Editorial - Come on rise up!

"Just because something is "liberal" doesn't make it automatically wrong."

This statement was made to me during the course of a lively, but futile, conversation involving the proper role of the judicial branch of government. My reply no doubt caused my opponent to shake his head in disbelief that anyone could be so intolerant:

"Yes, actually, it does."

Liberalism, to be blunt, is always wrong. It is always wrong because its methods and goals are in direct conflict with what I call the American character, and with the principles upon which the United States was founded. The underlying premise of every liberal argument is a lie, and when a position is based on a lie, it is impossible to find common ground from which to hold a debate, as I was foolishly attempting to do in the example above.

Modern liberalism is a threat to liberty, and is therefore to be despised. The unopposed individualism, nihilism and radical egalitarianism that are the fruits of liberal social policy can only be forced on our society by co-opted institutions that overcome popular will and activist courts that subvert democratic process.

Robert Bork, whose name became a verb meaning "to destroy with liberal lies and viciousness," wrote; "Modern liberalism is fundamentally at odds with democratic government because it demands results that ordinary people would not freely choose. Liberals must govern, therefore, through institutions that are largely insulated from popular will. The most important institutions for liberals' purposes are the judiciary and the bureaucracies. The judiciary and the bureaucracies are staffed with intellectuals and thus tend to share the views and accept the agendas of modern liberalism."

An ideology that seeks equality of outcome and condition requires extensive government regulation of individuals because that type of radical egalitarianism is unnatural to humans. Because equality of condition is not something that would come about naturally, it must be forced on people by government. The increasing need for uniform rules to force egalitarianism upon the populace leads to ever-increasing bureaucracies to administer those rules. Bork notes that "as government spreads, bureaucracies get beyond the power of the elected representatives to control them, and Democratic processes become increasingly irrelevant."

Alexis De Tocqueville warned of a "soft" form of despotism that would permeate society and small, complicated rules that would soften and guide the will of man to acceptance of a "servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind." Tocqueville foresaw that the effect of such servitude on the people would be disasterous.

This, and much more, is what modern liberalism has brought us to.

We find ourselves, despite ideological opposition from the majority, those in the "red" states, succumbing to myriad complicated rules issuing from the elite intellectual classes, far left of center and moving the country in that direction from their positions of cultural influence - the media, the courts, the educational institutions and the arts. Nihilism has become a constitutional right.

Some optimists believe that liberalism will die a natural death, choking on its own incoherence, a victim of its own lies. Others think that the only way to combat the spread of liberalism is to bring the general public back to the virtues that we believed in and practiced just a few decades ago. In either case, a victory in the culture war will require principled voices to counterbalance liberal lies with plodding logic.

We can't count on politicians to fight our cultural battles. Politics is too fickle an animal, and too many of the Republicans already holding office are of the "moderate" variety. Senator Malcolm Wallop put it well when he said, "If the Democrats were to suggest burning down every building on Capitol Hill, the Republican moderates would say, 'That's too radical. Let's do it one building at a time and stretch it out over three years.' "

The real battle has been in progress for some time now, and there is reason for optimism. Books written from a conservative perspective regularly hit the best-seller lists. Conservative radio programs and cable television news programs are becoming increasingly popular. The explosion of internet news outlets - all of these things have given people hungry for truth an alternative to the traditional institutions of information dissemination with their entrenched liberal elites. All of these are soldiers in the culture war.

The Tocquevillian Magazine is another of the soldiers, and we've rejoined the battle.

Pheonix From the Ashes metaphors are so much overused as to have become a cliche'. So I shall refrain. But this, the first issue in the new incarnation of the Tocquevillian Magazine is indeed a rising up, if not from the ashes then from obscurity at least. There is a purpose here, one that we think is vital to the health and future of our unique American culture.

Robert Bork, in discussing the passive conservatism trying to hold its own against the inexorable tide of liberal thought, wrote, "There is, however, a more aggressive conservatism, or traditionalism, and it is there that our salvation must be found, if it is to be found at all."

Welcome to a more aggressive conservatism. Welcome to traditionalism. Welcome to The Tocquevillian Magazine, and welcome to salvation.