We've discussed before how modern anti-anthropology views humanity: as radically autonomous individuals, self-created through reason and will; and how this anti-anthropology results in a politics of abstractly equal freedom, in which substantive right and wrong, good and evil, are replaced by what is willed or chosen by the free and equal new man. When this anti-anthropology encounters the real world one result is the untermensch, the Low Man, chained to nature, history and tradition, standing in the way of the full emergence of the free and equal new man. While liberalism claims to be radically opposed to authoritative discrimination, in the real world politics or government just is authoritative discrimination. Human authority which discriminates, binds us to its discriminations, and enforces its discriminations legitimately is essential to, is virtually a definition of, politics and government.
So we can see that the requirements of reality, nay of basic rationality, are set radically in opposition to liberalism. Because liberalism is a political doctrine, and despite its genuine and absolute commitment to political equal freedom, liberalism must itself act as an authority: it must authoritatively discriminate between different conceptions of the good. Because it at one and the same time must authoritatively discriminate and must deny the legitimacy of authoritative discrimination, there is in liberalism necessarily an anthropological bifurcation or splitting of humanity into "high men" who are free and equal supermen to whom the anti-discrimination rule applies absolutely, and "Low Men", the untermenschen, who are not fully human. The Low Men are those against whom liberalism must discriminate authoritatively; and because it must do so, and at the same time it is in liberalism's view inherently illegitimate to authoritatively discriminate between differing freely chosen substantive conceptions of the good and the meaning of life, it is simply incorrect to view the Low Men as fully human in the pertinent, politically authoritative sense.
Obviously liberalism, particularly in prosperous times, is uneasy with the untermensch built into the combination of its view of the world with the actual reality of the world as it really is. But the less-than-fully-human untermensch always lurks right beneath the surface; and sometimes pokes his head above it. The Low Men are those against whom liberalism must substantively discriminate in order to keep the way cleared for the free and equal new man to live as a self-created, fully autonomous being who has transcended nature, history, and tradition. The Low Men are those who are impediments to the will of the new man, impediments to him realizing whatever he wills himself to realize subject only to the constraint that his rights are absolutely equal to the rights of others. The Low Man can be anyone at all who is not fully autonomous, fully free and equal, self-created through reason and will.
Who is the Low Man required and entailed by the fact of liberalism holding and asserting public authority, entailed by the collision of liberalism's incoherent politics with the hard cold facts of reality? Dear reader, if you are reading What's Wrong With the World with an even somewhat sympathetic ear, why, the Low Man is you.
Comments (32)
"The Low Men" would make an awesome name for a group blog.
Posted by Kevin B. | February 17, 2009 12:57 AM
Your analysis of liberalism is both entirely too glorious and to narrow. Your wording continues to seem to suggest that liberalism is only a political doctrine - you haven't said that explicitly - but you've said "just is" previously. Liberalism is much more than just political. It's a personal morality, belief system and way of life as well. There is literally no aspect of life that is untouched by it.
But the main thing crippling this analysis is its race-blindness. The overwhelming majority of the world's non-whites are non-liberal, and hence must be viewed on this analysis as untermenschen. Yet liberals idolize them and wish to prostrate themselves before them. They want to import as many as they can to displace their own progeny. They glory in the anti-white violence of "minorites," and will stop at nothing to encourage it. Any thorough understanding of liberalism must come to grips with this death wish.
That is why I suggested before that liberalism is a death cult for whites. There is no pretense on the part of liberals that their dogma must be accepted by any but white people. You can't say that they don't believe race exists, when they certainly know which race must be destroyed, and are working so effectively to bring that about.
Posted by Dan McCulloch | February 17, 2009 2:37 AM
Some will suggest that the liberal's claim to be personally opposed is simply false. But that requires us to believe that when liberals express their beliefs they are not merely wrong, not merely that they hold morally abhorrent positions, but that all liberals everywhere are and always have been lying about what they believe. And that sort of coordinated mass-scale insincerity is simply not possible.
So while I agree that liberalism ultimately and implicitly pervades and overruns every aspect of life, we will nevertheless misunderstand it if we do not grasp that it is first and foremost a political doctrine, a doctrine of the legitimacy of political authority.
