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Kyle Shymanik E308- English 3 Mr. Leathem May 3, 2007 Research Paper Draft Thing Liberalism, a philosophy developed during the Enlightenment and pioneered by men such as Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, plays a large role in modern American politics and society. Yet those who penned the founding tracts of liberalism likely would not recognize their philosophy today. It is generally accepted that this change occurred in the 1960s, though some, such as former Attorney General Robert H. Bork, argue that it began in the 1890s. Regardless of its beginnings, the shift in liberal ideology has been profound. A philosophy that once stood for the free market, free inquiry, equality of opportunity, rationalism, and minimal government has been turned on its head and now supports socialism, equality of outcome, subjective opinions rather than objectivity, and sprawling, bureaucratic Leviathans. What once built off of Classical thought and formed the backbone of Western culture has become a decidedly relativistic and anti-Western mindset. One result of this transformation is that the United Sates, a nation founded on traditional liberal ideology, is finding that her most vocal critics are on the left. Many political and social commentators, albeit primarily those with conservative views, have asserted that this New Left is dangerous and eroding American culture and values. The claims of those on the right cannot be easily dismissed, and will here be examined, considering the origins, ideology, and actions of modern liberals. Liberalism is defined by the Encyclopœdia Britannica as a “political and economic doctrine that emphasizes the rights and freedoms of the individual and the need to limit the powers of government” (Encyclopœdia Britannica). This doctrine is one that is unique to the West (the “West”, here and throughout, refers to the Greco-Roman region of the Mediterranean, Europe west of the Oder, and any territories subsequently colonized by the aforementioned regions). Throughout human history, no culture outside of the Western tradition has ever developed on its own any form of liberal philosophy, neither autocratic state of the Far East, nor African or Polynesian tribe, nor Muslim theocracy, nor technologically backwards pre-Colombian culture. All cultures other than that of the West have accepted and adopted either autocratic states under the absolute rule of an emperor or god-king or else failed to develop societies sophisticated enough to necessitate governments, remaining nomadic and tribal. The idea of individual freedom and liberty has its roots in the Western tradition, this much is certain. As such, liberal philosophy, being based on the liberty of the individual, shares these roots. This philosophy is generally considered to have begun with the work of John Locke, though its origins can be traced back to Classical civilization and to Renaissance humanism. His work stressed that free individuals could form the foundation for a stable society. This idea was expounded in his A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) and Two Treatises of Government (1689), in the latter of which he writes that “the natural liberty [itlaics Locke’s] of man is to be free… and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man [italics Locke’s], in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent” (Locke). Liberal philosophy quickly spread, and was soon being espoused in salons throughout Europe. Montesquieu- who wrote in his The Spirit of Laws that governemnt should represent the “humour and disposition of the people” (Montesquieu)- Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Smith, Kant, Jefferson, Paine, and countless others contributed to the most fashionable and rational philosophical movement in history. The ideas these men developed were based on the Western tradition of reason that began with the ancient Greeks. The Enlightenment valued rationality over most anything else. Kant and Hume were formost in this love of reason, although Locke called reason “so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title” (Locke), while Jefferson stated that “reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error” (Jefferson). The Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution gave birth to the scientific method of objective, rational investigation and discovery, as well as to Descartes’ famous axiom, “Cogito, ergo sum”. It was, in its essence, a movement to discover the unknown via free and rational inquiry. It is for this reason that the liberalism of the Enlightenment must be considered to be part of the Western tradition. Its values were drawn from those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed, as Cicero stated, that “Domina omnium et regina ratio” (Reason is the mistress and queen of all). This love of rationality represents a definite link between the Enlightenment and the Classical origins of Western thought. On the other hand, modern ‘liberals’ such as leftist philosopher Paul Feyerabend have said that “there is no comprehensive ‘rationality’” (Feyerabend). Nor is this an isolated occurrence; those Enlightenment liberals who championed reason, small government, and the free market would likely be shocked at what modern liberal philosophy has become. This great shift and the subsequent schism between old liberalism (modern conservatism) and its contemporary counterpart became apparent in the United States during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, but it had begun before the turn of the 20th century. As former Solicitor General, acting Attorney General, and Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork writes, the “conditions [the conditions for the development of modern liberalism being previously defined as: great affluence, a decline in manual labor, and increasingly unconfined individualism] were ripe at the end of the nineteenth century… but that trend was delayed by the Great War,… Great Depression,… and World War II” (Bork). This then is why the New Left movement led by Tom Hayden, David Horowitz, and others did not begin in earnest until the post-war affluence of the 1960s. This thesis of Bork’s is supported