Though the greatest liberals have trucked without pause with uncertainties in the past, the most ardent contemporary liberals demand certainty and security for the future. As liberalism has degenerated, gray areas recede and politicians skid toward a materialist manifesto that sees political opportunity in the state of the voter’s kitchen table. Liberal political philosophy thus embraces more and more of a materialist manifesto, whose advocates are held up as spiritual leaders. The urgency of the next meal makes them talk as if disaster is close, but any conservative answer, such as allowing the table setters to keep more of their money, sends assailants back to the complex gray world of unknowing where only they are competent to judge. Thus, Bush’s tax cut was assailed by these politicians reminding us that we could not predict the economic future, and thus we would be hasty to give money back to the owners that government might need later for the citizens. The historic recklessness and arrogance of liberals with taxpayer money remains steadfast. 

   With the appetite for certainty whetted, security--and its security, control--begin the process of purging and pruning life. The contemporary liberal must minimize risk to maximize certainty, but within the clamor of the traditional liberal emphasis on justice, which keeps things that matter, like matter, moving toward them, and thus justifies manipulation of well nigh everything. The resulting union of liberalism and justice is a bastardization of both, because freedom and liberty present too many variables for the despotic notion of justice as equal outcome. Because variables made possible by freedom and liberty jeopardize the certainty of security, to ensure justice one must control such variables with their associated risks for certainty. Justice for the liberal egalitarian will therefore occur when such variables are put under government control, by issuing separate rules for separate groups, for without benefit of blatant despotic government this is the only way the liberal can ensure his notion of justice as enforced equality. 

   Much of the liberal pruning of life is thus a pruning of other’s lives, for this political ideology at full throttle mandates the leveling of any peaks. With the voracious appetite for security whetted and demanding to be fed from peaks, this politician becomes shrill so as to be heard. Part of the shrillness, however, bespeaks the envy with which this politician greets success because he is committed to explain empty tables in light of full tables, or the peak because of the valley, or on an even larger scale, poor countries explained in terms of rich countries. With greatness explained as the new deviance, this way the liberal can justify revolt against those out of line—those that liberals were once known for defending. 

   Liberalism, however, is scarcely about individuals much any more, but the mass, whose appetites are whetted with expectation when candidates announce themselves, as Al Gore did, as “for the people,” while the opponent is left stuck with the minority: the “powerful.” As protectorate of the people, this politician stands at the helm guiding through fears that provoke hearers to huddle behind rather than run ahead.   The news of the day then must never be good, but bad. This is why the message must be delivered with shrillness. To circumvent any real change that might break such stagnation, the liberal is at work even on vacation, and reminds those on the steamer that they are only one paycheck away from the lifeboat, so in effect we are all in the same boat, because indeed we are all alike.  So much for any real belief in diversity. 

   The liberal will hunt for failure, couched in veiled but transparent moral outrage over success, because he is committed to find any counterexample that can impugn a whole nation, and thus presents the one to prove the ninety and nine illegitimate.  Here the liberal is close enough to religious language to be mistaken for an authentic spokesman for God. For the radical liberal there are only successes made possible by someone else's failure. In this story, everything is finite, and must therefore be controlled. Each will be given according to his need, but what must be managed most, that is, controlled, are the takers of risks that produce more than they need. Movers and shakers are the nemesis of ardent liberals, who portray them as throwing others off the cliff.  

   This politician therefore is not much of a believer in diversity nor democracy, but instead a level surface in which none can rise above another. The conservative, by contrast, is principled by a willingness to abandon the failed, or to make the good better. The conservative's liberalism prevents him from just wanting to get by, and this has the net effect of a willingness to seek positive change: one traditional but vanishing trait of the liberal. The push by conservatives for school vouchers and partial privation of Social Security exhibit willingness to risk something in order to have something better. To liberals, however, this threatens to produce the kind of wealth that risks can produce, and thus upset the status quo. With acceptance of risk, however, many a venturesome soul sailed for the New York harbor, Virginia, and a host of other opportunities. 

   For the liberal the desire for security comes to outweigh the promise of betterment and greatness, and life becomes a matter of small pleasures, for the dreamed of big ones are too risky--or only for the rich. Thus, the Cold War statement of the left, "Better Red than Dead," reflects the defeatism that liberalism embraces. For the liberal, having a fish to eat becomes more important than knowing how to fish and reflects the materialist orientation of someone mistaking himself and mistaken for a spiritual prophet. By regress, the stomach, not the soul, becomes the most important part of the man.

   By contrast Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death" connotes an individual who will have no truck with a free lunch when he could have his own--and fearful for the freedom that dissipates with a "free" lunch, ultimately most expensive than the one he pays for. The politician spoken of, however, finds his ultimate security in the meal provided, and not in promises of greatness, which only prompt the exercise of risks and remind one of the differences among people. The conservative finds his ultimate project in his soul, where neither peace nor prosperity that sacrifice movement and the possibility of human greatness will appease him.

   When presidential candidate Bush made reference at the Republican National Convention to fear as a strategic weapon of the opposition political party, he highlighted a decisive and escalating difference between vote getters, but equally divisive among citizens. Bush pointed out this ideological distinction when he conjured his opponent as an unlikely Founding Father, with the inference that taking risks is a necessary step toward greatness. Though Bush refrained from any contention that assuming risks for something better distinguishes Americans from the rest of the world, one could venture that the promise of betterment in America drew many an immigrant to risk coming to this land of opportunity. Today, however, Americans are dissuaded of boldness and ingenuity by politicians trafficking fears they propose to tackle through bold government. Far from FDR's delineation of our only real fear, these politicians carry a Pandora's Box of them, while building and maintaining a noticeably larger chest of treatments to ease them. It is therefore no surprise that these politicians fan the fears of citizens deluged with what they have to fret about.