No, the Low Man is not just anyone who is not (yet) liberal. The Low Man is the current enemy, the less-than-human who by his actions or mere existence is blocking the full emancipated emergence of the free and equal new man. Jews, aristocrats, unborn children, white men, old or infirm dependents, growing third world populations, etc all occupy the role of the Low Man at one time or another, most especially when they actually exercise real authority but really whenever they interfere or are perceived to interfere with the liberal project. Many of those non-whites, most especially the not yet born ones, are considered Low Men; particularly by genocidal Population Bomb liberal nazis who see third world population explosions as a danger to the emancipation of the free and equal new modern/postmodern man.Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 9:02 AM
I read that snippet over at Oz Conservative and could only shake my head. Professor Levy is obviously a dangerous radical, whose ravings may be dismissed by mere recitation of them. But it wasn't that long ago that the lunatic ravings of Peter Singer could also be so summarily dismissed. Slippery slope-n-all that. It is profoundly unsettling. I've long observed that if you scratch the surface of a liberal, you'll find a totalitarian: the worst vices of puritanism with none of their virtues.
Posted by Steve Nicoloso | February 17, 2009 10:57 AM
Zippy,
The "Low Men" feature in the Stephen King story "Low Men in Yellow Coats" later made into a movie. The "Low Men" are malevolent characters who want to take away a boy's friend -- seems like they sort of fit your metaphor!
Posted by Jeff Singer | February 17, 2009 11:44 AM
In the case of abortion, I have to disagree, at least to some extent. I think there definitely is mass-scale insincerity and that the vast majority of liberals who say they are "personally opposed, but" on this issue are not telling the truth. Does anybody remember Rudy Giuliani going on on television about how he "hates" abortion, and then it turned out he was a contributor to PP? He was not telling the truth. I suppose he might have lied to himself first before lying to others, so as to work up the requisite appearance of distaste, but he wasn't telling the truth in any event.
Posted by Lydia | February 17, 2009 12:02 PM
Conservatives (considered very roughly, say, as folks who value deeply illiberal institutions like the family and marriage) have had their clocks cleaned. I think part of the reason is because most conservatives are themselves to some extent politically liberal; that rather than concede as much conservatives paint an inaccurate caricature of liberalism precisely so that their own form of liberalism to which they themselves have some loyalty is not challenged by that caricature; and because they are fighting against this straw man, in addition to other reasons which probably deserve their own post at some point, conservatives get their clocks cleaned. This is the root underlying foundation of the Hegelian Mambo: liberalism could not sustain its leftward march through history if it were not itself sustained and empowered by conservatives unable or unwilling to fully face up to the nature of the enemy.
Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 1:42 PM
Great post, Zip.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 17, 2009 2:41 PM
Hmmm. I'm thinking about that one. See, I think the reason that I, for example, am inclined to regard such claims with skepticism is because I deeply suspect that the committed liberal who utters them has a pretty different notion of "private space for devout religious practice" from the one his audience is likely to assume. For example, I'm pretty sure that if he's a real liberal ideologue, he _doesn't_ include the religious believer's children within that private space. He would like those children to have to be indoctrinated in his own worldview, which he calls "making them free to make their own decisions in life." But when people hear it, they hear it as including the privacy of the home and family. So there seems to me to be some deception going on there in some way, shape, or form. I'm also quite sure that he doesn't want to include private businesses in that "private space." So the conservative small business owner isn't supposed to be free in his private business to "discriminate" on the basis of sexual orientation. In fact, he isn't even supposed to be free to utter politically incorrect statements that might create a "hostile environment." So in the end, the "private space" in question ends up being just about as big as a closet, with room for only one person in it, or ends up being just about as big as the privacy of one's own mind and thoughts, which isn't what the statement sounded like to begin with. When PZ Myers says in the interview in Expelled that he wants religion to become just like knitting and churches to be like knitting clubs, he definitely isn't talking about a space for devout religious practice. He is making it quite explicit that he wants to push down religion until it gradually and eventually becomes _not_ devout, that religious believers themselves come to regard it as unimportant, precisely because they have not been allowed to treat it as having any relevance to the outside world and to the rest of their lives.
It seems to me that the only question is how many liberals have gotten as far as Myers in realizing what is happening and where their tenets are leading. I can certainly imagine, as you say, some young person's getting pulled into liberalism through things like "personally opposed, but" or "we want a private space for devout religion so long as it isn't imposed on others." But at some point, the more devout of a liberal he becomes, the more of a sham that becomes.
I think the homosexual rights movement is bringing this out in a really big way. I've recently stood before my local city commission and argued for freedom of conscience for businessmen not to have their businesses used as a platform for the homosexual agenda--for example, photographers being forced to take pictures of homosexual weddings. And I got nowhere. It was like talking to a wall. Yet I'd bet dollars to donuts that most of those commissioners would say they believe in one's right to private religious and conscientious opinions so long as those aren't "imposed on others." So now a printer's refusing to print homosexual advocacy materials is "imposing his beliefs on others." Of course it's absolutely _obvious_ that the person trying to force him to print the materials is really the one trying to "impose his beliefs on others." The whole thing is upside-down and backwards. In what sense, then, is it true that the liberals who take these positions really mean it when they say they really believe in the right to have your private beliefs so long as you don't impinge on the rights of others? Once the "rights of others" means the right to make you publish their stuff (for example), the statement has become totally meaningless. It now means, in fact, the opposite of what it seems to mean on its face.
