You’d better hope it comes up heads
December 5, 2015 § 79 Comments
Liberalism is political commitment to liberty, equality, and fraternity; where liberty begets equality and fraternity proceeds from them. If we only look at one side of each of these coins, the side liberalism likes to show off in the display case, they look very pretty.
But like all coins they have both heads and tails. You can’t pick up a coin without picking up both sides, and if the coin toss doesn’t go your way things don’t look so pretty.
The flip side of the liberty coin is constraint. For every single political liberty empowering a citizen to choose what he wishes to choose, a multitude of constraints on other people are implied. “Liberty” in practice just means that you agree that the ‘free society’ puts the right sort of people in prison.
Liberty as a political priority begets the equality imperative. The pretty side of the equality coin is freedom from discrimination: equal rights. But politics just is authoritative discrimination, so this incoherent demand for authoritative nondiscrimination doesn’t actually make you free from discriminatory authority. It just makes authority sociopathic, pushes it underground, to the bottom side of the coin that you do not see, and creates an arbitrary justification for whatever the ruling class happens to will. Equality attempts to abolish politics and as a result reduces it to arbitrary Will.
Together liberty and equality produce fraternity, the universal brotherhood of the new, free and emancipated man, politically released from the chains of history, tradition, religion, and even biology. The other side of the coin though is that to liberalism, anyone who is intransigently in the way of the political emancipation of the free and equal new man is less than human. He has to be less than human, because all men are political equals, the just powers of government derived from the consent of the governed. If the Low Man were fully human he would be ‘with the program’ rather than impeding it: he would be giving his free consent to liberal governance. But he is not; therefore he is less than fully human and must be educated, rehabilitated, absorbed, or eradicated.
And it is all fun and games until the coin toss doesn’t go your way.
Zippy Catholic 
Picture liberal society as composed of liberals carrying around their coins held high, gazing raptly at the pretty side. Other people walking along with them in the same direction also see the pretty side.
When they come across other liberals walking a different direction, though, they see the ugly side of each others’ coins and accuse each other of being tyrants. Each sees the other as inauthentically liberal, as selfish, sick, insane power hungry tyrants who mouth the words of freedom and equal rights but don’t really mean it.
I am still troubled by the fact that all of this is so obvious now, and was always there for me to see, yet I never put the pieces together. I suppose it shows the depths to which humans can be willfully blind.
I second Mr. Graeme. Zippy, you’ve irreversibly altered my worldview.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
I think a good case could be made here for something analogous to “little l versus big L” libertarianism. Most of us want “small l liberty” that is, in general, to be left alone on a regular basis. It’s the exaltation of liberty to Liberty, a high or the highest, political virtue that becomes problematic.
Zippy, you’ve irreversibly altered my worldview.
You may find it hard to believe, but you’ve had the same effect here as well. I may sound like a libertarian on a number of things about authority, but that is probably more of a lack of understanding of some things and a reluctance to bend the knee before liberal authorities than anything else at this point.
Mike T:
Everyone wants a nice tame liberalism that they can keep confined to Pandora’s Locke Box; not the ‘Liberalism’ showing on the coins of all of those people walking in different directions from us.
Being left alone is orthogonal to liberty, small L or otherwise. If someone isolated himself in a far northern latitude of Soviet Far East, there would be no commissar to silence him. This, presumably, is how the Russian Old Believers survived two attempts to fatally silence them over the course of four centuries.
Your version of being left alone illustrates Zippy’s point, whether you realize it or not. If you’re telling others to leave you alone, you’re imposing on them. Freedom for me is restrictions for thee.
Think of it as a cleaner version of a Slut Walk.
White politicians imposed anti white discrimination on a white majority in the name of equality and whites kept voting those politicians back into political power because fraternity
Your version of being left alone illustrates Zippy’s point, whether you realize it or not. If you’re telling others to leave you alone, you’re imposing on them. Freedom for me is restrictions for thee.
I am actually well aware of that, which is why I chose the phrasing that I did. Your entire comment is a heavy-handed misreading of what I was saying.
Zippy,
I was not referring to liberty in a broad sense, but in a minimal sense with the “small-l” liberty concept. In previous discussions, you’ve said that you do believe that a light hand is better for promoting the good in most cases. That is what I am referring to when I say liberty in a small letter sense. It is not autonomy from authority, but a philosophy of using authority in a way that prevents the authority from becoming a busybody or social engineer.
