, people will recognize the practical need for government to manage birth quotas, like they do in China.

And just to be sure that no one engages in risky behavior, especially things like entertaining risky thoughts or associations, everyone must permit the government the freedom to monitor and record their every thought, word and deed.

Of course, when we examine these issues from a sordid ideological perspective, these innovations may seem ill advised, even, dare I say it, inducing discomfort. Progressives will no doubt point out, however, that if humanity is to make any progress at all, we all have to be prepared to move out of our comfort zones.