Radical Minds

“The radical liberal mind’s goals are now familiar, of course, but another brief

summary will prove useful in highlighting their essentially childlike nature. Just noted

were the grandiose goals of providing for everyone’s material welfare and healthcare,

protecting everyone’s self-esteem, correcting all social and political disadvantages,

educating all citizens, and eliminating all class distinctions. In his pursuit of these goals,

he intends to construct a universal human family, one united in bonds of mutual love,

concern, caretaking and tolerance. Through drastic government action the radical liberal

seeks the following:

• A powerful parental government to provide everyone with a good life and a caring

presence

• An elite corps of surrogate parents that will manage the lives of the people through

approximately equal distributions of goods and services, just as real parents provide

equally for the needs of their children

• A guarantee of material security from the state, similar to that which a child expects

from his parents

• A form of parental social justice that cures or mitigates all states of deprivation,

inequality, suffering and disadvantage

• A guarantee that negative rights for the protection of individual liberty will yield to

positive rights that reduce or eliminate inequalities of wealth, social status and power,

just as good parents would balance benefits to their children

• Government laws that will punish the “haves” for their excesses and compensate the

“have-nots” for the pangs of envy, just as good parents would do for their children

• Government directives from wise and caring officials that channel the citizen’s

initiative and industry through social programs and tax incentives, just as wise parents

determine the directions of the family’s labors

• Government policy that instructs the people in how to relate to each other politically,

just as good parents instruct their children in how to conduct themselves properly

• Permissive laws passed by sympathetic legislators that lower the obligations of

contracts, ease codes of acceptable conduct, and relax the burdens of established

institutions such as marriage and adoption procedures, just as indulgent parents would

do

• Government welfare programs that free the citizen-child from the duties of altruism,

just as parents do

• An international caring agenda that will enhance the family of nations by

understanding everyone’s hardships, tolerating destructive actions by others, and

empathizing with aggressors to bring them to the negotiating table, just as good

parents do in resolving family disputes.

These and other goals dear to the modern liberal heart are remarkable for the

childhood needs they address and the adult needs they ignore. As noted in more detail

below, what the radical liberal mind really longs for, as revealed in his political goals, is a

child’s relationship to a loving family whose caretaking compensates him for the injuries

he suffered in his early years. He seeks all of this in the contemporary political arena.

* * *

“Certain neurotic themes are dominant in the radical liberal mind’s perceptions of the

world. All of them portray the citizen as a suffering child who is victimized, helpless and

in need of rescue. All are evident in various liberal platforms. They represent the liberal

mind’s transference of childhood dynamics into the world of adult relationships. As

expressed in his most passionate political pronouncements, the radical liberal mind

believes that:

• A very large portion of the population is suffering; they are suffering because they

are deprived, neglected, exploited or abused.

• They are suffering because of certain injustices inflicted upon them.

• They are helpless to stop their suffering.

• Bad people, such as capitalists and the rich, cause the victims to suffer by depriving,

neglecting, exploiting and abusing them.

• These bad people are villains who must be stopped from preying on their victims.

• The villains are ruthless, powerful, selfish, cruel and mean-spirited.

• The bad institutions supported by the villains are economic, social and political in

nature; they include free market capitalism, basic property rights, strict moral and

ethical accountability, reasonable social decorum, personal and financial

responsibility, individual sovereignty, and justice based on merit and desert.

• These bad institutions promote economic enslavement, social discrimination,

political disenfranchisement, exploitation of minorities, forced pregnancies, and

coercive advertising, among other things.

• The people are innocent victims; they have no important role in causing their

suffering.

• Modern liberals are heroes whose mission is to rescue the victims from the villains.

• Modern liberals are compassionate, wise, empathetic and nurturing.

• Modern liberals are devoted to saving the victims from the villains just as nurturing

parents protect their children from harm by others.

• Like children, most citizens cannot adequately direct Or manage their own lives.

• Most citizens need a powerful liberal government to direct and manage their lives.

• Because the villains and their institutions are ruthless and powerful, the people need

a powerful liberal government, The Modern Parental State, to protect them from the

villains and the institutions supported by the villains.

• The Modern Parental State is the answer to problems created by the villains.

• The Modern Parental State will rescue the people and protect them from the villains

and from other misfortunes.

• The Modern Parental State will nurture the people by providing for all their needs

and desires.

• The Modem Parental State will blame and punish the villains for their deprivation,

neglect, abuse and exploitation of the victims.

• Much of the suffering of the victims comes from too much freedom in economic

markets, which allows the villains to exploit the victims for unjust gain.

• Proper controls instituted by The Modern Parental State to regulate the markets will

prevent the villains from economically exploiting the victims.

• The Modern Parental State will cure the deprivation, neglect, exploitation and abuse

of the victims by taking the wealth, power and status of the villains away from them

and redistributing it to the victims.

• Some of the suffering of the victims comes from too lime social freedom and too

many restrictions on behavior in social situations.

• The Modern Parental State will lower the standards of social conduct in order to free

the victimized citizen from guilt and from adverse legal consequences when he acts

criminally, irresponsibly or offensively.

• By remaking the institutions of society, The Modern Parental State will liberate the

victims from exploitation and oppression by the villains.

• The libertarian structure of ordered liberty grounded in basic property and contract

rights allows the villains to exploit the victims.

• The Modern Parental State will eliminate these individual rights and create a new

political architecture for a secure society modeled on the loving nurturing family.”