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Authoritarian Liberals

Jack Hays

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The lefties' reach still exceeds their grasp, but for how much longer?
Authoritarian Liberals

Appearing on a panel September 23 at the Heritage Foundation, National Review’s Kevin Williamson made the following observation (per the account of MSNBC.com’s Suzy Khimm): “ ‘The left is intellectually dead, and where it’s heading towards is authoritarianism,’ said ...

. . . . Wanting people who disagree with you arrested may not be the “predominant current” of today’s progressives. But the authoritarian impulse is enough of a hallmark of progressivism that it’s not something to be hastily dismissed, either. Especially when this sentiment is still being echoed on websites read by millions and uttered by representatives of American liberalism’s most famous political dynasty.
 
"The left is intellectually dead, and where it’s heading towards is authoritarianism,’ said Williamson, citing a Gawker blog post making the case for arresting climate change deniers.”

:lamo :doh
Yup thats all the proof ya need!
 

'Authoritarian liberals'? Gawd, and quoting the National Review, too. William F Buckley must be spinning in his grave.
'Authoritarian liberal' is an oxymoron and whomever coined the phrase can leave off the oxy. You neo-cons, so neo that you think you get to reinvent the language. Don't work like that, laddybuck- you can conjure up boogie men pieced together from bits of fascists and communists and ultra-conservatives and paint 'liberal' on their sloping foreheads but it won't make them so and it won't make anyone who knows the difference give you a modicum of credibility.
 


No need to conjure up anything so long as we have RFK Jr. From the OP:

". . . Left unmentioned by Chait was that, also on September 22, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the liberal scion best known for being one of the leading lights of the vaccines-cause-autism movement, accused global warming deniers of “treason” and lamented there was no law that could be used to put them in jail. In his discussion of the Gawker column, Williamson was hardly pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The creeping authoritarianism of the left was all too timely and relevant thanks to RFK Jr.’s disturbing outburst. Chait was later forced to update his post acknowledging the RFK Jr. outburst, though he did not back off his charge that Williamson was saying that authoritarian impulses “encapsulate the predominant current in contemporary liberal thought.”. . .
 
The problem is that everybody keeps treating liberal as analogous with Democrat, or vice versa.
 

Virtually no one believes climate change skeptics should be thrown in jail, RFKj is one person and does not represent everyone...
 



all ideologies lead to authoritarianism in the extreme, no one can dispute the "authoritarian" aspect of say, the Nixon administration nor the excesses of the Patriot act, those are pretty authoritarian, draconian in my opinion.

Only true [classical] liberalism a la John Locke remains free as liberalism's ideology is less government. What you are dealing with are Nazi's on one end and Socialists on the other. I mean how authoritarian can it get passed forcing people to pay money to insurance companies for services they will never need?
 

Well, there ya go. Anyone who wants more laws and especially laws against speaking your opinion is no liberal, is he?
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Virtually no one believes climate change skeptics should be thrown in jail, RFKj is one person and does not represent everyone...
Click to expand...

Elsewhere in the OP:

". . . Of course, Williamson never said it was the “predominant current” in liberalism. It is a common enough trope to merit comment, however. Perhaps Chait should read what his own readers are saying under his post. “Climate change kills—their denial and active fight against making reforms is indirectly killing people. While I don’t agree with arresting them, I can see how that would be legally justified—it could be considered non-protected speech, like yelling ‘fire!’ in a crowded -theater,” notes one of the New York magazine commenters. Chait, of course, is in no way accountable for the fan base he draws, but the comment is notable for two reasons. One, it sounds relatively sober even if the underlying sentiment is terrifying, and two, shouting fire in a crowded theater was the exact reference Adam Weinstein invoked in his objectionable Gawker column last March.

Though the context is often forgotten, “shouting fire in a crowded theater” was the rationale Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. used in a 1919 ruling concluding that a defendant’s speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected by the First Amendment and was a violation of the sweeping and unconstitutional Espionage Act. Indeed, thanks to Woodrow Wilson’s Espionage and Sedition Acts, thousands were arrested for thoughtcrimes. Wilson is, of course, the godfather of America’s progressive movement."
 
Grand Mal said:
Well, there ya go. Anyone who wants more laws and especially laws against speaking your opinion is no liberal, is he?
Click to expand...

On the contrary, he's right in step. From Woodrow Wilson right down to campus speech codes.
 
