Britannia Radio

Finding meaning in liberalism.

By Stanley Kurtz, fellow, the Hudson Institute
May 31, 2001 9:10 a.m.

Sometime during the past thirty years, liberalism stopped being a mere political perspective and turned into a religion. I mean that literally. Liberalism now functions for substantial numbers of its adherents as a religion: an encompassing worldview that answers the big questions about life, lends significance to our daily exertions, and provides a rationale for meaningful collective action. 

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Liberalism arose as a solution to the destructive religious wars of Europe's past, and succeeded because it allowed people of differing religious perspectives to live peacefully and productively in the same society. Designed to make the world safe for adherents of differing faiths, liberalism itself was never supposed to be a faith. But that is exactly what liberalism has become. And this transformation of liberalism into a de facto religion explains a lot about what we call "political correctness."

Have you ever wondered why conservatives nowadays are so often demonized, even by mainstream liberals? No matter how balanced, well-reasoned, or rooted in long-established principle conservative objections to, say, affirmative action or gay marriage may be, conservatives are still likely to find themselves stigmatized as racist homophobes. By the same token, reasonable conservative ideas are regularly deemed unfit for reasoned debate. This preference for ostracism over engagement amounts to a brilliant strategy on the part of the Left, but the demonization of conservatives can't be explained as a mere conscious tactical maneuver. The stigmatization of conservatives only works because so many people are primed to respond to it in the first place.

So why have conservatives been demonized? Maybe it's because the religion that liberalism has become is so badly in need of demons. Traditional liberalism simply laid out ground rules for reasoned debate and the peaceful adjudication of political differences. One of the main reasons why politics in a liberal society could be peaceful was that people sought direction about life's ultimate purpose outside of politics itself. But once traditional religion ceased to provide modern liberals with either an ultimate life purpose or a pattern of virtue, liberalism itself was the only belief system remaining that could supply these essential elements of life.

So how does liberalism grant meaning to life? How does liberalism do what religion used to do? So long as it serves as a mere set of ground rules for adjudicating day-to-day political differences, liberalism remains too "boring" to serve as a religion. But what if liberals were engaged at every moment in a dire, almost revolutionary, struggle for the very principles of liberalism itself? What if liberals were at war on a daily basis with King George III? With Hitler? With Bull Connor? Now that would supply a purpose to life — a purpose capable of endowing even our daily exertions with a larger significance, and certainly a purpose that would provide a rationale for meaningful collective action.

Consider two standard features of political correctness: the continual expansion in meaning of terms like "racism," "sexism," and "homophobia" and the tendency to invent or exaggerate instances of "oppression." Whereas racism once meant the hatred of someone of another race, the term is now freely applied to anyone who opposes affirmative discrimination, or even to anyone who opposes reparations for slavery. Again, this stigmatization of mainstream conservative positions makes a certain amount of tactical sense (although it badly backfired in the case of the Horowitz ad), but the tactics don't really explain the phenomenon.

The young students who now live in "multicultural" theme houses, or who join (or ally themselves with) multicultural campus political organizations are looking for a home, in the deepest sense of that word. In an earlier time, the always difficult and isolating transition from home to college was eased by membership in a fraternity, or by religious fellowship. Nowadays, multicultural theme houses, political action, and related coursework supply what religion and fraternities once did. But if the multicultural venture is truly to take the place of religion, it must invite a student to insert himself into a battle of profound significance. The fight for slave reparations, and the unceasing effort to ferret out examples of "subtle" racism in contemporary society, are techniques for sustaining a crusading spirit by creating the feeling that Simon Legree and Bull Conner are lurking just around the next corner. Conservative opponents of affirmative action or
slave reparations simply have to be imagined as monsters. Otherwise the religious flavor of the multiculturalist enterprise falls flat, and the war of good against evil is converted into difficult balancing of competing political principles and goods in which no one is a saint or a devil.
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Of course to say that liberalism has ceased to be a political perspective and has become a religion is another way of saying that liberalism has betrayed itself and become illiberal. This point is made very nicely in an excellent article entitled, "Illiberal Liberalism," by Brian C. Anderson in the current issue of City Journal. Anderson shows how the persistent attempts to silence and stigmatize conservative views by even mainstream liberal voices betray the commitment to rational and civil debate at the core of genuine liberalism. Once liberalism became a religion, the principles that made liberalism what it was — principles like free speech, reasoned debate, and judicial restraint in the face of democratic decision-making — went by the wayside. The secular religion of the educated elite is still recognizable as a distorted version of classic liberalism. But underneath all the talk about "oppression" and "rights," what we're really looking at is a
modern way of reproducing good versus evil, and us against them.

