"Liberalism's offer to the adolescent and young adult is far from
benign. Collectivism does not consist in mere mannerisms but is instead a
permanent and defining social architecture, dangerous to liberty precisely because its principles are in direct opposition to it. Given
modern liberalism's dominance in the contemporary world scene and its
growing presence in western culture over the past century, it will be
useful to ask again what collectivism has to offer the adolescent, whose
further development requires a worldview that both inspires allegiance
and resonates with his emerging identity."
After
observing the recent student marches across the country demanding free
college tuition and debt forgiveness, "safe spaces" free from the
tyranny of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the bullying by
students to force the resignation of college administrators and
teachers, one needs to understand the collectivist principles and
mindset behind the anti-individualist movement that is a direct threat
to Personal Liberty and Freedom.
The Liberal Manifesto: Major Principles
1.
The citizens of a modern nation are, in effect, the children of a
parental government; they are members of a very large family with
enforceable obligations to each other. These obligations are not defined
by traditional individualist western social conventions, nor by mutual
consent based on moral imperatives, but are instead prescribed by
liberal intellectuals and politicians through legislation, judicial
decisions and the canons of political correctness.
2.
The individual's relationship to government should resemble his
original relationship to his parents, or the fiduciary relationship
between guardian and ward. The state is a proper source from which to
gratify the longings of the people for various forms of surrogate
parental care. The care should encompass the entire life span from
cradle to grave. It should consist of various forms of economic, social
and political assistance, protection and indulgence in every major
sector of life. Self-reliance and the role of individual responsibility
should be diminished in favor of collective care-taking administered by
the state.
3. This relationship between
government and the governed properly diminishes the sovereignty of the
individual in favor of the state. As a political entity, the state is
superior to the individual. Moreover, the individual can not exist
without the state.
4. The people will be
better off under the direction of government programs than if they care
of themselves through cooperative arrangements of their own. Because
most citizens are not competent to run their own lives effectively they
need government guidance to do what is good for them. Collective
remedies coordinated by the state are nearly always preferable to those
initiated by individuals on a voluntary basis.
5.
Socialism and its variants with far reaching power vested in
centralized government is the proper political foundation for an ordered
society. Collectivism is the proper political philosophy for an ordered
society. Government coercion is needed to ensure that the activities of
the people achieve politically appropriate ends. Traditional property
and contract rights and other protections on individual liberty against
encroachment by the state must be subordinated to this collective
process.
6. It is not necessary that a good
life be earned through diligent individual effort, voluntary cooperation
with others, or conduct consistent with traditional moral values.
Instead, a good life is a government entitlement owed to each citizen
regardless of the nature and quality of his acts and their usefulness to
others. Material assets under the control of the government are to be
distributed to those deemed in need of them. The beneficiaries of
government handouts are entitled to them and owe no debt of gratitude to
the persons who fund them.
7. Voluntary
cooperation based on the consent of the parties in a transaction is not
an especially important ideal and may be overridden by the coercive
apparatus of the government. Consent of all parties is not morally or
legally necessary to complete a transfer of material assets for welfare
purposes or to alter an individual or group's circumstances in the name
of social justice. In fact, collectivist concepts of justice require
that redistribution of power and social status as well as material
assets should be effected regardless of the objections of those who
possessed these goods prior to their transfer to others. In these cases
collectivist definitions of distributive and social justice should override older considerations of earned benefits, just title, freedom of
exchange, due process, rights of association and historical precedent.
8.
The natural and acquired inclinations of moral persons to cooperate with
each other in a framework of laws governing property rights and
contracts are not the primary basis for an orderly society. Rather, a
large government regulatory apparatus, analogous to the authority of
parents in a family, is needed to exercise control of the citizenry and
to ensure that social justice is achieved. Where legal disputes emerge,
court decisions should be determined in accordance with collectivist
ideals. Outcomes in social matters should be judged by whether or not
they promote material and social equality, aid the disadvantaged,
enhance diversity, reduce envy, protect self-esteem and mitigate
disparities in social status, among other considerations.
9.
