Posted by
Curtal Friar on Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:00:35 AM
Did the title grab your attention? Good. This essay is in response to some posters who asked for clarification to a recent piece I wrote entitled "Top Ten Liberals Of The Twentieth Century." That list provoked some reaction by listing the top three liberals as being Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. Requests were made to me to explain what I meant by calling those them liberals. What follows is an explanation as well as an admonition to avoid giving power to liberal politicians.
Before I explain the Nazi/Communist/Liberal connection, allow me to establish definitions of liberal and conservative. The word liberal has undergone changes in meaning over the last 150 years, and the way I will define it here is based on the contemporary goals, beliefs and propaganda of liberals in and seeking political power. For the rest of this essay, liberal will refer to those in power who are liberals, and not the average person in society who holds liberal beliefs.
The word liberal today is easily interchanged with socialist. Many, if not most, of liberal goals and beliefs today spring from the socialist ideas and theories and goals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Liberals today, like most socialists over the last hundred and fifty years, seek and promise government solutions to all of the problems faced by citizens. Hungry? The government will put a chicken on your plate. Homeless? The government will give you a house. Penniless? The government will either give you money or a job. Sick? The government will take care of you and give you medicine and medical treatment. The list goes on, ad nauseam.
Liberals today, like classic socialists, hate big business and private enterprise, and seek to destroy both for the good of the people. Both desire to redistribute wealth among all the classes. Actually, they seek to abolish the classes, so that there is only the people. This idea can be heard from the mouth of Hillary Clinton, as well as any socialist or communist since those ideas began. The liberal of today tries to dress up that idea, and use emotional appeal to arouse interest, but it is the same tired claim that if we just all pooled our resources into a common fund, shared equally by all, that there would be no more problems. Competition would disappear and all people would live happily side by side.
Liberals believe in strong government that extends its control into every faced of life. Cigarette smoke bothering you? The government will take care of it for you. Trans fats unhealthy for humans? The government will ban it. Offended by the words of another? The government will label such speech "hate speech" and ban it. Worried that religious ideas are extending too far into society? The government will place strong controls on religion and religious practice.
Now let's take a look at the contemporary conservative. In brief, the modern American conservative believes in small government, with as little intrusion into the lives of citizens as possible. Plain and simple. Conservatives think, for the most part, that the purpose of government is mostly to protect citizens from outside threats that they cannot handle or would have a difficult time handling themselves. Thus, the government should have a military to protect us from foreign threats, and from any force that tries to overthrow our government and take over and change our country and our way of life. The government should provide justice by apprehending and punishing lawbreakers. Beyond that, conservatives really don't want the government to have any power. The government should not tell citizens how to live their lives. It should have no say or control over the flow of ideas, over any part of the marketplace, or over any aspect of religion. The government also should not be in the business of protecting us from ourselves. That, in a nutshell, is what the contemporary American conservative believes.
Now, as to my claim that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party were liberals, by the way I defined liberal above, let's take a quick look at the history of both. What many people may not realize is that the word, Nazi, is but a shortened form of the German name of the Nazi party. Really, the full name of the Nazi party is the National Socialist Party. Ladies and gentlemen, Hitler was a socialist. He espoused the same ideas that liberals espoused today in America. The only difference between Hitler and the modern liberal, in ideology, was the strong racist component espoused by Adolf. Hitler pointed to all the problems in post WWI Germany and declared that he had a solution. If he was given the power, he would wipe out poverty. He would eliminate hunger. He would solve all of the problems for German citizens and take care of them.
In truth, Hitler was no different than Stalin or Mao. All three were following, in their own way, a socialist ideology based on the ideas begun in the nineteenth century. Call it communism, nazism, socialism, whatever, it's still the same beast with a new name. They all sprung from the same source, and from the same writings: Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, and all their imitators. Hitler hated big business and did what he could to wipe it out. He hated religion and wanted it eradicated from the public sphere. He spoke to the "people", and proclaimed all he did was for the good of the "people."
Let's pause for just a moment here so I can address a question that is doubtless forming in the minds of some of the readers. I am not suggesting that modern liberals are Nazis. I am not saying that the liberals want to establish an American version of the Nazi party. What I am trying to show is that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party of WWII Germany is the extreme end of liberalism. Stalin and Mao come from the dark side of liberalism as well.
Is Obama a contemporary Hitler or Stalin or Mao? No, at least not at this stage. However, give him the power he craves, and we may very well see such a ruler emerge. Make no mistake, the contemporary liberal is all about power. Oh, liberals may cry about the people and the children and try to paint themselves as the saviours and liberators of the people, here to save us from the insidious forces of capitalism and big business, especially the oil companies and the tobacco industry. They will give us money and food and homes and whatever else we need. We need to understand though, that accepting such "gifts" gives them increasing power, and the liberals are well aware of it.
Liberals, like all good communists and nazis, seek to control speech by establish such concepts as political correctness and hate speech. Hate speech, superficially at least, may appear to be benign, but scratch the surface and you see an agenda whose goal is to wipe out dissent by making it seem hateful.
Liberals are clever. They have managed to convince the general populace that Nazism is a right wing phenomenon, and then paint their opponents as Nazis by the use of terms, such as the "conservative reich" and others. In truth, Nazism is neither right wing or conservative. Conservatives are neither Nazis or right-wing.
Did you catch what I just wrote? Let me repeat it. Conservatives are not right wing. Probably right now, upon reading that, conservatives and liberals alike are shaking their heads at me in disbelief, but bear with me. The terms right wing and left wing are used to show the range between two opposing views, one which promotes the power and strength of the "people" and one which promotes the power and strength of a single monarch or dictator or emperor. In reality, there is no difference between a strong right wing government and a strong left wing government. Both are all about the power of the government and both demand obedience and loyalty from its citizens. In this, left-wing governments are deceptive, because they mask their drive for power by pretending to be all about the people, but in the end, just as with right wing dictatorships, power ends up being placed in the hands of a single despotic ruler.
The modern American conservative is cast in the mold of Thomas Jefferson, in spite of liberal propaganda to the contrary. Jefferson wanted a small government with strict limits on its power. Some liberals say that Jefferson promoted change and the breakdown of the old order and was therefore a liberal, but in this they are mistaken. Jefferson did want change, yes, but the change he sought was a change in the nature of government power. He stood against a strong right wing authority, the King of England, that would exercise its dominance over the American Colonies. If Jefferson were here today, he would advocate a strong stance against the left wing forces that are trying to rise to dominance in contemporary America, for he would see that the end result of allowing liberals to control America would be no different than living under the will of the King. The modern American conservative does not wish to have an all-powerful government, regardless of whether it's right wing or left wing. Conservatives represent a unique viewpoint, that of the people dictating terms to the government and keeping it under control. Such a viewpoint is neither left or right wing, but indeed a third opinion.
The modern American conservative is the descendant of Thomas Jefferson and the other Americans who shared his views. The modern American liberal is the descendant of Marx and Nietzsche, just like Hitler and Stalin and Mao. This does not mean that someone like Hillary or Obama would become a Hitler if put in power. Not necessarily. It does mean that we need to beware when people like Hillary and Obama promise the people government solutions to all their problems. Those solutions always come with a heavy price, first and foremost of which is the loss of our liberties and freedoms, and the ceding of power to those who give us the gifts.