THE LIBERAL THEFT OF MEANING

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There are a lot of different ways that a person can enjoy sensory pleasure. Having a good laugh, watching an inspiring or funny movie, playing a game, enjoying a sensual moment... the list can be huge.

But there are very few things in life that create a sense of profound and lasting meaning; a sense of deep satisfaction and vitality in life. Charles Murray has identified exactly four:

*Being a good parent

*Having a good marriage

*Being a good neighbor and a good friend

*Being really good at something that draws the most from your abilities

These are all things that anybody of sound mind and a willing heart can engage in, and have success at.

They all take discipline, they all take time, and they all can consume the majority of a person's waking hours in meaningful and satisfying pursuits. But they don't require a Ph.D., or a diploma from Columbia or Harvard, or connections with people from "good families." They don't require an IQ of 140, or an enlightened vision of some theorized evolution of human consciousness, or a visionary sense of the direction that mankind should head if we are to be truly wonderful.

These are the four things that every human being on the face of the earth, unless they are deeply mentally impaired, can involve themselves in for the duration of their lives; and in so doing can earn and sustain a sense of deep satisfaction. These are the four things that make life worth living to the vast majority of people.

Whenever a government program is designed to make life easier for people - to pay for their retirement or health insurance, to raise their children for them, or to ease the burden of responsibility to one's family or community - that meaning is drained, slowly but surely, from at least one of these areas. And it is transferred to those who would administer and direct the lives of others through such "compassionate" programs.

Liberal/progressive social policy is like a meaning transfusion that bleeds satisfaction from the population of a country and injects it into its intellectual administrators.

The great robbery that the left is engaged in, and the progressive movement has been excitedly and passionately fighting for, is not the transfer of wealth from the producers to the consumers. It is not the power that is amassed by a political elite at the expense of those who would create good things through their ingenuity and innovation.

The great robbery is the theft of meaning and satisfaction that is stolen from a whole society of people at all levels of intelligence and abilities. The lightening of the burden of regular, day to day responsibilities and commitments simultaneously lightens the purse of possibilities for a regular person to make his or her life matter.

I once got to know a fellow who had been a fence builder in New Jersey. He told me one day how it used to be that a person could build fences all his life, and feel proud of the work that he did, that he was able to provide for his family, and be respected and honored in his community for the good work that he did.

Now, though, he felt like this just wasn't enough. Nobody seemed to appreciate that kind of work anymore. You had to do something "really important" for it to matter now, and he just didn't have it in him to know what in the world that could mean, and how he might go about doing it.

This man, this good man, had been robbed by a culture that was coming to value ease and irresponsibility; that saw the basic requirements of a good life as tedious and superficial. He was a victim of a vampire attack of the cynics.

My son Jesse is in Boy Scouts, and he enjoys the challenge of earning ranks and merit badges. Each one of them is something to shoot for, something to engage his mind and effort towards. This is a big part of what makes Boy Scouts matter to him.

He had a meeting this week with a scout from Switzerland, who told him about what scouting is like in his country. "Dad, it actually sounded really boring," Jesse said to me. "They don't earn any ranks, they don't earn merit badges. It sounds like all they do is go on hikes from time to time."

I don't know anything beyond what he told me, but isn't that more or less the path of European socialism? Aren't they trying to take care of people to the point where they don't need to worry about the mundane tasks of life? Aren't they trying to create whole societies where people can release the burdens of menial tasks, and engage themselves in things that "really matter" - like the "evolution of society and the liberation of human consciousness?"

In such a world, what are merit badges and ranks but simply cheap human constructions, distractions from the truly important concerns of the enlightened man?

In such a world, caring for those in need in one's family and community is seen as a responsibility for the government, while private charity is seen as an intrusion into an area where amateurs should stay out, as exemplified by an interview with German shipping magnate Peter Kramer:

"The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable.... That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state... one cannot forget that the US has a desolate social system and that alone is reason enough that donations are already a part of everyday life there."

