Liberalism is over. As an ideological movement, liberalism has lost all of its power and has been stripped of its former nobility. Once viewed as the guardians of science and humanism within the political sphere, liberal institutions have now been subsumed by the corporate state. All liberal values have been reformulated; melted down and recast as fetters to bind social change movements. Even the word “liberal” is maligned beyond repair; the conquerors pour cement on the graves of their enemies just in case one of the undead liberals thinks he can dig his way back up.
Contrary to right-wing mythology, there is no remaining refuge for liberalism. The Ivory Tower has cracked and fallen. Liberalism is dead. Those who now claim the liberal title are worse than the undead; they are fashionistas chasing an aesthetic. The word “liberal” is still in the lexicon, but liberalism as a movement has been swallowed up and extinguished by illiberal ideology that took away all the meaning from liberal words.
Many institutions still talk like liberal institutions. Universities, for instance, still proclaim allegiance to Science and Truth, but this is only for marketing purposes. To the profit-motivated University, these liberal values are nothing more than buzzwords in a press release. President Obama speaks in the liberal language of progress and change while passing illiberal laws that are more authoritarian and regressive than George W. Bush ever imagined. He is not a liberal—he is a paid celebrity endorsement—an actor crafting a testimonial for a TV commercial.
All liberal institutions (press, college, union) are now dominated by the multinational corporation—the new organizational principle around which humanity revolves. All liberal culture has been co-opted by the associated profit-motive and has, in the process, been extinguished. Liberalism is no longer an ideology or a movement—it is now simply a brand—a meaningless aesthetic that can be attached to products by marketers. President Obama is a plastic action figure, designed by advertisers, manufactured by slave children, made appealing with this empty liberal style. The Obama brand can be stamped on corporate malfeasance to make it fresh and desirable.
The failure of liberalism cannot be laid at the feet of the oligarchs or the religious fanatics (who are the natural enemies of liberalism). These regressive forces certainly conquered liberalism, but blaming protohuman Christian fanatics or greed-possessed corporate suits for liberalism’s death is like blaming a pride of lions for the death of a gazelle. It is a mechanistic, cause-effect relationship—the unconscious animal eats the food you put in front of it.
No, the credit for the death of liberalism can only be awarded to liberals themselves. Despite their faults, liberals are conscious beings—modern humans. They aren’t soulless or primitive. They are powerful, and they could have won the battle against the forces of darkness; they simply chose not to. The Savannah explorer knew of the danger of the man-eating lion, but chose not to bring his rifle. He had faith in the inherent goodness and kindness of the lion. He had tolerance for the sharp teeth of the lion, and felt it wrong to threaten this majestic creature by bringing his gun. The lion ate the explorer—this has been the fate for all naive liberals. They are simply eaten by the forces of darkness to whom they generously extend tolerance, kindness, and Christ-like passivity. The explorer marveled at the inner-beauty of the lion; the lion did not hesitate to devour the explorer. The nature of the lion is to kill—no amount of unconditional love transforms a lion into a conscious human being. Evolution does not operate through “love”.
Since the Enlightenment, liberals have actually controlled the levers of social power. The industrial revolution changed power dynamics by changing the nature of weaponry—suddenly, a meaningful army could be raised by nothing more than handing out rifles. State-of-the-art battlefield technology became democratically available. Any group of men, no matter how unskilled, could be transformed into a power bloc. Tech advances in the 20th century completely transformed the power dynamic again—this time putting all martial power in the hands of scientists and technologists. For the first time in history, scientists and engineers were the ultimate warriors. Had every nerdy fantasy come true?
Imagine a fanatical Christian trying to invent the nuclear weapon. It’s inconceivable. How about corporate suits? Can jock-salesmen create, let alone understand, the science behind stealth bombers, unmanned aerial vehicles, or internet viruses? He who dominates these weapons dominates the world. Scientists dominate these weapons, therefore scientists dominate the world. As a group, scientists and engineers could choose to assert their collective power and no one could compete with them. They could instantly rule the world by the simple fact that military technology is so advanced—and they control it.
