The Liberal Delusion

We can think of plenty of liberal delusions. But what is the Liberal Delusion? The primal delusion?  The  ur-delusion, the one which begets so many ugly progeny?

According to John Marsh in his book of that name, it is the idea that human beings are born naturally good.  This notion can be traced to Rousseau, who in his book ‘Emile’, one of the most ruinously influential documents ever to enslave mankind  in error, told a receptive public that children were  born wholly good and implied that the Christian doctrine of original sin which says that we are naturally inclined to do evil as well as having the capacity to do good, could be ditched.

According to Rousseau, since children are born good and rational, they do not need to be disciplined. If they turn out badly, it is because they have been treated badly.  (You can see where this is going in terms of liberal social and economic policy today).

Allied to John Locke’s  pernicious tabula rasa or ’ blank slate’ theory of human nature,  which implies that  it is  malleable and improvable, perhaps infinitely, this doctrine of Rousseau’s has been responsible for a thousand and one errors, gross injustices and terror on the part of Liberals and Leftists.  Pol Pot with his ‘Year Zero’ is perhaps the most famous recent example of those who have sought to return people to their natural state of goodness by restructuring society (in his case by the most evil means possible) but Blair and New Labour (‘Britain is a young country’) is another .

They have assumed that, because people are naturally good and rational, civilisations and their traditions which have taken millennia to evolve can be cast aside overnight. People don’t need such traditions to guide them. They have bound them in the chains of convention and economic injustice.  All they need is the removal of those structures of power in society, economic or otherwise, which have made them behave badly in the past (if they have).  Their natural goodness, allowed then to flourish, will ensure that things will work out just fine; far better than in the oppressed past.

Marsh charts a number of the ideas that flow from the ur-Delusion, all of them having dire results. Chief among them is the Liberal claim that the more freedom there is the better. Well yes –up to a point, Lord Copper. That point being well before a society falls apart when there is nothing to hold it together because there is no overarching, agreed, system of morality.

This doctrine is all of a piece with another; that the individual is of overriding importance. Now if the individual is of primary importance and can do what he wants regardless, it is necessary to impose the further idea that greater equality is always beneficial. Without imposed equality (and it must be imposed) one idea of morality and behaviour is going to rise above the others as embodying more of the truth. And we can’t have that, can we! Because (and here is a further compounding of the original error) there is no truth other than what we make for ourselves individually.

Oh dear, there’s no end to this trail of stupidity built on an idea of human nature that anyone who has brought up children can tell you is a lie. (Rousseau had five of his own which he offloaded onto a foundling home at birth). Well, there is, but not before Marsh has well and truly dished liberal attitudes to science, religion, history and other targets which beg to be dismantled. He gives the BBC a well-deserved mauling.

In truth, there is not very much in Marsh’s book which has not been aired at one time or another on patriotic websites at least. But his book is very well researched, goes into considerable informative detail and brings together much of this material into an ordered, well-argued and compact form.

It is a pity that such an important book which ought to be on every patriot’s reading list, is replete with so many glaring typos.

All the same, it is highly recommended.