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Last updated: 12/1/08

“If you do not subscribe to the Liberal/Socialist plan for alleviating poverty/improving healthcare/improving education, you do not want to alleviate poverty/improve healthcare/improve education”

Did you ever wonder why it is that the people who promise you full employment, universal healthcare and 100% literacy always run out of money when it comes to pregnancy and mental incapacity?

This is possibly the most successful rhetorical tactic employed by Socialists in their quest for power. It is suggested here that every dogma of Socialism is defined in terms that deliberately contradict experience and common sense¹ because that is the only way to confirm the hold one has over others, dependent on whether they resist or obey². (The explicit accusation contained in this statement is that Socialism is motivated by a lust for power.) Resistance is undermined by ceaselessly portraying it not as it is – as resistance to the errors of Socialism³ – but rather as hostility to a moral cause. In a summary of Friedrich Hayek's analysis in The Road to Serfdom, Gene Callahan explains, for example, that, “Socialism requires that . . . all productive efforts must contribute to a single master plan. . . . Let's say that the nation's coal miners feel the wage assigned to them in the plan is too low . . . the coal workers in a would-be socialist commonwealth are not free to go look for other work. . . . If the plan calls for 10,000 coal miners, then 10,000 there must be – otherwise, the state's production plans become irrelevant. . . . The people of such a . . . nation will be faced with a choice. They can either abandon the march toward socialism, or opt for a strongman who promises to get things done. . . . Under the strongmen, the people at least have a shot at being able to heat their homes, albeit at the cost of the liberty of the coal miners, and, ultimately, all other citizens.”⁴

So successful, however, have Socialists been in traducing their opponents that they have even managed to seduce many of the baptised into believing that the destruction of unborn children is an aberration from the generally “Christian” ethos at the heart of Socialism. These baptised, in turn, are then persuaded to marginalise “conservative”⁵ Catholics as being further from the Truth than the explicitly Godless Marxists. Meanwhile, the popularly elected Mayor of London apparently sees fit to spend an estimated £2 million of taxpayers' money, not on alleviating poverty, but on celebrating the fact that in Cuba, if you do not subscribe to the Socialists' plan for “improving” healthcare and education, you will be imprisoned (28/12/06). What is interesting here is the inability of Socialists to leave Christians free to practise charity in God's name. The tactic described here involves using a person's desire to perform good works as a mechanism for enforcing his acceptance of atheism. This includes withholding the Catholic taxpayer's own money from any charitable scheme he may wish to establish or support that does not have a strictly “secular”, i.e. Godless, outlook. (Although they would vigorously deny this, we suggest that the easiest way to interpret Liberals' modus vivendi is to understand that they do not wish to worship God, they wish to feel like gods.)

An example of the use of this overall tactic appears in The Evening Standard of 14/9/06, in which one commentator shows his inability to resist agitating against conservatives when he quips pretentiously that Tories have “suddenly” shown concern for the plight of the (Venezuelan) poor (“Spare us Citizen Ken's dodgy new comrades”, Comment, p.13). The Guardian provides another example here. When a Catholic reads articles like this latter one, he knows, first of all, that the writer is in for yet another big disappointment. Catholic moral teaching will never change. It is scientifically grounded in the fact of Revelation. It is not something plucked out of the air like the opinions of certain “moral philosophers” one could mention. Individual priests or bishops might rebel, but so did Martin Luther, and he is no authority within the Church today. What a Catholic reads when the drive-by media publish this type of article is an unsubtle attempt to smuggle the disease of lust into the Church so we can all become self-absorbed and anti-social⁶. Everyone knows that basic charity and chastity would prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The condom argument is an attempt to gain implicit approval for the idea that sex is something we just “gotta have”. And what is the motive for creating this Trojan Horse argument? It is transparent: because it is easier for the lustful to hide themselves among a crowd.

