In the 1930’s,
the “liberals” had a program of
broad social reforms and
a crusading spirit, they
advocated a planned society, they talked in terms of abstract principles, they propounded theories of a predominantly
socialistic nature—and most of them were touchy about the
accusation that they were
enlarging the government’s power; most of them were
assuring their opponents that
government power was only a
temporary means to an end—a “
noble end,”
the liberation of the individual from his bondage to material needs.
The
goal of the
“liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into
welfare statism by means of
single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus
statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but
by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological
corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservatives” was only to retard that process.)
Today, nobody talks of a planned society in the “liberal” camp;
long-range programs, theories, principles, abstractions, and “noble ends” are not fashionable any longer.
Modern “liberals” deride any political concern with such large-scale matters as an entire society or an economy as a whole; they
concern themselves with single, concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment projects and demands, without regard to cost, context, or consequences.
“
Pragmatic”—not “
idealistic”—is their favorite adjective when they are called upon to
justify their “stance,” as they call it, not “stand.” They are
militantly opposed to
political philosophy; they
denounce political concepts as “
tags,” “
labels,” “
myths,” “
illusions”—and
resist any attempt to “label”—i.e.,
to identify—their own views.
They are
belligerently anti-theoretical and—with a faded mantle of intellectuality still clinging to their shoulders—
they are anti-intellectual. The only remnant of their former “idealism” is
a tired, cynical, ritualistic quoting of shopworn “humanitarian” slogans, when the occasion demands it.
Cynicism, uncertainty, and fear are the insignia of
the culture which
they are still dominating by default. And the
only thing that has not rusted in their
ideological equipment, but has grown savagely brighter and clearer through the years, is their
lust for power—for an
autocratic, statist, totalitarian government power.
It is not a crusading brightness, it is not the lust of a fanatic with a mission—it is more like the glassy-eyed brightness of a somnambulist whose stuporous despair has long since swallowed the memory of his purpose, but who still clings to his mystic weapon in the stubborn belief that “there ought to be a law,” that everything will be all right if only somebody will pass a law, that every problem can be solved by the magic power of brute force.
The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term “liberals” are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They do not want to accept the full meaning of their goal; they want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.
from “Credibility and Polarization,” The Ayn Rand Letters
