Liberalism Unmasked

by Richard Houck

  The Occident rose from the brilliant Promethean flame that illuminated humankind: per aspera ad astra. The desire to struggle, to dare greatly, to overcome and conquer, is the essence of the soul of Western tradition.

  Behold a Pale Horse: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalyptic Left

  There are four values that the international Left incessantly advocates: egalitarianism, diversity, progress, and tolerance. Each one is an ignoble distortion of reality.

  1. Egalitarianism

  Egalitarianism is nothing but the Liberal perversion of equality. Egalitarianism seeks to take the ideals of equality under the law, turn them upside down, and extend them to financial and social outcomes, enforced by the law and the State.

  The differences between equality and egalitarianism derive from the differences between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Liberals believe that effort should be nearly irrelevant, that there are no inherent differences between people, and that everybody should have virtually the same outcome no matter what. But people living in the real world understand that different outcomes in terms of success and life-trajectory are based on a myriad of factors.

  Marx urged erasing inequality through socialism, eliminating social and class inequality through the elimination of financial inequality. The problem with this premise is that it implies that people are only unequal financially because of some rigged system which ensures that some of them will never succeed, while granting success to others through no effort of their own. Liberals entirely disregard that individual who struggles, who fails, and who builds the resolve to try again. And again. And again. So that one day he may eventually overcome all trials and emerge as something far greater than what he was when he started. The Liberal position here is perhaps best exemplified by the statement made by Barack Obama in regard to success: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”22

  The Liberal bastardization of equality called “equality of outcome” looks not at the efforts, but the results, to decide if something is fair or not. I once had a class that discussed the psychology of stereotypes, racism, and prejudice, which offered the number of Fortune 500 CEOs and congressmen as evidence of racial and sexual inequality. The argument was that if there were true equality, there would be more women and non-whites running Fortune 500 companies and in key political positions. By this view, in order to achieve true social justice, we need more women and non-whites in key positions of business and Congress. This is where the notion of equality goes off the rails. Liberals never consider that the people presently running those companies might just happen to be the best suited for the job. Maybe these people went to the best schools and achieved the best grades because they worked the longest hours and persevered through all adversity. That never enters the Liberal mind.

  Liberals can look to the NFL, in which the players are around 70 percent black, and conclude simply that the best players made the team. Yet when looking at the fact that around 70 percent of head coaches of the teams are white, they assume that this percentage must be sign of racism and inequality.23 This is a classic example of the doublethink so commonly seen among Liberals, that strange ability to hold two contradictory views, while only applying their standard rule to one of them.

  Liberals look at data showing that whites and Asians earn more money than blacks and Hispanics, and they see only a problem that needs to be fixed. They think that because some groups outperform others in certain areas, there must be systemic oppression. Never mind the fact that whites and Asians have lower rates of crime, lower rates of single parenthood, and higher rates of education than blacks and Hispanics; Liberals still see the results as unfair. The Left now attributes any difference in outcome to factors beyond a person’s control, something that must be remedied. And the common remedy is taking away the effort, opportunity, or property of one person, to give it to another.

  Liberals proclaim that anything which does not perfectly mirror the demographic makeup of society is racist or sexist, or proves that the system is rigged in favor of one group, the group of white men. In their warped minds, everybody, from every background, is identical and equal. Liberals live in a world of relativism and subjectivity, in which everybody is equally amazing and special in their own ways. And that’s all wonderful — but in the real world, we all have different sets of skills and make different life decisions, and these things lead to different outcomes.

  Egalitarianism, like socialism and communism, is an ideology for losers and for the dredges of society. It seeks to pull the strongest and most productive members of a society down to the lowly ranks of the least productive and laziest. All ideologies that are rooted in forced equality are little more than cultural crabs-in-a-barrel: the lowest members are forever able to keep the best from reaching higher.

  Equality as it is understood by the Right means that we all deserve what we earn through our own efforts. Liberals believe equality means everybody should end in a similar material position. Liberals feel that resources should be redistributed to lessen any and all material inequality, regardless of individual effort and decisions.

  “Politically correct” and “social justice” are two egalitarian terms that need to be eradicated, as they are both morally corrupt and logically incoherent. Truth, honesty, and justice are all being subverted by this Liberal obsession with political correctness and social justice. When you take ideals that are inherently good — the ideals of justice and correctness, truth and honesty — and you alter them, they are warped into an inherently perverse sense of justice or truth.

  When you add a modifier to the words “correct” or “justice,” you entirely alter their meaning. Justice refers to objective moral correctness; it indicates that each person receives what he rightfully deserves. Correct means to be objectively truthful. It’s that simple. Anybody who insists on political correctness or social justice is inherently a liar advocating for severe injustices. This idea is perhaps best exemplified by a former Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan, who, while on trial for crimes against humanity, told the court he was only fighting for “social justice.”24

  The modifiers to these words are of communist origins. They refer not to righteous or epistemological truths, but to the “proper” way of doing and saying things under the new regime, in which the collective will supersedes individual justice. In egalitarian thought, the collective is taken to be inherently more important than any individual, and the individual is sacrificed to the false god of the collective whenever necessary.