by the fact that the liberal British politician LT Hobhouse wrote in 1911 that government had “just consent” to involve itself in issues of education, public welfare, and the economy. Likewise, the famous utiliarian philospher John Stuart Mill claimed in 1859 that liberty "consists of doing what one desires" (Mill). Surely these sentiments bear a greater resemblance to modern liberal ideology than to that of Locke and Jefferson. It must therefore be accepted not only that the socio-economic conditions necessary for the cultivation of modern liberalism were present in the late 19th century but also that the seeds of said philosophy had already been sown. Bork proposes that "the defining chracterisitcs of modern liberalism are radical egalitarianism and radical individualism" (5). The former refers to the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities, the latter to the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification and hedonism. Certainly no philosopher outlines and supports "radical egalitarianism" more than Marx, and no one can top Mill when it comes to "radical individualism". Both of these men lived and wrote in the 19th century, lending great credibility to Bork's assertions. Yet the question remains: how and why did liberalism change? This too Bork adresses, and his commentary on this issue merit special attention. "Modernity," Bork writes, "the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good scoiety cannot be achieved by unaided reason" (4). This relationship between Enlightenment liberalism and rationality has already been sufficiently investgated; that the results of the pursuit of reason- the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions- magnified certain societal shortcomings is undeniable. "The response of liberalism" Bork continues, "was not to turn to religion, which modernity had seemingly made irrelevant, but to abadon reason" (4). This statement appears initially to be questionable. Surely one our society's major schools of politcal, social, and economic thought cannot be entirly bereft of reason. Such is utterly unthinkable, at least until one takes the time to look at statements such as those made by liberal philosopher Paul Feyerabend, who claimed that there is "no comprehensive 'rationality'" or Sandra Harding's claim that "science is a male rape of female nature". Neither of these statements is defended by even the weakest of logical arguments. They are simply undefended assertions in the style of those made by the Church 'scientists' who denied the heliocentric world view. This is what Bork calls the fallacious idea that there is "no reality other than one that is 'socially contsructed'" (4). A Romantic obession with opinion and feeling and sensation has replaced the pursuit of objectivity in liberal thought. The truth of this is readily apparent, whether one considers the statements made by prominent figurexs on the left about reason, the fields that liberals tend to go into in large numbers (philosophy, social sciences, liberal arts, gender studies, as opposed to more objective- though not necessarily better- fields of study such as engineering, economics, and applied chemistry, where reason is necessary to build a strdy bridge, maximize profits, or create a 'wonder drug'), or simply the ideology of modern liberals and of the Democratic Party. Nor is reason- or lack thereof- the only way in which modern and classical liberalism differ. On the contrary, the two are dissimilar in almost every way imaginable. While Enlightenment liberalism adopted the free-market economic theory of Adam Smith, its modern counterpart favors, if not unadulterated Marxism, then at least a much more isolationist, 'protective' economic policy. This is more akin to the mercantilist policies of Louis XIV's minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert than to Smith's ideas of the invisible hand of the market and the benefits of eliminated trade barriers. It is interesting to note that while Smith's theories now form the basis of all of the world's successful economies Colbert's protective isolationsim actually inceasingly impoverished France, whose industry could not compete internationally. This difference in favored economic systems has lead to another major shift in liberalism: that of the proper role of government. Thomas Paine argued that "that government is best which governs least". Jefferson, speaking not only for the American colonies but also for Locke and most otehr Enlightenment philosophes, famously wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "to secure [basic] rights Governments are instituted among Men". Enlightenment liberals believed almost unanimously that the proper role of government was a limited one, that it should be laissez-faire, not a Hobbesian Leviathan. However, modern liberalism supports a socialist, or at least a heavily regulated, economy. In order for a socialist or a welfare state to exist, government must be expanded far beyond what the founders of liberal philosophy thought to be its proper scope. Federal expenditures must necessarily rise to fund the unending stream of 'social projects' as well as the expanding bureaucracy. Thus, taxation must increase as well. This taxation falls more heavily on the wealthy, and a certain amount of fiscal redistribution ios accomplished. This differs drastically from the contractual theory of govenment pioneered by Locke and Rousseau, which states that governments exist by the consent of the governed that they may provide for the individual what he cannot hope to provide for himself: law, order, and protection foremost. In modern liberalism however, it can be seen that big government is supported, primarily because it is necessary for socialism, but also because the higher levels of taxation that it necessitates work to resdistribute the nation's wealth. Thus, it can be seen that liberalism has undergone a significant shift from the Enlightenment to today. But of what importance is this? The issue could perhaps be dropped at this point were it not for the fact that it is utterly antithetical to and incompatible with Western civilization. Some of this incompatibility should already be apparent; the two differ greatly on issues ranging