1. Introduction

Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must realize that the basic principle of our freedom is freedom to choose, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.

Dante

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all of its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Henry David Thoreau

Liberalism, as the term is used in American politics, encompasses a number of labeled ideologies, including socialism, statism, communism, fascism, Maoism, Marxism, and even welfare-statism. As the term is used in this blog, as well as how it is used throughout America, liberalism refers generally to the advance of the power of the state over the individual and is often juxtaposed to American conservatism, which, while advocating the preservation of many social traditional values, has generally come to represent the preservation of individual liberty from the violent authority of the state.

Liberalism itself is not just an ideology; it is, in fact, an ideology of ideologies; a “meta-ideology,” referring to the more general notion that men should be ruled by ideas of one form or another as opposed to by their own free will (within the bounds of laws whose non-ideological purposes are to prevent the savagery that arises from mankind’s natural covetousness, of course). Liberals in America, while belonging to many specific ideological faiths, generally believe that the lives of men should be ruled by ideas that may or may not be their own. In this regard, they stand in direct opposition to the founding fathers in the American political tradition who believed, and implemented in their constitutional laws, that each individual should, as much as possible, have the liberty to pursue his own happiness.

This blog is an inquiry into the reasons why people continue to be liberals in the face of an overwhelming amount of evidence that it simply does not work. The history of the last four-hundred years clearly demonstrates that ruling ideas eventually reduce society’s members to abject poverty and tyrannical cruelty. The efficacy of liberalism is not an issue here, it being assumed that any well-informed readers have already seen the evidence that it, in all of its forms, is simply a recipe for social disaster. The idea that governments (as opposed to customers) are always right has consistently led to bankruptcy and starvation wherever it was tried in the twentieth century, the three centuries previous to that, and the current young century that we live in now.

In addition to its economic unfeasibility, the idea that one man’s ideas should rule another man has consistently led to the natural violence of determining which man’s ideas should be the ruling ones. In turn, this competition of ideas has consistently lead to the rule of one man whose sociopathic personality has allowed him to most easily eliminate competing ideas and the men who spawn them.

That only leaves us with the question of why does liberalism persist as a bad idea – a bad idea of bad ideas. Liberalism flourishes in the face of failure because it is a part of man’s nature. Liberalism will always exist for the same reason that rape will always exist – because fear, guilt, and envy reside in the heart of man. External violence over others will always be an appetizing alternative to men who suffer the internal violence of their own alienation from themselves.

2. Society versus the State

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one;

Thomas Paine, Of the Origin and Design of Government

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington, Of the Origin and Design of Government

Social cooperation under the division of labor is the ultimate and sole source of man’s success in his struggle for survival and his endeavors to improve as much as possible the material conditions of his well-being.

Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

Society and the governing body that we know as the state are two different things. In fact, they exist as contradictions to each other. One is a voluntary organization wherein people have come together to cooperate to their own mutual benefit; the other is involuntary, its members being held together by a force that threatens them with violence and imprisonment should they stray from its rules and boundaries.

An example of a society is the relationship between a man and a woman in love. Two people, bonded to each other by physical attraction, the pleasure of each other’s company, and the compassion that is natural between people who have learned the meaning of sharing things, their relationship is essentially voluntary and neither would think of using force on the other for his or her personal benefit. The inherent characteristics of this society, like all societies, is the voluntary cooperation that occurs to the benefit all of members thereof.

A state can also be modeled as having a membership of one man and one woman. However, in this case, the relationship is one wherein the stronger of the two takes whatever he wants, whenever he wants, from the weaker member. In a state made of up of only two such members, the physical part of their relationship is called “rape,” wherein the weaker submits to the stronger, either directly from violence itself or from the mere threat of violence that the stronger holds over her. The fact that the state is a democracy does not alone justify the force that the majority can use to abuse the minority. If the state is made up of two men and a woman, the majority, made up of men, can vote on rape almost as easily as a single tyrant can.

This, of course, does not mean that we can live without a state. The mere existence of a hostile foreign state requires us to band together into a state of our own. However, we can follow the guidance of people like George Washington, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the other wise leaders who founded our American state and assure ourselves that we, as individuals, are sufficiently protected from the state’s limited power.

In also means that we need to be introspective of ourselves and look inside to find out what dark shadows reside in our souls that make us want to give even more power to that violent body, the state.