I know you get sick of talking about abuse of authority, but I think you can’t avoid that discussion when discussing liberalism. One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve stepped back and examined your points about liberalism is just how much liberalism, unalloyed with another philosophy or religion, simply cannot help itself from being abusive when in a position of authority in many cases. The freedom-equality imperative means that at some point, many authorities are going to have to just well, mess with people under them and alter their lives for reasons that aren’t clearly in the common interest.
All authorities may override preferences and impose their will, but there is no type of authority I can think of that feels the need to so frequently override others and impose itself than many liberal ones. It is actually a pretty slick system, from a metaphysical perspective. It’s a perpetual tyranny-rebellion generating system.
One of the things I’ve been noticing about the right is that chunks of it are starting to become vaguely aware of the things you’re saying. They may not be aware of the full picture, but they are starting to realize that they are untermensch to the left. I’m seeing more of them beginning to stand up to that and fight back because they’re starting to realize what is at stake (it’s not a civil disagreement anymore, they really do want to oppress you).
A lot of the fighting on the right seems to be between those who will not accept this on any level, and those who are starting to realize it. Those who are waking up, take it seriously and realize that no, the other side isn’t foolish and misguided. They are very aware of what they’re doing and do intend to harm.
SJWs have done a fine job of pushing this to the forefront with rhetoric like “there is no place in society for someone who believes/does $X.” It’s hard to go all “golly shucks, they just are passionate” on them when they’re really saying “no, seriously, we do want to drive you out of polite society and the economy.”
Mike T:
Yes, just like you can’t avoid talking about abusive and otherwise useless husbands when you talk about feminism and male headship.
It is true enough that insisting on more freedom brings about more tyranny; but most people do not understand that and are not going to be awakened by some people getting fired by homosexual agitators or whatever. No, most people will just go around and around the racetrack, insisting that they have become the real oppressed, that they are really in favor political freedom, and SJW’s and anti-racists and whomever else are not authentically for political freedom. They will continue to think that until the moment the bullet enters their brain or the gas enters their lungs.
Did the Nazi and Communist holocausts wake the surviving victims up to the truth about modernism and its political expression, liberalism? How many Jews rejected political liberalism because of the Holocaust, versus how many instead spin it as Hitler not being authentically for political freedom and equality of rights?
If slaughtering literally hundreds of millions of innocent people in the name of the emancipation of the superman did not result in mass rejection of liberalism, then what in the name of Zeus’s various orifices makes anyone think that attacks on some peoples’ livelihoods by self-important poofters and trannies is going to do it? Only the incredibly entitled and coddled could think that job insecurity is going to accomplish what the Nazi, Communist, and Feminist holocausts did not.
Only the incredibly entitled and coddled could think that job insecurity is going to accomplish what the Nazi, Communist, and Feminist holocausts did not.
I think you make a number of bad assumptions about human nature. We have not sent people to concentration camps, that is a foreign practice (so far, by the grace of God). Our Holocaust is more pernicious, it is one against humans at a stage in which it is easy for people to rationalize than seeing some skeletal figure getting gunned down, incinerated or gassed.
Indeed, have I not observed here and W4 that even most pro-lifers don’t seem to really believe abortion is murdered, as evidenced by their atavistic revulsion at the notion of executing women who seek one?
Humanity is not rational. Human is not even capable of prolonged periods of deliberately sustained, systematic rationality. A great many people are simply immune to dialectic which is why Vox Day often jokes that you’re better off calling many feminists fat and ugly to brow-beat them than try to rationally show why they’re wrong.
Why do you think God uses the shepherd analogy to describe us? Because humanity, for all of the Imago Dei in us, are dumb as sheep most of the time. Sheep don’t tend to care about a wolf eating a cow’s calf until that wolf starts looking at their lambs.
Mike T:
The sci-fi book of the month club hasn’t even repented of liberalism itself. The notion that it is going to catalyze a repentance which the slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocents did not catalyze is precious.
Vox has repeatedly insisted he’s not a conservative, so how people don’t see him as a liberal (by our agreed definition of one) astounds me.
