ARE WE ALL LIBERALS NOW?

Playwright and socialism-advocate George Bernard Shaw famously declared a century ago that “We’re all socialists now” – meaning that socialist ideas had so permeated English society they were advocated however disguised even by their opponents.

The current hysteria over the “abuse” of Iraqi prisoners is evidence that American society has become so infected with envy-appeasing liberalism that “We’re all liberals now.”

The defining essence of liberalism is a psychological compulsion to appease the envious. Liberalism is not a political ideology. It is an atavism, a regression to the primitive fear of the Evil Eye of Envy.

Susceptibility to envy what causes someone to be a liberal. The fear of being envied – the fear of the Evil Eye – is what makes a liberal. Liberalism is a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. It is the fear of being envied that is the source of “liberal guilt.”

I discussed this in Beyond Treason (TTP July 23, 2003, currently posted in Classics, which discussed Ann Coulter’s accusation of treason regarding liberals. I explained that:

“The passions of Limousine or Hollywood Liberals are not traitorous. They are frenzies of masochism. The more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy-appeasement. Traitors are folks who go over to the other side for the money or some other self-interested reason. Liberals root for the other side precisely because they believe it is against their self-interests.

What, for example, could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended. The lunacy of the “global warming” hoax cannot be comprehended other than its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. Culture-destroying illegal immigration policies are defended by those who do not want their culture to survive.

The lethality of Liberal Envy-Appeasement is that personally-felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing for one’s society or race.

White liberals become auto-racist, male liberals auto-sexist: racists towards their own race, sexists towards their own sex. Dimestore demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, PETA animal rights loonies, NAMBLA pederasts, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, all get their strength from the liberal’s fear of their envious Evil Eyes.”

Now to this list must be added Arabs in Iraq.

The American liberation of Iraq from the hideous tyranny of Saddam Hussein is the single greatest humanitarian achievement of modern times. That this achievement has not been without moral failures in no way diminishes it, for these failures have been minor and rare. Such is the case of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

It is to be expected that the liberal media would do their best to whip up a guilt-mongering frenzy over the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners. What is saddeningly surprising is how quickly so many conservatives joined the frenzy.

A case in point is The Washington Times. I got so steamed at this that I wrote a letter which was published in today’s edition (5/7/04):

“Letters to the Editor
Washington Times

Dear Sirs –

I could not be more revolted by your Editorial Page cartoon of May 5, 2004, depicting Uncle Sam looking at an American Flag besmirched with a “US Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners” splotch and thinking, “It’ll take more than a strong detergent to get this stain out…”

What is the difference between this cartoon and that of the now-infamous Ted Rall cartoon calling Pat Tillman an idiot?

Let me explain reality to your cartoonist. This “abuse” was not conducted by America nor by the American military but by a tiny group of military personnel who are in no way whatsoever representative of either. If your cartoonist had any brains or patriotism he would have depicted this abuse as such an exception it highlights by contrast the overwhelming humanity and heroism of our troops serving in Iraq.

I subscribe to the Washington Times as an alternative to the liberal media embarrassed by their country. I expect an apology from you and an explanation of what now differentiates you from left-wing capitulation to the envy of America-haters. It will take a strong detergent, indeed, to remove the stain of this vile cartoon from your journalistic integrity.

Jack Wheeler”

Far more revolting, however, than a cartoon in a newspaper is that the majority of Senators and Congressmen on Capitol Hill have expressed more outrage over the humiliation of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib than the torture and murder of Americans by Iraqis in Fallujah.

Making men wear women’s underwear and laughing at them is mistreatment for which the perpetrators deserve dishonorable discharge or similar punishment. It is not in the same moral universe as torturing people to death who are trying to bring you food (that’s what the convoy in Fallujah was doing), then burning, mutilating, and hanging the charred bodies on public display. The perpetrators of the Fallujah Atrocity deserve to be shot on sight as one would a mad dog.

Yet Johnny McCain, Dick Lugar, and others of their ilk are in greater moral dudgeon over the former than the latter.

Unless a sufficient number of folks on Capitol Hill and throughout the conservative media have the gumption to denounce the Abuse Frenzy as a blatant liberal attempt to smear every American soldier risking his or her life in Iraq, then we’re all liberals now.

Then we retreat and capitulate – we retreat from Iraq, retreat from the world, and let the terrorists dictate their terms of surrender to us. The Abuse Frenzy is make-or-break time, the fork in the road to either winning or losing the War on Terrorism.

Thus the key to victory in this war: Reject envy! Only by rejecting the envy of Arabs, of Moslems, of all those who hate America, can this war be won. Only by announcing we just don’t care if you hate us and are envious of us, do we have any chance of prevailing over the evil of terrorism – and over the desperate attempts of envy-appeasers to make liberal of us all.