Liberal Illiberalism (Victor Davis Hanson nails it again)

[DixieBelle]

The Liberal Assault on Liberalism

Conservatives are put into awkward positions of critiquing liberal ideas on grounds that they are impractical, unworkable, or counterproductive. Yet rarely, at least outside the religious sphere, do they identify the progressive as often immoral. And the unfortunate result is that they have often ceded moral claims to supposedly dreamy, utopian, and well-meaning progressives, when in fact the latter increasingly have little moral ground to stand upon.

...

In other words, so often in matters of producing gasoline for the lower middle classes, or cutting timber to ensure affordable housing, or making sure that we have plentiful cheap asphalt to fill potholes, we forget the moral argument that such resource utilization is critical to ensure that average folks have the same sort of chance for jobs, money, and aspirations as do the more wealthy whose green religious zeal makes them absolutely insensitive to — and in truth immoral about — the concerns of others less well off.

...
Tit-for-tat factionalism leads nowhere but to chaos and carnage. But the Western tradition is not made of adamantine metal; it is fragile and singular. Anytime we do not stand up and defend it, however unpopular, we cede to barbarism ourselves.

In other words, the only way to question these illiberal doctrines is without apology to identify them as immoral — and to welcome the hysterical reaction that ensues.

Read the whole thing http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/liberal-illiberalism/?singlepage=true