Maggie's Farm

The problems with the liberal approach to problems do not lie in the goals they profess to seek, but their insistence on achieving them in very specific ways, their adamant denial that any other method will work, and their invariable habit of claiming that anyone who questions their proposed methods are four-square against the goal.

To a large degree, the goals they profess are window-dressing, and this is most obvious when they endorse methods that have failed at every attempt.

For instance: Their preferred method of ensuring that the poor have the good things in life is some form of government largess. The fact that our poor are as poor as ever, in spite of fourteen-digit spending, does not deter them, and anyone who says that there is a better way to feed the poor is accused without evidence, of wanting the poor to starve.

Or: Their preferred method of bringing peace to the world is for the unilateral disarmament of anyone who can be pressured to do so. We now know that the Soviet Union planned to attack the West in the event that the peace activists' goals were achieved, but this revelation has fallen on deaf ears, and anyone who objects to defense spending cuts is still denounced as someone who wants to wage indiscriminate warfare.

The truth about hard liberals appears to be that the means they espouse are, in fact, their goals. They want big government not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Socialism has killed more people than all of the world's other ideologies put together, but that does not deter them. They believe society should be run by a centralized all-powerful government, even if it kills us.