Modern Liberalism

We hear a lot of talk from the left these days about how liberalism is the "ism" of the future. Liberals are all about compassion, they care about people and they work towards the common good. Right leaning individuals on the other hand, well we don't care about people. We're evil, profiteering, war mongering pigs. Just read what Edward Feser has to say about a prominent leftist:

He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter. He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.

He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies. His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out.! This call will echo throughout the world!"

The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state. They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group.

Is Feser talking about Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president? Not quite. Howard Dean, the raving lunatic from Vermont? Nope. Maybe it's the leftist's Meccah ole' Billy Clinton himself. That would be a good guess, but it'd be wrong. He's actually not referring to any modern leftist at all. He is in fact referring to the Furer himself, Adolf Hitler.

Amazing isn't it? Sounds like a description of a modern leftist/socialist. It doesn't mention his hatred of Jews, but even anti-semmetism has seemingly become a stigma of modern liberalism today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that today's liberals are the next Hitler. All I'm saying is, it's an awfully slippery slope.

There's more to this story if you care to go read it. I caution you, it's a long read, but well worth it.