Relevant:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-return-to-things-past.html
And the more conservative people always lose the liberal civil war, because genuinely venerating Liberty, they can only try to educate and cannot consistently enact the latter three.
Notice too that as liberalism encounters reality and unravels, it unravels in perfect reverse from its procession. Fraternity becomes “if you will not be my brother I will crack your skull”. Equality becomes equality among a circumscribed, inbred and exclusive superman. Each become shriveled and decrepit versions of their original vision, as their rage against reality is repudiated by nature and nature’s God.
But in order to avoid simply regenerating different iterations of the same lies all over again you have to repudiate the fountainhead of all of the lies, the source of the name and ontology of the lies: liberty, freedom as a political priority within whatever Pandora’s Locke Box you envision, from which it inevitably either escapes or within which it is fully and comprehensively extinguished.
If you want the weed to die, you have to kill its root. And in my experience very few modern people are willing to do that in themselves.
If you want the weed to die, you have to kill its root. And in my experience very few modern people are willing to do that in themselves.
Liberalism is similar to Islam when it comes to apostates, only less overtly violent. There is a similar motivation to not stray too far from the reservation.
Zippy. It is to be wished that you could get these ideas a hearing before the Hierarchy for the more we become inclusive (Ecumenism and Indifference) the smaller we become.
Soon, the Church will include everyone and, thus, disappear.
Well, I don’t think that liberalism is less overtly violent than Islam. It is more clinical in its violence, to be sure, because those subjected to liberal violence are not fully human. Liberal violence typically comes with furrowed brows; with the demeanor of the entemologist dissecting a spider or fumigating a cellar.
So I’d agree that they are different, but I don’t agree that liberalism is less overtly violent. And even the differences may be attributable to liberalism’s dominance and Islam’s position as underdog — it may be more accidental than essential, in other words.
It depends on which form of liberalism you are discussing. Social democracies like US and most of Europe are not slaughtering dissidents. Unborn children, yes, but not dissidents. The “untermensch” comes in many forms and is treated differently according to why he is an untermensch in most forms of liberalism. Even the Nazis often did not treat less dangerous political prisoners with the same ferocity they treated “undesirable races.”
Why the distinction? Because accuracy matters.
Mike T:
The main reason dissidents are not slaughtered in liberal-dominant societies is the same as in Islam-dominant societies: dhimmitude.
Dhimmitude is provided to Christians and Jews (in theory). Apostates and heretics are expressly prohibited from being regarded as dhimmis.
The number of people who grasp and reject liberalism would probably fit in a small room, so I’m not sure the quibble is relevant.
It’s not a quibble because dhimmitude is not available to apostates from Islam. It is black letter of Islamic law, not available to them as a safe haven. You could be a dhimmi. Ayaan Hirsi Ali could never be a dhimmi. The only two fates she can have are either repent or be killed by the first pious Muslim who finds her.
You are splitting hairs, because there are no significant numbers of genuine apostates from liberalism to test what liberal societies would do with them. I imagine it would be something worse and less honorable than death, probably involving psychotropic medications though.
This seems very appropriate for your posts about liberalism.
I think it depends on the liberal society. Social democracies like the US and much of Europe would probably not be able to bring themselves to do that much. Clever apostates would be able to play them like a fine piano by playing up their hypocrisy, which is a deadly sin in modern society.
There’s also the fact that in the US, they could just make use of the second amendment and stand their ground. A whole lot of Americans would have no problem with that and might rally behind them just because it seems like the thing to do.
I think that is weak. I think the main difference is between liberalism fat, dumb, and happy, and liberalism under existential threat.
Liberalism in social democracies is at a point where most people wouldn’t fight, especially if the reactionary elements harbored no open desire to make things worse for them. I mean really, do you think these guys would stand up to a bona fide, masculine reactionary? Hell, if he were giving the feminists a genuine what-for, they’d probably just rally behind him out of curiosity.
Mike T:
The “masculine reactionaries” you talk about are liberals and will fight to preserve their vision of political liberty. And others will fight to preserve their incompatible vision of political liberty. But this won’t happen while the vast majority of liberals are fat, dumb, and happy.