  What I have found, and what I hope to convey in these pages, is that there is no difference at all between the modern Liberals inhabiting the Democrat party and the members of any of the communist regimes we have ever seen the world over. They all work from exactly the same playbook, every single time.

  Liberals use the term “politically correct” to regulate what facts they deem acceptable for discussion. It is factually correct for me to say that black men commit homicide at a rate far higher than any other group in America; however, it is not politically correct of me to say it. This essentially distorts reality and prevents us from having productive discussions or creating effective policies to solve problems. If there were no stigma associated with facts having to do with race, we could have open discussions regarding these questions. We could look at the plight of inner cities, the impact of unemployment and single motherhood on crime, and we could work towards a better country for everybody. Yet because it is not considered “politically correct” to acknowledge any differences between people or groups, society is prevented from seeking resolutions.

  Political correctness is costing lives. When people bring up gun violence and deaths, they don’t mention that the majority of young white men killed with guns are suicides. Or that the majority of young black men killed with guns are killed by other young black men. Political correctness has kept issues like gun control in the media without allowing us to discuss the real and deep trouble
s among young white men and young black men.

  Not only in the realm of firearm deaths is political correctness literally killing us, but we are seeing the same horrific effects in terms of migration and crime. All over Europe migrants are robbing, assaulting, and raping native Europeans, but few people will stand up and openly proclaim the issue, the violence continues on. For it is not seen as politically correct to draw the correlation between steeply increasing rape rates, and the number of foreign men flooding into Europe. Even more taboo is the discussion of who opened the gates to the Saracen hordes.

  The equality between men and women means that persons of both genders have an equal, inherent, and intrinsic basic value. It does not mean that all people are going to be equal from birth until death. You start out equal — meaning with the same rights and the same protections under the law. From there, it’s up to you. Liberals seem to have gotten the idea that human equality means readjusting our entire society at the end of the year so that everybody gets the same trophy, the same salary. Equality does not mean that if you do not achieve your goals, whatever these may be, you get to blame all those who were able to reach theirs.

  I will never be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, race the Monaco Grand Prix, or ride in the Tour de France. This acceptance of reality is beyond the Liberal realm of understanding. I would really like to race Monaco at least once or ride a Grand Tour through Europe — but it just isn’t on the cards for me. That doesn’t mean I was somehow cheated somewhere in my life.

  Egalitarianism forces equality by undermining individual effort. It means nothing but taking positions away from those who rightfully earned them, and giving them to those who did not. It means high taxation on those who have toiled and struggled their lives away to earn a good living for their family, and giving this stolen money to those who have done nothing. It means theft in the name of equality.

  By nature people are inherently unequal, a simple concept the Left will not admit. Egalitarianism is the false god worshiped by secular Liberals. It is a destructive dogma, an evil that distorts actual equality and destroys societies from within. Every country in the world that has attempted to force equality onto its people, has ended in the ruins of starvation and decay.

  2. Diversity

  “Diversity is our greatest strength,” is the favorite mantra of the international Left the world over. It is used as a call for mass migration and an excuse to permit the invasion and destruction of cultures, in the name of supposedly great benefits. But never is a single shred of evidence raised in defense of this platitude.

  In reality, Liberals do not believe in true diversity — diversity of thoughts and of ideas. The Liberal, multicultural utopia is one in which everybody has different skin color, but thinks exactly the same. Even the Liberal concept of diversity itself is a perversion.

  Liberals have lately been claiming that diversity is a core American value. As if our most treasured and central value as a nation could possibly be allowing millions of foreigners that have no connection to our history or values to come here and collect welfare.

  Diversity is not what built this nation and made it into the envy of the world. What built this nation was European people coming together, putting their differences aside and working towards a common goal. The value of freedom and hard work is what brought people together. They worked towards a few common American goals to create something special. And now Liberals want to pretend that importing hordes of foreigners who have no intention of integrating, or even working for that matter, is somehow going to enrich our culture. By every measure, increased diversity lowers trust, erodes social capital, and ultimately weakens society.

  Diversity is not an asset, but a weakness, one which destroys societies. Multiculturalism is a failed experiment.

  We have seen the outcomes throughout Europe and the US. We know what decades of diversity and multiculturalism do to a nation and its people. Certain cultures and ethnicities may simply never get along, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Forcing multiculturalism benefits nobody but a select few in the upper echelons of society, whose wealth and status shelters them from all its horrific consequences.

