“[T]he wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good…and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil….”
How ironic.
Nietzsche wrote these words to describe the worldview of Judeo-Christian morality, which he denounced as life-denying. He thought it emasculated men and prevented them from fully developing themselves. Yet, today, it is secular liberals – not religious conservatives – who are stifling human enterprise and saying “no” to life virtually every day.
Allow people to work?
No.
Allow children to go to school?
No.
Allow human beings to see each other as they build, debate, or create?
No.
Stay home and wear a mask. The Chinese virus has a survival rate of 99.7 percent, but no matter. Cower at home – indefinitely.
Many wonder why leftists so vociferously oppose reopening society. Undoubtedly, a political element is involved, but, on a deeper level, their opposition is an outgrowth of liberalism, which is a much greater life-denying force today than Western religion ever was.
Conservatives celebrate human achievement. Liberals regard it with suspicion. That's why they oppose everything associated with it: the West, laissez faire capitalism, masculinity – and the reopening of society.
Liberals don’t even particularly like human beings. A few summers ago, a neighbor of mine complained to a local government official that a bear was rummaging through her garbage outside her country home. She asked him if he could do something about it. “No,” he said, his tone serious. “The bears were here first.”
Thirty years ago, environmentalist David Graber wrote, “Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet …. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."
When the philosopher Ayn Rand – who virtually worshipped human beings – saw skyscrapers, she was stirred by the human ingenuity, spirit, and grit they symbolized. Human greatness inspired her.
Liberals, however, are wary of human greatness. Hence their opposition to laissez faire capitalism. In free markets, human potential blooms. If you think big enough and work hard enough, you can build a multi-billionaire-dollar company, no matter your economic background. Free markets give you the opportunity to “be all you can be” – as the old U.S. Army slogan to advertise.
Modern-day liberals also detest men. Men – real men – radiate vigor and strength. In short, they radiate life. But liberalism is a life-denying force and therefore cannot tolerate real men (or boys). Liberals therefore try to feminize them as much as possible.
Liberals also despise their country, which has made so many human dreams come true over the last 250 years. They don’t take pride in George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. They feel embarrassed by them. Thus, when hoodlums destroy statues of these heroes, they take the side of the hoodlums, not Washington or Jefferson.
Liberals even hate themselves. How else to explain modern-day parenting advice, which tells adults to essentially let children trample all over them? In the olden days, parents put a child who misbehaved or acted disrespectfully in his place. Today, they swallow insult after insult and bend over backwards to accommodate their child, no matter how obnoxious he or she is.
The science on lockdowns and mask-wearing is not crystal clear. Some safety measures may be wise to implement. But the passion with which liberals demand that people hide behind masks and cower in fear at home is motivated by the same impulse that leads them to hate the West, detest laissez faire capitalism, despise masculinity, embrace radical environmentalism, and acclaim parenting philosophies that insist that adults quash their self-respect.
It’s all of a piece. A life-denying philosophy undergirds it all. The Bible tells us to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Liberals think God made a mistake.