You are making the basic mistake of seeing liberalism as nothing but the aggregation of individuals who happen to be committed to liberalism right now, and because they – at least the ones you see and recognize as liberals – are fat dumb and happy individuals you think liberalism is not capable of ruthless violence. But that is because you haven’t adequately grasped the situation.
Thought this was a good representation of the cognitive dissonance you’ve referred to in your recent posts:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/time_magazine_declares_america_no_longer_a_republic.html
I still like American Thinker, but I read it much differently now than I did before I started reading your posts on ideas and the roots from which they spring.
Elspeth:
Liberals gravitate toward majoritarian democracy because it creates the illusion of everyone sharing equal political power. And they gravitate toward formal procedures in general because formal procedures are not human beings and create the illusion of ‘self governance’ — of governing without actually putting anyone genuinely in charge or making anyone personally responsible, governing without anyone actually personally holding any authority over anyone else or exercising substantive judgments about substantive matters.
But liberals only like democracy and formal procedures as long as they see the results as consistently liberal (who sees what will of course depend upon the direction they are walking, to continue the metaphor of raptly holding up the shiny coins). So some mechanism must be available when ‘the equal rights of others’ are violated, to push things back onto an ‘authentically’ liberal track while maintaining the illusion of metaphysical neutrality. The various approaches to Constitutional law, judicial review, etc provide these ‘mechanisms’ in the US, where conlaw is an intramural war between the legal postmoderns (emanations and penubras) and the legal positivists (sola Constitution) — another two-sided coin of insanity.
Notice how each side views the other as illiberal tyrants when they fail to bend the knee to the Supreme Dispassionate Metaphysically Neutral Procedure.
Certain kinds of ‘conservatives’ go on and on about following formal procedures because they think that following those formal procedures would produce the ‘authentic liberty’ in outcomes that they want. But of course that is just their own interpretation, which is at best question-begging and more credibly is just flat out wrong; and in any case that little thing called reality has gone a very different way. Hanging all hopes on dispassionate metaphysically neutral bureaucratic mechanical procedures to govern us more wisely (well, more ‘authentically’ freely and equally) than a king and aristocracy openly acknowledged as such has obviously and spectacularly failed.
Not that any but a very small few can even see that or are willing to acknowledge it. I think most reactionaries are like our friend Mike T and others in the ‘reactosphere’: they just can’t quite get the fishhook all the way out of their mouths.
It depends on how broadly one draws the borders of liberalism, and context.
I would say that liberals, narrowly defined, were clearly incapable of any serious resistance or violence in 1930’s Germany or Japan despite the high prestige and power that many held. (The Imperial Throne, for example!). But you seem willing to include marxists and fascists as a part of liberalism, something I am less willing to do as a matter of terminology. I am still willing to define a big tent of liberalism, but I draw the lines at modern liberal, classical liberal, etc. To me it is modernity itself that encompasses the big tent that covers all of the above, but not necessarily liberalism itself.
Of course, there is that old piece, “Liberalism, The Political Religion of Modernity” I recall reading some time back. But contra that, I would argue that modernity is liberal more than anything else and liberalism is its most successful flavor, but not all attempts at modernity were or are liberal.
Of course Re: Japan, a lot of that was swallowing the propaganda. “Anti Racism in Asia! Liberating the world from colonialism!”
Anymouse:
I do understand liberalism quite broadly as any firm political commitment to liberty, which gives rise to equality, from which proceeds fraternity. You can call Nazis ‘not liberal’ and make them out as cousins rather than brothers, but that kind of hairsplitting hardly matters from my point of view. The Nazis were as committed to liberty and equality as any modern SJW; they just had a narrower vision of the superman, being held back under the oppressive thumb of the Low Man. They were liberals in the crucible of reality; not fat, dumb, and happy.
Have we forgotten firebombings and atomic bombs? For that matter, have we forgotten tarring and feathering? Have we forgotten the abortion mills?
People who insist that liberalism is incapable of ruthless violence when it perceives itself to be threatened are in denial.
Anymouse:
The boundary for me is politics. Liberalism is the political expression of modernity: foundationally, belief in liberty — the politically emancipated new man. All the rest follows.
The reason our mass death camps take the form of abortion mills is because it has been impossible to eliminate, via procedures or technology, the threat that pregnancy represents to the emancipation of women.