This is probably why The Guardian is also desperate to have the preaching of atheism enforced in schools (27/11/06; see also point 1 above). And it is almost certainly why adult journalists feel the need to attack a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl (example is from The Times, 25/6/07). This writer's employment of the “Pluralist” outflanking strategy in the hope of enforcing his Liberal worldview is blatant. Couples who are married traditionally wear rings to indicate to others that they are no longer “in the market”, so to speak. In a like manner, some Protestants have learnt to adapt to the takeover of the public culture by Liberals by using a ring in order to stave off awkward situations, communicating to others in a discreet way that they are not “in the permissive market”. The reality with Liberalism is, of course, that plural views on fornication are not tolerable: sin is “good” and contrary statements must be suppressed.

Addendum: Liberals, “why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye: but the beam that is in thy own eye thou considerest not? . . . [C]ast first the beam out of thy own eye” (Luke, 6:41-42)

Instead of misrepresenting Catholic doctrine as a threat to global health, sanctimonious Liberals, such as vocal Environmentalists, may well benefit from reflecting on whether their dogmas have actually had precisely the genocidal consequences they attempt to lay at the door of the Church (8/5/06).

This brings us to another classic Liberal ploy. In its tireless effort to legalise and promote crimes that are mostly sins of commission, Liberalism attempts to wrest moral superiority by accusing its opponents of “crimes” of omission, i.e. of “causing” others' suffering through a lack of charity. The number of these potential omissions is, of course, infinitely greater than the resources available to charitably address them all, otherwise there really would be a Santa Claus and he would be each and every one of us. Charity, like trade, must be managed in accordance with what is practically achievable⁷. Nevertheless, this inability to play Santa Claus serves an additional purpose for Liberalism in that anyone who falls for this ploy can only salve his or her conscience by seeking “absolution” from Liberals themselves. One of the conditions of absolution is, of course, to end all calls for Liberals to cease their sins of commission. The classic example of this ploy is the retort: “Why can't I kill my unborn child [commission] – are you going to look after it [omission]?”.

Although it is beyond the scope of this Web site to investigate any individual political issue, it is within scope to point out the potential of political statements, such as this U.N. report on Sudan, to support the Liberal agenda (23/6/07). Whereas a Christian resists the temptation to do wrong out of love of God and neighbour, Liberalism is indistinguishable from criminality in its refusal to practise self-restraint. Indeed, this Web site argues that Liberalism is nothing more than the product of a criminal mind⁸. The danger of this U.N. report exists in the possibility that it can be interpreted as “absolving” mass murderers of responsibility for their crimes of commission, and blaming the deaths on Liberalism's opponents in the West (i.e. its still traditionally Christian cultures) through their alleged “sins of omission” (with regard to energy consumption or “being bourgeois” or whatever). Another element in this process is Liberalism's practice of handing out suggested “pleas in mitigation” in much the same way as the Church was once accused of handing out indulgences. This usually involves asking leading questions such as, “You did it because you were poor, didn't you?”. It is not claimed here that this is in fact a correct reading of the U.N.'s mind on this subject, but lest such a reading be considered, it must be pointed out that the asserted aetiology of “causing” slaughter overseas by running up unnecessary fuel bills at home is such an astoundingly complex proposition when compared with the straightforward responsibility to desist from delivering an actual lethal blow to one's neighbour that it does not bear thinking about⁹.

One should also be aware, in this context, of what this Web site calls “à la carte Liberalism”. This term, which is related to the concept of the unprincipled Liberal exception, is an attempt to describe the phenomenon whereby a person employs the criminal rhetoric of Liberalism to achieve a specific personal objective while verbally supporting other, recognisably charitable causes. Just as a criminal does not practise crime all the time but merely reserves to him or herself the right to do so when “required”, so does the Liberal impose unexplained limits on his own rhetoric of self-indulgence in areas where his conscience may be troubled or he is otherwise disinclined to get involved.

