The Big Picture

The father of the intellectual movement we modern folk call “liberalism” has been forgotten by most Western scholars. He was an 18th century French priest named Charles Irenee Castel, also known as, “Saint-Pierre.” In an era when clerics filled the highest posts in the French government, Saint-Pierre rose to become an important French diplomat. Saint-Pierre was instrumental in negotiating the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which created an international peacekeeping alliance, in order to prevent war. It was Europe’s first baby step towards global government.

Saint-Pierre published several related essays between 1712 and 1737. In these essays, he called for five basic changes in society. Surprisingly, all five of his goals are perfectly compatible with contemporary liberalism. In fact, the five goals of Saint-Pierre still comprise the central elements of modern liberalism:

1) An international government to replace sovereign nations. This global government would prevent war.

2) An educated elite, to rule over the population with wisdom and virtue. This was a repeat of Plato’s call for an oligarchy of “philosopher kings.” Later, Karl Marx changed the name to “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

3) All schooling to be done by secular teachers, without any influence from Christianity. Saint-Pierre was almost certainly an atheist.

4) High taxes, including a progressive income tax, and a high inheritance tax.

5) A vast social welfare system, to be run by the government. This would be paid for by high taxes.

Saint-Pierre’s wish list is strikingly similar to Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848. The only important part missing was Marx’s call to abolish private property. Yet even this was really not a significant departure from the socialist goals of Saint-Pierre. The massive redistribution of wealth envisioned by Saint-Pierre was intended to accomplish the same thing. Marx simply voiced this same idea more dramatically. So anyone who is familiar with Saint-Pierre’s work will recognize how his ideas clearly influenced Karl Marx.

Excerpt 2

Yet conservatives would be wrong to assume that their larger donations to charity somehow prove they are more compassionate than Modern Liberals. After all, the Modern Liberal support for social welfare spending cannot be ignored. Surely their support for socialism indicates that Modern Liberals feel compassion for poor people. In response, some conservatives argue that, “liberals are being generous with other people’s money.” However, these conservatives are forgetting that Modern Liberals pay taxes too. In fact, because Democrats on average earn 6% more than Republicans, Democrats probably pay more in taxes than Republicans. Therefore, Democrats (Modern Liberals) are certainly not, “being generous with other people’s money.”

Conservatives generally support voluntary giving instead of the forced transfer of wealth. In contrast, Modern Liberals tend to support the forced transfer of wealth over voluntary giving. Both sides want to help the poor. They simply disagree on which method is more effective and fair. So the difference between the two camps is an intellectual difference; not a moral difference. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Modern Liberals believe that government action is the best way to reduce poverty. As a result, Modern Liberals support social welfare programs. In contrast, conservatives believe that private charity the best way to reduce poverty. As a result, conservatives give more to private charity than Modern Liberals do. In the end, neither side can really claim to be more compassionate than the other. They simply have different ways of being compassionate.

Excerpt 3

The only other significant difference was that under both Nazism and fascism, an individual could still own land and factories. However, under communism, these types of properties (“the means of production”) were owned by the state. Therefore, the communists more closely followed the true socialist model of property ownership. Yet this one difference is not enough to shift Nazism all the way over from the extreme left of the political spectrum to the extreme right. When comparing Nazism to communism, the most important thing to consider is not how the two systems treated property. The most important thing to consider is how the two systems treated people.

Remember that all three systems sought government control over the economy, in order to redistribute the wealth. So while the communists controlled the economy through government ownership, the Nazis and fascists controlled the economy through government regulation. Either way, the end result was basically the same for the common man. The government’s power grew without limits, and individual freedom was brutally suppressed.

Yet this one small distinction is still useful for us in the 21st century. Barack Obama’s take over of the health care industry did not create government ownership of the health care industry. Therefore, conservative pundits were incorrect when they called it a “socialist” policy. Instead, Obama imposed government regulation of the health care industry. So it was really an example of fascism, not socialism.

Technically speaking, Modern Liberalism is not quite socialism, because most Modern Liberals still accept the right to own private property. At the same time, Modern Liberalism is not quite fascism, because most Modern Liberals still prefer free elections over outright dictatorship. Modern Liberalism is really a hybrid movement. It combines the main element of socialism (redistributing the wealth) with the main element of fascism (government control over the individual). In effect, Modern Liberalism combines the socialism of Marx with the authoritarianism of Rousseau.