The Liberal Mind

I finished up “The Liberal Mind” by Kenneth Minogue published in 1963 in England. I started the book with very high hopes, and in general I think it is a solid work, the case is that the reader isn’t as much up to the task as he should be. It is a strong academic work, and if one doesn’t have the background to follow all the references to Locke, Hobbes, Bentham, and many more it can become a bit of a thicket. As I have said in the past, if I had a few years to devote to study I would start out with a work like “Closing of the American Mind”, this book, or others and try to work my way back to the underlying supporting material. That task won’t be undertaken this year.

One great quote early on “…but with the liberal mind, we encounter something even more portentous: namely, a civilization busy cutting it’s links with the past and falling into a sentimental daydream.” That is certainly one way of summing it up. A bit later, “Liberalism is a vague term … it used to signify individual liberty, and now means rather state paternalism. But this is not quite accurate. It now means both.” One might add that the two concepts are at odds with each other, as he does in the book in much deeper and harder to follow logic than simply that the very act of state paternalism is going to infringe on the economic liberty of one set of people in order to provide for the receivers of the state paternalism.

In a very academic way he pretty much says “consistency is not an issue” in a number of places. A lot of time is spent understanding the liberal tendency to want to deal with “suffering”. “Liberalism develops from a sensibility which is dissatisfied with the world, …, but because it contains suffering. The theme that progress is civilization is bound up with a growing distaste for suffering in all it’s forms is a common one in liberal histories …”. “The sufferings of any class of individuals is for liberals a political problem, and politics has been taken as an activity not so much for maximizing happiness as for minimizing suffering.” “For liberalism is goodwill turned doctrinaire”.

A lot of intelligent discussion is carried out on what does “suffering” really mean, what does “politics” really mean, with the bottom line being that the liberal is going to be able to define things so that since there is bound to be SOMEONE at the bottom of any economic scale, they will “by definition” suffer, so the work of the liberal will never be done. What is more; “The point of suffering situations is that they convert politics into a crudely conceived moral battleground. On one side we find oppressors, and on the other, a class of victims”. It is great to see that someone had figured out liberals already when I was only seven.

Even more fun, “…for the ideal suffering situation is one in which the victims can be painted as virtuous and preferably heroic-noble savages, innocent children, uncorrupted proletarians …” “Those who fit the stereotype as oppressors, however, are not seen as the products of their environment, for that would incapacitate the indignation which partly fuels the impulse of reform.” He figured out that the poor, the criminal, the terrorist and all manner of other “downtrodden” elements will always have some justifiable excuse for whatever they do. The conservative however has no excuse, apparently their evil springs from a dark soul where they COULD have made te right decisions and selected the correct liberal thought, but for some unknown reason they simply chose the dark side. There can be no excuse for conservative thought!

The book covers a lot of other good ground, the liberal need for man to be the measure of all things and the need to remove all tradition, including religion in order to succeed. The idea of The conversion of everything in a society to “political purposes”, institutions in general, but education in specific. A good deal of time is spent on how quickly “education on national duty, civics, and politics” becomes simple indoctrination on liberal thought, with a natural bent to propagandize the other side, as well as the natural effect of making alternate types of thought costly to hold in the institutions that are tools for the liberal political purpose … and to a liberal, ALL problems are political.

As I said, an excellent book, but a struggle at times. Worth the effort, and one to look forward to bringing out in the future and tying together with the historical underpinnings