In the 20th century, the majority of scientists and engineers were some form of liberal. They supported science and enlightened government as a means of social improvement. They rejected the most idiotic forms of religion, and they held the core liberal values of the open society inviolable. At the same time, they created weapons and then gave those weapons to the power elite. A city full of physicists invented the nuke and promptly handed it over to the hierarchy. These physicists could have kept the nuke to themselves and ruled the world from Los Alamos. Instead, like good liberals, they gave up their weapons—handed their power to the entrenched global elite. Wasting no time, the Bully Club used this new power to send a threatening message to the Soviets. Millions of Japanese, most of them innocent civilians, were sacrificed for the petty political goals of American oligarchs. A thoroughly illiberal action was directly facilitated by the submission of liberals.
Why do liberal scientists create weapons and then give those weapons to cowboys who commit war crimes? Today, no one would say that the scientific community has any choice in how military technology is deployed, and yet scientists actually have all the power because they are the masters of the technology. Why do liberal scientists put up with this? When scientists recognize that fossil fuel abuse is causing climate change and destroying the Earth, why don’t they organize and take a powerful stand? Where is the “Scientist Party” willing to hold the world hostage? Why don’t scientists unite, stand up together, and send this message to the world:
Stop destroying the Earth. Stop now, or we will sabotage your vehicles. Stop now, or we will shut off your air conditioning. For every acre of ecosystem you destroy, we will deprive you of two creature comforts. We will turn off American Idol. We will hack your iPhones. We will use all of our skill, all of our intelligence, all of our science—to deprive you of every modern convenience until you face the music and take collective responsibility for this sick planet.
If all scientists and engineers banded together to silence the lying media, bust the Wall Street cartel, or rile up the masses by tinkering with their televisions, could anyone stop them? Would anyone even try?
What is the moral justification for a liberal scientist, who recognizes the danger of climate change, to do nothing aside from whining? This is the future of the entire SPECIES! You can’t even CONSIDER seizing power to protect the ENTIRE SPECIES from EXTINCTION?! Could you be ANY more passive?
In liberals, the master-slave dialectic operates psychologically. According to Hegel, the master-slave dialectic ends when the slave inevitably gains more power than the master and supplants him. Liberals gained this power with liberal institutions and 20th century technology, but, instead of supplanting their masters, they renounced power and clung to their submissive dialectical role. They were uncomfortable with rulership. They gave their newfound strength to the first dominant group that came along. Confident and driven extroverts, eager to take control, stepped in to fill the power vacuum. Now idiots run the world. Apocalyptic Christians exert control over a nuclear stockpile large enough to destroy the Earth ten times over. How could intelligent people let this happen?
Modern liberalism is the ideology of intelligent submissives. All the revolutionary acid that burned in the stomachs of pre-20th century liberals has neutralized into a chalky residue. Modern liberals have internalized the slave role, identified with it, and made it a virtue. The slave role now defines the liberal ethos just as it defined Christian virtue back when liberals used to care about Christianity. All liberals are psychologically enslaved because all liberals reject their own power. Any confrontation with reality—with the hardness of the real world—is felt as anxiety in these last men. They flee from their anxiety into the safe world of their beautiful souls. They refuse to recognize the responsibility they hold, because in that recognition there is fear. In that recognition lies the end of innocence—the end of childhood. Jesus was a psychological liberal. Like modern liberals, he advocated that we turn the other cheek when confronted by a psychopath. Jesus was magical and could have changed his fate at any time using his magical powers. He could have stopped his torture. He could have saved his friends (and humanity) from brutal domination by the Old Testament tyrant. But this was not in his nature. As a liberal—as a slave fulfilling his slave role—Jesus was fetishistically tied to masochism and lusted for the feeling of being dominated by an abusive Father. Like a masochist who brings his own ball-gag to a BDSM club, Jesus dragged his own torture device to his own torturing.
