The Liberal Men Who Think They're God, part I

How can one be truly wise without the humility to understand you do not know everything?

When I was studying for my history A-Level, back in the ’90's, I was taught that the Fascist worldview led to totalitarianism, and the Communist worldview also led to totalitarianism. The forces of Liberalism fought and defeated both murderous tyrannies, for the good of all. I looked around at my free world, a world where opportunity seemed to stretch out before me, my safety and my rights copper-fastened by a robust and mostly fair, if imperfect, system.  I thought I understood. It all added up.

Nearly thirty years on, though, the evidence seems ever-clearer that Liberalism — our purported saviour — has also brought us to the brink of totalitarianism. 

And when I was in Italy last month, walking among the ruins and Madonna shrines and the eternal beauty both human and natural, it struck me why that is.

Maybe subconsciously or maybe consciously, maybe secretly or openly, every Liberal man thinks he is God. And I mean men specifically, as it has been liberal men who have shaped our reality going back since the dawn of secularism. 

Forgive the somewhat grandiose statement, which will no doubt sound crazy to anyone who has not yet truly felt the gravity of our present moral crisis. “What the hell is she on about now??” I can hear them say. 

But more than political, economic, social or even cultural, our present moment is defined by a collapse of the moral order set in place in the 1960’s, that in itself replaced a far older and more stable one.

If we lack the wisdom to see this, we will attempt to fix the crisis with all the wrong medicine — with political upheaval, economic transformation, cultural and social warfare. None of it will work. That is without a decent moral framework — note I am not saying a religious one — agreed upon by the majority of adults.

If there is one single moral failing that contemporary discourse is suffering from —and obviously there is more than one — the root failure, the source of all our confusion and venality is this: lack of humility. Humility of mind. Humility of purpose. 

We are suffering from a catastrophic curse of certainty. And it turns out, we are certain of all the wrong things.

But when there is no higher power than oneself in possession of knowledge, which seems to me a fundamental tenet of Liberal Man, then there can be no real humility. Am I all for being the captain of my own ship. Self-determination is essential. Pride has an important role in our lives. But it must be accompanied by the sense that a single person does not know everything. There are answers to life’s mysteries that I will never know. And that is a good thing — it actually keeps me sane. It frees me from a burden of pretending.

The lack of humility is exactly what precludes liberals from seeing how their worldview has created its own version of totalitarianism. Because liberalism was the supposed antidote to totalitarianism, most liberals — steeped in the narrative of their moral superiority— are blind to myriad examples of the impending cataclysm. ¹

I must admit to my own bias, as for some reason liberals have always annoyed me. Even though I always categorised myself as one, by default. Most people I knew were liberals. I lived a highly liberal lifestyle in my 20’s, voted only for Democrats when I lived in the US, and watched MSNBC. I read the New Yorker, and Harper’s and listened to NPR. I was acutely aware of the benefits — if that’s the right word — this liberal lifestyle had afforded me. 

Now that it is clear that liberalism has curdled into its opposite, it is clearer to me what bothered me all that time.

It’s that certainty that the world has been mapped and everything has been figured out — if only those thickos and poors would listen! We — liberals — understand everything! All the while, these men live an immensely comfortable, physically easy, and safe existence. How can one be truly wise in such an environment? Where does judiciousness come from, if you simply inherit a life of plenty and prestige and you enjoy that for the duration of your life? 

1. In case you think I’m being Chicken Little, here are a few specific cases that inform my thinking about a lack of humility in the men who rule over us.

— Ukraine/Iraq/Vietnam (we can and should intervene in foreign conflicts! At whatever cost to our own working class!)

— Lockdowns (Trust the men in white lab coats! Believe the Science (Peace Be Upon It)! At whatever cost to the working class! Force medical choices upon people, no matter how many get hurt or lose their livelihood! We know better!)

— Brexit/Trump (Anti democracy is out-of-control! To protect democracy we must overturn these expressions of the democratic will of the people! To protect them!)

— Trans-ing kids (Sure, it’s a bit weird but the men in lab coats say it’s totally fine, and plus we are just flesh suits and all inner doubt can be cured by cutting off body parts of teenagers! We must maintain this facade, at whatever cost to the kids!)

— Pride for kids and porn culture (What’s the big deal?? We are all free to experience pleasure and why not allow the government to show little kids that sex is what sophisticated and accepting people do! If you don’t you are a bigot!)

You could argue that some of these positions are of the left, not of liberals. While that might be true up to a point, the liberal hegemony we all live under has done nothing to stop it, and in fact has completely ceded the moral high ground to the illiberal totalitarians to their left. For all practical purposes, and in very concrete, life-defining ways they are now one and the same. Ask parents who have watched their children destroy their bodies over the trans insanity, or people who were injured after being forced to the the mRNA shot.

All of these are not simply political choices and policy mistakes. They are moral failures, on a catastrophic scale. See stories of detransitioning kids, the Instagram accounts detailing vaccine injuries from the US, UK and Ireland, for example.