I no longer consider myself a liberal if it means I must value feelings over facts
YOU know that breakup cliché ‘it’s not you, it’s me’? When it comes to my split with the left, it’s more a case of ‘it’s not me, it’s you’. Or as Ronald Reagan said of going from left to right: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”
Apostasies are recognised as difficult to accept, like losing your religion or falling out of love, and it’s easier to blame politics for changing, instead of facing the fact that you have. But my belief system has not changed – it’s the definition of liberalism that has.
Here’s why I’m out.
I used to stand with author Garrison Keillor, who wrote: “I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness.” But in recent years, this enlightened movement has warped into authoritarianism, with its hijackers bent on creating tribes, demanding strict obedience to the group’s authority and denouncing those who don’t bow to its dogma.
It has become hard, merciless, vindictive; and it gives me no pleasure to acknowledge this.
It has forgotten its own definition as a willingness to accept opinions or behaviours different to your own, and instead encourages and rewards bigotry: intolerance of those who hold different views.
The left today scorns classic liberal principles such as presumption of innocence, free speech and unity and is instead focused on outrage, judgment, public shaming, and putting feelings over facts.
Liberalism’s three tenets are now identity politics, political correctness and victimhood mentality: all forms of weaponised compassion – a mask for control. Common sense, pragmatism, truth: all discarded.
Identity politics dictates that minorities are regarded as incompetents, who must be constantly reminded of how oppressed they are, and urged to nurse grievances. This only serves to trap the less fortunate and halt personal progress, instead of strengthening individuals. It segregates, when we should be aiming to transcend and unite all the identities.
Victimhood culture rewards and reveres those who self-identify as passive and helpless, when even psychologists say the victim mindset dilutes human potential. Selective inclusivity excludes and divides: the left is the oppressed and the right is the oppressor.
Political correctness is regulation: a manipulation of social behaviour and pressure to nudge people into speaking and behaving in ways they may disagree with or have not considered. It’s a menace that Dr Jordan Peterson – the most powerful public intellectual in the world, according to the ‘New York Times’ – described as “the elevation of moral posturing on sensitivity over truth”.
Modern liberalism’s sincerity is fake. It purports to champion victims, but only stands for those from certain groups. Liberals have been shamefully silent on the many innocent men who have had their lives and names destroyed by fake and vicious allegations that were an inevitable terminus of the insidious #metoo vigilante movement.
Today’s liberals make idols of politicians for overseeing the successful abortion referendum, yet don’t seem to care that the same politicians are presiding over the biggest housing crisis in the history of the State.
Liberalism is now a minefield of rules and regulations and those who break the rules are shunned and shamed and silenced. A teenage girl wearing a Chinese dress is attacked with comments like: “My culture is not your goddamn prom dress.” Perceived offenders – even of minor transgressions – must not only be publicly punished, they must be annihilated, their careers in tatters. Comedian Bill Maher noted “the joy liberals seem to take in vaporising people and making every offence a firing offence”.
THEY reserve their greatest bile for those they see as turncoats: and that’s when the real prejudice comes out. Kanye West, one of the biggest artists of all time, was the subject of instant outrage when he switched sides.
The son of a Black Panther and a single mother had a passionate opinion on his own community: and instead of being heard and respected, he was vilified, patronised, his words deliberately misconstrued.
He is on a mission to expose the left for what it has become: a band of mindless whiners without a sense of humour whose main aim is to control by spreading fear: like the Thought Police in Orwell’s ‘1984’.
The rage towards him is because his 180-degree turn threatens the established ideology: he has 28 million Twitter followers and people listen to what Kanye has to say.
Liberalism is not the natural endstate of political evolution, it’s one of three ideologies of the 20th century, along with Communism and Fascism, both of which also support the oppression of opposing voices.
It appears to be going the way of the other two.
Those of us who truly believe in “the politics of kindness” have jumped ship.
If you value freedom over fear, if you refuse to be told how to think, what to say and even how to have sex, you will too.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.