Tuesday, February 10, 2009

It’s All Academic: The Fallacy of Liberalism.

How many of you have heard the phrase “It’s academic”?


This phrase is usually used when something goes wrong with a predetermined plan. For example, if Joe Enterprises wants to add some square footage to their plant in order to double their production but they can’t get a loan to do it, they may go forth on their fiscal planning phase for the expansion, but it would be “academic”. This means that it is nothing more than an idea of something that cannot be implemented. Even if the implementation somehow became possible, any CEO or business owner will tell you it is virtually nonexistent that fiscal planning for a project goes as intended. Now, let’s correlate this to Liberalism…


Liberalism is itself a concept of academia. We all know that state funded universities have severe liberal biases, even in conservative geographical areas. Statistics show that better than 75% of college professors are liberally biased, and some claim it is upward of 90%. Self-proclaimed liberals will perform massive displays of chest-bumping while telling you that the reason behind this phenomenon is that the supremely educated class knows that socialist mechanisms are the wave of the future. The problem with this theory is that, like any wave, it loses its foundation when it comes up against the slightest resistance.


The truth of the matter is that in academia, it IS all academic. The basis and the proponents of the liberal university culture are self-propelling singularities that create the idealism that is expressed in the bumper sticker slogans of liberalism. In other words, liberalism is self-promoting academic policy that has no underlying foundation. When young, impressionable kids attend a university they are inundated with liberal policy which sounds good to a struggling college kid who is still wet behind the ears. “What did you say; we can get someone else to pay for our tuition? The rich people won’t even notice the higher taxes, let’s do it! That sounds fair; after all, they are rich and I have to eat Ramen for dinner every night!” This educational brainwashing creates the perpetual motion of liberalism. There are many of those youth who enter the work force, see liberalism for what it is, and move on to a clearer and more enlightened frame of mind. On the other hand, there are those that get a degree in education, feed back into the system as professors, having little or no real-world experience, and create a positive feedback mechanism that drives the liberal ideal.


In our scenario with Joe Enterprises, a financial plan was developed for a project that had no funding, thus the academic nature with no relevance. Liberalism has the same pitfalls in that it creates a Utopian ideal with no viable method of implementation, hence the aforementioned bumper sticker mentality of liberals. These include, “Save the Trees”, “Coexist”, and the ethereal and eternal “make love, not war.” These are academic ideals that fall into the “can’t we all just get along” basket. No one would argue with the idea that it would be great for everyone to just get along. No one would say that they hope for the death of all trees. No one would say that they would rather get shot than get laid. The problem is that the actual implementation and procedural dynamics of such policies go above and beyond the ideal to a whole new plane.


Let’s take a look at the original war protestors of the 60’s; the hippie movement and their “make love, not war” mentality. The war opponents of today can’t hold a candle to these liberal icons. “Make love, not war!” Alright, this is going to be awesome! If we can just get everyone into a massive orgy of copulation they will all feel love for each other and eliminate the desire for destructive tendencies. Everything sounds great until 20 years later we have a pandemic of AIDS and liberalism requires that we take care of the people suffering from the auto immune disorder, created by their own failed policies, by throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at the problem and creating government bureaucracy to promote the use of condoms in order to stem its spread. Moreover, the economic cost of lost wages, health care, and pharmaceuticals far outweighs any benefit that was gained, and more people die from the pandemic than from the war. It is obvious that the actual cost of implementation has far exceeded the ideal from which it sprung. This is the fundamental flaw in liberalism.


Liberals generally look past the problems associated with implementing their bumper stickers and only focus on the euphoria-inducing ideal that they imagine will come to pass. When a problem crops up along the path, they gladly tell everyone that they will get someone else to pay for the mess their plans have created. The citizens of our country need to wake up and realize that there is no such thing as a free lunch. In a massively interwoven economy such as ours there is no way to implement a payment arrangement funded by someone else that does not end up touching each of us in one way or another. You and I will pay for every piece of legislation that is passed; it doesn’t matter who the talking heads claim will foot the bill. If you understand that, no explanation is needed. If you don’t, then no explanation is possible.


There are far more problems related to the legislation of the liberal Utopia than just those related to fiscal responsibility. The problem of restructured freedoms resulting from liberal mania is even more damning. But that is a topic for another day…….