Liberty and the Left

One of the things that isn't realized by many Americans is how much the left despise America's founding principles, in particular the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on a debate at Shimer College about its future direction helps illustrate this.

Shimer is a very small liberal arts school focused on a Great Books curriculum. It lost students and was short on money, so it hired a new President, Tom Lindsay, to help revive the school

As part of his efforts, Lindsay changed the mission statement, noting that the word "liberal" in "liberal education" has the same root word as "liberty", that the "highest liberty consists in freedom of the mind", and that studying the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers were an important part of a liberal education.

You might think such a statement was uncontroversial. But then you may not be familiar with leftist ideology and the modern American college. As noted in my column "Is Healthcare a Right?", the left despises the principles of individual rights embedded in the Declaration of Independence, so such a mission statement is fighting words to the left.

In response, one professor said: "Code words for the right wing." One student said: "Words that tea-baggers throw around." And the mention of America's founding documents caused concern, described as "chauvinistic" by one student.

The fundamental problem is that freedom, the scorned "liberty" to leftists, is incompatible with equality of result. In the most generous interpretation, the left throws freedom overboard in its pursuit of wealth redistribution to try to achieve equal outcomes. The less generous interpretation is that the left seeks to control individuals, as all collectivists throughout history have tried to do, and the welfare state is the latest manifestation of that desire to control humanity.

This understanding helps explain why the left despises America, because America really does represent ideas and values inimical to the left's beliefs. And it is why the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and liberty are fighting words to a leftist.