One of the greatest distractions and threats we experience as a society today is from those hell bent on anti-liberalism.
In its purest form, liberalism is the belief in freedom, equal treatment of all, and the inalienable rights of individuals, not the rights of groups or collectives. We might look at the Declaration of Independence as the purest form of liberalism defined.
Anti-liberalism is the opposite and is an intellectual position that rejects liberalism as an impossible state of individualism, maximized liberties, and egalitarianism. Proponents of anti-liberalism believe that all people will never be equal, and that society needs a class of people that sits above all else, leads the masses, and decides the rules.
The roots of liberalism are often historically associated with such thinkers as John Locke (1632–1704), an English philosopher and physician considered the father of liberalism, and Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), a French lawyer and philosopher who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. Montesquieu is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world, including in the United States.
Liberalism was a political movement that spanned the better part of the last four centuries. Various revolutions in the 1600s, such as that in England in 1688, and through the 1700s, including the Revolutionary War, which established the United States of America, and the French Revolution, were motivated by liberalism. Each of these events occurred as a result of an attempt to limit the power of a supreme monarch.
The use of the word liberalism to define a specific political doctrine did not occur until the nineteenth century. Even into the mid-twentieth century, liberalism was still about individualism, civil liberties, and the right to have dissident thought and speech that questioned authority. Growing up, my formative years were marked by anti-Vietnam War marches, the musical Hair, which symbolized love, happiness, and freedom, and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, an activist who spearheaded the civil rights movement in the United States.
The original philosophy of liberalism is likely best upheld today by Libertarians, who are neither Democrats nor Republicans. Libertarians believe that liberty is a core principle and that living should maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment, and self-ownership. Modern-day liberalism or anti-liberalism is really the opposite of libertarianism.
Anti-liberalism is expressed today by reducing individuals to a group identity, defining that group in permanent victim terms, and denying others their constitutional and human right to challenge that group and its ideology. Anti-liberalism represents the hardening and unbending institutionalization of once-vital revolutionary and forward-thinking ideas about human engagement and relationships. Liberalism has been reduced to rote memorization and repetition of sound bites and demonstration of behaviors that are repressively Stalinist, and dependent on an intricate and complex web of exploitive politicians, think tanks, TV news talking heads, and a government bureaucracy to enforce its totalitarian principles.
Anti-liberal politicians are those who espouse freedom of speech but focus on silencing differing perspectives. We experience this every day on TV and in the streets and on college campuses where protests, which in recent years have been turning violent, are mounted against any person or organization that has views not consistent with those doing the protesting. These anti-liberal people are trained in protesting and community organizing, often deploying tactics such as those written by Saul Alinsky in his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are ardent Alinskyites. In 1969, Hillary Clinton wrote “There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model,” which was her ninety-two-page senior thesis while at Wellesley College.
One could make the argument that the rise and election of Donald Trump, as President of the United States, was actually the result of and reaction of many to modern-day anti-liberals. Enough people perceived that the Democrat Party had gone too far and no longer represented their views for what it means to be a true liberal or even a liberal blue-collar Democrat. Even today, society is constantly being presented with divisive, victim talk, from anti-liberal, almost apoplectic Democrat party leaders and politicians. There is little discussion from anti-liberal Democrats about actually expanding freedom, security, or human rights--in fact you can see these politicians blatantly lying to the American people and making up their own rules in Congress. When they are not attacking Donald Trump, they speak of more taxes, expansion of government regulations, censuring the so-called right-wing media, opening borders to all, and increasing the entitlement state, yet they are short on real solutions that address that which many Democrats and Republicans alike believe are ailing the country.
Anti-liberals fail to see that many citizens are increasingly placing the blame of failing inner city education, crime, drugs, and murders on the backs of anti-liberal policies, cronyism, corruption, and lack of action. It’s as if anti-liberals are tone deaf or don’t care, and therein may rest the root issue with their problems as a Democrat party today. Awakened voters see through the veneer of their regurgitated policy prescriptions, which are lip service and no value to society at large.
In no way is every citizen who identifies as a liberal or Democrat in total agreement with the views and actions of their anti-liberal representatives and leadership in Congress or with others in society who demonstrate anti-liberal views. Most people believe in the original tenets of liberalism, but they have become co-opted by the leaders of the Democrat party to think and behave in a way actually not in line with human nature, which is about individualism and freedom.