The hidden religious character of modern liberalism explains a lot about contemporary political life. I've already alluded to it in previous pieces on the Horowitz ad and on the president's faith-based initiative. Once you catch on, you'll see it around. 

From de Tocqueville to Allan Bloom and Frances Fukuyama, we've heard the story of America's growing and dangerous tendency toward individual isolation. That story is largely true; but it is also incomplete. We cannot bear our isolation. So in ways sometimes hidden even from ourselves, we strive to overcome it. Liberalism as religion is one solution to the problem of life in a lonely secular world. It allows us to appear to fight for individual freedom, without quite acknowledging to ourselves that we've enlisted in a grand, collective, and almost classically intolerant, religious crusade.
http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-kurtzprint053101.html

May 10, 2002 8:45 a.m.
Clueless Liberals
And they think we’re dumb.

The belief in conservative bigotry is more than a misunderstanding. It is liberalism's indispensable drug — the opium of the elites. Are there some bigoted conservatives? Sure. But conservative bias can't hold a candle to the thunderous bigotry of the Left toward conservatives. From the shameful attempts to portray Judge Pickering as a racist, to David Brock's misrepresentations about the supposed anti-gay bigotry of David Horowitz, to the press's refusal to treat Pim Fortuyn as anything other than a neo-Nazi, the goal of the Left is to somehow shove all conservatives into the same bigoted and dismissible little box. Yet isn't it funny how even those conservatives most opposed to Pim Fortuyn's views on homosexuality have rushed to defend him from the Left's misrepresentation of his political character.

The reason why these ceaseless defamations of conservatives will not go away (as I explained in "The Church of the Left") is that liberals can't feel good about themselves unless they are fighting someone else's bigotry. Liberalism has stopped being a mere set of political principles for managing conflict and has turned instead into the religion of the secular elites. That religion can supply a purpose to life, only if it is felt to be a crusade against radical evil. However clever all these accusations of conservative bigotry are as a political tactic, they are not mere manipulation, but are sincerely felt.
http://old.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz051002.asp

No wonder Pim baffled the Left

By Alasdair Palmer

12:01AM BST 12 May 2002

ONE of the most entertaining exercises last week was scanning the Guardian letters pages and seeing the confusion amongst its readers over the assassination of Pim Fortuyn.

"Should we be celebrating this as an anti-racist act or condeming it as an anti-gay one?" wrote one. Only in The Guardian would anyone ask that about a political murder. One reader insisted that Fortuyn had "reaped as he had sown": he had probably been assassinated by a Muslim unhappy at his plan to restrict Muslim immigration into Holland.

It turned out that it was not an angry Muslim, but a human-hating animal-lover who had shot Fortuyn - apparently because of his views on the sexual quality of horses' buttocks. Even so, said another letter-writer, Fortuyn was a bigot who deserved to die - and "being gay is no excuse".

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Pim Fortuyn managed to combine the virtues which Guardian readers love to love and the vices they love to hate. He was openly gay - which is terrific: homosexuals are an oppressed minority. Unfortunately, he was also anti-immigration - which is terrible, because to be against the free movement of people is certainly racist (although to be against the free movement of goods and services is to be properly anti-capitalist).

The paradox is that the preservation of a liberal society is, of course, precisely the result which Guardian-readers want: they want immigrants to end up with the views and values which are reflected of the comment pages of the Guardian. But to admit it would be "culturally imperialist" and "racist" - the ultimate sins in the Guardian-reader's lexicon of vices. Hence last week's contortions. 

Fortuyn was not a very likeable human being, and may have been a deeply unpleasant politician, but he wasn't a racist. He was a hard-core liberal who showed that cultural imperialism is essential to preserving liberalism. No wonder he caused so much anxiety.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3576491/No-wonder-Pim-baffled-the-Left.html