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The first liberal was named Lucifer. He was an angel. He lived in Heaven millennia ago, before modern times, before ancient times, before time itself. He could still be there today if thats what hed chosen, but in his absurd and insatiable pride he would not bend his knee to the supreme will of God.
Non serviam. I will not serve, he said, wanting to love only himself.
Just like that, he and those who followed him were cast out of Paradise, down into the hideous depths of Hell, where he could reign over his pitiful kingdom of darkness. It was there, in the fires of damnation, that the philosophy of liberalism was born, although it wouldnt be known by that name for many years. Im telling a somewhat abbreviated version of the story, I realize.
It was this philosophy that led to the Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptations of the serpent and attempted to make themselves equal to God.
It was the philosophy behind every act of human evil throughout history, at the bottom of every atrocity. Its the philosophy you would have found incubating in Sodom and Gomorrah amid the orgy of heathens, or in the Temple of Baal, where the pagans made human sacrifices as part of their barbaric fertility rituals, and to ensure for themselves wealth and prosperity.
This philosophy has propelled all the great villains throughout history. It is the philosophy of Judas, of Nero, of Genghis Khan, of Adolf Hitler, of Hillary Clinton. The specifics of what these people all believed, and how they framed it around the political circumstances of the day, isnt terribly relevant, for they desired the same thing and worshipped the same god: the self.
What we call liberalism in public discourse today is really just the worship of self. It is the categorical belief in the supremacy of the individual. The particulars of modern American liberalism, or progressivism if you like, were certainly informed by the social, political, religious, and sexual philosophies of Machiavelli, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Sartrethe pillars of unbelief, as Peter Kreeft calls themas well as guys like Kinsey and Singer, but underpinning everything is a studied and intentional selfishness.
Of course, we all lapse into selfishness at timesI often provide proof of thatbut those who affirm the ultimate primacy of the self all share the same ideology. Their worship might manifest itself in different ways, but theyre all cut from the same cloth woven by the Devil himself eons ago.
You can find this philosophy anywhere, and not just coming out of the mouths of people who identify as liberals. You can find it in our churches, in our schools, in our homes, on TV. You can find it tucked away under sloganstolerance, acceptance, etc.that sound quite noble at first blush.
FAUX VIRTUES
In classical times, the Greeks ordered their ethical universe around four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. The Church later added three more that Paul had highlighted in his first letter to the Corinthians: faith, hope, and love. It wasnt until the late twentieth century that noted modern philosophers like Lady Gaga and Barney the Dinosaur promoted tolerance and acceptance as not just cardinal virtues but the only virtues.
It seems that nobody really talks about courage, or justice, or faith anymore. There is, apparently, no need to act bravely or seek justice so long as we are tolerant and accepting. And I cant help but notice that the people who prattle on the loudest about those two faux virtues almost always do so self-servingly. They arent asking that we tolerate and accept everythingeven they believe some things are still intolerable and unacceptable, such as Nazism and Orthodox Christianityjust that we tolerate and accept whatever it is that they themselves are doing at the time.
Of course, even when tolerance and acceptance are promoted and celebrated more broadly and nonspecifically, it is still, in the end, selfish. The seven virtues advanced by the ancient Greeks and the early Church fathers require action and self-denial. For example, if I insist that people behave temperately, I have just burdened myself with the same expectation. I could shout for temperance in between monster bong hits and Cheetos binges, but then I would make myself a hypocrite. Better to explicitly dismiss temperance and any other difficult, sacrificial virtue, and instead advance virtues that I can live out and demonstrate without changing my lifestyle at all. Thus I turn to tolerance and acceptance.
It takes nothing to tolerate and accept. I can incorporate tolerance and acceptance into my bong hits and Cheetos routine. I can incorporate it into anything. Indeed, the more indulgent and lazy I become, the more apt I am to tolerate and accept. It takes effort and work to not tolerate something. Tolerance, on the other hand, just requires me to sit back and mind my own business. It becomes, then, a win-win for liberals. They can live however they want, do whatever they want, be as selfish as they want, and far from experiencing any sort of guilt or remorse, they can actually feel quite proud of themselves.
BECAUSE IM ME
Self-worship has become the predominant religion in our culture. It is why we, as a society, have caved in on ourselves, like dying stars, and are now sucking each other into the black hole of our megalomania. We cant see the world outside the window, because were too busy whispering sweet nothings to our reflections in the glass.
There is a hierarchy of beings in the universe, with God sitting all the way at the unattainable apex of it. But when God is dethroned and the existence of all heavenly and spiritual entities denied, man is left suddenly at the peak of the pyramid. Now we are the pinnacle. Or, at the very least, the pinnacle is in reach, and our goal is now to claim it. To become the bermensch as Nietzsche described, before he was admitted to a mental hospital and later died diseased and insane.
If we are, or can become, the apogee of all reality, then we are the only ones deserving of our worship. We should adore and praise ourselves simply because we are ourselves. This is the message embedded into most of what we ingest in music, films, and television, and it is the message explicitly taught to us from a young age.
I can still recall the insufferable self-esteem seminars we were subjected to in grade school. I remember my teacher telling us that we all ought to hold ourselves in enormously high esteem, because were great and special and there is nobody in the world more spectacular than us. I found this a peculiar statement at the time, particularly coming from the woman whod just given me a D on my last math quiz. I asked