GOOD MORNING AND HOW IS THE MIND TODAY? AN ENCOUNTER WITH A BORN-AGAIN LIBERAL IN THE WESTERN CAPE I had the misfortune sometime back to run into an ex-comrade who is now a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Western Cape, and, like all new converts, he proselytized lyrically about his newfound conversion to liberalism. After some attempts at constructive intellectual engagement with him, I realised that he did not know anything beyond the political platitudes he had been fed about his newfound ideology of liberalism. He merely regurgitated the political catch-phrases of his newfound leaders as if their mere public authority and history constituted sufficient pe-conditions for the validity and cogency of their claims. I then proceeded to enlighten him. I explained to him that liberalism has its intellectual roots in the philosophy of John Locke who argued that human beings are by nature solitary, self-aggrandizing beings and that consequently, the preferred social and political relations with others, including the state as the organized expression of political society, is purely contractual. I explained that this would mean that at a policy level his newfound political party, the DA, apothesises the individual, and not the collective, as the irreducible unit and concrete reality on which all political societies and their governments are organised. This was what Margaret Thatcher really meant when she claimed that there is no such thing as society and the community, but only individuals. It is therefore for this reason that liberalism and their latest developing world poster boy political economist, Hernando De Soto of Mystery of Capital book fame, lionises the promotion and protection of the individual and his/her interests, particularly as they relate to property, as the primary political objects of public policy. I then bid my ex-comrade farewell, in the final sense of the word, with the advice that he at least try to study his newfound ideology more deeply before being seduced by the platitudes and political soundbites of his new political masters. At least the political organisation both of us come from, as epitomized by the intellectual spirit of Comrades Chris Hani, Pallo Jordaan and Ben Turok, made sure we understand why we fight before we act, and are able to reason in support of what we believe.
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 04:23:12 +0000
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