Posted by Lydia | February 17, 2009 3:27 PM
Liberalism defeated Nazism, Communism, fascism and socialism (yes, some vestiges of the latter 2 co-exist within the Liberal system)and its economics has showered millions with material riches once reserved only for the aristocracies of long-dead ancien regimes.
These stupendous victories bestow upon the Liberal a noble moral glow and firm conviction that he marches in step with history itself, making him impervious to any argument that casts him in the role of oppressor. He cannot bear human suffering since he is incapable of deriving any redemptive value from it. The Cross plays an ornamental role at best, in his earthbound eschatology and the only rational response to the misery of the Third World is birth control and abortion coupled with billions in foreign aid.
His self-understanding may be delusional and dishonest, since he goes to great lengths to conceal his will to power and epic ability to consume, but the track-record (and self-evident goodness) of his philosophy serves to suffocate those strong, inchoate pangs of guilt that occasionally well-up. Nothing succeeds like success and if Marx were alive today, he'd be astonished that it was his old rival, the Liberal who engineered the epoch defining global revolution. He'd probably be the first to tell you where it is heading as well.
Posted by Kevin | February 17, 2009 4:46 PM
Lydia:
The core problem here is that the liberal's anthropology specifically and conception of reality generally is incoherent though. So no matter what he says, and no matter what he himself assumes to be the limits of what it implies, it isn't going to resolve into something fully coherent. As an epistemologist you may be looking for some set of concrete premises (which we presumably would both agree to be false) under which the liberal is justified - in the sense of having a sound argument - in believing what he says he believes. But people believe things without a sound argument from definite premises all day long. The fact that they do so doesn't mean that they don't really believe it.Liberalism's surface plausibility layered over internal incoherence, by the way, is part of what makes it so strong: it becomes difficult to pin down, easy to disavow, easy to invoke alternate 'voices' of any terms, etc. As usual the analytic philosopher in you seems to be trying to grasp the thing in its entiriety as a coherent object. But there is no coherent object to grasp in its entiriety; there are only premises, loyalties, commitments to principles which ultimately degenerate into incoherence.
This is the most difficult thing to get across when discussing liberalism, in my experience. Liberalism is one of those things that has the character of being not even wrong, because what it asserts is irrational and can thus be ultimately put into the service of just about any substantive agenda whatsoever -- that is, its language can be adopted to argue for just about any substantive agenda at all (though in practice this is constrained by historical circumstances). You see conservatives doing this all the time, arguing against the liberal agenda based on assertions of political freedom and equality, where everyone in the argument agrees that political freedom and equality are absolute goods and just disagree over what that is supposed to mean in the present substantive conflict.
In the sense that they really believe and adhere to the principles involved, even though those principles in fact, in the real world, stepping back from their limited perspective, lead to incoherence rather than anything definite.Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 4:58 PM
Kevin:
It defeated them after giving birth to them, yes; and in a certain sense they are merely more radical (and therefore less resilient) versions of itself.Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 5:00 PM
Last night Eldest Daughter saw a bumper sticker at the library that said, "Freedom of religion means any religion." She said to me, "I'm trying to figure out what that even means." I think this is related to what you're getting at, Zippy, in that a conservative shouldn't even utter such a statement. A conservative shouldn't pretend that he believes in "freedom of religion for any religion." Not if (to take an exaggerated example) the religion in question involves sacrificing infants at the New Moon. So it's a mistake for conservatives to make it sound like they buy into the whole sharp private-public distinction and are just disagreeing with the liberals on how to apply it. I think that is part of what you are getting at.
Posted by Lydia | February 17, 2009 5:15 PM
Zippy,
How can you even begin to claim this when, in fact, Liberalism itself continues to evolve in (as you say) admittedly more radical but, what's worse, even more aggressively hostile forms (as evinced in policies that have basically become the Hallmark within the Walls of Academia but also Government itself, issuing in both condemnations and even legal penalties against its offenders!) mutating to significantly greater lengths and to higher positions, thereby extending its life to near eternal & even religious heights?
Posted by aristocles | February 17, 2009 5:17 PM
Zippy,
The paternity papers are not conclusive, especially in the case of Nazism, which was an attempt to return to a pagan, pre-Christian past. What is clear, is because Christianity fathered Liberalism, its staying power is assured.