This is where we have been heading with our progressive social policies - advocated by members of both parties, but primarily championed these days by the liberal democrats. We are headed toward a culture where the people in government, media, and academia are the holders of meaning. They do the meaningful, "real" work of life, which they see as taking care of us. While we do... what?

I find it interesting that the most popular genre of the day is the vampire story - The Twilight series seems to have struck some macabre nerve in the American psyche, spawning a multitude of offshoots scrambling to get a piece of the market.

The elite intellectuals, exemplified by people like John Dewey, inspired by 19th century German philosophers like Hegel, seek to amass great meaning for themselves, great acclaim as compassionate administrators and thinkers, while the system they champion makes life less worth living for the great majority of people.

When liberal politicians look out a million or so Tea Party activists at a rally, what they see are the great unwashed, the ignorant masses blindly following some other powerful person - Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin. They see their adversaries as those powerful people, and they focus their energies on denigrating the masses, through attacking and belittling the leaders.

What they don't understand - and this is terribly ironic coming from people who claim to be for the common people - is that the mass of Americans who are standing up right now and defying the will of the progressives in government, media, and academia, are fighting a very personal and passionate battle.

We are fighting, not just to keep the money that we earn, not just for the right to create and produce great things. We are fighting to preserve the very meaning of our lives.

Being a good parent, being a good husband, being a good neighbor and friend, these all require that we do things one way as opposed to another; that we have to consider how we behave in relation to these people, and that what we do actually matters to them.

Being really good at something that draws the most from your abilities requires that whatever skills you have the capacity, the gifts, and the discipline to perform is valued - whatever your intelligence, whatever your abilities. If you can build a good fence, or write a good book, or produce good crops of food, you can earn that sense of satisfaction and vitality.

But if these things are drained of meaning; if it doesn't really matter who raises your kids, or whether your marriage works; if you don't have to think about your neighbor's or friend's well being because it is somebody else's job to do so; if your work is simply what you do to while away the hours, while some government program ensures that your needs are taken care of... then these all become just meaningless acts.

The theft of our money through taxation, regulation and inflation, the constrictive limitation of a wide range of behavior through politically correct dictates from on high, these are the effects of progressivism that are seen clearly, concretely. These are the arguments that the left is prepared to engage in from a sense of moral superiority.

The theft that is unseen, the unidentified crime that is being perpetrated on our American culture by our ruling elite - and that many of them may not even be aware of because of their myopic belief that they are doing good -is the gradual but persistent draining of our life's blood - the vital energy of meaningful engagement in a life worth living.

Well done! This is one of the most insightful thinks I have read recently.

Good post.

I truly believe that it is the nature of liberalism to pervert everything they touch. They don't create, they only destroy.

Thank you! This article helps me to formulate a better answer next Saturday when someone asks me why I’m at the Lincoln Memorial....

The list is incomplete. It is missing that which is of first importance. If you have to ask what that is, you would not understand the answer.

"...What they don't understand - and this is terribly ironic coming from people who claim to be for the common people - is that the mass of Americans who are standing up right now and defying the will of the progressives in government, media, and academia, are fighting a very personal and passionate battle..."

And that may be why Jim Thompson started FR, ... or somebody ................... FRegards

ON THE THEFT OF MEANING...

Ted Olson, the anointed “conservative” by the drive-by media liars argued there is a “right to marry” in he Constitution.

Olson on Fox news, is now arguing there is a “right to build” in the Constitution.

Since Islamic law allows a man to have four wives, will Terd Olson argue they have a “right to marry” as well???

The Second Amendment is illegal in NYC.

These legal hacks like Terd Olson have given us endless, cascading rivers of lies about why an American citizen cannot own a gun in NYC, but now they want to tell me that a foreign enemy has Constitutional rights they would routinely deny a citizen of this country?

Maybe this mosque will perform polygamous gay marriages and Ted Olson is angling for a black burqa judicial appointement from Sodom Hussein Obama...

Easy there, cowboy.

How did you know I was a big, ugly, tattooed cowboy??? If I don't have a 2nd Amendment right to own a gun in NYC, they certainly don't have a 1st Amendment right to strap a suicide bomb to a ten year old child...