Liberalism

I feel like I have to give a preface for this.
Last year around this time I was in a government class: controversies in politics. I have to admit that I fully expected my classmates to be ultra liberal just because and ill informed about everything. I was glad to proven wrong; in fact, I was really impressed by them. Seriously. The professor on the other hand...
He gave me a B on a my first of three position papers. We all had to write on euthanasia. I went to his office and asked why I had received the grade I did, and he wouldn't tell me. Fine.
The next position paper was on illegal immigration. I got the grade I wanted.
For the third, we could choose any topic we wanted. I chose a broad, yet specific topic mostly just to make him made. I wasn't sure he was going to pass me, so I figured I'd go out with a bang.

This is that paper. I figured it would be fitting for the day after Election Day. Let's hope those elected keep this in mind...

While the majority of politicians in Washington D.C. might not describe themselves as liberal in thought and philosophy, a good many of them legislate as if they were. This descriptor cuts across party lines, including Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and third-party politicians. The same is true of most news and media reporters and celebrities. While the Constitution grants people the right to their opinions – as well as the right to implement their opinions – there is something about liberalism as a whole that is incredibly disconnected from reality.

It doesn’t work.

Not only does liberalism not work in the real world, it so skews one’s perception of reality that it’s nearly impossible to negotiate with a ‘hard core’ liberal. That is not to say that there are no pointlessly stubborn conservatives, because there most certainly are. Stiff-necked politicians have always existed and will always exist on both sides of the line. However, more conservatives of late have shown more and more efforts to come to a bipartisan agreement and voiced their concern about the partisan politics that are dead locking many initiatives. It is because of the liberal worldview held by many politicians in America today that this country is in the state of disaster it’s in.

Liberalism is a very progressive way of considering the world and how we as humans operate within it, but it is fundamentally flawed in several aspects:

• the liberal concept of human nature and human motivation cannot be shown by any portion of history;
• the liberal conception of how wealth creation and wealth distribution occurs is not only untrue, but is impossible to mandate and maintain;
• the liberal view of what human rights are is misguided and dangerous to everyone.

Simply put, while liberals surely have every good intention, their worldview often leads them to conclusions that are not only unrealistic, but frankly harmful to the country and its citizens as a whole.

The motives of humans and what human nature is truly like is basically the foundation of any philosophy. Liberals believe that human nature is inherently good and that people shouldn’t need much motivation to be charitable and for doing other good deeds that they assume will come naturally. However, in actuality, human nature is primarily guided by self-interest and a desire to rule others. It is because of this difference in philosophy that the Founding Fathers of America crafted in the Constitution limitations – the ‘checks and balances’ – that would prevent people – who are not inherently good and selfless – from becoming the tyrants and dictators they had seen and experienced not only in England, but also throughout history, such as civilizations like Rome and Greece. They did this purposefully to safeguard the rights and the safety of the American people, and because liberals don’t see human nature as self-promoting and greedy, they seek to destroy those checks and balances. Ironically, as they do this, they are manifesting the exact nature that the Founders decidedly tried to guard against. Because world history has proven time and time and time again that human nature is not good and that people will not inherently do the right thing and protect their fellow man, this philosophy ought to be stripped from our way of thinking because it simply does not work.

The liberal concept of wealth and wealth creation is also fatally skewed. Liberals believe that there is a limited amount of money, and that if somebody has more, then – logically – somebody else must have less, and that this situation is neither morally right nor fair. However, this view is simply not correct. Wealth can be created from literally nothing. If someone were to create a product – an iPhone, for example – or write a novel – perhaps Animal Farm or 1984 – then that person has created something of value to other people that did not exist before. Those people would then willingly give that creator some of their wealth in exchange for that product. That process is how wealth is generated and distributed. Contrary to liberal belief, there is not a fixed amount of money in the world; there is no pot of gold that’s just waiting to be distributed. Wealth is ever expanding. Bill Whittle argues that the Los Angeles of the 1800s was vastly different than it is today, and that a large part of that change can be directly attributed to wealth creation. He argues that the wealth of America as a whole has grown nearly seven thousand times over, and that even the poorest people in America now have things – such as televisions, modern healthcare, and automobiles – that the richest people in the 1800s could never dreamed of having. This is all due to individual wealth creation in a capitalist economy.

