MachineGhost wrote:
The second part is sheer liberal loonacy. Can't have one or the other, gotta take both! Typical. I think liberals are actually scared shitless of liberty. Am I right, PS?
Yes, basically. The important thing to understand is that liberalism is not an ideology that's actually concerned with liberty in the Libertarian conception of the word. Liberalism is concerned with something else.
To vastly oversimplify and use a metaphor (and somebody give me a high-five if they recognize the reference), Conservatives are "straight" while Liberals are "weird." The Liberal conception of liberty is freedom for the "weird" to express themselves and challenge the "straight" orthodoxy without suffering the normal social consequences of doing so. They want to be able to participate in and benefit from the same society that they criticize and reject. Anything they perceive as strengthening the "straight" elements of society (e.g. big corporations, rich people, etc.) is something they perceive as a threat to themselves and their power, which stems from the rejection of and disdain for those elements. This is why liberals champion single motherhood, gay culture, ethnic outsiders, heavy metal music, etc. All "weird."
In the end, this is Liberalism's major weakness: it largely consists of a coalition of different "weird" factions that don't really have anything in common except for their exclusion from the "straight" mainstream status quo. In addition to the challenge that their interests may frequently be opposed, any one group that becomes too successful and begins to get absorbed into the mainstream then finds itself increasingly being better represented by "straight" Conservatives and coming into conflict with the remaining "weird" Liberal groups. For example, rock & roll music was weird in the 60s, but now it's totally mainstream, so modern Liberals don't particularly listen to much Rock & roll music or champion its culture. The serious ones have moved onto heavy metal.
This is the self-devouring nature of Liberalism, because it actually isn't interested in forging a durable society the way Conservatism is, only pointing out and challenging perceived flaws in an existing one. This is why all the societies that the Liberals attempted to fashion without any Conservatives failed so terribly. They're just no good at it. In this way, Liberals are sort of necessary subordinate symbionts on Conservative society. They serve a useful function of challenging and correcting the worst abuses of Conservative society, and helping it to change when necessary (which Conservatives ordinarily have a real problem with). But they can't become too big or too strong, or else they will wind up simply destroying the society they totally rely on.
When I considered myself "weird," Liberalism seemed attractive to me. As I matured, got a job, bought guns, accumulated money, got married, and started a family, its rebellion against the social structures I was coming to enjoy and make use of seemed less and less attractive.