Moral liberalism

I've focused a lot on the differences between right and left liberals. But it appears to me that there is another distinction, one which I will very loosely call, just for the sake of this post, a distinction between political and moral liberals.

I'll take as a starting point liberalism as a political philosophy. Who are the people who typically accept liberalism as a political philosophy and promote it in society? It's generally young, single intellectual men of a libertarian bent. I'll call these the "political" liberals, because they are focused on liberalism in an intellectual way as a political principle.

There are not a lot of political liberals, partly because there are not a lot of politically oriented intellectuals in society, partly because asocial intellectuals are not good at promoting their ideas and partly because it's a dry and highly individualistic philosophy. On the last point, I'm reminded of one of the most famous of liberal intellectuals, J.S. Mill, who had a nervous breakdown and turned to a conservative poet, William Wordsworth, to get back his feeling for life.

If conservatives were up against political liberals, I think we would have a good chance of winning or at least holding our ground. We could appeal to communal feeling and communal identity in a way that political liberals can't, for instance, by celebrating national achievements, or a sense of family and ancestry.

But political liberalism gave birth to another expression of liberalism, one with far wider appeal. I will call this, for the moment, "moral liberalism".

Moral liberalism has its strengths. It appeals to middle-class whites with only a passing interest in politics or intellectual matters. It has an emotional or even quasi-religious appeal for these people. Its strongest devotees seem to be middle-aged, middle-class white women.

The basic message of moral liberalism is that good liberal whites are bringing about justice and equality for oppressed groups by taking on and defeating the privilege and ignorance of bad, right-wing whites.

Moral liberals are very, very good at promoting their world view. Your average high school English or history teacher is likely to be a moral liberal, and they mercilessly pummel their students with this outlook on life.

Unlike political liberalism, moral liberalism is not a dry theory for intellectual loners. Most people do need to have a sense of meaning and worth in their lives, and moral liberalism provides this in an easy way to middle-class whites: it gives them the belief that they are acting in a superior way to less enlightened and lower class whites to bring highly morally charged goods into the world, such as justice and equality. They can do this at no cost to themselves or their job prospects simply by adopting the "correct" set of beliefs.

At the moment we are losing to moral liberalism. But we shouldn't get too defeatist, because moral liberalism also has its weaknesses.

First, moral liberalism only works effectively when its promoters have a monopoly on debate. That's one reason why it is still so strong in schools and universities - because these environments can be controlled to suppress dissident voices. Moral liberals need a monopoly because the "moral charge" depends on people accepting certain dubious propositions, for instance, that the oppressor group (men or whites or straights or whoever) have organised themselves to be privileged at the expense of the oppressed group. In reality, this picture of things only seems reasonable if reality is filtered to make it seem so.

This is the positive aspect of the men's movement. It's true that most members of the men's movement continue to accept political liberalism. But nearly all reject the standard politics of moral liberalism, in which men are held to be an oppressor group victimising women. And there are enough voices now in the men's movement to start to break up the narrative of moral liberalism. It's having a positive effect.

Second, moral liberalism is suicidal for whites. It's based on whites committing themselves to an essentially negative view of traditional white society. A white moral liberal will devote his or her life to attacking white society in favour of other groups.

That has two consequences. First, there will be some whites who will be far sighted enough to realise the danger and question what is happening. This ought to be a major opportunity for traditionalists. But we tend not to benefit as much as we should. I think the reason is this: moral liberals don't explain why they believe what they do. They are not political liberals with an intellectual theory. Instead, it gets presented simply as a moral assertion.

So those people who instinctively feel that something is wrong, and that they are being asked to accept a suicidal world view, are often confused about how to respond. They might conclude that the world has gone mad, or that someone must be pulling the strings behind the scenes. They want to strike back but aren't sure what to aim for.

That's why we need to present to these people the intellectual assumptions of liberalism, on which moral liberalism is ultimately based, and what it would mean to reject liberalism in principle.

A second consequence of moral liberalism being suicidal is that it brings about, over time, a growing dysfunction in society. It becomes more difficult to hold together the traditional goods of living in a Western society. That's significant, because moral liberals, for all their posturing, do generally want to continue to enjoy the traditional, non-liberal goods of Western society.

I notice this with the teachers I work with. They are exceptionally radical when it comes to moral liberalism; they are obsessed with an anti-white politics, subjecting the students to a constant barrage of anti-white and to a lesser degree anti-male messages. But they themselves tend to be conservative in their lifestyle: they live in safe white suburbs, amongst their own kind, in traditional family arrangements. They are in their own lifestyles and personalities highly respectable.

I wonder what will happen when things reach the point that the traditional goods of society are no longer so readily available for our moral liberals. What will happen, for instance, when teachers have no option but to work in dangerous schools in dangerous suburbs? What will happen when their own children miss out on university courses? Or are subjected to street violence?

Another weakness of moral liberalism is that those placed in the negative category, i.e. your average white, do tend to pick up on the insult. It's not unusual for the students I teach to complain to me about the situation; they feel that it's unjust and they tend to become cynical about the politics being foisted on them.

Again, this ought to be a major opportunity for traditionalists, but the problem is that most ordinary whites don't break decisively enough with moral liberalism. For instance, they might pick up on double standards (e.g. students might complain about the liberal teachers "You say that everyone should be treated equally but then you give all these special privileges to group X so you're the ones being racist") but they tend not to go further than this. Also, they tend not to be the type of people who would become politically active - they are the kind of white voters who are deserting the left-wing parties in droves, but they aren't likely to put their hand up to organise a new kind of party or political movement. They could, though, provide a lot of passive support for any movement which is able to get off the ground.

A third problem for moral liberalism is that it is powered by middle-class whites and this is the group that will decline most rapidly in society. What will happen, for instance, when middle-class white teachers are no longer 90% of the staff at the average school, but only 30%? Of course, other ethnic groups might carry on with it all for a while because it suits them to feel like they are oppressed and hard done by. But in my experience, the newer Indian and Chinese teachers don't get off as much on moral liberalism as white teachers do. If they want to chase social distinction and emotional/religious fulfilment they'll probably need to find some other way (I admit I could be wrong here - we'll have to see).

Finally, there's the issue of what we can do to prevent younger middle-class whites from slipping into moral liberalism. Moral liberalism fills a need for some of these whites. Could traditionalism fill this need instead? Could we present ourselves a bit differently, so that middle-class whites felt they were distinguishing themselves and showing important moral qualities by defending their own tradition - rather than by attacking it?

When we have the resources, we should think about returning to an older tradition of writing about the lives of distinguished members of our own nations. We need to present our own ideal of what distinguishes a person socially and morally.