[MD] Political Wars

[Ham Priday]

Krimel, Arlo, Marsha, WB-2, Platt, and All --

At the time the United States came into existence as an independent nation, 
liberalism literally meant Freedom: freedom for individuals to pursue their 
own goals with the least possible government regulation and interference. 
This was the concept of "laissez-faire" economics.  It was also the ideology 
of our Founding Fathers who established America as a Constitutional 
Republic, essentially limiting the powers of government to securing "the 
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

By amendment, judicial edict, and the gradual "democratization" of America 
over the course of two hundred years, liberalism has taken on a new meaning.

As Thomas Brewton wrote in 2004:

"Today liberalism means that the national state must regulate economic 
activity and individual behavior in ways that will promote equal 
distribution of all of society's goods and services.  This brand of 
liberalism is a collectivist concept.  Like a pot-luck dinner, whatever 
individuals produce is really the common property of society.  Liberal 
regulators therefore will be the ones to decide how much of what you produce 
you will be permitted to keep and how much you must share with other people 
whom you don't know and with whom you have no ties of family or friendship.

"This is what requires liberalism to think in terms of collective classes of 
people: by race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, and economic status. 
Liberalism is thus in the contradictory position of claiming that the 
individual has primacy, but always subordinating individuality in the 
economic realm to what intellectuals decree to be the collective 
d."    -- [T. E. Brewton: "How Socialists Stole Liberalism"]

No one acquainted with American history can deny this idealistic shift in 
our society, or fail to observe that the new administration has taken 
political advantage of it.  This is what Platt disparages, and I fully 
support him.  One may argue for sharing the wealth and trading 
discriminative judgment for political correctness as "fairer", "less 
offensive" or "more egalitarian" for the society as a whole, but the 
indisputable fact is that it runs counter to the founding principle of 
individual freedom by which this nation rose to greatness.

--Ham