The Absurd Report

Two primary errors of modern liberalism are a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and an inability to learn from history.

Regarding the first, liberals are always chasing the fantasy of human perfectibility, which influences so many aspects of their policies.

Liberals believe that if we give a powerful central government enough resources and authority, wielded by intelligent people of good will, virtually all problems and endeavors of human society can have happy outcomes – poverty, education, racial disharmony, crime, affordable housing, universal health care.

Conservatives, on the other hand, recognize that government is composed of enormously fallible people, weak and prone to doing things in their own interest, and not in the interest of others. The larger the government, the more these problems are magnified.

When self-interest is channeled correctly, through liberty and free enterprise, with an underlying structure of law militating against the depravity found in varying degrees in everyone, it can produce remarkable benefits.

America’s economic system of free enterprise is based, or was in the beginning, on giving freedom to individuals to produce wealth in accordance with their abilities. The result has been the most prosperous society in history. Unfortunately, the liberal proclivity for exercising control over human enterprise threatens to bring that to an untimely demise.

Regarding the second error, liberals seem oblivious to the lessons of history, especially as they apply to dealing with despots and savages. The likes of Barack Obama seem to think that simply sitting down with one’s enemies, having a cup of tea and looking for common ground, is all that is necessary for peace.

This is the same inclination that led Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of England, to advocate the appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938. Are there any among us who do not know how that turned out?

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