Posted by Kevin | February 17, 2009 5:30 PM
Ari:
The past is not the future, but looking at the past what we see is that moderate forms of liberalism seem to last longer, have more resilience, and do more damage than more extreme forms. (Or, if you rather, liberalism is more resilient than the more radical heresies which have sprung from it).
Kevin:
I agree that Nazism is a liberal heresy, that is to say, it is its own ideology which took liberalism as its starting point; and that liberalism is somewhat more distantly a Christian heresy in the same sense.
Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 8:09 PM
Lydia:
I think what it means is any religion which embraces freedom of religion as understood by liberals. In practice this means that you can have any religion you want as long as it is liberalism. Liberalism instantiates the anarchist tyrant: you have complete freedom of choice, as long as you only make liberal choices.Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 8:14 PM
Zippy,
Tracing the genealogy of the various "isms" that bedevil us could take awhile, but I think your answer to Ari about Liberalism's resilience suggests it is not all that "distant" a heresy.
Certainly the strong family resemblance it has with Christianity (all men are created equal and endowed with God-given rights) marks Liberalism as the faith's most formidable and subversive opponent.In retrospect, the establishment of class or race-based paradises through advanced science were too bogus to last. Not so, for a civil religion that affirms the dignity of the individual and promises redemption by lifting the Cross from mankind's shoulders. The language of the Gospels runs through it's foundational texts, written as they were by Christian clergy in some cases.
Posted by Kevin | February 17, 2009 8:46 PM
I think liberalism has very little to do with traditional Christianity, actually. About all it gets from traditional Christianity is its perverse notion of political equality, which it takes by 'materializing' or immanentizing/politicizing the cross-cultural brotherhood of all Christians and the offering of the Gospel to every people, language, and nation. It is true that liberalism is very much a parasite on traditional Christianity; but don't confuse the ticks with the dog.
Naziism, on the other hand, has a great deal in common with liberalism. So I stand by my characterization of liberalism as a distant heresy of Christianity, and Naziism as a much closer heresy of liberalism.
Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 8:56 PM
And Kevin, I really don't get this at all:
My answer to Ari was just that liberalism has been very resilient and successful compared to (say) Nazism and Marxism. That implies that liberalism is a close offshoot of Christianity? I don't see the sequitur.Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 9:11 PM
Zippy,
Liberalism's longevity and endurance are the product of its genes. How else do you account for its staying power? It grew out of Christendom, a badly divided, war-weary and spiritually fatigued Christendom, no doubt, yet it retained, at least rhetorically many of the aims of the civilization it ultimately supplanted. Liberalism is an agent that hollows out from within by offering a superb parody.
Nazism may have been revolutionary and incapable of sprouting within Europe prior to the advent of Liberalism, but it stressed biological and cultural differences, authority, hierarchy and promised a return to a mythic past via the exercise of raw state power. The individual was submerged into a particular tribal collective, not enshrined. These are not Liberalism's egalitarian-libertarian goals,or the preferred methods for attaining universal utopia.
Posted by Kevin | February 17, 2009 9:41 PM
Kevin:
I find this whole notion that if something has staying power it is necessarily Christian very, very bizarre. How do you account for the staying power of Buddhism? "The National Socialist state knows no 'classes,' but politically speaking only citizens with absolutely equal rights and accordingly equal general duties, and, alongside of these, state subjects who in the political sense are absolutely without rights." - Adolph Hitler, Mein KampfThe main difference between liberalism and Nazism is that in Nazism the untermensch becomes overtly acknowledged as such.
Posted by Zippy | February 17, 2009 10:05 PM
Zippy,
Do you mean bizarre or inconvenient to your premise? Liberalism flourishes in the West because it conforms to our civilization's long held internal longings and expressions, much like Buddhism does in the East. The Liberal subtly abolishes the transcendent by merging the temporal into the eternal and by realizing the Kingdom here and now.
Vastly different than a 1000 year Reich or Hitler's "classless state" stratified by race where the "pure" preside at the top. You will search in vain to find such a notion explicated within Liberalism.
I think you're getting too sweeping in your assertions.
Posted by Kevin | February 18, 2009 6:34 AM
I mean bizarre.
Posted by Zippy | February 18, 2009 6:40 AM
Zippy and Kevin,
For what it's worth, Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism deals with this very topic of fascist roots and comes down strongly on Zippy's side of the debate.
I also think Kevin is right to trace liberalism's roots to Christianity -- although I would argue those roots reside specifically in Protestant Christianity and more specifically for the American project, Puritan Christianity. Kevin Phillips book, The Cousin's Wars is quite good at tracing these roots from Cromwell through to Lincoln.