The idea that because our mass death camps involve the most innocent and defenseless, since they are the main existential threat to emancipation which has been impossible to eliminate technologically or procedurally, is hardly an endorsement of our kind of liberalism as ‘nonviolent’.
There is a tendency to view societies infected by liberalism as ‘not liberal’ because they still have illiberal features, etc, or because there are good, true, and beautiful things in those societies; or because those societies are only ‘kind of’ liberal. I think this perspective is a distorted view of reality, and in any case can be quite deceptive if we don’t import some additional perspective.
Liberalism is a disease or disorder, a parasite in political thought, not a kind of society; and so-called liberal societies are societies which are infected by this parasite. Just as banking and lending are not comprehensively and only usury, modern societies are not comprehensively and only liberal. Ireland is a liberal society because it is infected by liberalism; but it is still Irish, which is not liberalism.
In general modern societies are well and truly infected by the mind virus of liberalism, just as modern banking is well and truly infected by usury. The fact that the disease progresses differently in different contexts can obscure our capacity to identify it as such.
We naturally want to think the best of our own societies. Americans in particular tend toward the ‘proposition nation’ ideal: they see liberalism the disease as what defines us, much as the homosexual sees his disorder as what defines him.
This is counterproductive, if we want to actually grasp the objective situation. Especially if we don’t want to degenerate into a fugue of self-hatred.
The homosexual needs to stop defining himself as his disorder and repent. So do we.
Note: I promoted this comment to its own post, with a few edits.
[…] Liberalism is a disease or disorder, a parasite in political thought, not a kind of society; and so-called liberal societies are societies which are infected by this parasite. Just as banking and lending are not comprehensively and only usury, modern societies are not comprehensively and only liberal. Ireland is a liberal society because it is infected and even dominated by liberalism; but it is still Irish, which is not liberalism. […]
[…] mass killing by logical necessity would have to be a rationally coherent ideology. Liberalism is not rationally coherent, as I have explained many times. Inconsistent ideologies will not give consistent results by […]
[…] liberalism it is a different story. Liberalism is not rationally coherent, so an end to its violence is not even conceivable without liberalism itself disappearing. […]
If the Low Man were fully human he would be ‘with the program’ rather than impeding it: he would be giving his free consent to liberal governance. But he is not; therefore he is less than fully human and must be educated, rehabilitated, absorbed, or eradicated.
Or incarcerated.
For American conservatives, despite the insistence that freedom and rights are inalienable and vital etc etc., it is entirely justified that the criminal or Low Man has them stripped from him and is often subjected to terrible punishment because he impedes the program.
[…] Fraternity means that if you will not agree that my political philosophy is right you are less than human scum. […]
[…] for authority, despite the fact that modernity relentlessly indoctrinates us with the idea that to be human simply is to be subject to no authority, is to be self-created through reason and will, subject to no man. Islam appeals to effeminate […]
[…] Because liberalism is incoherent the playoffs, I mean elections, and the political circus more generally, become all about lists of preferences: aggregations of long lists of policies, tied together by nothing more than their appeal to different market segments. […]
[…] Is rationally incoherent, and therefore logically implies everything and its opposite all at once; but in a way which is not immediately transparent. […]
[…] Liberalism is an objectively wicked, destructive, and murderous political philosophy. Therefore commitment to liberal principles objectively disqualifies a candidate for public office. […]
[…] Democracy is a symptom of the core problem. The core problem is that the pervasive political philosophy of the ruling class – of really all classes of society other than a few freaks and nutcases wandering around raving in the darkness outside the padded walls – is liberalism. […]
[…] a particular understanding of the good must disappear. Insisting that freedom (and concomitantly equality and fraternity) are the principles of political action, are the final causes of political acts, requires politics […]
[…] This, by the way, is where Vox Day is correct in “SJWs Always Lie” about taking down SJW entryist attacks at the source. The problem isn’t the SJW thought-policing. It’s that their form of policing leads to the drab, gray world – you’ll notice that Vox’s methods amount to, admittedly even, thought-policing SJW’s out of your organization. Our goal is to create a world more full of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and to do it without the mass slaughter of liberalism. […]
[…] 1: Demonize whatever is just slightly more politically liberal than you are as […]
[…] modern politics is analogous to a black hole, because at its very center is a self contradictory logical singularity where all reason breaks […]
Given that a chief end of politics is to bring about justice, we can understand the errors of liberalism as arising from misunderstandings of justice:
1) Liberty is an indispensable component of justice. Therefore, to restrict someone’s liberty is unjust, and to remove restrictions on liberty is just.