It seems that the Socialist “Democrats” of the European Union have discovered the concept of “state-sanctioned murder” (30/12/06). As is the wont of the ideology of Socialism – the political wing of violent crime – the right label is applied to the wrong offence. The British National Party is one with which this Web site is unfamiliar, other than through newspaper reports that are always unfavourable. These reports regularly include such unrestrained epithets as “repellent” and “dangerous” (see for example this Mail on Sunday article). If this standard of journalistic honesty is to remain consistent, then the Labour Party, which instituted the slaughter of over 6 million unborn children and counting, should always be described as “murderous”, as should any party that has failed to outlaw the killing – which, of course, includes the Conservatives.

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1Possibly the most frequent debating instrument used by Socialists in this pride-based rebelliousness/imperiousness is the fallacy of the misapplication of a principle. For example, when the issue is the morality of euthanatic homicide, the Socialist states that freedom of choice is the overriding argument. Nothing trumps that. (Unless, that is, one makes the wrong choice.) When it comes to achieving peace among nations, Western Socialists often tell their fellow countrymen that the overriding argument is, “Turn the other cheek” (to lethal force). Nothing trumps that. In response to this one might ask, firstly, what happened in this case to freedom of choice? Wasn't that supposed to be the ace card? Secondly, since freedom of choice necessarily implies acceptance of the existence of free-will, how does turning the other cheek work as a recipe for world peace? While it may inform the conscience of the aggressor, it no more stops him from choosing to continue with his attack than, once upon a time, trial by combat stopped the guilty party from winning.

On the related subject of the jihad, one American Liberal commentator has gone on record as saying that, while there have been terrorist attacks in the past, and there will be more in the future, there is no terrorist threat. This argument seems to employ the philosophical position of nominalism: the view that nothing exists except that which one can point to. Thus a terrorist bombing is real, but an observed pattern or trend of bombings is imaginary. As with most intellectual tools of Liberalism, this one also leads to self-contradiction. If abstract reasoning is false, how does one identify something as a terrorist bombing rather than, say, a rearrangement of matter?

5By unflinchingly adhering to the Catholic Faith many readers may find themselves described as “conservative”, “ultra-conservative” or “right-wing” because they logically oppose such things as abortion. This should not be a cause of concern. The attempt to eliminate the practice of Catholicism, either in one country or in the entire world, by qualifying it as an extreme form of a “broader Catholicism” (an example of the outflanking manoeuvre) has a historic precedent in the Protestant Revolt:

“The term “Roman Catholic” was not used by the Fathers, but first appeared in the 16th century and was used by Anglican . . . theologians . . . to make room for their claim that they were “English Catholics”, while those in union with Rome were “Roman Catholics”. Well aware that the title “Catholic” goes back to the second century, they did not want it used by Catholics in their country. It was an attempt to claim that there could be varying, even contradictory, forms of “Catholic”. Later, other disparaging terms would be invented, such as “Romanist” and “Papist”.” (Sheehan, op. cit., pp.163-4).

Being called a “conservative” Catholic now is no more significant than being called a “Roman” Catholic either then or now. Likewise, just as the latter term was an invention of members of the Anglican community pretending to be Catholics so it seems likely that the former term is the product or consequence of the rhetoric of what has been called the Conciliarist community, i.e. a community that has as its point of origin the Second Vatican (Ecumenical) Council rather than Our Lord. (Unlike the Anglican community, however, the Conciliarist community, as defined, has not separated from the Catholic Church.) The Conciliarist mentality is well exemplified by this reported clerical animosity towards the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass. (See also here.)

7While a civilised nation, therefore, uses the power of the State to (negatively) prohibit crime, an oppressive regime may use it to (positively) coerce “virtue”, as one author has put it (Robert Bork, op. cit.). The utility of coercing “virtue” as a method of government control lies in the very fact that opportunities for “virtuous” action are limitless, and so, therefore, are the demands that a corrupt State can make of its people. (See also footnote 1 on Marxism.) Furthermore, through the suppression of Church by State, the definition of “virtue” comes entirely under the control of the latter, which can only compound the potential for corruption. Examples of coerced virtue from traditional Socialism include having to hand over one's property to the State at gunpoint – euphemistically called, (non-beneficial) “taxation” and “nationalisation”. Contemporary Liberal examples of coerced “virtue” include the desire to force doctors to actively facilitate abortion and starvation to death.

