As usual, I enclose “liberal” and its variants in quotation marks because such words refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are in fact destructive of liberty, that is, illiberal.

The unacknowledged core value of “liberalism” is its repudiation of personal responsibility. There is ample evidence of this; for example:

• the treatment of material inequality as inequity, as if differences in intelligence, skills, ambition, and work habits are irrelevant

• unblinking support for the redistribution of income and wealth, thus encouraging sloth and punishing intelligence, skill, ambition, and hard work

• a preference for rehabilitation and second, third, and fourth chances, as opposed to sure, swift, and harsh punishment for criminal acts

• the unsupported view that terrorism arises from poverty and is therefore “understandable,” and isn’t an act of war but merely a crime whose perpetrators must be accorded due process in American courts

• the promotion of abortion, which is a way of escaping the consequences of imprudent sexual behavior — after-the-fact birth control, as it were

• the disparagement and destruction of familial responsibility, through welfare programs, easy divorce, the advancement of gay “marriage,” and the subsidization of women’s work outside the home

• a general disinclination to hold persons responsible for the consequences of their actions: various addictions are “diseases”; those who acquire lung cancer by smoking are “victims” of tobacco companies; those who engage in risky sex acts are “victims” of AIDS; those who borrow money and don’t repay it; and on and on

• the treatment of straight, white males as”privileged,” to justify the indiscriminate bestowal of favors on “protected groups” (those who aren’t straight, white males) because all members of such groups are discriminated against,” “disadvantaged,” and “oppressed,” by definition.

Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalyrmple) captures the essence of the “liberal” mindset:

In the United States, the National Institute on Drug Abuse defines addiction quite baldly as a chronic relapsing brain disease—and nothing else. I hesitate to say it, but this seems to me straightforwardly a lie, told to willing dupes in order to raise funds from the federal government.

Be that as it may, the impression has been assiduously created and peddled among the addicts that they are the helpless victims of something that is beyond their own control, which means that they need the technical assistance of what amounts to a substantial bureaucratic apparatus in order to overcome it. When heroin addicts just sentenced to imprisonment arrived, they said to me, “I would give up, doctor, if only I had the help.” What they meant by this was that they would give up heroin if some cure existed that could be administered to them that would by itself, without any resolution on their part, change their behavior. In this desire they appeared sincere—but at the same time they knew that such a cure did not exist, nor would most of them have agreed to take it if it did exist….

[A]ll the bases upon which heroin addiction is treated as if it is something that happens to people rather than something that people do are false, and easily shown to be false. This is so whatever the latest neuro-scientific research may supposedly show….

Dishonest passivity and dependence combined with harmful activity becomes a pattern of life, and not just among drug addicts. I remember going into a single mother’s house one day. The house was owned by the local council; her rent was paid, and virtually everything that she owned, or that she and her children consumed, was paid for from public funds. I noticed that her back garden, which could have been pretty had she cared for it, was like a noxious rubbish heap. Why, I asked her, do you not clear it up for your children to play in? “I’ve asked the council many times to do it,” she replied. The council owned the property; it was therefore its duty to clear up the rubbish that she, the tenant, had allowed to accumulate there—and this despite what she knew to be the case, that the council would never do so! Better the rubbish should remain there than that she do what she considered to be the council’s duty. At the same time she knew perfectly well that she was capable of clearing the rubbish and had ample time to do so. This is surely a very curious but destructive state of mind, and one that some politicians have unfortunately made it their interest to promote by promising secular salvation from relative poverty by means of redistribution….

[T]he notions of dependence and independence have changed. I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state. (“The Worldview That Makes the Underclass,” Imprimis, May/June 2014)

The deeper tragedy is that the denial of personal responsibility leads inevitably to the erosion of liberty. When the state becomes the arbiter of our morals, it becomes perforce the arbiter of our actions.

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