From: rah@rampart.enet.dec.com (Robert Holt)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.correct
Subject: PJ O'Rourke on Liberals
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:00:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: PA.1992Apr13.210006.26171
Reply-To: rah@rampart.enet.dec.com (Robert Holt)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

From the SJ Mercury News, 12 April 1992

Stop That Whining!

By P.J. O'Rourke

My new book, "Give War A Chance", is a collection of articles about 
- if I may be excused for venturing upon a large theme - the battle 
against evil. In a compilation of modern journalism there's nothing 
suprising about that. What does suprise me is how much of the evil 
was authored or abetted by liberals.

Now liberals are people I had become accustomed to thinking of as 
daffy, not villainous.  Getting their toes caught in their sandal 
straps, bumping their heads on wind chimes - how much trouble could 
they cause, even in a full-blown cultural-diversity frenzy? (I mean 
if Europeans didn't discover North America, how'd the rest of us get 
here?) But every iniquity in the book is traceable to bad thinking or 
bad government. And liberals have been vigorous cheerleaders for both.

"Liberal" is, of course, one of those fine English words, like "lady" 
and "welfare", which have been spoiled by special pleading. When I say 
"liberals", I certainly don't mean openhanded individuals or tolerant 
people or even big-government Democrats. I mean people who are excited 
that 1 percent of the profits of Ben & Jerry's ice cream goes to promote 
world peace.

The principal feature of contemporary American liberalism is sanctimoni-
ousness.  By loudly denouncing all bad things - war and hunder and date 
rape - liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, 
they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those 
who care about such things. People who care a lot are naturally superior 
to us who don't care any more than we have to. By virtue of this superi-
ority the caring have a moral right to lead the nation. Its a kind of 
natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is 
that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong, or even lucky to join it, 
you just have to be liberal. Kidnapping the moral high ground also serves 
to inflate liberal ranks. People who are, in fact, just kindhearted are 
told that because they care, they must be liberals too.

Liberals hate wealth, they say, on grounds of economic injustice - as 
though prosperity were a pizza, and if I have too many peices, you're left 
with nothing but a Domino's box to feed your family. Even Fidel Castro and 
Kim Il Sung know this to be nonsence. Any rich man does more for society 
than all the jerks pasting VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE bumper stickers on their 
cars. The worst leech of a mergers and aquisitions lawyer making $500,000 
a year will, even if he cheats on his taxes, put $100,000 into the public 
coffers. That's $100,000 worth of education, charity, or U.S.Marines. And 
the U.S.Marines does more to promote world peace than all the Ben & Jerry's 
ice cream ever made.

Liberals actually hate wealth because they hate all success. They hate suc-
cess especially, of course, when it's achieved by other people, but some-
times they even hate the succsess they achieve themselves. What's the use 
of belonging to a self-selecting elite if there's a real elite around? 
Liberals don't like any form of individual achievement. And if there has to 
be some, they prefer the kind that cannot be easily quantified - "the achi-
evement of Winnie Mandela," for example. Also wealth is, for most people, 
the only honest and likely path to liberty. With money comes power over the 
world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Buisnesses can 
be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations 
pursued. But liberals aren't very interested in such real and material free-
doms. They have a more innocent - not to say toddlerlike - idea of freedom. 
Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words, 
and to expose their private parts in art museums.

That liberals aren't emamored of real freedom may have something to do with 
responsibility - that cumbersome backpack that all free people have to lug 
on life's aerobic nature hike. The second item in the liberal creed, after 
selfrighteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college 
majors - psychology, sociology, women's studies - to prove that nothing is 
anybody's fault.

No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider 
how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform 
that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous 
pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment.  A devout Christian 
would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the 
liberal point of view.

Since we're not in control of ourselves, we are all vulnerable to victimi-
zation by whatever is in control. (Liberals are vague about this, but it's 
probably white male taxpayers or the Iran-Contra conspiracy). Liberals are 
fond of victims and seek them wherever they go. The more victimized the 
better - the best victims being too ignorant and addled to challenge their 
benefactors. This is why animal rights is such an excellent liberal issue. 
Not even a Democratic presidential candidate is as ignorant and addled as 
a dead laboratory rat.

The search for victims of injustice to pester explains why liberals won't 
leave minorities alone. "The minority is always right", said that pesky 
liberal Ibsen. And, when it comes to minorities, there is none greater - 
or, as it were, lesser - than that ultimate of all minorities, the self. 
Here the liberal truly comes into his own. There is nothing more mealy-
mouthed, bullying, irresponsible and victimized than a well-coddled self, 
especially if it belongs to a liberal.

Liberal self-obsession is manifested in large doses of quack psychoanalysis, 
crank spiritualism, insalubrious health fads and helpless self-help seminars. 
The liberal makes grim attempts to hold onto his youth - fussing with his 
hair, his wardrobe, his speech and even his ideology in an attempt to retain 
the perfect solipsism of adolescence. He has a ridiculous and egotistical 
relationship with God, by turns denying he exists and hiding in his skirts. 
Either way - as God's special friend or as the highest sentient life form 
on the planet - liberal self-importance is increased. The liberal is conti-
nually angry, as only a self-important person can be, with his civilization, 
his culture, his country and his folks back home. His is an infantile world 
view.  At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all 
spoiled children are, unsatified, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and 
useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.