Ronald Reagan once said “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”  A simple explanation of a profound truth. Some examples of things they know that aren’t true are:

• They believe the government knows better how people should run their lives than the people themselves do.
• They believe government can direct resources and run businesses better then the free market can.
• They believe wealth comes from workers, both by the work they do and the money they spend.
• They think freedom is something bequeathed by government and not an inherent birthright of individuals,
• They believe in the reallocation of resources is the best method to alleviate poverty.
• They believe the part of the state furthest removed from the direct influences of parents and families is the one most fit to control the education of children.
• They think personal happiness is a responsibility of government and that government has a preeminent right to provide for happiness by whatever means necessary.

This is of course a most modest list of what could be a book of things liberals know that just isn’t so. Their ideas are hand-me-downs from socialists dogma that goes back to those that incited the French Revolution. Ideas that even today corrupt all they touch and act like a cancer eating away at the core of the societies that adopt them. A philosophy reeking of self-righteousness that seems incapable of seeing its own hypocrisy.  Its followers often speak of democracy but seek an all powerful state that can squash dissent.  In the name of fairness they seek to take from those that have earned their way so they can give to those who would not.

Their ideas are not new, Jefferson warned of them as did John Adams and George Washington. Thomas Paine got consumed by them and was destroyed by them.  They are the ideas that filled the streets of Paris with blood a scarce 13 years after America’s birth. The same ideas that drove Lenin’s rage, Mao’s minions and today are destroying Europe.

The ivory tower of liberal thought often consumes those that enter into it. As the liberal mind becomes wrapped up in its own world it becomes incapable of understanding any other views but its own and those closely akin to it.  A study by a University professor of self professed liberals and conservatives found that, when asked, conservatives could easily describe the liberal perspective on any given subject. Liberals given the same task were totally incapable of grasping conservative views. Once more this inability to understand tended to manifest itself in the form of anger.

The results of the study would probably surprise most liberals but for the conservative mind the study is just confirmation of what they already knew; conservatives reject liberalism not because the do not understand it but because they do! It also shows what history has already reveled. From the horrors of revolutionary France and killing fields of Cambodia to the rabid protestors of the Occupy movement, anger and violence has always followed the left.  It is the same anger that fueled the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin and inspires them to relentlessly go after anyone that successfully opposes them.

This is the fatal conceit of the liberal mind, that what they desire seems so wonderful it can’t be wrong. They assume their good intentions justify their actions. That it is those that do not share their vision that are to blame when their ideas inevitably fail. They can’t accept that somehow they might be fundamentally in error. No matter how dramatic they fail or how much damage is done the fault always lies elsewhere or that they did not somehow go far enough. They often take comfort in telling themselves things would of been so much the worse if they hadn’t taken action. They live in a world separated from reality and steeped in dogma. Incapable of stepping out of their tower to take a good look at it from the outside or even to imagine the viewpoints of others in their true light.

Theirs is a road best not traveled for it is street that is always under construction. Filled with holes and incomplete bridges of thought, its way is inherently dangerous and inevitably leads to a wreck. Even when it seems solid, the fact that it always lacks the foundation of experience means collapse can happen at anytime.

As liberals preach their religion of governmental salvation we need to remember,”the government” is not an entity, it is a group of people. It is not, nor is it meant to be, the soul of a society or to direct its way. It is nothing more then people hired to do the work of the the country’s citizens in their name. As such government has no inherent authority, the people in the government have only that authority which has been allocated to them. These ideas of what government is and its proper role were developed over time and are based on experience as much as anything, as such they are foreign to the liberal way of thinking.

To develop this concept even further, individuals can only delegate authority they themselves have. As the halls of power become more and more removed from the people they are suppose to serve they also become less answerable to those that gave them the power in the first place. Consequently, limited government is not only sensible it is also morally imperative!

The natural tendency, as Jefferson pointed out, is for government to grow and freedom to yield. A yielding that implies that the government is taking powers never allocated to it and likely no one has the authority to give it in the first place. That great compact, called the U.S. Constitution, was the contract by which our founders set down the principles by which our society was to operate.  A conservative document based in the English concepts of individualism and equality before the law and God. When they talked of self-governance they meant a lot more then just having elected officials. To them government properly applied meant people made their own decisions, took their own risks and reaped the results.  Individual sovereignty was preeminent followed by local then state and finally federal governments. To them maintaining freedom meant as one went up the government ladder the powers of the state must necessarily decrease with the Federal being the most limited in what it could do. An arrangement that is the most friendly to freedom.

This is the antithesis of liberalism in its present form. As with the socialists in Europe, theirs is a vision based in the dreams of dead philosophers. One that sees reason and the human intellect of a few as somehow able to direct the lives of the many. A philosophy based in utopian ideas but devoid of the foundations of experience and tradition.  As a tool of man liberal philosophy is one totally unsuited for the task, that of organizing society, to which it is applied. Of course, the same could be said of all philosophies including conservatism; a fact conservatives recognize but liberals do not.

The Conservative Mind

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