Liberalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew liberalism arose during the Palestinian captivity, as white Liberalism appeared in the American north during desegregation, as the notion of the Master Race devolved in Germany following World War II. In such desperate times, the vanquished would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. American liberalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses appeal to the lame and impotent.
What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family.
It is the state of modern life.
The liberal (or more accurately, the beleaguered individual who comes to embrace liberalism) cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his ilk and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To liberalism.
What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family.
It is the state of modern life.
The liberal (or more accurately, the beleaguered individual who comes to embrace liberalism) cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of his ilk and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To liberalism.