(3089/898) Liberals all (even the conservatives)

2313) [There] is a common feature of a certain kind of contemporary conservative thought. Abstract philosophical reasoning is used to establish a set of norms for human life, and it is the discovered that, by some wholly unforeseen coincidence, these norms correspond almost exactly to the way things were in the United States circa 1958. [...] Thus [Charles] Murray doesn't really propose to get rid of any of the functions the federal government has exercised, or the investments it has made, of the human rights it has established - almost always over the fierce and sometimes violent objections of local communities and private interests - since the Great Depression. He wants food and drug regulatory agencies, air traffic control, interstate highways, social insurance, welfare agencies, freedom of expression, environmental protection, universal access to education, and virtually every other benefit of modern life. He wants them all privitized. Having granted every wish, the genie of big government can now return to the bottle.

Louis Menand
"Born Free" in
New York Review of Books (2/20/1997)
[review of What it Means to Be A Libertarian:
A Personal Interpretation by Charles Murray]

2314) If we look at the actual things we call freedoms [...] - the freedom to speak and to believe what we choose, the freedom to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, the freedom to travel - we find that they have been established only by the exertion of centralized political power against the natural tendency of some groups of human beings to stifle and control other human beings, particularly human beings who look or think differently from themselves. Libertarianism of [Charles] Murray's variety is a philosophy for winners, for the same reason that "born Free" is a song about lions, not about the animals they prey upon. Not many people who feel vulnerable or repressed will find much use for it. What those people want is a public body vigilant in protecting their interests, including their interest in personal freedom, against the tendency of majorities to dominate and exploit them, and they will be willing to abide by the decisions of such a body so long as they are democratically reached. Groups make laws, formally or informally, by consent or by fiat. Democracy is a way of trying to do it by consent. There is a law of the jungle, but it's not particularly big on "liberty," and the animals don't get to vote.

Louis Menand
"Born Free" in
New York Review of Books (2/20/1997)
[review of What it Means to Be A Libertarian:
A Personal Interpretation by Charles Murray]

2315) There is a sense in which all Americans are liberals, not excluding the neocons who use that word as a curse, but this is not the usual journalistic sense of the word. That's to say, Americans believe instinctively in a pluralistic, individualistic, open society. [...] American culture has always stressed individual fulfillment over duty owed to the state; the nation's very founding creed was "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Geoffrey Wheatcroft
"The Big Kibbutz" in
New York Times Books Review (3/2/1997)
[review of Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience
in Modern Israel by Yaron Ezrahi]