from rationality to the most effective socio-economic systems. Yet this is but the tip of the iceberg. One of the most striking differences lays in how merit is regarded. The Western tradition is one based primairly on the encouragement of individual drive and merit. This has been true almost from the birth of the West, for if the Golden Age of Athens and the development of Socratic philosophy is taken to be the origin of Western civilization, Plato surely lived during its infancy. In all of his works, but especially in his Republic, Plato outlines the world's first meritocracy: in which success and ability are rewarded and failure or incompetence are punished. Throughout its history, the West has not been morally superior (neither has it been morally inferior) to other cultures, but it has been more successful, irrespective of ethical considerations. Greece, not Persia, was victorious at Marathon and Salamis. Rome, not India, formed the world's most dominant army and empire. Europe, not Asia, not Africa, not pre-Colombian America, subjugated the rest of the world and bent vast foreign dominions to their will. America, not China, is the world's leading power today. This is becasue the West has always rewarded merit and success more so than any other culture (For reasons why the West has been so dominant militarily, the reader is refered to Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture). Cortes conquered the Aztecs for several reasons: his society, despite the Inquisition, encouraged science and therefore had superior arms technology, he and his men enjoyed greater autonomy than did any of Montezuma's subjects, and the conquistadores, unlike their Aztec foes, stood to profit from military success. Despite this, modern liberalism lacks the West's commitment to encouraging invidual drive, risk, and merit. This can be manifested in various ways. Economic drive and risk are characteristics not of Marxism but of capitalism. Entrepreneurship is, by Marx, Engels, and many modern liberals, dismissed as a cynical bourgeosie method of opression. The willingness of some individuals to risk enormous sums of money has been called "organized crime" and a "failure for the lower [and] middle classes" by Howard Zinn, while George Soros, who has profitted greatly in the stock market, can claim with all seriousness a businessman is someone who "used to be a human being". Socialism does not require or encourage economic risk; similarly, it abolishes any incentive for the individual to work hard and strive for success, for all efforts will be compensated equally. Merit too is discouaged by an ideology that values family ties over individual merit on citizenship applications (most of our current immigration policy is based on the ultra-liberal Hart-Celler Act of 1965) and race over skill on college admissions. The disdain of modern liberalism for merit and individual drive is one of the primary issues making liberalism in its current form incompatible with the Western tradition. However, this incompatibility is perhaps best seen in statements made by liberals about the culture that developed the idea of individual autonomy and representative government. When Yale proposed a program for the study of Western civilization, a Democratic English professor cried out, "Western Civ? Why not a chair for colonialism, slavery, empire, and poverty?" A colleage of hers added, "The major export of Western Civilization is violence" (Kaylin quoted in Bork 89). Andrew Young, a self-proclaimed collectivist, declared that "it may take the destruction of Western Civilization to allow the rest of the world to really emerge as a free and brotherly society". Similarly, Susan Sontag claimed that "the white race is the cancer of human history". No arguments or logical progressions can demonstrate the anithesis between the Western tradition and modern liberalism as succiently as the vitrolic comments of liberals themselves. It should now be apparent that modern liberal ideology is not only incompatible with that of Western civilization but that it is also a corrosive agent to Western societies. This can be seen in the goals and ideology of modern liberals, which is in direct opposition to the Western tradition, and also in the violent, antagonistic views held by liberals about the West. As such, the amount of influence held by the New Left in America should inspire some level of fear, for America is a Western nation, and modern liberal philosophy is therefore antithetical and antagonistic to the founding principles of the United States. It is with this in mind that the role of liberalism (let us dispense with the modifier 'modern'; its Enlightenment counterpart will not be discussed significantly again and thus there is no reason to distinguish between the two anymore) in modern American society will be examined. Currently, the left-wing Democratic Party controlls both houses of the United States legislature. This puts the left in a position of power from which they have the opportunity to turn their ideology into law. Usually, politicians are more moderate than their constituents, but the modern Democratci party is increasingly controlled by its most radical elements. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are two of the most liberal politicians in American history, Pelosi having received a score of 3 from the ACU, an extremely liberal score, and an equally impressive 21 from the NTU (both are conservative groups that give annual ratings on a scale of 0:liberal to 100:conservative. These scores are based solely on voting records. Many liberal groups do the same). The average scores among Congressional Democrats were a 20 on the ACU and a 38 from the NTU. Barrack Obama, a 2008 presidential front-runner, also has a very liberal voting record. Yet it is the ability of an unknown radical anti-war candidate named Ned Lamont to defeat the four-term Senator and former Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman in a party primary that best demonstrates how far left the Democratic party has moved. The Democratic Party is no longer in touch with the public, as illustrated by Ned Lamont's 10 point loss to Lieberman in the Senatorial election as well as by Congressional approval ratings that