I had the honour and pleasure of briefly meeting the author back in April 1996, during the last day of my internship at the Heritage Foundation (Kim was Heritage's Vice President for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the time). At the time, I knew that Dr. Holmes was a highly accomplished individual with a firm commitment to the Heritage principles of free markets, limited government, and strong national defense.
But it wasn't until I read this latest book of his, "The Closing of the Liberal Mind," that I got detailed insight into--and therefore full appreciation of--Kim Holmes's astute intellect and superbly scholarly mind and writing style.
Dr. Holmes gives a brilliantly detailed history of how the original meaning and concept of "liberalism," i.e. the "classical liberal" beliefs of our nation's Founding Fathers (inspired in turn by John Locke and Montesquieu to name but a few) in free markets, free minds, and limited government, have over time been hijacked, co-opted, and skewed by entities thar most Americans would associate with the word "liberal" nowadays, from the progressives of the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, to the New Left of the 1960s and 70s, and now the neo-Orwellian, ultra-dogmatic and virulent "postmodern" leftists (race-baiters, gender-baiters, etc.) who have so thoroughly infested the ranks of academia, the so-called "mainstream" media, and the entertainment industry.
A must-read for anybody concerned about the future of America's intellectual (and political & economic) freedoms.
RANDOM STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS (and noteworthy passages):
--"Thus, what we call a 'liberal' today is not historically a liberal at all but a progressive social democrat, someone who clings to the old liberal notion of individual liberty when it is convenient (as in supporting abortion or decrying the “national security” state), but who more often finds individual liberties and freedom of conscience to be barriers to building the progressive welfare state." So many people fail to grasp this.
--"If they are not really liberals, then what are they? As this volume will explore in more depth, they are postmodern leftists. A postmodernist is someone who believes that ethics are completely and utterly relative, and that human knowledge is, quite simply, whatever the individual, society, or political powers say it is. When mixed with radical egalitarianism, postmodernism produces the agenda of the radical cultural left—namely, sexual and identity politics and radical multiculturalism."
--"The ideological similarities between the far right and far left are not merely that their methods can be totalitarian. Nor is it merely that Nazism and communism are differently colored ideological peas in the same 'socialist' pod, with Nazism being a kind of 'socialism.' Rather, it is that both movements spring intellectually from a tendency in the radical Enlightenment to want to create the perfect society at the expense of individual rights. For the white supremacist, that society should be a race-pure order. For the communist or anarchist, it is a utopia of perfect equality. Either way, the state must be endowed with unlimited powers to create this new order, and the rights of the individual must be radically sacrificed for the 'greater good.'"
--"Whether a white supremacist or communist, the one thing they share is a hatred of individual liberty and the rule of law. Standing up to both is necessary to protect the rights of majorities and minorities alike." Indeed.
--p. 9: "Radical liberals (otherwise known as libertarians)" Doesn't fit what most people would consider to be synonymous with "radical liberals," which again goes to show just how far the original meaning or the term has been skewed!
--p. 13: "However, this did not give them the right to take other people’s property or to infringe on the political rights of others. Liberty was not license." Eh, try telling that the modern-day leftist gun grabbers in political and "mainstream" media circles!
--p. 60: "They [radical abolitionists, that is]often railed against capitalism as much as any communist would. Some, like radical abolitionist Stephen Foster, whom every American schoolchild knows solely as the composer of sentimental American folk tunes, were as radical as any New Left critic of the family." Wow, you really do learn something new everyday!
--p. 159: "There has been an ever-increasing labyrinth of regulatory crimes that, in the hands of malicious prosecutors and administrators, can ruin a person’s life faster than you can say Honduran lobsters." Haha, funny, but paradoxically sadly true.
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Per conoscere l'america e l'evoluzione del pensiero politico nel mondo
Reviewed in Italy on November 25, 2016