Civilised governments, on the other hand, recognise that God loves us, and that to love someone presupposes that that person exists. Consequently, acts that are objectively detrimental to a specific person's existence and well-being are liable to be outlawed as criminal. As well as murder and assault, this includes adultery – the objective violation of a legally recognised contract to marry and (if possible) have a family – and theft, since property is necessary to a man's existence and well-being. Coercive Socialists seek to justify State theft on the pretext that they “intend” to transfer other people's “surplus” property to those “in need”. Whereas, however, theft is an objectively measurable fact, the identification of surpluses and need are not – unless the need is an urgent medical one. (The “irony” here is that the Liberal response to an objectively starving patient is to let him or her die.) This is why a civilised culture leaves matters such as charity to the conscience of the individual. Mutual exhortation to, and organisation of, charity through a shared religion is one thing, but arrogant, forceful intervention in the lives of others is quite another.

Civilised countries prohibit certain forms of speech, classed as “performative utterances”. Again, the consequences of such acts are objectively measurable. Defamation affects a specific person's reputation (a question of objective public perception rather than subjective feelings), perjury affects the course of justice, and fraud involves dishonest procurement of another person's property. Unless a performative consequence can be identified, there can be no moral justification for criminalising a person's speech. Liberals, however, believe in coercing others into talking “nice” (i.e. with State approval) because it gives them power over people. Once again, Liberalism can only justify its oppressiveness based on wild chains of “causation”. Telling someone to “go back to their own country” (issues of assault with soft fruit aside) – classed by Liberals as criminal “hate speech” – is not a performative utterance worthy of the law's attention. It is no more objectively detrimental to a person's well-being than a witch's curse.

Liberals do periodically utter the slogan “free speech”, but again this has to be understood in terms of the Liberal's criminal ambition. Liberalism being the desire to be free to commit crime, Liberal “free speech” means the freedom to engage in, and more importantly to broadcast, specifically criminal speech such as blasphemy and treason. It is critically important to realise here that hatred is not a crime. While a forensic scientist may attribute a victim's injuries to missiles such as sticks and stones, no-one has yet been found to have been wounded by words. In fact, unlike blasphemy and treason, which are objectively justiciable attacks on the fundamental sources of authority within a civilisation, hatred can be a good thing. Hatred of crime is necessary for the defence of civilisation. Liberalism, however, being an ideological expression of the desire to commit crime, wishes to silence any expression of opposition to the latter. It does so by the personal identification of Liberals with crime: “If you hate crime, you hate me, a Liberal, because crime is my raison d'être”.

At the end of the day, Liberal governments do not care if their policies are morally wrong. As long as they give them legislative form in accordance with constitutional norms, they argue that they have satisfied the objective standard of the “rule of law”. (Yet another Liberal misapplication of principle.) What matters, however, is not that evil has been given statutory form. What matters is the morality of the legal system – i.e. the jurisprudence. It is, for example, a violation of the legal system that a woman can lawfully have her child taken from her at birth by the State – on the basis that she is believed to present a threat to the child's life – while at the same time she can lawfully take the life of that child at any stage before birth (27/8/07).

Home	(Please note: CatholicSchool.org.uk is not responsible for the content of sites linked to from this or any other of its pages.)
	Last updated: 12/1/08