have routinely been, since the Democratic 110th Congress took office, comparable than Prsident Bush's abysmal ratings (36.7% Congress to 33.8% President last week). The legislation proposed by the 110th Congress is equally extreme and equally dangerous. Not one major piece of legislation has been passed by the Democratic majority, and among the failed bills one can find many, many dangerous proposals. HR1 would undermine national security by "implementing the 9/11 Commission recomendations", which would include blaming America and the President instead of al-Qa'eda for the attacks. HR2 would raise the federal minimum wage and thereby, as conservative scholar Shelby Steele has pointed out, increase unemployment, especially among poor blacks. HR3 would take the lives of the unborn in order to "enhance" stem cell research, although embryonic stem cells, unlike adult stem cells, have never treated a singel disease successfully. HR5 would expand the socialist, anti-Western welfare state under the guise of "college student relief". HR6 would have undermined capitalism itself by making the free market secondary to "clean energy". HR1592, the Matthew Shepard Act, would have drastically expanded what is considered a 'hate crime', thus trodding upon the 1st Amendment in order to serve some vague, "higher racial good". Such is the resume of the 110th Congress: a long list of measures that would, if enacted, move America significantly farther away from its Western heritage and towards a socialist state. Yet, as Bork writes, "politics is a lagging indicator" (2). As has been noted above, none of the 110th Congress's proposed legislation has been passed into law. The real power of the left lies in its stranglehold on the media and education. In 2002, Bernard Goldberg, winner of seven (now eight) Emmy Awards, wrote a book entitled Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. It quickly became the New York Times #1 bestseller. Goldeberg is not a nut; he does not claim that this purported bias is proof of a "vast, left-wing conspiracy" (Goldberg 21). Instead, he argues that it is due to the "utter lack of ideological diversity at the networks" (22). he quotes Andrew Hayward, then President of CBS News as having said "Of course there’s a liberal bias in the news ... If you repeat any of this, I’ll deny it” (44). He goes on to show how the media's depiction of issues may not be in touch with reality, citing the Center for Media and Public Affairs study that found that "16% of AIDS patients shown on TV were Black or Hispanic. 46% of AIDS sufferers were actually Black or Hispanic. 2% of AIDS patients shown on TV were shown to be drug addicts. Drug addicts were 23% of AIDS cases in real life"(83). Goldberg also cites the 1996 Freedom Forum Study that found that 89% of journailists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, while only 7% voted for George Bush and only 2% for Ross Perot. 61% of journalists characterized their political beleiefs as 'liberal', while only 9% called themselves 'conservative'. A similar study conducted in 1972 found that only 25% of journalists voted for Nixon- who would go on to carry every state in the Union but Massachusetts. If this is not enought to convince the reader, Goldberg continues to present evidence that supports his claim of an overwhelming liberal mainstream media. A 1985 Los Angeles Times survey of 3000 journalists nationwide found that journalists were: twice as likely as the general public to consider themselves 'liberal', half as likelky to support Ronald Reagan, twice as likely to support abortion, three times more likely to oppose non-denominational prayer in schools, twice as likely to oppose capital punishment, and the list goes on. Surely these statistics make it clear that there is a liberal bias, intentional or otherwise, in the media. The reason for this is not some diabolical scheme for world takeoever, but instead the more mundane fat that journalists are overwhelmingly liberal. The proponents of liberal philosophy hold no less sway over the nation's educational system. A Nov 18, 2004 article in the New York Times, a decidedly leftist paper that has not endorsed a Republican for president since Eisenhower, acknowledged that "Republicans [are] outnumbered in academia". The nationwide study that led to this conclusion found that Democrats- or liberals- outnumber conservatives at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences. At Cornell, "166 professors were registered Democrat (or another party on the Left), and just 6 were registered Republican (or another party on the Right)" (Goldberg 52). At Colorodo-Boulder, the Left wins 116-5, and at Brown 54-3. A 2005 study of 183 universities and conducted by George Mason, the University of Toronto, and Smith College found that 72% of professors called themselves 'liberal', while only 15% were self-described 'conservatives'. The result of this is, as Alan Kors and Harvey Silvergate describe in their The Shadow University, an assault on "liberty, free speech, the individual, and due process" (Kors & Silvergate 11). But most of all it is an assault on truth. A prominent Afrocentrist professor at Wellesly College taught his students that Greek culture was "stolen from Egypt" (Lefkowitz quoted in Bork 244), that "the Egyptians were black" (Lefkowitz quoted in Bork 244), and that Aristotle, father of the Western mind, "stole his philosophy from the library at Alexandria" (Lefkowitz quoted in Bork 244), which would no be built until after Aristotle's death. Depite his teaching obvious falsehoods as fact, the professor in question was not fired or suspended, out of fear that it would increase racial tension. Liberal ideology has conquered truth when it comes to sex as well. It is now "verboten to suggest innate bioloigcal differences between the sexes even though males have a Y-chromosome that females do not" (Nisbet quoted in Bork 218). Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers was forced to resign because of "controversial" statements that he made about innate gender differences. In the humanitites and social sciences, but especially in such 'fields' as gender or racial studies, truth has taken a backseat to furthering the ideological goals of liberalism.