Yet, very few citizens really care about what is happening daily in Washington, D.C. This is where the mainstream media plays its most important (and well-paid-for) role. Politicians and the managers of society (aka Deep State) use the 24-hour news cycle, TV programming, and “fake news” stories to take the anti-liberal rhetoric to the people, indoctrinating and conditioning the reality they want to create or perpetuate in society.
Unless observant and aware, people hear this negative rhetoric over and over again, which is upsetting to most and incites fear in many, generating energy into the anti-liberal design for power and control. All of this is massively on display through peoples’ posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets used to express their anti-liberal views and opinions. Clearly, the anti-liberal Democrats and media did not get what they wanted in the last election.
But, it’s more than that. The sixty years of efforts to mold US society into their ideology of anti-liberalism is in jeopardy. This is totally on display every day evidenced by the huge conceptual gap between President Trump and his anti-liberal critics. Many of his critics are highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats, who regard themselves as models of compassion—which they have elevated into a supreme political and Democrat party principle—but who routinely refer to President Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers, and even racists, misogynists, and homophobes.
These elite anti-liberals have been educated and highly conditioned to occupy a space of thought and belief that is ill-organized, subjective, abstract or theoretical, and certainly not pragmatic. Anti-liberals routinely fail to systematically observe the everyday life and degrading social conditions of the people they say they care for, much less understand the repressive and persecuting conditions under which the majority of Americans live. There has been a reluctance or inability of these anti-liberals to admit that things are just not that great for their constituents or even to confront the obvious rise in terror in this country spurred by jihadism, for fear of being offensive and not politically correct in the eyes of their anti-liberal peers.
Clearly, Hillary Clinton was a disastrously wrong candidate. She secured the nomination only through trickery and deception, which was perpetrated by the Democratic National Committee and assisted by a corrupt national media that imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals. Bernie Sanders probably had the right populist message and policies for this time in history. Even Joe Biden, with all his gaffs, may have had a chance to defeat Donald Trump, at the time.
Yet, what real choice does a voter have, who wants to participate in the process, with just a two-party system. One side has been hijacked by the anti-liberals and is clearly going the direction of totalitarianism—a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the State. The other side of “Trumpism” is not so much a theory of government as a celebration of one individual’s claimed capacity to govern. But, it too has its own Deep State actors, like Mitt Romney. President Ronald Reagan saw government as a beast that needed to be brought under control and shrunken. President Trump sees it more as an entity in need of new management. Government, in Trump’s view, is not necessarily bad in itself—it’s just run by incompetents and corrupts, which, as we are learning, may not be too far from the truth.
The challenge for so many, by accepting and approving of the hatred that is displayed, whether it be a play in New York City in which a figure of Donald Trump is assassinated, fear-mongering about Trump policies, the Democrat's quest for impeachment, or protests and violence of anti-liberals against anyone who is not of their like mind, is to awaken and break free from the anti-liberal conditioning, and then to espouse and live life under the original tenants of liberalism. Again, the challenge is awakening to the truths. The root of liberalism is freedom of thought and expression, across party lines. The problem is that modern-day liberalism has actually succeeding in twisting people to believe that they are liberal when indeed they are not.
All of this has actually worked against the anti-liberals by swinging the pendulum of politics to the right in the United States and also in Europe as we are seeing in multiple countries like France and England. Citizens have an absolute right to demand basic rights, freedom of thought and expression, and security from their government, in whom they put their trust and to whom they pay sometimes exorbitant taxes. The contortions to which so many anti-liberal politicians and media personalities resort to show political correctness and avoid the connection between open borders and non-citizen-crime, failing inner city education and lack of employment with drugs and crime, and shootings, stabbings, bombings, and persecutions of citizens to perverse religious ideology is remarkable, particularly given their supposed caring for their constituents and the usual animosity toward religion and in particular Christianity. Yet, on this last point, most in the media have no clue about the tenets of any religious beliefs and how numerous passages in written works have been interpreted in different ways over time to both inspire good or spur acts of evil. It seems that the facts really just don’t matter.
To say that most modern-day liberals or anti-liberals are not clued in to reality is not a fair statement. They are creating their own reality, which is based on their own perceptions. Almost everyone understands that humans are polluting the environment, money and debt ruin lives, politicians lie, infrastructures are crumbling, human and child trafficking is rampant, and that education needs an overhaul. Many have bought into anti-liberalism, because they perceive that it has a solution to these problems, when in reality anti-liberalism is full of false promises and, for that matter, false idols and gods. Anti-liberals are only bent on controlling thought, repressing dissent, and managing society in their image. The sooner we all awaken to this, the more we will be able to shift the consciousness of society for the better.
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