Brain dead liberals

Oscar Miller

Skimmer - you are spot on. The solipsism of the Left has become quite remarkable.

Nicholas

The Left certainly, but unfortunately tagging Liberal to Left ignores the facts that:

a) Genuine liberalism is at the root of conservative thinking; and

b) A vast swathe of the Left are far from liberal in their outlook

I think that may be because Liberalism has actually come to mean "Do Good-ism" where it seeks to control more for the supposedly greater good. True liberalism may be more about letting people get on with their lives and do want they want, small government, small laws. Something we don't see much of these days. Pity, because it personifies "Britishness" rather than "Europeness".

But I'm not sure the Left, Right, Centre tags even fit anymore since the invention of New Labour by Tony Blair and the Dark Lord of the Treasury. What exactly is it? A sort of "Leftish, lets pretend to be Centre, but keep quite about liberalism and have a sinister undertow of extreme right/left statism" party/government. It has destroyed not just this country but the normal precepts of political thinking too.

One only has to watch the intellectual twist and turn of Diane Abbot on This Week to understand how this invention confuses even its own MPs. And dire old lefty luvvies like Richard Wilson and Tony Robertson must be paddling like mad below the surface as they float seemingly serenely along on the New Labour current taking them towards the weir.

CS

The Left is, of course, fantastically illiberal towards anyone who dares to think differently. There was a cartoon years ago in some newspaper of a small man cowering in the middle of a circle of giant, screaming faces which was captioned "The man who was accused of intolerance". I think that the reason why the Left has got away for so long with portraying itself as liberal and the Right as illiberal is rooted in the unfortunate tendency of certain elements of the Right to support a laissez faire approach when it comes to business, the economy, education, etc but to turn all controlling and interfering when it comes to sexual morality. Whereas the Left of course take the exact opposite positions. If the Right would only extend to the bedroom the attitude of "we'll leave you alone as long as you're not hurting anyone" which it extends to business, then the Left's claim to liberalism might be exposed as a sham more often.

Trumpeter Lanfried

It's tribal. If you are on the left you are expected to buy into a schedule of assumptions and attitudes, few of which will bear intellectual analysis. It doesn't matter. The great thing is, that the assumptions and attitudes are shared. They give you a warm feeling inside and avoid the labour of thought.

Max Kaye

Surely the phrase 'brain-dead liberal' is a tautology?

Nick Kaplan

Like Nicholas I have never understood how the left have claimed the title of Liberal. The original Liberals, John Locke, Adam Smith, the founding fathers, and to a lesser extent David Hume, were at a far remove from those who claim the title today. The true liberal thinkers of our modern times, the Neo-Liberals; Friedman, Hayek, Nozick, understood the importance of the idea “the freer the market the freer the people.” Unfortunately, liberalism, as it would be understood by the general population today, means big government, economic intervention, multiculturalism, environmentalism, regulation and creeping collectivism, the antithesis of that which the true liberals advocated. Small government and non-intervention are the true friends of freedom but the very essence of this simple principle was corrupted by T.H.Green and the “Modern Liberal” left. What Green and his cronies understood was the appeal of the idea of freedom; they took this term and distorted it to promote their left wing agenda. These closet socialist defined freedom, not in terms of being left to achieve what it was one wanted to achieve (the original negative understanding of freedom), but instead, in terms of an ability to do what it was one wanted to do. Thus not being able to afford a car (or any other non-essential item) no longer meant one needed to work harder or save more, it meant one’s liberty was constrained, freedom was no longer about freedom from intervention, but a right to all that one desired. Thus Capitalism or at least the Capitalist was no longer the friend of liberty in its new sense, it was the enemy, to be free, what we needed was redistribution, to give people the ability to do what it was they wanted. As Isaiah Berlin described, this corruption of the term “Liberty” was used by some of the most deplorable regimes in the world, who claimed to know better than the individuals concerned, what it was that they wanted or desired. The use of words like Freedom are highly emotive in politics and thus we have a duty to define them properly, what Hayek and the Neo-Liberals attempted to do was put the freedom back into Liberalism (in its philosophical sense), what is left for us true Liberals/ conservatives/ right-wingers to do is make the public understand that their freedom involves smaller government, less intervention, lower taxes and free markets, then perhaps the leftists will kindly vacate our ideology!

Fergus Pickering

I am on the right and I am not bothered by sexual mores. I don't even care that girls and boys are doing at fourteen what we didn't do until we were twenty-two. Of course if babies result I don't see why I should pay for them. Perhaps the answer (partly) 9s toencourage homosexuality.

Tanuki

Who *are* these people? I've never heard of them before. I can only assume that they live in some odd lacuna of supposedly 'creative' existentialism free from the need to earn a salary by virtue of any true kind of skill. As such I'm happy to give their opinions the value they deserve. Zero.

Robert Heming

Nicholas is right. Liberal and liberalism are important political concepts that have everything to do with the freedom of the individual and of expression etc. and nothing to do with the blinkered thinking of Socialist doctrine. The old Liberal Party used to defend those liberal values but it seems the new Liberal Party is a weird shape-changing shadow of the Labour Party. Mamet's "conversion" probably reflects what is happening to many of us as we mature and realise the ultimate emptiness of socialist ideas. Perhaps Ayn Rand was right and the difference between totalitarianism and welfare-state solcialism is just a matter of time.

Perry

Brave man . . . and, I guess, plenty of grist for pollytwaddle.

Ian C

I still cannot fathom how the left acquired the 'liberal' label in the first place. It is such an illogical contradiction it makes no sense at all and accounts for much confusion in political thinking. Being of the left, is by definition illiberal, because the left has its own idealistic agenda that does not/cannot truck dissent - so its very nature is illiberal. The past ten years have been witness to this, and we should not be surprised at this outcome after electing a Labour government, whatever prefix you give it. We should cease using the word in this context and stop being so polite and call the left what it is - socialist.

George Steiner

I am not a linguist, but I suspect that the left's appropriation of the word "liberal" has to do with the word "liberate". The left has claimed for almost a century to be liberated from the morals, customs and ideas of the past. Thus unshackled, they are the liberals.

Ian C

George, if your interpretation is near to definitive, it underlines the contradiction inherent. Removal of morals, and customs, as we have learnt over the past 40 odd years, is precisely what has resulted in the loss of cultural and social identity. The claimed 'liberal' values have thus broken the structures of society and left voids in their place. The rest, as they say, is [contemporary] history....

Oscar Miller

Excellent thread - the winter weather seems at least to have produced some green shoots from the grey matter.

Oscar Miller

Having finally got around to reading David Mamet's beautifully written article I am surprised Mamet ever thought he was a 'a Brain-Dead Liberal'. Judging by his body of work I'd say he has only belatedly discovered what he always was. Looks like his dramatic intelligence was way ahead of his conscious beliefs.

Ian C

It is interesting to read these posts - as Oscar says excellent thread through them all. On this occasion the Spectator's hiccupping software holding up postings has allowed us all to express similar thoughts/reactions without being held back by seeing that someone else has said something similar. Good progress in upping the quality of the debate/blog.