Explaining Political Morality

I originally posted this on my other blog, My Journey. A friend asked me to put it up here on Virtual Mirage. One reason for the re-blog is the O'Reilly appearance on The View, a leftist love-fest on MSNBC in the morning. So bear with the rant on The View before I settle down to discuss political morality and utopian socialism.

Liberals and progressives anchor their views of political morality in the following three key areas: (1) self-esteem (increasing your self-worth without having to achieve anything; (2) hope (achieving your goals without any real effort) and (3) victimhood (it's not your fault that you haven't achieved anything or made any effort). Nowhere is are the three vicious lies promoted by the liberal media so perniciously spread more than they are on The View. 

Our cultural focus on enhancing "self-esteem" has resulted in the near-worship of emotions and feelings at the expense of reason and thought; on emphasizing "root causes" and victimhood, instead of demanding that behavior be civilized and that individuals exert self-discipline and self-control--no matter what they are "feeling". The Hollywood hens on The View would have you believe that there is nobility in being a victim. Therefore:

1. You are not responsible for what happened to you
2. You are always morally right
3. You are not accountable to anyone for anything
4. You are forever entitled to sympathy
5. You are always justified in feeling moral indignation for being wronged
6. You never have to be responsible again for anything

The ladies who live in The View exalt themselves in their liberally sanctioned exaltation and refer to the rest of us as people who "live in fly-over country who cling to their guns and religion" and smugly chuckle because we simply can't think as clearly as they do. If we vote liberals from office in November 2, stand by for their retreat to victimhood (see above), because the racist, sexist, Islamaphobic, bigots from fly-over country just didn't get the hope and change.

This ends my present rant on The View.

On, to Political Morality.

A friend of mine who spends a great deal of his time in old China has commented to me that the Chinese people seem to have a gap in their social experience. I explained that something happens when the mind is chained in a multi-generational sense. Children propagandized by dogmatic tyrants have had not only their capacity to think for themselves abrogated; they have had their capacity to make moral choices taken from them. Given fifty or sixty years, it creates a generation of people who need to re-learn morality and the quality of mercy.

The very foundation of capitalism is human freedom in its most classical, liberal tradition. And that frightens American progressives to their very core. Try to explain it and they will deny it with vitriol. Capitalism's incredible production of wealth is the economic side-effect that occurs when political freedom is present. It has been argued, and I agree, that both economic and political freedom are absolute prerequisites for moral behavior.

The moral case for capitalism is not taught in our schools, nor is it argued much in our culture. In fact it has been more or less universally accepted by the intellectual elites that systems such as communism and socialism are "morally superior" to capitalism, hence more "socially just", even though in practice such systems have led to the death and enslavement of millions, and to those unlucky enough not to die from them, they have led to the most horrible shrinking and wasting of the human soul.

Neither socialism nor communism nor any kind of religious fanaticism is compatible with morality at all. If all of one's actions are coerced by the state or religion, or both; if human activity is indoctrinated, legislated, regulated and ordained down to the last minute detail--particularly to the degree we see in other countries of the world --then how can it possibly be argued that one's actions are moral? 

Human behavior under such systems is not voluntarily chosen, but actively coerced. Morality has to be a matter of choice, not mandate. One cannot hold a person responsible for actions that are coerced or forced from him. Morality can only exist when freedom of action exists; and thus moral actions in any field of human endeavor require freedom.

Conduct may only be thought of as moral or immoral when it is freely chosen by the individual. It is only then that the moral significance of the action can be assessed. It is only when we are free to act that we can exercise moral judgement.

Which brings us to a capitalist political/economic system. Only in a free economic system within a free political system is it even possible to be moral, since benevolence toward others, compassion, charity, and generosity cannot exist without freedom. Benevolence, generosity, charity, and compassion that are mandated by the state, or by a religion (on pain of death or other consequence); or by any regulations on behavior; or by force--are meaningless insofar as individual morality is concerned.

The American left's utopian agenda has forgotten that human ambition and the drive to freedom is not as easily crushed or eradicated--as the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century discovered; and as the ones of the 21st will soon realize. 

The human spirit--a spirit which strives always to throw off the shackles hold it down; which constantly veers toward freedom and away from slavery--cannot ever be completely extinguished and will always rise from the ashes of the left's next failed utopian experiment.