Not yours
For all of its discussion of progress and fairness, the underlying goal of liberals is to show how they are not like the rest of them.
If you want to differentiate yourself, you have to come up with some reason why the rest of them are wrong and you are right. The essence of collectivist movements, or those focused on a social group instead of an individual or an idea, is that there’s a password. There is some state of mind or activity in which you have to participate in order to be in the club.
Once in, of course, you’re entitled to your share of the spoils. In an organized group, there’s a hierarchy for spoils; they go to the most capable, so they’ll do capable things with that wealth and thus make more of it. In a disorganized group, everyone gets the same amount or it’s grab whatever you can. Liberalism is a disorganized group that distrusts hierarchy.
Thus the cardinal rule of liberalism is that every person in the raiding band gets the same amount of spoils. This doesn’t change if you already have wealth; you just can’t take more than anyone else. This is a negative ideal in that it knows what it doesn’t like more than what it does.
Negative ideals are there to make people feel better about a situation that they don’t think will change. If life is so inherently bad, you need to find some way to make yourself feel better, and the easiest way is to set up someone else as an object of derision and ridicule.
Liberals have a pathological need to feel better than those who are not-liberal. That isn’t just conservatives; it’s anyone who hasn’t joined the great People’s Crusade for progress, compassion, tolerance, etc. Pick any word that makes you feel accepted and add it to that list.
As a result, liberals always have an enemy at hand. Fanatical brain-dead Nazis, ugly racist cops, rich people or faceless government spies. They will unite their little group with hatred of outsiders and a sense of moral superiority.
Can we deny the sneer lurking behind the word “progress”? It implies — with enough deniability for a beltway lawyer — that everyone else is in a primitive state except that lightbringer who carries progress to the ignorant. That person is (by definition) smarter, better, cooler than the rest.
The reason this fantasy is appealing is that it confers acceptance without qualifications. All you must do is take communion of the Ideology, repeat it to others, and sneer at those who don’t adopt it. Then you’re in and entitled to an equal share.
Liberalism programs the brains of its victims to expect this kind of order. They get a social high on feeling superior to others, and since they expect liberalism is the only “true” order, when they’re not shown acceptance without qualifications, they get enraged. This enables them to feel they are the victims, and to attack without feeling guilt.
The manic desire for equality of the modern time as a result does not arise from a concern for our neighbors not getting their fair share, but from envy itself: why does someone else have something I do not? After all, we’re sharing the spoils; if they got more, it’s unfair.
In contrast to that, hierarchies exist because different people have different levels of performance and are rewarded unequally to send most of the wealth, power and acclaim to those who are doing good things; this is the polar opposite of acceptance without qualifications.
These hierarchies insult liberals because they damage the liberal sense of self-worth, which is based in being a member of the group. You know you’re a member of the group when you get equal spoils.
To a liberal, when they see a hierarchy that rewards some people for greater intelligence, wisdom, labor or ability, they do not see that this is the only way to run a functional society. They take it personally. It refutes their sense of superiority.
All they hear is “not yours.”
To them, these are fighting words.
It may be an opportune time to start using this as a weapon against them. Saying “not yours” is not confrontational; it’s part of the basics of cooperation, sharing and taking care of each other. We share what we can, but each person has some things that are not shared.
For example, we reserve the right to deny others entrance into our homes. We also reserve the right to deny them entrance into our bodily orifices, or to give them control over our minds. Not theirs.
When a liberal is confronted with an unemotional and rational “not yours,” their extreme behavior in response seems so out of place that it makes them look insane. The radical professor is suddenly a masked anarchist smashed the windows of stores he’d love to shop at.
In an instant, liberalism is debunked. All the fancy language about helping others, progress, tolerance, compassion, etc. goes out the window. It is replaced by a more concrete vision: a child having a tantrum because it is denied something that someone else achieved.
The fact of life is that nothing is equal. If it were, there would be no change; the universe would be in a static state and no motion would occur. In the same model, if we take something valuable and give it to everyone, it loses its value.
This in turn makes people lose the will to do more than the minimum, and also makes them lose sight of reality. They replace reality with a social collectivism in which each person gets equal spoils.
The first step to unraveling this crazy mindset is to put out a vertical flat hand and say Not yours. Instead of taking liberals at their word, this reveals the underlying superiority complex and shows how unstable it really is.