Altruism is better understood as a virtue of the state, a socialized
function or collective expression of the General Will embodied in
government programs. Voluntary acts of compassion and charity by private
individuals or groups are always inferior to the welfare activities of
the state, cannot be substituted for the state's welfare machinery, and
cannot meet the welfare needs of the people. Massive welfare programs
administered by the state at taxpayer expense are necessary to meet the
needs of the disadvantaged.
10. An individual's
destructive actions against himself or others are not primarily the
consequence of his personal choices, values, goals or other mental and
emotional processes occurring in his own mind, but are instead caused by
negative influences impinging upon him from his culture. He should
therefore not be held responsible for his bad actions. Rather, he and
others should be encouraged to view his actions as the collective fault
of a society that has in some way oppressed, neglected, deprived or
exploited him.
11. Traditional ideas about the separateness and sovereignty of the individual are invalid. Although
his is a physically separate entity, and individual's political
significance derives from his membership in a collective; the collective
is the primary economic, social and political unit, not the individual.
Rights formerly held to reside in the individual, such as property
rights in his person and possessions, are not longer primary but are to
be subordinated to the people as understood by government officials
takes precedence over the rights of the individual and may properly
displace older ideals of liberty and procedural justice whenever
necessary. Claims to personal sovereignty and the right to have a life
of one's own are selfish and therefor morally wrong.
12.
Materials subsides are to be paid to persons designated by the state
and based on need, suffering or inequality, not on merit or desert.
Reparations to persons deemed by the state to have been wronged may be
made by forcible transfers of property from other persons who are
assigned responsibility for injuries or disadvantage even though they
have personally done no wrong. In general, rights to life, liberty and
property enshrined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S.
Constitution's Bill of Rights should be set aside in favor of whatever
collective rights are asserted by the state.
13.
Human nature is highly malleable. Not only can it be molded to
accommodate collectivist ideals without contradicting that nature and
without adverse consequences, but adherence to collective ideals will
improve human nature. Government programs based on social science
research can and should alter behavior toward politically approved ends.
Liberal insights are superior to traditional conservative beliefs, in
part because liberal policy makers are intellectually superior to
conservatives and other opponents.
14. Prescriptions on how to act and how not to act should not be based on
the distilled ethical and moral wisdom of the centuries but should
instead be decided by liberal intellectuals and promulgated through the
canons of political correctness or evolved through the creation of
alternative lifestyles in a spirit of cultural diversity. Many
behaviors traditionally counted as offensive, immoral, or illegal should
now be deemed acceptable. Behaviors of this type are not to be judged
in regard to their moral or ethical implications or by their tendency to
disrupt social order, but should instead by explained by the motivations behind them and understood as expressions of human freedom,
healthy absence of inhibition, progressive morality, or defensive
reactions to adverse social influences. Sexual freedom, in particular,
should be given wide latitude among consenting adults even if its
exercise results in extramarital pregnancies and single parent families,
increases the incidence of sexually transmitted disease, violates
traditional marriage vows, invades stable unions or destroys family
integrity.
15. Established traditions of
decency and courtesy are unduly restrictive given modern liberal
insights. Traditional courtesies may also be rejected because they
support class distinctions that oppose the liberal ideal of social
equality.
16. In general, traditional social
ideals, ethical standards and prohibitions of conscience are to be
regarded as outmoded, opposed to the evolution of progressive social
codes, and not applicable to modern social systems. In fact, there are
not objective grounds on which to favor one set of societal arrangements
over another. Traditional moral and ethical codes such as the Golden
Rule may be rewritten ad libitum in view of insights gained from contemporary relativistic and multicultural constructs.
17.
Traditional moral, ethical and legal codes have not been promulgated
for such reasonable purposes as ensuring social order or promoting good
will or human happiness, not have they been based on a rational
understanding of human nature and the conditions of human existence.
Instead, they are essentially political constructs created for
manipulative purposes by persons who seek power over others. Equality
before the law, for example, is a fiction even as an ideal and
represents an apparently ethical cover for what is in fact the
exploitation of certain subgroups such as women and ethnic or racial
minorities.
