The older one gets the further back one can see, and patterns begin to emerge that may explain the world lived in or the life led. This activity is important to me as I try to affix where I stand and determine future actions on the short path forward. One can misread the pattern, but best to do it soon enough so that clearer heads can prevail.
I can see a list of things that define who I am, in this order: father, liberal, journalism professor, thinker, communicator, originator…at the top. To list my criteria for success in each area is to engage in self-approval, relevant to me but nobody else. But the item that intrigues me most is “liberal” because that is the most formative.
My liberalism turned on two elements: a good liberal education at Brooklyn College and the assassination of President Kennedy ending the Camelot dream. In the first, my intellect awakened from the theocratic slumber of my upbringing, and in the second, it alerted me to the fact all was not right with the world. Witnessing a progression of liberal icons, at home and abroad, being assassinated seemed to hint at something larger … which came together just as I stopped shrugging off the deep state as another Trump delusion. The historical foundation of the liberal socio-economic order was in jeopardy.
There was a time when people of differing parties, ideologies and cuisines could talk to each other, exchanging ideas and sharing recipes. Today few are attempting to breach the sound barrier. The Right and the Left, conservatives and liberals, are unaware that they live on the same side of the ideological fence. They have ceded their power to their radical illiberal offshoots: Christian White Supremacy and Secular Progressivism.
It’s a heavy intellectual lift -inaccessible to most citizens, politicians, media practitioners, and religionists- to fully understand the liberal paradigm that has governed the world since the original Magna Carta in 1215 bound the king to the rule of law in disputes with his barons, eventually extending sovereignty to all the people. Liberalism at its core is about the supremacy of individual and inalienable rights and the democratic constructs necessary to protect those rights. Thus it is a purely western phenomenon that has no currency in tribal, regal and communitarian societies.
The philosophical roots of liberalism start with Plato and find later expression in the republicanism of Cicero and Machiavelli. In between there was Jesus Christ and the Sermon on the Mount and the Catholic notion of salvation and reward through good works (altruism). The remnants of the feudal yoke on society were finally cast off by the American and French revolutions. That the newly won rights did not apply to Black people, enslaved or not, or any illiberal or barbarian community or nation, was seen as okay until such time as they were equipped to fully function in liberal democratic society (a moral justification of imperialism). Herein lies the seeds of today’s backlash against the undelivered liberal promise.
The Russian Revolution escaped this racist trap by veering off into communism which stressed the common good over individualism. (To each according to his need; from each according to her ability.) And even as we see a fallback in Russia today, their communitarian DNA sets them apart in how they organize their governance and relate to other nations. China is writing its own chapter to shake off the yoke of liberalism even as we did with feudalism.
In a past post I advocated that the only solution for the US is to be split into two nations because the GOP has morphed into an irrational Luciferian cult that seeks total submission. It is impossible for us survive together under a Constitution that enshrines permanent minority governance. The Blues need to spin off and reform under liberal principles that eliminate class hegemony and provide the opportunity for individuals to set their own goals and reach their fullest potential for human development.
Unfortunately we cannot just shake hands and go our separate ways. The Reds are split between classical conservatives in the liberal tradition and a gun-toting dominant cult committed to our annihilation. Squarely in the cross hairs are democratic institutions, high church religions, universal higher education, social benefits, universal medical care, developing democracies, real news, and various pizza shops that are dens of liberal iniquity.
Yes, QAnon is no joke. Nor is the Deep State. Their main weapons are outrageous conspiracy theories that lull scoffing liberal minds into confidently ignoring them while they do their real work of turning decent people into “crazies.” If the plotters behind QAnon are unknown to the Justice Department, it is probably because that’s where they reside. How else can one explain how our cyber security experts can pinpoint international1 hackers in a particular city, on a particular street, in a particular building, in a particular room? And they can’t find QAnon?
Liberalism is vulnerable because it always hasn’t been true to itself. I see countless wars, vulture capitalism, mass destruction, despoiled environments, homelessness and rampant disease, lack of education and stolen elections. Liberalism has been preoccupied the better part of its first 700+ years undoing the tribal and feudal paradigm that previously organized civilization. Now is the time to fulfill the promise. To put technology in service of liberal ideas. And to learn how to co-exist with communitarian systems. And to prepare ourselves to handle the digital impact on humanity.
Those of us whose intellectualism has been gifted by special liberal opportunities must dedicate ourselves to beating back the evil of regression. I won’t be around for the long fight, but I hope I have contributed courageous liberal cohorts to the contest. I am optimistic because the illiberals come with no plan to replace that which they would destroy. Humanity is hard wired to evolve toward its most perfect version.
End
Read Cynthia Chung’s article on the secret history of the FBI:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/08/origins-of-americas-secret-police/
Take a deep dive into the philosophical pedigree of liberalism:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
Reconnect with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/sermononthemount.html