2) Equality is an indispensable component of justice. Therefore, enforcing inequality is unjust, and to remove inequality is just.
[…] Liberalism survives and thrives over many generations of men by asserting unprincipled exceptions to deal with its own excesses. In a world where Marxist professors are being pilloried for their cisgender whiteness and right wing wrongthought, this gives rise to movements like (what the Current Year labels) the alt right. […]
[…] Liberty. We are by definition either a nation of anyone and everyone who professes fealty to the intoxicating horror of liberal principles, of liberal Walmart whales with citizenship papers united by our common love of Good Friday […]
[…] Liberalism is first and foremost a political doctrine: an (incoherent) view about legitimate exercise of authority. It is true that once empowered liberalism cannot be contained and ‘leaks’ into everything else. But characterizing liberalism as a grand overall religious or anti-religious worldview rather than as a specifically political doctrine is a mistake: a mistake easily rejected by liberals as a caricature which creates a motte and bailey social structure from which escape becomes impossible. […]
[…] and the rest of the gang didn’t sprout Reformation genes or convince everyone with pamphlets. (Zippy is actual right on this […]
[…] their god is the same god as the god of leftism, their simple minds fail to grasp that he is a trinity, simultaneously one and […]
[…] but labeling that difference in the details freedom, is as if these “freedoms” were one-sided coins which imply no corresponding restrictions, is just self […]
[…] is never granted. Permissive will is real enough as a facet or mode of a particular choice; but every coin has both a heads and a tails. Every concrete choice empowers (or “frees”) a particular actual reality to the […]
[…] put Zippy’s insights into my own […]
[…] extent to which these two sets are coextensive is left as an […]
[…] = the maximization of choice'”. And it is here that we begin to see Zippy’s valid critiques of Libertarianism as a real […]
[…] = the maximization of choice'”. And it is here that we begin to see Zippy’s valid critiques of Libertarianism as a real […]
[…] posts at Zippy Catholic. Some of the main posts that deserve credit can be found here, here, here. These thoughts began as a comment of mine on the second article. I hope to expand upon them and […]
[…] of relevant blog posts of Zippy’s on my last piece, but I will link a few more here: 1, 2, 3, 4. But I also want to point out one of his latest posts, which I think is making a courageous […]
[…] of relevant blog posts of Zippy’s on my last piece, but I will link a few more here: 1, 2, 3, 4. But I also want to point out one of his latest posts, which I think is making a courageous […]
[…] equal freedom is self contradictory, because politics – resolution of controvertible cases through the exercise of authority by […]
[…] concept of political freedom capable of invalidating monarchical authority is rationally […]
[…] that any theory is better than no theory at all; even when the theory in question is manifestly and demonstrably destructive, evil, deceptive, and just plain wrong. The important thing is that in the hierarchy […]
[…] meaning is self contradictory, because justice always trumps consent by definition. That is why we have jails. The positive law – governance – in its essence tells those subject to the law – […]
[…] group of liberals happen to unreflectively want and expect – liberalism necessarily produces opposing factions. Different groups of people want and expect different things. Each faction, understanding itself to […]
[…] correct that metaphysical realists and the reality in which we believe obstruct their vision of a free and equal new man, self created through reason and will, occupying a neutral and tolerant public square emancipated […]
[…] from the configuration of empowerments and restrictions our society considers good – or that our team is convinced society ought to consider good – under the boot of […]
I didn’t know where else to ask this:
Which of Jim Kalb’s books do you most recommend for someone who hasn’t read any of his books yet?
His first book, The Tyranny of Liberalism is probably the best place to start.
[…] the question of authority is pervasive in modernity, because modern people raised on liberalism try very hard not to believe in the reality and real legitimacy […]
[…] then – the whole society as opposed to individual liberals – as composed of liberals carrying around their coins held high, gazing raptly at (what they personally believe to be) the pretty side. Other people […]