18. Good character as an embodiment
of certain virtues is not an important ideal. Individual dispositions
to behave with honesty, integrity, responsibility, self-direction,
mutuality and dependability in interactions with others are not to be
especially valued or praised. More generally, one should avoid judging
the actions of another person based on standards of ethics, morals or
virtue. Condemning the behavior of another person on grounds of right
and wrong or good and evil is harsh, mean-spirited and judgemental and
may diminish self-esteem, but this criticism of others by liberals
should not itself be subjected to disapproval because it is needed to
achieve social justice. Economic, social or political disadvantages
should be sought for as explanations for bad behavior by any definition,
and such explanations are to be understood as excuses for that
behavior. Because such hardship and disadvantage are caused by other
persons and other factors, the individual committing the bad act should
receive sympathy, not blame. Society's primary response to such actions
should be to treat or rehabilitate the offender, not to punish him or
require him to make restitution for his wrongdoing. Persons who have
been disadvantaged should not be held to ordinary legal duties or
obligations if such responsibilities would be burdensome to them.
19.
These considerations also apply to alleged good and evil behavior
between nations and among religious and ethnic groups, including various
types of terrorist acts that inflict devastating injury and death on
apparently innocent persons. Moral and ethical judgements about what
individuals or groups do on the international scene should be withheld
pending further analysis of their motives and the economic, social and
political context in which the acts occur.
20.
In the interest of social justice, it is the duty of the state to
determine which groups or classes of persons suffer from deficits in
material security and in social and political status and to cure these
deficits through government initiatives. The state should provide
benefits to persons of its choosing based on perceived need, or on
certain types of inequality, or on past, present, or ancestral hardship.
Traditional concepts of merit and desert are themselves unjust, fraudulent and injurious to the sensibilities of those who are unfairly
blamed for wrong doing, self-neglect, laziness or other self-defeating
tendencies. These tendencies, if present, should not be condemned as
weakness, immaturity, irresponsibility or moral turpitude.
21.
More generally, time-honored conceptions of justice as reflected in
common sense, ethical philosophy, judicial practice and the history of
political thought are invalid. It is not true, for example, that a
person should be rewarded or punished in proportion to the good or evil
he causes. It is also not true that the outcome of a transaction is
fair just because the processes that lead to its completion are fair and
the decisions made by the parties to the transaction are informed,
voluntary and competent. Instead, justice must be based on
considerations of need, inequality, disadvantage and suffering. An
outcome that leaves one or more parties to transaction in a disadvantaged,
unequal, or needy state is unjust by definition. To satisfy need,
remove inequality and eliminate and compensate for suffering, it is
proper to take economic goods from persons who own them according to
older standards of just title and give them to persons or groups now
deemed deserving by government officials. It is also proper to lower the
social and/or political status of certain persons and elevate the
social and political status of certain other persons based on
considerations of need, equality, disadvantage and suffering.
Adjustments of this type are proper even if those demoted in their
status have not committed and social or political wrongs. The ideal of
equalizing disparities in status justifies the realignment.
22.
Traditional ideals of self-determination, self-responsibility and
self-reliance are invalid. These concepts are illusory anyway, since
the manner in which any one person conducts himself cannot be attributed
to particular characteristics that differentiate him from others. What
appears to be virtuous effort or moral integrity, for example, is
merely a complex result of societal influences, expressed through the
individual. His own effort, talent, ingenuity, risk taking,
persistence, courage, or other apparent personal contributions to his
success, including those he sustains in the face of hardship are
illusory. (Obama: You didn't build that.) Furthermore, the fruits of an
individual's labors should be shared with others without compensation
because his talents, virtues and abilities are actually collective
assets belonging to the population as a whole, and his achievements are
more reasonably attributed to the collective process from which he
benefits.
23. Economic activity should be to a
great extent be carefully controlled by government. Where the means of
production are not owned outright by the state, they should be closely
regulated despite burdensome administrative costs, interference with
prior ownership and contractual agreements, or negative effects on
allocation of resources and incentives to economic activity. Adverse
effects on the freedom with which individuals can run their economic
lives, even when severe, are appropriate concessions to the ideals of
government regulation, especially where redistribution of material
wealth is concerned. Likewise, the distribution of what is produced
should be strongly influenced by government, as should the nature of
what is produced, the persons who do the producing, the sale price at
which products are offered, and the margins of profit enjoyed at each
state between production and consumption. Competition at all levels of
economic activity, including that arise from innovation, is unduly harsh,
demands excessively hard work, and may cause financial and other
hardships through job loss, business failure and career change.