Liberals follow Jesus’ example when they refuse to take control of the state and resolve the major inequalities in society. All followers of the New Testament want to be punished by followers of the Old Testament, and here the liberals find their ultimate sexual gratification in being politically dominated by fundamentalist Christians (who prefer the Old Testament). The ultimate liberal fantasy is to be abused by sadistic fanatics while engaging in passive resistance. Instead of direct fighting, the liberal fetishist will resist passively, allowing himself to be beaten up. With every blow, both his virtue and his orgasm will intensify. He will refuse to fight back no matter how bad the beating, and as the liberal turns into a bloody pulp, he is sure that his spiritual fortitude will awe the dominant sadist. The saintly liberal’s masochistic suffering will cause a spiritual transformation in his abuser—a change of heart that stimulates recognition and a burst of new consciousness. The abuser suddenly understands the virtue of the liberal and sees his own depravity. The abuser feels compassion for the first time, realizes common humanity with the bloody pulp, and the two opposing dialectical poles embrace, re-uniting master and slave in an orgy of blissful higher consciousness and unconditional love. The ultimate liberal ideal is realized—to resist without fighting back, precipitating abuse, causing the transformation of the abuser and the birth of a new social harmony. This is the sexual fantasy of the modern liberal.
It is for these reasons that liberals are NOT our allies. Liberals WANT to lose; they CRAVE slavery. They reject the power they already have and strive for more power only so that they may redouble their submission by giving it away. They don’t care about the millions of impoverished human beings—or, more accurately, their own masochistic sexual gratification is more important to them than the lives of these suffering millions. A liberal is willing to sabotage his own political cause if it will help him achieve the liberal ideal: to be passively tortured by a dominant for the sake of some inner virtue—for the sake of his pure, untarnished, beautiful soul.
In reality, psychopaths are not transformed when they sadistically abuse others. They only become more psychopathic. Psychopaths love the feeling of power that comes from abuse. They start by torturing helpless animals and bullying weaklings in the schoolyard. Later, they work their way up the corporate hierarchy, and as CEOs, earn the right to torture entire communities. If their sadism is not forcibly stopped, they simply become more and more depraved, more and more brutal, more and more skilled in their dark indulgences. Sadists, psychopaths, and fanatics rule our world. Not because they are inherently powerful, but because modern liberals are cowards who will not stand up to them.
Politically conscious liberals often dream about resistance. Privileged with a comfortable desk job, they watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and shake their heads at the latest right-wing travesty. They strongly objected to the irresponsible policies enacted by BP’s CEO—corporate psychopathy causing an ecosystem-destroying oil spill. They were completely opposed to the body-fascism furthered by Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate who wanted to restrict women’s healthcare. FOX News has become the most powerful propaganda platform in US history, as all liberals are intimately aware. “What can I do to stop this?” asks the concerned-but-gutless liberal.
Liberals desperately want to address these regressive horrors that are killing us all, but most liberals are too afraid to actually chain themselves to an oil tanker and precipitate their own beating. While they recognize this odd heroism as the liberal ideal, and revere those brave enough to be pepper-sprayed, most are just too timid to go out and make their wet dream come true. All their resistance is limited to imagination and ineffectual symbolism. Today’s most popular forms of resistance risk nothing and achieve nothing. The only function of modern protest is making liberals feel better for a short time. Liberals don’t want to acknowledge that their higher intelligence and superior culture gives them superior power. Liberals could leverage their superiority to exert direct power over the world. If they would stop denying their power, and start using it deliberately and intentionally, the dark mobs of unconsciousness would have no choice but to give way.
When liberals have access to power, but choose not to use it, they are rejecting consciousness. They are rejecting autonomy and adulthood—fleeing to a childish innocence where they may avoid responsibility. They allow others—inferiors—to choose for them. The master-slave dialectic will raise the consciousness of the slave until the slave is capable of overpowering the master. But what happens if the slave shies away from this power and flees back to his womb of enslavement? In his flight from freedom, the slave rejects Being and he rejects his own expanded consciousness. He regresses to a state of helplessness. His consciousness is stunted; his mind dulls. He is a spiritual failure.
