Sunday, June 03, 2007

Liberalism's Unlikely Founding Father--The Marquis de Sade

"Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain."

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (17401814)


This a common sentiment shared by many of those of the liberal persuasion. Conservatives tend to not mind a few infringements on liberty in order to get social order. A bit of order never hurt anyone but there are a lot of people who have been hurt by license posing as liberty.

I’ll never forget a photo I saw in Time or another such rag about 20 years ago. It showed a group of black children and the caption was “black children talking loudly”. The article went on to describe black children’s loud speech as a result of their not being brought up with the inhibitions of white children, (as if this were some sort of benefit) instead of just saying that these loud and obnoxious little shits were undisciplined; i.e., a little social order at the expense of their liberty would have been most beneficial.

Now there might be those black people who would be offended by this and my reaction to them is this: step out of your cultural blindness and look beyond color to your humanity. Surely nobody is a better human being for behaving rudely and without class.

This is of course a difficult rope to walk. One has only to stray a few centimeters to the right to plunge into the abyss of totalitarianism but not discussing the failures of liberalism is also form of social suicide. We all know, in general, what the failures of totalitarianism consist of. Do we know in detail what the failures of liberalism are?

Look around you: crowded courts, endless litigation that could be adjudicated with a few bullets in minutes, street crime, the legalized murder of abortion, sodomy safe zones for the morally challenged and finally the proliferation of beaurocracies and energy draining civil servants who wouldn't know what a creative thought was if it came and bit them on the asses.

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