Liberalism is a Bunch of Lies: Or, Why Rush Limbaugh is Right about Being Wrong

To those who insist on calling me a liberal: Here is the reason I am not.

During my routine listening to 610 AM radio this afternoon, I caught the recap from Rush Limbaugh’s first hour. He summed it up this way: “Liberalism is a bunch of lies.” And, truth be told, I agree.

The problem is that both parties are decidedly committed to liberalism. They may vary in certain degrees; there are pre/anti-Rawlsian classical liberals of many libertarian stripes on the one hand, and social democratic progressives of all kinds that seem to take the point of Rawls’ Theory of Justice (or Marx, as the case may be) seriously on the other, but, make no mistake: There are no real conservatives out there today.

Many will want to accuse me of word-switching here, but I do not think that is the case. Let me give two very simple—and historically accurate, as far as I know—summaries of liberalism and conservatism.

Liberalism is the idea that birthed the socio-political climax of the Enlightenment: the modern nation-state. This idea varies, but comes out of a historical fatigue of religious, state conflicts and others similar things like the divine right of kings articulated by notables like John Locke and John Stuart Mill. The articles of faith of this idea come in two myths: 1.) the notion of state neutrality, or secularism; and 2.) the notion of individual autonomy as the basic unit of value in this secular state.

Conservatism is not the mere converse of this view. It is not a pure resistance to change. Instead, it articulates two different views of its own: 1.) the notion of a divine will or natural law—or some ontic primodiality in general—as the inescapable, fundamental source of any state or non-state; and 2.) the notion that the person cannot be reduced to anything but personhood; the whole cannot be viewed in its mere parts. It holds it historical roots in the critique of the Enlightenment and its political consequences, most vividly, of course, the French Revolution.

I find First Samuel (chapter eight) to be a striking example of the contrast between liberalism and conservatism. In that passage, Israel asks for a King; and God is a bit confused and annoyed by it all. The basic argument from the people of Israel is something like: Everyone else is doing it! God, of course, appoints Saul to be their King. But he isn’t happy about it.

If we look at this from the view of liberalism vs. conservatism we can see that God, in First Samuel, is radically conservative. What makes him this way is not so much that he is resistant to change—after all, God is the very essence of change itself—but, rather, that he finds the sudden, present “need” for a nation to be silly and, perhaps, even dangerous.

So too, with the Enlightenment. Burke’s opposition to liberalism is not unlike the earlier warnings against the Enlightenment from Pascal and others who are not seeking “holy” war or some kind of Luddite (im)morality, but, instead, articulate a legitimate fear of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. And, if anyone cares to read what they say, they come up with alternatives that could require the imagination to destroy the frying pan from within—like the lesson of First Samuel, to re-imagine the very state apparatus itself, from the ground up.

So, when Limbaugh asserts that “liberalism is a bunch of lies,” I agree with him wholeheartedly. The “neutral,” secular state is a lie. The atomistic individual and the corresponding notions of autonomy and rights are all lies. These lies of liberalism are all too often ignored by liberals and so-called conservatives alike. Even with the update that Rawls offered liberalism this past century, these lies remain. Together they constitute a powerful mythology that seems impossible to overcome.

For this very reason, this very impossibility, the authentically conservative imagination is much more radical than the one of status quo liberalism. To imagine conservatively is not to resist change, but to question the very idea that change can be resisted or pushed along by the myth of progress and individual autonomy.

Sadly, Limbaugh believes many—if not all!—of the lies of liberalism. His only axe to grind is against other forms and degrees of liberalism. Worst of all, perhaps, is that Limbaugh (like so many others) doesn’t seem to know what liberalism and conservatism mean historically or otherwise. Democrats and Republicans alike are all liberal in their allegiance to the articles of faith of liberalism that come out of the Enlightenment and Secular Age, as Charles Taylor puts it, of modernity.

What is even more strange than Limbaugh’s obvious confusion is the occasional, if not frequent, confusion of this very issue by the Church. Nonetheless, if I was to be offered one or the other, as I seem to always be lately, I would take conservatism in a heart beat.

As I have said before: I am something of a post-structural conservative. And this is some part of why.