The act that, according to liberalism, makes us human

As Australian traditionalist blogger Mark Richardson explains at Oz Conservative, columnist Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun “is about as right-wing as it gets in the mainstream media here in Australia. And yet he is clearly a liberal rather than a conservative.” In particular, Richardson points out, Bolt upholds (quoting Bolt),

the humanist idea that we are all individuals, free to make our own identities as equal members of the human race. In this New Racism, we’re driven back into tribes.

To which Richardson replies:

This is standard liberal autonomy theory. According to this theory, we are made human by our ability to self-determine who we are. Therefore, we are supposed to reject as impediments to our individual autonomy anything significant to our identity that is inherited rather than self-created.

To which I replied in a comment:

A fascinating and disturbing way of putting it. It never occurred to me, not just that liberals believe that we self-determine who we are (a point that traditionalists generally understand and that I’ve made many times myself), but that liberals believe that it is our very ability to self-determine who we are that makes us human! It is in the act of rejecting the order of the world in which we live, the world which made us what we are, the world without which we would not exist, that we become human. Without that act of soulless, egotistical assertion in a nihilistic void, we’re not human. Mr. Richardson’s observation explains so much and shows the horrible nature of liberalism more clearly than ever before.

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Adela G. writes:

You write: “…liberals believe that it is our very ability to self-determine who we are that makes us human! It is in the act of rejecting the order of the world in which we live, the world which made us what we are, the world without which we would not exist, that we become human.”

Of course. If one is to be the sole creator of one’s own existence and universe, as liberalism demands, one has to destroy (if only metaphorically) everything that came before. Thus, someone of Ken Hechtman’s ilk, in order to avoid being under the rule of anyone else’s ideology, would destroy all man-made borders and boundaries and impose on the entire world an order in which each self-actualized person “freely” comes and goes as he pleases.

It’s the apotheosis of a peculiarly virulent narcissism.

Here’s a link to my favorite science-fiction short story, which I initially enjoyed chiefly for its remarkable portrayal of loathing in its various forms but have increasingly come to see as an apt metaphor of modern liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 17, 2009 01:10 PM | Send