  If the visible outcomes of European “enrichment” programs are not enough to convince you of the devastating harm that diversity does to societies, there’s more. Robert Putnam, Harvard professor, researcher, author of Bowling Alone, and renowned expert on social capital, made an extensive study of diversity. His study put the phrase “diversity is our greatest strength” scientifically to the test.

  “Social capital” indicates the relationships between people in a culture or society. It refers to the level of trust, cooperation, norms, values, civic engagement, friendships, quality of life, and the like. Researching social capital within communities, Putnam embarked on a monumental feat of data collection. Putnam collected data from 30,000 people across neighborhoods in forty-one United States cities. Participants were interviewed on numerous topics relating to social capital in their local communities. What Putnam found in his now infamous study was the last thing he, or most Liberals, ever expected.25

  Since the 1950s, sociologists have been putting forth the theory of Contact Hypothesis — the idea, simply put, that the best way to improve relationships between different groups is merely to bring them to interact with each other. And in many ways, this idea has its merits — assuming the interactions with the other groups are positive. What Putnam found was not only that increased diversity in societies leads to lower levels of trust between different out-groups, but also that people in diverse societies became less trusting overall, even towards their own in-group.

  Putnam found that as diversity increases, so does social isolation: people living in diverse areas stay in more and spend more time alone, watching TV by themselves. As diversity increases, trust levels decrease. Trust not only of each other, but of the local government, the local news, and the media. As diversity increases, fewer community members register to vote, fewer give to charity, and fewer work on community projects. Diversity lowers social cohesion; people in diverse societies are less inclined to work together.

  Is it any wonder? The greatest of societies have been created and built by a common group of people working towards a common goal, something greater than themselves. Diversity makes this unified effort all but impossible.

  Perhaps the saddest and most damning finding from Putnam’s study: as diversity increases, people report having fewer close friends, they report lower ratings of happiness, and a lower quality of life overall.

  In areas that were less diverse and more racially homogeneous, all the negative effects of diversity disappear. The least diverse areas of the country, even when one controls for other factors, engage in more community involvement; their members are more trusting of each other and spend more time with others, and more time outdoors generally. The most homogeneous cities have the highest levels of trust among members of the community. Happiness, quality of life, numbers of close friends per individual, all increase in areas that are less diverse and more ethnically homogeneous.

  Professor Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Helsinki conducted a study that investigated the relationship between conflict and ethnic diversity.26 Professor Vanhanen found a very high correlation (.726) between the amount of conflict in an area and the amount of diversity. His study ranges from almost entirely homogeneous areas, with little to no conflict (South Korea and Japan), all the way to the exceptionally diverse and war-torn nations of Bosnia and Sudan.

  Another analysis done on diversity found that life satisfaction, national wealth, and life expectancy are negatively correlated to increased ethnic diversity; these qualities all decline in the 130 nations studied as their level of diversity increases.27 The safest, happiest, nations in Europe, Iceland, Poland, Slovenia, all happen to be the least diverse.28

  But set the science aside. Ask yourself: has increased diversity made you happier? Safer? Healthier? Has it made your life any bet
ter or more enriching? Has it at any point benefited any of the recipients of this “enrichment”? The next time you’re stuck in a three hour long TSA line at the airport, you can undoubtedly thank diversity and tolerance for the delay.

  Diversity, by all measures, weakens society, lowers trust, destroys social capital, damages happiness, and degrades quality of life. Far from being our “strength,” it leads to fragmentation and mutual mistrust, making all cohesion or social unity impossible.

  3. Progress

  Freedom once implied certain unalienable rights. The right to speech, press, worship, and to property. The freedom to pursue one’s own happiness. There is an essential quality common to all of these rights; they do not require anything from anybody else. I can say whatever I like without needing anyone’s participation. Nobody even has to listen to my ravings for me to have that freedom. These rights do not require any sort of limiting principle; they are passive in nature, and ask nothing of anyone.

  You can faithfully pursue your happiness, whatever that may be, so long as you do not impede on another person’s freedom or harm society. These freedoms and rights in a certain sense exist almost naturally: if you do not impede another person’s rights or harm society at large, then you are for that very reason acting in a virtuous and just manner. All that needs be done to maintain these freedoms is to ensure that whenever anyone’s rights are infringed, there is a system in place to deal with such transgressions. In our case, this is the court system; and even here, the accused has a right to a fair and quick trial.

  This was the status quo in the United States for the better part of its history. Then Franklin Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Address declared the “freedom from want,” which would forever turn the passive nature of rights upside down in the United States. To declare that all people have the right to a certain standard of living, as FDR did, is to open the floodgates to constant and incessant “progress” with no limiting factor. There is always going to be some new arbitrary crusade, some manufactured battle to fight. To declare that coverage of basic living expenses is a “right,” is also to declare that some other person must be obligated to provide that right. Which of course violates the property rights of the provider.