	“If you do not subscribe to the Liberal/Socialist plan for alleviating poverty/improving healthcare/improving education, you do not want to alleviate poverty/improve healthcare/improve education”
	or
	Did you ever wonder why it is that the people who promise you full employment, universal healthcare and 100% literacy always run out of money when it comes to pregnancy and mental incapacity?
	This is possibly the most successful rhetorical tactic employed by Socialists in their quest for power. It is suggested here that every dogma of Socialism is defined in terms that deliberately contradict experience and common sense¹ because that is the only way to confirm the hold one has over others, dependent on whether they resist or obey². (The explicit accusation contained in this statement is that Socialism is motivated by a lust for power.) Resistance is undermined by ceaselessly portraying it not as it is – as resistance to the errors of Socialism³ – but rather as hostility to a moral cause. In a summary of Friedrich Hayek's analysis in The Road to Serfdom, Gene Callahan explains, for example, that, “Socialism requires that . . . all productive efforts must contribute to a single master plan. . . . Let's say that the nation's coal miners feel the wage assigned to them in the plan is too low . . . the coal workers in a would-be socialist commonwealth are not free to go look for other work. . . . If the plan calls for 10,000 coal miners, then 10,000 there must be – otherwise, the state's production plans become irrelevant. . . . The people of such a . . . nation will be faced with a choice. They can either abandon the march toward socialism, or opt for a strongman who promises to get things done. . . . Under the strongmen, the people at least have a shot at being able to heat their homes, albeit at the cost of the liberty of the coal miners, and, ultimately, all other citizens.”⁴
	So successful, however, have Socialists been in traducing their opponents that they have even managed to seduce many of the baptised into believing that the destruction of unborn children is an aberration from the generally “Christian” ethos at the heart of Socialism. These baptised, in turn, are then persuaded to marginalise “conservative”⁵ Catholics as being further from the Truth than the explicitly Godless Marxists. Meanwhile, the popularly elected Mayor of London apparently sees fit to spend an estimated £2 million of taxpayers' money, not on alleviating poverty, but on celebrating the fact that in Cuba, if you do not subscribe to the Socialists' plan for “improving” healthcare and education, you will be imprisoned (28/12/06). What is interesting here is the inability of Socialists to leave Christians free to practise charity in God's name. The tactic described here involves using a person's desire to perform good works as a mechanism for enforcing his acceptance of atheism. This includes withholding the Catholic taxpayer's own money from any charitable scheme he may wish to establish or support that does not have a strictly “secular”, i.e. Godless, outlook. (Although they would vigorously deny this, we suggest that the easiest way to interpret Liberals' modus vivendi is to understand that they do not wish to worship God, they wish to feel like gods.)
	An example of the use of this overall tactic appears in The Evening Standard of 14/9/06, in which one commentator shows his inability to resist agitating against conservatives when he quips pretentiously that Tories have “suddenly” shown concern for the plight of the (Venezuelan) poor (“Spare us Citizen Ken's dodgy new comrades”, Comment, p.13). The Guardian provides another example here. When a Catholic reads articles like this latter one, he knows, first of all, that the writer is in for yet another big disappointment. Catholic moral teaching will never change. It is scientifically grounded in the fact of Revelation. It is not something plucked out of the air like the opinions of certain “moral philosophers” one could mention. Individual priests or bishops might rebel, but so did Martin Luther, and he is no authority within the Church today. What a Catholic reads when the drive-by media publish this type of article is an unsubtle attempt to smuggle the disease of lust into the Church so we can all become self-absorbed and anti-social⁶. Everyone knows that basic charity and chastity would prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The condom argument is an attempt to gain implicit approval for the idea that sex is something we just “gotta have”. And what is the motive for creating this Trojan Horse argument? It is transparent: because it is easier for the lustful to hide themselves among a crowd.
	This is probably why The Guardian is also desperate to have the preaching of atheism enforced in schools (27/11/06; see also point 1 above). And it is almost certainly why adult journalists feel the need to attack a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl (example is from The Times, 25/6/07). This writer's employment of the “Pluralist” outflanking strategy in the hope of enforcing his Liberal worldview is blatant. Couples who are married traditionally wear rings to indicate to others that they are no longer “in the market”, so to speak. In a like manner, some Protestants have learnt to adapt to the takeover of the public culture by Liberals by using a ring in order to stave off awkward situations, communicating to others in a discreet way that they are not “in the permissive market”. The reality with Liberalism is, of course, that plural views on fornication are not tolerable: sin is “good” and contrary statements must be suppressed.
