Liberty Alone

As anyone who knows me probably knows, one of my biggest annoyances is the way the word liberalism has been perverted by socialists, statists and conservatives to mean the opposite of what it originally meant. I’ve just come across a perfect example which shows how little this modern, American ‘liberalism’ differs from conservatism:

To lay a ghost at the outset and to dismiss semantics, a liberal is here defined as one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political, and economic justice at the municipal, state, national, and international levels…. A liberal believes government is a proper tool to use in the development of a society which attempts to carry Christian principles of conduct into practical effect.

Senator Joseph S. Clark, Jr. - Atlantic, July 1953, p. 27

Okay, so ‘liberals’ differ from conservatives in many of their ends, a ‘liberal’ has a different conception of justice and to day these so-called liberals shirk away from religion more, but the essence is the same, the government must use force and coercion to impose what politicians think is best. The argument is then simply about what should be forced upon people rather than is this the legitimate purpose of government, what is its ends and wouldn’t leaving the individual free to run their own lives be better.

This will be controversial amongst the left-wing progressives, but I can’t help thinking that the progressive movement planted the seeds for the neo-conservative international interventionist agenda.

The core of the progressive movement was ‘new freedom’ or ‘new liberty’ which was a wordplay to reverse the liberal view.
The liberal view is that force is not allowed except in retaliation of the use of force against you or your property. This was the basis of freedom and liberty (not that this was followed all the time by politicians). The change the progressive movement brought about was to allow the use of force against people ‘for their own good’. Force should be allowed to bring ‘freedom’ which is the state brought around by the use of force. (As an aside, this is the origin of the current use of liberalism in the US - force used for a person or community’s own good is thought to be justified).

The neo-conservative international policies can be characterised as interventionism in the affairs of foreign states to bring what they view as freedom.

Where’s the difference between the progressive and neo-con view then? Apart from the area over which force is used? The progressive uses force against the individual and community, the neo-con against another state. The logic and thinking however is the same - force is justified if the end is to be called freedom.

Is it any wonder that Tony Blair, a product of the progressive tradition in the UK, went along with the US in the ill-fated adventure in Iraq? Especially after he’d seen the relative success of intervention in Sierra Leone and Kosovo.