Liberal policies make sense if their objective is to punish rather than benefit humanity. Furthermore, without recognizing this aspect of liberalism you will never make sense of it. Their policies are consistent with their basic values. Liberals can’t like humanity. It would be contrary to everything else they believe.
Much of damage liberalism does to society results from the suppression of human freedom. There are a variety of opinions about what is unique about humans, about what distinguishes them from other animals. More than anything else, the uniqueness comes from free will.
Reducing an individual’s freedom diminishes that person and makes him smaller, makes him have less of what makes us human. Without free will we cannot develop our uniqueness nor fulfill our potential. Morality can only exist in the context of free choice.
Individual freedom is a low priority for liberals. In fact, they see individual freedom as a problem, not a blessing. Liberals fear freedom. They don’t like freedom because they don’t like what people do with their freedom. If you don’t like humans and don’t approve of their behavior, you will not want them to be free. If you dislike humans, you’ll dislike liberty. In their view, humans are just no damn good.
That’s why most of liberalism involves constriction of individual freedom. Liberals love government. They advocate taking choice away from individuals and putting it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. That is a dehumanizing process.
An axiom of conservatism is “the bigger the government, the smaller the individual.” Liberals think that’s a good thing. Liberals yearn for smaller individuals. They believe that if humans could just be prevented from making the stupid choices they all make, society would be better off.
Liberals love mass transit. They think it’s impossible to spend too much on it. They generally despise automobiles. Automobiles have done more for individual freedom than almost any other human achievement. Liberals think that automobiles are the chief culprit in global warming and the destruction of the planet. For conservatives, our endowment of fossil fuels and hydrocarbons is seen as a blessing. For liberals, it is seen as a curse.
In the view of liberals, humans are the one species that is destroying the planet. Humans deplete “non-renewable” resources and do things that emit carbon dioxide. In their view, carbon dioxide (an absolutely essential building block of all life) is a pollutant that is destroying the planet. Environmentalists have often likened humanity to a virus or plague. “Population control” targets only humans.
Why are liberals so uncaring for the unborn? Why are they such passionate defenders of “abortion rights”? Why do they care more about baby seals than they do about human fetuses?
Their enthusiastic and almost fanatical advocacy of abortion is partly the result of their desire for fewer human beings. Abortion is the issue that generates the most passion and energy for liberals. You can’t believe that killing a human fetus is something positive and admirable unless you don’t like humans. How can anyone enthusiastically support the termination of innocent life? It’s easy if you don’t like humans.
They are reflexively opposed to wealth-expanding projects such as the Keystone pipeline and fracking. If you don’t like humans you won’t care about doing them any favors. The pipeline, fracking, offshore oil drilling, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would all benefit humans and do no measurable or lasting damage to the environment. The benefit-cost ratio would be enormous, but only if you see benefits to humans as a benefit. Imaginary and grossly exaggerated environmental damage is a ruse for their real objective of denying humans comfort and happiness. Wealth is liberating. Preventing wealth creation diminishes freedom.
Dislike of humans explains why liberals love regulations. Left on their own humans will buy large sugary soft drinks, showerheads that use too much water, watch Fox News and listen to conservative talk radio. Liberals never met a regulation they didn’t like. Only those who care little about freedom can reflexively love regulations. The cost of regulations for the U.S. economy is conservatively estimated to be $1.7 trillion and growing. Excessive regulations are reducing our standard of living by at least a tenth. That enormous cost is of no concern to liberals. After all, it’s only humans who are affected.
Liberals don’t want humans to enjoy themselves. They feel guilty about living and existing, and especially about living opulently.
If they feel guilty they have convicted themselves of some wrongdoing. They seek absolution by buying Priuses and recycling. Driving a hybrid is the modern equivalent to sacrificing a goat to appease the earth gods. It’s like going to confession and a way of doing penance for too much consuming.
If you don’t like your own species, your own country, can you like yourself? It’s ironic that those who focus so much on the importance of self-esteem are the ones who do the most to make it difficult. Which comes first, self-hatred or species-hatred?
Public schools teach our children that humans are destroying habitat and the eco-system, driving millions of species to extinction, and generally destroying the planet. They essentially teach them that their parents are no damn good.
Liberals have a utopian mindset. As Mark Levin shows in his book, Ameritopia, all utopian variations throughout history have envisioned building a new kind of human. Wanting to fundamentally change human nature shows that you don’t approve of human nature as it now exists.
If you want to change something it’s because firstly, you think it needs to be done, and secondly, because you think it’s possible. An important dividing line between liberals and conservatives is the question of whether or not human nature is subject to manipulation. Liberals think it is, conservatives think it isn’t.
The fact that liberals do not like humans is why it is such a mistake to grant them so much power over our society, economy, culture, and public policies. Liberals advocate policies that constrict progress and wealth creation rather than enhance them. They want wealth prevention, not wealth creation. They are, at best, ambivalent toward economic growth which, in their view, only increases humans’ ability to destroy the planet. We are being governed by people who don’t like us.
The people who are in charge of public policy don’t really want good things to happen to humans. Humans don’t deserve good things. If it’s a policy that harms humans they’re just getting what they deserve anyway. Liberals are not that motivated to help humans. They’re “just not that into you.”
If someone is put in control of something he doesn’t like, the outcome will not be favorable to that something. Human achievement will be a fraction of its potential until liberalism is seen for what it is and how much damage it does.
◼ Are Liberals Misanthropes? November 14, 2016
Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.
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