Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Paraphrased from "The Liberal Mind"--Lyle H. Rossiter, MD[1]

1. We are all children of a parental government...

2. Self-reliance and the role of individual responsibility should be

diminished in this society in favor of collective caretaking

administered by the state.

3. The individual cannot exist without the state.

4. Because most citizens are not competent to run their own lives,

they need government guidance to do what is good for them.

5. Collectivism is the proper political philosophy for an ordered

society.

6. A good life is a government entitlement owed to each citizen

regardless of the nature and quality of his acts and their usefulness

to others.

7. In respect to economic and social situations, prior binding

contracts or agreements based on tradition may be invalidated by

the authority of the government.

8. A large government regulatory apparatus is needed to exercise

control over the citizenry and to ensure that social justice is

assured.

9. Massive welfare programs that are administered by the state at

taxpayer expense are necessary to meet the needs of the

disadvantaged.

10. Men should not be held responsible for their bad actions, but

rather such actions should be viewed as the collective fault of the

society.

11. Traditional ideas about the separateness and sovereignty of the

individual are invalid.

12. Material subsidies are to be paid to persons designated by the

state based on need, suffering, or inequality, not on merit or desert.

13. Human nature is highly malleable.

14. Descriptions of how to act and how not to act should not be

based on the distilled ethical and moral wisdom of the centuries,

but through canons of political correctness or evolved through the

creation of alternative lifestyles in a spirit of cultural correctness.

15. Established traditions of decency, courtesy, and sexual

repression are unduly restrictive and should be rejected because

they support class distinctions that oppose the liberal ideal of social

equality. Pornography is good.

16. Rules governing human interactions that have evolved over

centuries deserve no respect. Traditional Judeo-Christian moral and

ethical codes such as the Golden Rule must be rewritten to reflect

modern ideals of moral relativity and multicultural correctness.

17. Equality before the law is a fiction.

18. An individual who commits a bad act should not be held

personally responsible for what he does even if he does it with

malicious intent.

19. US foreign policy makers should assume the American

imperialism and capitalist exploitation have been major factors in

provoking aggressive acts by other nations and by religious or

ethnic groups.

20. It is the duty of the state to determine which groups or classes

of persons suffer from deficits in material security and in social and

political status and to cure these deficits through government

action.

21. Time-honored conceptions of justice as reflected in common

sense, ethical philosophy, judicial practice and the history of

political thought are invalid.

22. Traditional ideal of self-determination, self-responsibility and

self-reliance are invalid.

23. Economic activity should be carefully controlled by the

government.

24. An adult citizen's time, work effort and ability must be largely

apportioned to the state.

25. The primary purpose of politics is the creation of an ideal

collective society run by a liberal elite[2] committed to a just

redistribution of economic, social and political goods.

26. The traditional social institutions of marriage and family are not

very important and should yield to progressive alternative lifestyles

that emphasize the satisfaction of sexual and relational needs.

---

[1] Rossiter expounds on these condensed statements substantially in his book, and derives the why of them through analysis from a life cycle psychological viewpoint.

[2] Liberals classify citizens as: governing elites; military personnel; and the rest of us.

# posted by Mannning @ 10:44 AM