The poll results remind me of a discussion I once had with a liberal woman who claimed that all parents loved their children equally. I pointed out that some parents sell their children into slavery or prostitution, others encourage them to drink and abuse drugs at an early age, and others abuse them sexually or violently, etc. She thought they needed more education on how to be a good parent, or some such solution.

My conclusion was that some parents love their children less than other parents do, as evidenced by their actions. Similarly, I think that some people are less patriotic and love their country less than others, as evidenced by their words AND actions.

Of course, it is politically incorrect and McCarthyite to imply that one’s opponent is less patriotic than oneself, regardless of the evidence. I guess that, in the liberal world, all that matters are feelings, and if a parent declares that he/she has lots of loving feelings from time to time (in between episodes of abuse, for example), and a Democrat declares that he has positive feelings on occasion for his country, then all other words and actions are inadmissible as evidence. Declared feelings trump all else.

Mr. Coleman might also be interested in past articles at VFR by Jim Kalb and me (mostly from before Mr. Coleman began posting here, I believe) in which the logic of liberalism was discussed at length. It comes down to the rejection of transcendent truth. If there is no higher standard by which any particular thing or act can be judged as being closer to or farther from that standard, then the only criterion is what people want or the way they feel. Since all desires and feelings are equal, all acts and behaviors must be equal. All persons must be equally patriotic. All parents must be equally loving and protective of their children. To think otherwise would be to impose an illegimate, oppressive authority over people.

This is the best and most economical explanation of liberalism that I have been able to come up with. It is an analysis that applies both to the liberal view of enemies and to the liberal view of inequality. To think there are unappeasable enemies who must be simply defeated or unreformable criminals who must be permanently separated from society is to divide the world into a bad “them” and a good “us,” which is a violation of equality. Therefore the existence of enemies or criminals must be blamed on us: we have created those enemies and criminals through our own unequal and oppressive and selfish behavior. Similarly, the existence of intractable inequality in society cannot be due to deeply ingrained or inherent differences in ability, aspiration and behavior; it must be due to the unequal and oppressive and selfish institutions of the better-off people.

Thus the liberal belief in substantive human equality MUST turn the world on its head, it MUST make the good bad, and the bad good. The double standard, which superficial conservatives think is a mere excess of liberalism, is inherent in liberalism from the start.