	Addendum: Liberals, “why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye: but the beam that is in thy own eye thou considerest not? . . . [C]ast first the beam out of thy own eye” (Luke, 6:41-42)
	Instead of misrepresenting Catholic doctrine as a threat to global health, sanctimonious Liberals, such as vocal Environmentalists, may well benefit from reflecting on whether their dogmas have actually had precisely the genocidal consequences they attempt to lay at the door of the Church (8/5/06).
	This brings us to another classic Liberal ploy. In its tireless effort to legalise and promote crimes that are mostly sins of commission, Liberalism attempts to wrest moral superiority by accusing its opponents of “crimes” of omission, i.e. of “causing” others' suffering through a lack of charity. The number of these potential omissions is, of course, infinitely greater than the resources available to charitably address them all, otherwise there really would be a Santa Claus and he would be each and every one of us. Charity, like trade, must be managed in accordance with what is practically achievable⁷. Nevertheless, this inability to play Santa Claus serves an additional purpose for Liberalism in that anyone who falls for this ploy can only salve his or her conscience by seeking “absolution” from Liberals themselves. One of the conditions of absolution is, of course, to end all calls for Liberals to cease their sins of commission. The classic example of this ploy is the retort: “Why can't I kill my unborn child [commission] – are you going to look after it [omission]?”.
	Although it is beyond the scope of this Web site to investigate any individual political issue, it is within scope to point out the potential of political statements, such as this U.N. report on Sudan, to support the Liberal agenda (23/6/07). Whereas a Christian resists the temptation to do wrong out of love of God and neighbour, Liberalism is indistinguishable from criminality in its refusal to practise self-restraint. Indeed, this Web site argues that Liberalism is nothing more than the product of a criminal mind⁸. The danger of this U.N. report exists in the possibility that it can be interpreted as “absolving” mass murderers of responsibility for their crimes of commission, and blaming the deaths on Liberalism's opponents in the West (i.e. its still traditionally Christian cultures) through their alleged “sins of omission” (with regard to energy consumption or “being bourgeois” or whatever). Another element in this process is Liberalism's practice of handing out suggested “pleas in mitigation” in much the same way as the Church was once accused of handing out indulgences. This usually involves asking leading questions such as, “You did it because you were poor, didn't you?”. It is not claimed here that this is in fact a correct reading of the U.N.'s mind on this subject, but lest such a reading be considered, it must be pointed out that the asserted aetiology of “causing” slaughter overseas by running up unnecessary fuel bills at home is such an astoundingly complex proposition when compared with the straightforward responsibility to desist from delivering an actual lethal blow to one's neighbour that it does not bear thinking about⁹.
	One should also be aware, in this context, of what this Web site calls “à la carte Liberalism”. This term, which is related to the concept of the unprincipled Liberal exception, is an attempt to describe the phenomenon whereby a person employs the criminal rhetoric of Liberalism to achieve a specific personal objective while verbally supporting other, recognisably charitable causes. Just as a criminal does not practise crime all the time but merely reserves to him or herself the right to do so when “required”, so does the Liberal impose unexplained limits on his own rhetoric of self-indulgence in areas where his conscience may be troubled or he is otherwise disinclined to get involved.
	It seems that the Socialist “Democrats” of the European Union have discovered the concept of “state-sanctioned murder” (30/12/06). As is the wont of the ideology of Socialism – the political wing of violent crime – the right label is applied to the wrong offence. The British National Party is one with which this Web site is unfamiliar, other than through newspaper reports that are always unfavourable. These reports regularly include such unrestrained epithets as “repellent” and “dangerous” (see for example this Mail on Sunday article). If this standard of journalistic honesty is to remain consistent, then the Labour Party, which instituted the slaughter of over 6 million unborn children and counting, should always be described as “murderous”, as should any party that has failed to outlaw the killing – which, of course, includes the Conservatives.
	(Return to category headings)