Terrible thread with a terrible premise and terribly thought out with terrible resources.

Did I mention terrible?
 


That's quite a leap from "intellectually dead" to "authoritarian" and in the same sentence no less.


Anything that comes out of Heritage these days is DOA.
 
Jack Hays said:
On the contrary, he's right in step. From Woodrow Wilson right down to campus speech codes.
Click to expand...

Au contraire, he's no liberal, or at least not on that subject.
Liberals are for less government, fewer laws, more personal freedom, conservatives are for stronger government, more laws, more power for police, fewer personal liberties. Always has been that way, Jack, and always will be.
 
Moot said:
That's quite a leap from "intellectually dead" to "authoritarian" and in the same sentence no less.


Anything that comes out of Heritage these days is DOA.
Click to expand...

The OP is pretty short. You might want to look it over.
 

You could make that argument 100 years ago. Discussing Barry Goldwater, it was sometimes said that American politics is really just a debate between liberals drawing their ideas from different eras. Liberals in our time are the advocates of speech codes, trigger warnings and government-rationed political speech.
 
Fearandloathing said:
all ideologies lead to authoritarianism in the extreme, no one can dispute the "authoritarian" aspect of say, the Nixon administration
Click to expand...

The first charge on Nixon's impeachment document was a "thought crime." He thought about having the IRS audit his opponents, but never even requested they do it. His other crimes were having third-rate burglars sneak around at night. While not enviable, these were hardly the actions of an "authoritarian." An authoritarian would come right out and do them. Ask Obama?


Fearandloathing said:
nor the excesses of the Patriot act, those are pretty authoritarian, draconian in my opinion.
Click to expand...

I'll give you that one.


Fearandloathing said:
What you are dealing with are Nazi's on one end and Socialists on the other.
Click to expand...

Nazi's were and are socialists. Fascism (Nazi-ism) is merely government control of the means of production while leaving the CEO's in-place. The difference between Fascism and Socialism is only a matter of who's running the factory, the formerly privileged or the newly privileged? Hitler's party was called the "National Socialist German Workers Party."


Fearandloathing said:
I mean how authoritarian can it get passed forcing people to pay money to insurance companies for services they will never need?
Click to expand...

If that were the end of it, we should be so lucky? Don't forget, the government went to great lengths to adjudicate the "broccoli" issue. The question was, since the collective now pays for the individual's health, can the government strap the individual to a table and force-feed them broccoli (or any other liberal fad drug or treatment)? The answer from the Supreme Court was a resounding - YES. Yes, the government now has complete authoritarian control over your body (not yours in Canada, but yours if you're in the U.S.). Just wait till you see what authoritarianism that ruling leads to?
 
Jack Hays said:
The OP is pretty short. You might want to look it over.
Click to expand...


You're right, the OP is very short.


Anyone with a gun can be an authoritarian....which suggests that the NRA is full of authoritarians...."intellectually dead authoritarians." But I wouldn't go so far as to call them liberals.
 
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No they're not. Those aren't liberals. You need a dictionary...

a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts <liberal education>
b archaic : of or befitting a man of free birth
2
a : marked by generosity : openhanded <a liberal giver>
b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way <a liberal meal>
c : ample, full
3
obsolete : lacking moral restraint : licentious
4
: not literal or strict : loose <a liberal translation>
5
: broad-minded; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms
6
a : of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism

Okay, then, we need a definition of 'liberalism'...

: the quality or state of being liberal
2
a often capitalized : a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity
b : a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard
c : a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties; specifically : such a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (as those involving race, gender, or class)
d capitalized : the principles and policies of a Liberal party
 

Dictionary schmictionary. This is a discussion of politics, not etymology. People who call themselves liberals and are commonly referred to as such hold the views I described. If that violates your sense of the words then your argument is with them, not me.
 

Shorter Jack Hays: "Liberal means what I say it means!"
 

You are on fire, my friend. Great thread. Excellent and well-reasoned points. Can't argue with a single one.

Now that liberals have drawn intellectuals like yourself into the debate, they cry for government to silence you. Your words in this thread are truly mightier than the sword (the sword they seek to silence you with). They better cry for mommy-government to save them, because if you keep this up, liberalism and leftism won't be back for many years. Banished not through the force they would use upon you, but by the crushing truth played out in this marketplace of free ideas. Keep up the good work.
 
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