Many Americans who describe themselves as liberals are so fundamentally illiberal in so many ways that they ought to think of a new label to brand on their foreheads. The ideals of individual liberty, personal responsibility and strictly limited government that once characterized the liberal tradition are today as scarce as a spine among the ranks of the political left in this country. Liberals of today have abandoned hope in the power of freedom and equal treatment under law as vehicles for bringing about progressive social change, and have instead embraced liberty-usurping government programs that seek to redistribute wealth and closely regulate the lives of American citizens.
Liberalism arose with the novel ideal that every human being deserves an existence of dignity and freedom on Earth, and that no man has the right to use violence to prevent another from pursuing the good life as he sees fit. Free-thinkers in the liberal tradition acknowledged that life in a free society is a messy enterprise, but that it is at the same time infinitely preferable to the corruption and abuses that inevitably arise under all but the slightest establishment of governmental power.
Believing in liberalism came to mean believing that all people should be treated equally under the law. It came to mean that no opinion or expression should ever be outlawed, because the only way to move closer to truth is through the free and open competition of all ideas, which may ultimately survive in men's minds or perish based on their own merits or defects.
But a staggering number of those who call themselves liberals today espouse quasi-socialist ideologies and rally behind government-sponsored programs in vain pursuit of a phantom of social justice. Many have even supported laws banning certain ideas and expressions that they deem "offensive" or "intolerant." In so doing they have forgotten the once-core liberal insight that every shred of governmental power is fundamentally predicated on violence and especially prone to the clutches of corruption.
Nationwide, people pay a third of their income in taxes so that men with guns don't come to their houses to confiscate their property and drag them off to jail. Shopkeepers won't sell booze to adults under 21 lest rough men with badges break down their doors and throw them into prison. And now some private business-owners can't allow smoking in their restaurants without becoming targets of government-employed agents armed with pistols and pension plans. Let there be no illusions about it; every tax dollar spent is underwritten by a threat, and every law passed by Congress is enforced illiberally at the point of a gun. But instead of supporting limited taxation and legislative regulation, liberals today curiously do the opposite.
So-called liberals today have unabashedly abandoned the principle of equality under law, and many now proudly advocate the differential treatment of citizens based on race, sex and socioeconomic status.
Citing historical injustices, they name equality as their goal as they move to rob even more from the rich and give even less to the poor. Affirmative action, slavery reparations and welfare programs are all manifestations of this illiberal idea that unequal treatment of individuals is a necessary means toward some undefined yet coveted social outcome.
The once-liberal belief that people should be left to pursue happiness on their own terms and that individuals should be trusted to live with the consequences of their own choices has also disappeared among many liberals today. New liberals cheer lawsuits against tobacco companies, fast food restaurants and the firearms industry for selling products to people who hurt themselves or others. Drunk on the promises of the healing power of government, illiberal legislators have drafted laws telling people what they can and can't buy, sell, eat, drink and smoke.
But the most disturbing corruption of liberalism today has not been the embracing of coercive government authority and the support of unequal treatment under the law, or even the abandonment of personal freedom and individual responsibility.
The most terrifying new tendency of liberals today is their selective betrayal of free speech, and their willingness to censor ideas in the name of sensitivity and social justice. On college campuses nationwide, new-age liberal students and administrators alike deem offensive speech "threatening" or "intimidating" and thereby seek to ban such speech from the marketplace of ideas.
Hundreds of universities across the country uphold speech codes threatening disciplinary action against students who express hurtful ideas, and entire states have outlawed offensive yet peaceful acts of expression. Certain ideas, the reasoning seems to be, are too harmful to be legal. The liberal belief in absolute free speech has died among new-age liberals, replaced by the mantra that ethnic and religious minorities are too weak and vulnerable to live in freedom without being shielded from the ignorant remarks of racists and bigots.
As a pro-choice atheist who thinks all drugs should be legalized and all obscenity laws overturned, I can't very well call myself a conservative. But as long as hordes of anti-free speech "liberals" roam the countryside trying to repeal the Second Amendment to "stop gun violence" while robbing taxpayers at gunpoint in the name of social justice, I sure can't call myself one of them anymore, either.
(Anthony Dick is a Cavalier Daily
associate editor. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.)
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