Liberals also tend to argue that the United States has accumulated all of its wealth by the raiding and ransacking poorer nations and taking their wealth. This is laughably and utterly untrue. Whittle also argues that even if the United States were to take the entire GDP of a smaller, less powerful country – he uses Djibouti as an example – it would not even power the United States economy for an entire day. The wealth of the United States has been created by the creativity, hard work, and perseverance of individuals who have created small businesses that have become massive corporations and enterprises, not by redistributing a fixed amount of wealth such that everyone has a ‘fair’ portion. Equal wealth distribution has actually been tried before in America, and even then, it simply hadn’t worked. When the Pilgrims first came to Plymouth, they all worked in a single common garden where the yield was divided equally amongst the families. Some families with more children weren’t getting enough, some openly protested being forced to labor for yield they weren’t going to receive, and it generally caused a great deal of malcontent and trouble. It was ultimately decided that each family would receive their own garden plot and they could labor for their own yield. There was an immediate rise in productivity, yields increased, and those who had plenty often gave to their neighbors who had come up short. Contrary to liberal belief, working for financial prosperity is good for the economy because it creates wealth for everyone involved in the free market. Distributing wealth ‘equally’ would not only exploit those who labor, but it will take away that incentive for those who generate wealth until the gears of the economy grind to a halt.

Those who identify with liberalism also believe that people are entitled to healthcare, a job that pays reasonable wages, and a decent home that shelters them from inclement weather. These services and / or objects were part of a list that was set forth by Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Second Bill of Rights. While nobody can deny that these are things that would make anyone’s life better and more comfortable, there’s a really glaring problem that liberals do not want to admit, let alone discuss: while these are all perfectly reasonable things to want, they cannot actually be ‘rights’. For someone to have the ‘right’ to something logically demands that somebody else would be required to provide that service and / or object. For example, the Founding Fathers granted the rights of free speech and freedom of assembly in the Constitution. For one to exercise their right to free speech, absolutely nothing is required of anyone else. For one to exercise their right to assemble, absolutely nothing is required of anyone. However, for someone to have the legal right to healthcare, someone is therefore logically – and legally – required to provide that health care. For someone to have the right to a decent home, someone is therefore required to provide that home. For someone to have the right to a decent, well-paying job, someone is therefore required to provide that job regardless of the applicant’s education, experience, or skill set. While this sounds like a perfectly reasonable list of things for people to have, they cannot be mandated as rights because then there would have to be a set of people that would be legally bound to provide those services and products to someone for no compensation. There’s a term for a set of people that provide goods and services for no compensation: that term is slave. While slavery existed in America for nearly two centuries, it is something that was justly abolished, and by making such things as found in FDR’s Second Bill of Rights actual rights, America would be regressing – not progressing – into the ways of the past again.

America has always been a haven for those with differing political and philosophical ideologies. Different ideologies are actually encouraged, and the true test of an idea tends to come in the debates held surrounding government elections. While people cannot honestly be faulted because they’ve elected to try a certain way of accomplishing goals that would be good for everyone, they can indeed by faulted for ignoring history, common sense, and being untruthful about what their ideologies will truly bring about. Liberal legislation has not been ‘progressive’ in the sense that America is being carried forward; instead, America has regressed into partisan politics, become racially divided, and both parties are too proud to truly work together to find a reasonable solution. If a reasonable solution is to be found, politicians on both sides of the aisle must realize that human nature is unchangeable, and that is why safeguards in the Constitution exist. They must realize that wealth is created by individuals, and that by “spreading the wealth”, they will be taking from those who have labored for their wages, and destroying their motivation to work. Finally, they need to realize that commodities and services cannot be made rights, because that will create a class of peoples in slavery in deed, and then America will truly have regressed into the past.

Further Reading:

• "What We Believe" by Bill Whittle (x).
  
• “Dear Liberal, Here’s Why I’m So Hostile” by Jeremy Choate on Sufficient Reason(x).