Comprehensive government protections are needed to mitigate these
dangers. It is well known that capitalists and the rich rise to wealth
and power on the backs of the poor. The policy that wealth should be
passed on to the heirs of one's choice wrongfully deprives others of
material goods to which they are entitled by collectivist principles.
24.
Every individual is born into the world with a legally enforceable
obligation to take care of an indefinite number of persons whom he will
never meet and with whom he will establish no voluntary association or
agreement. He will be entitled to only a portion of the fruits of his
own labor, and that percentage will be determined by government policy.
Citizenship in a collectivist society properly implies that as soon as
an adolescent makes the transition to adulthood, a substantial portion
of his time, effort and ability becomes rightfully indentured to others.
The persons to whom he is obligated will be identified for him by the
state according to their membership in a group or class deemed
deserving. The more economically productive one is, the greater his
liability to others. This system is designed to combat the greed that
causes productive persons to want to keep what they earn.
25.
The primary purpose of politics is the creation of an ideal collective
society run by a liberal elite committed to a just redistribution of
economic, social, and political goods. This redistribution is to be
achieved along egalitarian lines using the coercive power of the state.
Traditional negative (Jeffersonian) Rights that protect individual
liberty through guarantees of freedom from encroachment by others
should not limit the state's actions and must instead yield to positive
rights that guarantee freedom from material need and from disadvantages
in social status and political power. Government enforced entitlements
are to be the primary means to these ends.
26.
The traditional social institutions of marriage and family are not very
important in the dynamics of social progress and should yield to
progressive alternative lifestyles. The traditional bond of marriage is
too restrictive and does not allow for more diverse social and sexual
experience, including the self-discovery that comes from relating to a
variety of partners. Similarly, children do not need parents who are
deeply committed to each other or to an intact traditional family. If a
child needs attention, love, affection, guidance, protection, training,
education, medical care, socialization and acculturation, these needs
can be met by daycare facilities, village programs, summer camps,
neighbors, sitters, teachers, social workers and other staff in public
schools. Moral and ethical values and the family's racial, ethnic and
cultural traditions can be acquired from these and other sources and do
not have to be taught by parents or extended family. Finally,
traditional religious training instills a narrow, prejudicial and
judgemental view of morality and culture and should be replaced by more
enlightened secular philosophies, especially those that promote cultural
diversity. Morality and ethics should be seen as evolving value systems
subject to progressive insights. There are no moral absolutes for human
relating, nor is it possible to make a valid argument for the
superiority of one moral code over another.
Based
on these considerations, the question of whether modern liberalism
prepares the emerging adult to live in freedom must be answered in the
negative. Far from an interest in preparing its children for lives of
genuine liberty based on personal autonomy, self-reliance and
cooperation by consent, the liberal agenda promotes an uncritical
childlike accommodation to the rules, regulations and expropriations
essential to the collectivist state and and equally childlike dependency
on a society that likens itself to an all embracing family. Mature
competence is achieved only with difficulty, if at all, under these
conditions. By the very nature of its operations, every government
program comes with an increase in the state's power and a decrease in
the domain of individual freedom: the will of the government officials is
substituted for that of the individual citizen whenever and wherever a
government program tells him what he may or may not do. With
directives for nearly every conceivable situation, the programs of
modern government constantly interfere with the individual's most
immediate experience of personal freedom: that of making his own
decisions at the countless choice points of daily living. These
intrusions undermine his growth to competence by extending the
dependency of childhood well into his adult years and even for the
duration of his life. More specifically, the collectivist society
diminishes the young adult's opportunities for continued development of
autonomy, initiative and industry; subordinates this personal
sovereignty to the authority of the collective; and defines him
politically by his obligations to the state.
- Lyle H. Rossiter, JR., M.D.
