Thought of the Day “Illiberal Liberals” Sydney Williams
http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com
“The individual is foolish, but the species is wise…We have inherited from the past the instruments
which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites.”
Russell Kirk (1918-1994)
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 1953
While healthy policy differences separate Republican from Democrat, extremist woke culture, propagated by sanctimonious, illiberal progressive elitists, has infested schools, universities, the arts, churches, banks, large corporations and sports teams. It threatens to transform our Country and do irreparable harm, with emotion replacing reason. It was behind the fatal decisions in Afghanistan, where military leaders had debated single-sex bathrooms and focused on gender identity and white oppression, rather than considering the consequences of an inauspicious withdrawal. Wokeism is a danger to all who love freedo
Wokeness is a belief in presentism. It is an ideology endorsed by people ignorant of history and unaware of consequences for the future. It exists under the banner of social justice, embedded in words like diversity, equity and inclusion. It inspires virtue-signaling by privileged whites feigning awareness of “social inequities.” It is a manifestation of the illiberal liberal. Its leaders are intent on uprooting liberal democracy, which cherishes free markets and individual freedom and replacing it with authoritarian socialism, where government’s powers are enhanced, and individual’s rights and liberties are suppressed. The responsible citizen is replaced with the obedient subject. Fear of government too large was important to the founding fathers. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison: “I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” Yet, a 2018 Gallup Poll showed that 57% of Democrats had a positive view of socialism, while only 47% felt the same way toward capitalism.
The world of the woke is filled with hypocrites: During the recent California gubernatorial election, a white woman wearing a gorilla mask threw an egg at Republican Larry Elder, an African American who the Los Angeles Times called “The Black face of white supremacy.” There was nary a peep of complaint from mainstream media. To be racist is okay if it is worn under a mantle of wokeness. Last year, California’s Governor Newsome kept public schools closed to in-person learning, while sending his children to private schools where all classes were held in person. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore the words “Tax the Rich,” embroidered in red on her white, designer gown, to a $30,000-a-seat benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an annual event where elites outdo one another, to impress the media and the masses, knowing that their wokeness, despite their privilege, exempts them from condemnation as oppressors. Hypocrisy and wokeness are partners among illiberal liberals.
A belief in those aspects of character which inspired Martin Luther King and that made the United States an exceptional nation – aspiration, initiative, merit, talent, hard work, tolerance, personal responsibility and adherence to families and churches – have disappeared into a mire of political correctness. Critical race theory, a Marxist view which teaches that racial prejudices and preferences determine academic and economic outcomes, has divided the nation into white supremacists and people-of-color victims. While critical race theory has been around for half a century, with some legitimacy to its tenets, it has been adopted by those on the left to Balkanize the American people. And it is racist, in that it is the group not the individual that is condemned or praised, based on perceptions, not facts.
It has been this freedom of the individual, where allegiance is to the law – not to men – that makes Western culture unique: Freedom to express ideas, freedom to pray as one chooses, freedom to own property, freedom to be considered innocent until proven guilty, freedom to have a trial of one’s peers, freedom to avoid the siren call of presentism, freedom to learn from the past and to profit from its lessons for the future, freedom to believe in colorblind justice, freedom to understand one’s talents, as well as one’s limits – all freedoms that illiberal liberals, with their woke police, would banish.
In a 1961 debate with Barry Goldwater, Norman Thomas, a perennial socialist Presidential candidate on the Socialist Party ticket between 1928 and 1948, argued that in a world that consists of an “anarchy of nations” a government of elected officials and administrators is needed to “manage our extraordinary scientific and technological achievements and our resources for the common good.” Has that been true for students in inner-city schools? Wealthy urban, white progressives have options in school choice, while Black and Hispanic parents and children have no choice, except for the few Charter schools where demand exceeds supply. A true liberal would offer inner-city parents a choice and not be hornswoggled by powerful teachers’ unions Have unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, ever “managed” our achievements and resources well? There have been examples of collaborative efforts, like the War Production Board during World War II and Operation Warp Speed set up in 2020. Both were successful because government-imposed regulations were eased. Creativity and Innovation are manifestations of free-market capitalism.
In terms of tax policy, “Pay your fair share” and “Tax the Rich” are empty slogans of illiberal liberals. The proposed tax bill is thousands of pages long, filled with exemptions and exclusions for the very wealthy. If a fair tax was wanted, Congress would enact a flat tax, with no exemptions. But, one suspects, those in the legal and accounting fields would not react well to a bill that deprived them of an income. And what is fair anyway? According to taxorganization.org, in 2020 the top one percent of income earners in the U.S. paid 38.5% of all income taxes. The bottom 90% paid 29.9 percent.
The fumes propelling “wokeism” are expelled by the narrative, not by facts. In Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins lamented that the CDC, with 21,000 employees and an annual budget of $15 billion had been unable to produce detailed research on COVID-19, on the numbers of people with natural immunity, and on breakthrough infections, despite having data on 40 million individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 200 million who have been vaccinated. “This isn’t,” he wrote, “the Manhattan Project. Its epidemiology 101.” Could it be that facts are secondary to the narrative?
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In his book, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote that he became a conservative because he was liberal. He was open to debate, the free flow of ideas and, surprisingly, to change. In that same book, Mr. Kirk expressed one of the canons of conservative thought: “Science must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a stateman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.” In contrast to the woke, true liberals want to preserve the good of the past and learn from mistakes made. They understand reality. They know it is wrong to ban books and tear down statues. Such actions do not change the past; they simply change one’s perception. Real liberals seek equality of opportunity and equality before the law for everyone, regardless of race, religion or gender, not a false promise of equity. Today’s progressives tell us they are liberal, but their policies are illiberal. Barton Swaim ended a recent column in The Wall Street Journal on the loss of liberalism with an appropriate sentence: “You can’t fix the city as long as the souls are a mess.”
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