Many of those Dems including the sitting President Barack Obama Senator Carl Levin and Sec. State John Kerry have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years.
Liberal institutions straightaway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions. This quotations author Friedrich Nietzsche was no traditionalist himself; in fact he was a harsh critic of Christianity who coined the phrase God is dead." Yet he knew that your republic would be dead the day liberals assumed enough power within it.
This understanding is necessary to properly evaluate the current Obama administration scandals involving NSA surveillance and IRS abuses. Critics main focus has been debating what power the government should have and this is a legitimate and important discussion. But even more significant is who wields that power. After all you can exhaustively regulate the police but it will be largely for naught if those with the great power of a gun and badge are fundamentally corrupt.
Buzzfeed columnist Michael Hastings touched on liberals will to tyranny in a piece titled Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans." Addressing the surveillance scandal he writes:
The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems including the sitting President Barack Obama Senator Carl Levin and Sec. State John Kerry have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections sic 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.
Precisely. When G.W. Bush played fly-on-the-wall he was a lawless fascist. But when liberal Democrats play 1984×Brave New World well as Senator Harry Reid said earlier this month Everyone should just calm down."
But liberals are actually being quite consistent historically. Infamous leftist Maximilien Robespierre is best known for authoring the French Revolutions spasm of violence and using the guillotine to murder thousands. Whats less well known is that prior to assuming power Robespierre was a staunch death-penalty opponent.
And the list continues. The communist Khmer Rouge promised Cambodians peace equality and prosperity but then proceeded to kill off a third of them between 1975 and 79. The Soviet Bolsheviks adopted the slogan bread peace and land" but then purposely starved nine million people to death during the Great Famine." Mao Zedong pledged to give the Chinese a better life but only delivered a quicker death exterminating 60 million of his countrymen. Fidel Castro promised his nation free elections in 1959 but then became the worlds longest-serving non-royal leader reigning as Cubas dictator for 52 years.
In our time too this leftist shape-shifting is evident. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) preaches an animal-liberation line and even condemns meat consumption but kills 89 percent of its shelter animals. Barack Obama promised to have historys most transparent administration yet it has been the most opaque giving us scandals characterized by abuse of law and power and the trampling of Americans rights. And this brings us to a question: Does power really corrupt liberals more absolutely than anyone else?
I remember an incident in which a very liberal colleague at a former workplace was caught in a misdeed. His response was to cavalierly brush it off saying with a chuckle Situational values." Another incident at that business involved a student of mine to whom I was quite close. Alluding one day to the difference between me and his liberal parents he said out of the blue (Im paraphrasing) Youre the only one whos consistent who says the same things all the time." Is this a surprise? Liberals have given us the credos If it feels good do it" and Whatever works for you addendum: at the moment."
This brings us to a truth about the modern left. Generally speaking like all relativistic people liberals dont have principles.
They have feelings.
And feelings change with the wind.
Of course some have learned the hard way mostly through debating liberals only to find theyre virtually immune to reason that the left isnt intellect-oriented but emotion-oriented. But the question is why do liberals deify their own feelings?
The short answer is that they have little else to deify.
But a more in-depth understanding requires some philosophical exploration.
Lets be honest: it can be hard for us human beings to be consistent. Principle can sometimes bump up against our worldly desires and this is when being situational" can be seductive. But there are things that can influence a persons likelihood to stand on principle. One is having a world view stating that consistency actually is better than inconsistency.
Ive long pointed out that the most basic difference between the people we today call liberals and traditionalists isnt the apparent ideological divide. It is that the latter tend to believe in Moral Truth whereas liberals are almost universally moral relativists.
This is nothing less than an issue of operating in two completely different universes of reality. When you believe in Truth morality is something objectively real to you like matter itself. And most significantly you view it as what it is: unchanging. This means that your yardstick for morality is the same whether convenient or inconvenient whether youre out of power or in power. It is unbending and non-negotiable. Oh this doesnt mean absolutists cant betray their principles; man is weak and we all falter. But in the aggregate it serves as a controlling power upon will and appetite" to quote Edmund Burke and thus mitigates mans do-what-thou-wilt default.
But what happens when a person doesnt believe in Truth? What then will be his yardstick for behavior? Well if what we call right and wrong isnt determined by anything above man then man himself is its author. But will it ultimately be a function of his intellect? Consider that the intellects job is to use reason a quality that the relativistic left ostensibly values. What is reason however? Its not an answer but a method by which answers may be found. But there can be no answers to moral questions if theres no Truth; hence there then is no reason for reason.
This is why following relativism out leads us to a striking conclusion: Since we cant say that anything is objectively right or wrong better or worse the only yardstick we have left for behavior is feelings. Truth is a tale faith is fancy but emotion is certainly real. We can feel it deeply. And oh how seductive is that siren of anger envy or any passion? Just think how readily emotion inspires action.
So ultimately relativism boils morality" down to taste. This is why that guide If it feels good do it" really does make more sense in the modern liberal universe than anything else. But whose feelings should hold sway? Well we may to an extent defer to those of the collective but ultimately youre just another mortal same as I. Why should I subordinate my feelings to yours especially since mine are the only ones truly real to me? This is mind you what contributes to the deification of the self. Liberals feelings do for them what God does for people of faith. They tell them how to behave.
And this is why liberals will often do anything for victory. When the Truth lies at the center of your world view it will in its immutable and infallible way define whats right. But nature abhors a vacuum; thus when a persons core is bereft of Truth an emotion-derived agenda takes its place. It then defines whats right." And that will be whatever advances that agenda at the moment be it vote fraud targeting opponents with the IRS or when power is sufficiently solidified perhaps killing 25 million capitalists." And the lesson dear voters is that it really does matter what master your leaders serve.
This morality-of-the-moment madness is why in all fairness liberals arent always quite as hypocritical as they seem (just almost). For hypocrisy is saying one thing while intending to do another. Robespierre might have been very sincere when inveighing against capital punishment while out of power and also very sincere when using it liberally while in power. Its just that the decrees of his personal god you see had changed.
And now we have a change agent in every sense of the term in the White House.