The Specious Origins of Liberalism

Book excerpt: First published as a series of articles in The South African Observer in the 1960s, this work provides a fascinating historical-philosophical analysis of the origin of modern liberalism. Starting with an analysis of what liberalism is, this book reviews the ideological origin-among the upper classes of society-of the notion of liberalism, and then moves through its historical development to the present day, where, he concludes, the "worst misapprehension of all is to suppose that all this Liberal misunderstanding of human nature can possibly fail in the end to pervert and corrupt the nation and wipe out all the accumulated treasure in virtue and sanity which has been fostered and stored during former, more rational and more tasteful times." As the author says in the preface: "Among the many remarkable changes witnessed in my lifetime, none has struck me more forcibly than that which has occurred in the relative importance of Religion and Politics. "For, whereas in my childhood and youth religion was still the principal field where fervour and fanaticism reigned, it has been my fate to see political doctrines and ideologies completely supersede it in all adult minds. "In my youth there was certainly hostility and rivalry between Liberals and Conservatives; but however bitter the antagonism, it never went to the length of branding the other side as "indecent", "disreputable" or actually "despicable". Yet to-day Liberalism has attained to this height of arrogance and presumption. "This book is therefore an attempt in this eleventh hour of expiring sanity to expose (he false assumptions and truculent vacuity of these very tenets and principles, and to outline a constructive means of combating them."