What is interesting to a modern, American conservative like me is the tension and difficulty of reconciling my conservative ideas with the ideas of someone like Zippy, who I suspect thinks I am too close in my ideas about good government to my liberal cousins for my own good.
Posted by Jeff Singer | February 18, 2009 9:33 AM
That raises the question of how closely Nazism and Fascism are related, I suppose, to which the answer is probably "closely enough, but not as closely as the usual narratives propose". That's a whole 'nother discussion though.
Posted by Zippy | February 18, 2009 10:48 AM
It seems to me this idea is very closely connected with the protestant denial of tradition. They claim that they get their beliefs from scripture and reason and therefore their beliefs are superior. It is not true. They have their own tradition that effects them much more deeply than they know. Just look at how many follow closely the biblical interpretations of the fellowship they were baptized into. Yet they claim that they are objective? Tradition runs so deep you can't turn it off even if your creed requires it.
Now liberals are not only rejecting Catholic tradition but the broader Christian tradition. They are claiming their thinking is based on reason and not on any new tradition. They think that makes it better. But guess what? They can't avoid tradition either. They can agree as long as they are simply opposing Christianity. But once they move away from that they will fight among themselves just as protestants do.
When one sees that everything is based more on tradition than on reason then the question changes. No longer do we ask, what coresponds to my reasoning? We start to ask, which tradition is objectively superior? That is when the Catholic tradition starts looking pretty good.
Posted by Randy | February 18, 2009 2:37 PM
Liberalism kills the Sabbath in the name of leisure and convenience and all we're left with is overwork, stress and debt. Human sacrifice without the Resurrection;
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0225/p01s02-wogn.html
The 40 days in the desert couldn't come at a better time. Do penance, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand {St. Matt. Iv: 17.}
Posted by Kevin | February 24, 2009 10:01 PM
The seed for Liberalism was sown in the Garden of Eden when Satan told Eve, "ye can be gods" or in modern nomenclature "you can create yourself". The Christian believes that not only can we never be god, but we cannot even approach God except through the atoning Blood of Jesus Christ. Freedom in Christ means that we are free from the curse of our sinful nature; equality in Christ means that salvation is available to all who accept Christ. It also means that we are all equal before Christ's judgement.
Posted by Jo | March 1, 2009 11:31 AM
National Socialism was a cure for Liberalism's disease, that's why it was so vigorously destroyed and demonized.
All of the greatest and most powerful civilizations have had some reflections of National Socialism/Fascism in their policies, which I would sum up as the subordination of the individual to a collective national goal.
Liberalism/individualism seems like a terrible and fearsome opponent, but it's really just a symptom of a larger disease, which is the collapse of Western Civilization. Is the process of aging the cause of death or a symptom of it's approach?
A truly liberal state could never sustain itself, it would immediately collapse. That's why I'm more interested in building a new society out of the ruins than trying to preserve this one against liberals, who will die off at the first sign of hardship.
Posted by Asa | March 9, 2009 12:28 AM
As a parlamentary note, if I start to get even the slightest whiff of sympathy for Naziism I'm going to delete comments. Some people at least say that they are big fans of free speech, sometimes to such an extent that they think the comment threads in my blog posts should permit anyone to say anything they want. I'm not one of them: I'm notoriously, unapologetically authoritarian and intolerant when it comes to subordinate goods like free speech. Be warned.
While I agree that liberalism is not in itself well equipped to deal with truly existential adversity, I'm of the opinion that when liberalism faces a serious threat to its existence it tends to spawn things like Naziism and Bolshevism. Since those things are viciously evil and despicable, I tend to be less sanguine about our prospects when liberalism faces serious hardship.Posted by Zippy | March 9, 2009 12:54 AM
As a parlamentary note, if I start to get even the slightest whiff of sympathy for Naziism I'm going to delete comments. Well, you have to admit, they made the trains run on time...
Just kidding.
Kevin, you say that Liberalism defeated Nazism, Communism, fascism and socialism (yes, some vestiges of the latter 2 co-exist within the Liberal system)and its economics has showered millions with material riches once reserved only for the aristocracies of long-dead ancien regimes.
I disagree: it was not the liberal conception of reality that produced the wealth of the western world - it was the inherent strength of the pre-liberal order that continued to pour forth its fruits. Also, although "liberal" democracies defeated Nazism and Communism, it was not in virtue of these democracies' total embrace of liberal fantasy that powered the victory - at least as much of the strength came from the people, communities, and patriotism of those who abhor liberal nonsense.
Posted by Tony | March 13, 2009 10:23 PM