We can find no use for these bland, anxious liberals. Liberalism was once a powerful movement that contributed to the French Revolution and a score of other revolutions. Now, they have regressed to a childish denial of their own power. They seek bliss in a delusion of enlightened impotence. Liberalism is now a coward’s ideology—exclusively for submissives afraid of judgment. Today’s liberals are extremely boring, and after acquiring some dull office routine, the majority of their conscious existence is wasted on entertainment fantasies manufactured by the very corporate psychopaths who co-opted and destroyed their dreams. Today, liberals cannot even imagine what it would be like to actually FIGHT the bad wolves, and most will never experience the apotheosis they wish to discover in passive resistance.
Liberals are out of nerve and out of ideas. They were complicit in their own destruction. They had the chance to create an enlightened planet, but instead clung to their cage and sought a hundred ways to justify cowardice. Once-noble principles were turned around and used as excuses for weakness and inaction. Democracy became a comforting screen to hide behind—another means of avoiding responsibility. Democracy once meant taking power from oligarchs and giving that power to the community. Now it means throwing your hands up in the air and allowing corporate fascists to take control of everything.
By rejecting their destiny, by letting power slip through their fingers, liberals chose death. They turned their backs on humanity and spiritually fell. No longer lean and vigorous, their minds rotted along with their ideals. Flies laid eggs on bloated liberal institutions, and the feeding maggots metamorphosed into a new cultural evil: Christian fascism—Earth’s new dominant paradigm and humanity’s Id principle—has ascended to dominion over our young planet.
Christian fascism is the merger of religious fundamentalism with the multinational corporation to create an unstoppable hegemon. The “gospel of prosperity” serves as the ideological junction between the (corporate) brain and the (fundamentalist) hands of this abomination. The gospel of prosperity is the conviction that virtuous people are rewarded with money. The gospel of prosperity is now the dominant myth underlying both fundamentalist Christianity and free-market economic ideology. Both groups believe that the virtuous are magically assigned riches by a transcendent principle.
Fundamentalist dogma asserts that money is bestowed by the Hand of God—he with the greatest Faith will be blessed with the greatest Wealth. Corporate dogma testifies to the existence of an Invisible Hand—not belonging to any specific God—that doles out benefits to the most upright and virtuous. A caste system enforced by God, this Invisible Hand punishes poor people for their sin. In the post-liberal world, the gospel of prosperity is the new dominant social, cultural, and economic paradigm.
The worst liberals co-operated with these corporate fascists; they became the arms and legs of multinational psychopaths. They bowed down to the hierarchy—sold their ideals for a steady wage. Fellow liberals, instead of condemning these traitors, apologized for them. No evil is too evil for a gutless liberal—he can always find a way to tolerate the grossest treason or the cruelest psychopathy. Liberals always hold back their condemnation. Like Jesus, they always find a way to apologize for evil. When they aren’t apologizing, they are formulating ethical arguments that will justify inaction. Liberals who fail to condemn the treasonous are themselves condemned. A friend who calls for passivity soon becomes an enemy. Deny this reality and you put the Earth itself in peril.
Liberalism is over. The modern, submissive liberal is squeamish and dysfunctional—an evolutionary dead end. He failed to defend his species and will disappear with a whimper. He is nothing but an ironic caricature, suitable for scenesters and Halloween costumes, a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out—all style and no substance—sold at Wal-Mart for $4.99. May his beautiful soul rest in peace.
Meritocrats seize power. We take control of our lives, and our world.
We are The Valuators. We Judge.
We have the courage to rule and the confidence to lead. We take moral ownership.
We don’t flinch from hard realities.
We are aggressive, whole, and willing.
We embrace Life in all forms, and in that process, we win the Truth of our Spirits.
