A Critical Analysis of Liberalism: Concepts, History, Motivation

[Asian-American]

Hi,

 

I recently read this academic analysis of Liberalism: http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/review-AR.html It goes into great detail about the origins of Liberalism, who created the original tenets and for what purpose, and follows the decades of Liberal elite management in keeping the movement alive. I'm looking for any feedback.

 

Supplemental material include:

 

http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/books-Preface.html

http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no2/km-understanding.html

http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no3/km-understandII.html

http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol4no2/km-understandIII.html

http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm

 

Regards.

[Buffy]

Sounds like a thinly veiled restatement of "Mein Kampf"...

 

Chilled,

Buffy

[questor]

why would you want to be a liberal unless forced into it by your inability to think three jumps ahead of the problem? example: Bush got us into this war to control Iraq's oil resources. it didn't work very well, did it? this liberal mantra also leads one to infer that liberals do not want the oil supply to be protected, therefore they are willing to pay far higher prices for the stuff, or maybe not use it at all. Questor

[Biochemist]

why would you want to be a liberal unless forced into it by your inability to think three jumps ahead of the problem?

"Liberal" in this context does not mean left-leaning elements of democracies. It means democracies. Nearly eveyone in western society is a liberal.

Bush got us into this war to control Iraq's oil resources...

You have now lost all credibility. The reasons it didn't "work" to control oil resources is that is was never anyone's intent. The world oil market is fungible. Oil producted anywhere affects prices everywhere. If anyone wanted to drive prices down, they would have let Saddam do what he wanted: pump more oil.

 

Bush, rightly or wrongly, invaded Iraq to establish a democratic beachhead. It is what he always said, and it is what he is doing. You can certainly disagree with the objective and the approach, but Bush is doing exactly what he said.

 

To create an artificial objective ("control oil") and then suggest it "didn't work" is putting your head in the sand not once but twice.

[questor]

BIO., you may want to re-read my post where i used the comment about Bush's desire to control the oil as an example of fuzzy liberal thinking.

[Fishteacher73]

Isn't thinking ahead, possibly about reducing the US's petroleum dependancy, and not just how much it takes for dubbya to fill up his hummers? (oh, and that nasty polution problem....damn I must be so short sighted to think about my kids...)That IMO is a few steps ahead of the game....

[questor]

i don't think that ''dubbya'' and his crowd are the only users of oil. and if you or anyone else could come up with some workable alternative fuels, i'm sure the whole world would be happy. this is a little different than what i call two-step thinking. two step thinking is observing a problem (step 1), treating the problem (step 2), then being clueless about the consequences of your treatment which gives results frequently worse that you had at the beginning.

[bumab]

Bush, rightly or wrongly, invaded Iraq to establish a democratic beachhead. It is what he always said, and it is what he is doing. You can certainly disagree with the objective and the approach, but Bush is doing exactly what he said.

 

True- but you can't move from that statement to the idea that it was all in the idealic goal of democracy throughout the world. Far more likely, given his past actions, that the creation of a democractic beachhead was done in the interests of securing a more stable platform for oil extraction.

 

Second- He was very disengenous about the causes. 50% or so people thought Hussein was behind 9/11 years after the fact, when it was shown very conclusivaly he was not involved. Now, I know he didn't say Hussein was responsible directly, but he certainly hasn't denied it, either. Focus should have been on Afganistan if the objective was al-Quaida. It hasn't been- it's been on Iraq. (my personal beef- I think we should still be in Afganistan more strongly, and Iraq should have been a secondary thing)

 

anyway, the first statement was more on topic :)

[Biochemist]

BIO., you may want to re-read my post where i used the comment about Bush's desire to control the oil as an example of fuzzy liberal thinking.

Way whoops. I humbly apologize!!!

 

I completely misread your post.

 

:)

[questor]

i agree with Biochemist about Bush's motives. what would the world say if he is successful with opening the middle east to representative government and bringing the heavily muslim countries into modern society where they sought peace instead of murder? would the liberals then applaud him? probably not, because we didn't find WMD. and if the huge oil reserves of Iraq remain available to the world market will the liberals thank Bush? no, because they can't understand the problem.

[bumab]

That's a pretty pejoritive statement about liberal thinking. If anything, history has shown that most presidents are remembered for what they did, not which party they were in.

[Biochemist]

... but you can't move from that statement to the idea that it was all in the idealic goal of democracy throughout the world. Far more likely, given his past actions, that the creation of a democractic beachhead was done in the interests of securing a more stable platform for oil extraction....

This seems a bit of a non sequitur. Bish did not invade Iraq to spearhead democracy generally, and certainly not to secure an oil platform. He did it because he thinks that democracy in the Middle East will stem the tide of terrorism. Further, he think terrorist states should be confronted. It may not work, but that is what he thinks.

 

He is also in favor of supporting democrats in any location (e.g., having Condi Rice talk tough to the Egyptions from Cairo) but that was not the reason for the Iraq invasion.

 

You can like Bush or not, but he tends (more than any president in memory) to do exactly what he says.

[Tormod]

You can like Bush or not, but he tends (more than any president in memory) to do exactly what he says.

 

Bio, this is a rather strong statement. What Bush says and what he does are two different things. Such is the world of politics. I dare you to make a list of the political goals of the sitting US president and his real agendas for them. It is not possible. Things are more complex than that.

[questor]

i agree with your statement about why presidents are remembered because of their deeds, but i doubt there are many people who would not know to which party they belonged. what i'm really talking about is the thought process that seems to be quite different in different people. this is what compels them to react to issues in opposite ways

and compels them to associate with people of like mind. this difference in thought pattern is the reason we have liberals and conservatives.

[Tormod]

i agree with your statement about why presidents are remembered because of their deeds, but i doubt there are many people who would not know to which party they belonged

 

This is a very US-centric view. Most democratic countries have many, many parties. In Norway we have about 8 or 9 large parties. Some countries have so many parties that no party gets a majority vote, and they will have to govern with a minority coalition.

[Biochemist]

...I dare you to make a list of the political goals of the sitting US president and his real agendas for them....

Do keep in mind that I am comparing US presidents to US presidents, not to the man in the street. But Bush's goals are transparent. They are:

 

1) Revamp social security, consistent with his view of the value of personal ownership

2) Reduce taxes, consistent with his view of the value of personal ownership

3) Prosecute the war on terror by confronting it wherever it exists (as long as the military can afford the extension). In this war he defines countries as either for the US or against the US. This is a stark contrast to his predecessors

4) Support democracy where it can be supported. Bush's support of democracy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia is also a start departure from his predecessors.

 

Again, you can think this is keenly insighful or absolutely nutty. But this is exactly what Bush says, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats.

 

It is not reasonable to impute some other motive to Bush. You can dislike the ones he has, but there is no real reason to make up another one to dislike.

[UncleAl]

The blatant shrill anti-Semitism detracts from what is essentially a true thesis: Utopianism was espoused by folk who bloodied their knuckles to achieve success, then wished to grant success free to those who could not be bothered to work for it. Thes results were uniformly disasterous wordwide, from the USSR to Israeli kibbutizm to the Shining Path to the Khmer Rouge. China survived Mao with a giant swerve to the Right, certainly economically.

 

Liberalism fails when it runs out of other peoples' monies. It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere. A child who is not a Liberal has no heart; an adult who is a Liberal has no mind. Conservative government steals from what you have, Liberal government steals from what you might have. The difference is hunger vs. famine.

 

Best efforts will not substitute for knowledge. The Nanny State cannot substitute for personal responsibilty. "Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit," Albert Einstein.

 

("The stupor of authority is the greatest enemy of truth")