Liberals were the ones who started off as sceptics; they often revolted against religion’s monopoly over being the sole source of morality and virtue, and its claims of being only possible version of truth.
For me, Galileo was a Liberal. Boltzmann, who was ostracized over his idea of Atom and Second law of thermodynamics, was a liberal. He eventually committed suicide in depression. His ideas were later proved right by Einstein in his famous 1905 paper on Brownian Motion.
Religion becomes dangerous and inimical to knowledge and rationality, when it claims to be the only truth and sole source of morality. Being religious is reduced to “virtue signalling”, and throwing around a “holier than thou” attitude.
And guess what – same has become the case with so-called Liberals today.
They are steeped in ‘holier than thou’ attitude, we are the one who will liberate you from demons. You know, “aazaadi” from demons. They are the saviours of this world, and you must accept them as saviours, else you are a heretic.
I have studied Science. Science works on a simple principle: facts. If an observation contradicts a theory, that theory has to change. Not the observation.
Religion works exact opposite. If observation doesn’t fit the claims, either the man making the observation must be killed or the observation must be suppressed. This is true even in modern times when it comes to Islam. For Islamists, anything that doesn’t agree with their view is blasphemy, and death to the blasphemer is the only solution.
How the modern liberals are much like the Islamists:
Remember when Salman Rushdie wrote the Satanic Verses? Islamists burnt embassies and properties across the world. Today when an author or filmmaker with a divergent view wants to go to a Berkeley or JNU or Jadhavpur University, we see violent protests and riots.
The legitimisation of violence comes from the ‘holier than thou’ beliefs. My religion is superior to yours; my ideology is superior to yours. You will hardly find any so-called liberal unequivocally condemning such behaviour. They will always add a “but”. As Salman Rushdie famously calls them the “but brigade”.
It has become so pervasive and perverse, that today if you see a University burning in US, you don’t know if it’s done by Islamists or Liberals. And closer home, when someone shouts “Bharat tere tukde honge”, you don’t know whether that came from JNU or Jihadists of Kashmir. If you have people championing Hijab, you don’t know if it’s an Islamist or a Liberal.
Not only are they finding common causes, a common thread binds them – the holier than though belief, and the intolerance not to allow any dissent.
But it’s not just Islamists, our Liberals are actually much like the casteists back in India. If corrupted casteism was the worst of Hindu religion we saw, its mirror image is seen in modern Indian liberalism.
The liberal caste-system:
Just like the Brahmins were the bunch that denied education and shared spaces to the Dalits, the liberals have to make sure no one who disagrees with them enters their temples – universities like JNU, media organisations like NDTV, and assorted bodies running on government grants and taking about various “rights”.
Liberals would not let anyone with a divergent view work in their industry. If some self-made person strays in that zone, boycott him. He has to made untouchable. So malign his character. Label him.
We will go after your jobs if you resist. How dare you start a news and opinion website? We will take away your job (Rahul Raj). We will crush your voice by suspending your Twitter accounts. We are the high priests, don’t you dare!
And just in case you thought we can do only this. Remember Kerala? Remember West Bengal? Or best, remember Mao? You may not love your job, but you surely love your life?
This is the proverbial killing of shudra if he tries to learn vedas. Liberals will do the same to you if you try to learn their “art”.
The Liberal Jihad:
Religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, have often spread through holy wars. Jihad. And liberals to have a jihad. No, it’s different from the violence they indulge in or condone as we have seen above. It’s the different type of Jihad – the narrative Jihad.
To go to war, you need to feel victimised. Once you feel like a victim, you either feel the need to protect yourself or you feel like taking revenge. Liberals often use the weapon of political correctness to wage the narrative Jihad. They shape narratives to create victims.
You learn this trick, you can never lose a debate in your life.
I’ll present to you an apolitical example. You call someone “fat” today, Liberals get offended. Again, remember how “hurt sentiments” was once the sole domain of religious folks? How dare you call him Fat? Call him Healthy!
Now let’s extrapolate (and exaggerate) it. Everyone started calling obese people ‘healthy’. Obesity is not a disorder anymore. Clinics offering cure to obesity are spreading “Healthyphobia”. Doctors talking about obesity are sick, and ‘healthy’ people are the victim.
See, with a simple wordplay, you made a victim out of a person who drank Coke and had French fries all his life, and made villain out of a doctor! Language is the carrier of thoughts. If you control language and narrative, you can control people’s thoughts.
Terrorists can become freedom fighters, anti-national slogans can become true nationalism, and people fighting for the nation can become villain. This is the magic – again a concept originally associated with religions – of modern liberalism.
Science liberal vs Humanities liberal:
I don’t want to make “liberal” a bad word, even though the so-called liberals are doing everything they can to make it so. I consider myself a liberal too.
But I am a Science Liberal, not a Humanities Liberal.
What that means is I don’t believe one theory/solution can explain all universe. For Big Universe, I will go with Newton, at atomic scale, I will go with Bohr’s Quantum Mechanics, and at high speed with Einstein. And mostly with Heisenberg!
I am a sceptic, not an intellectual.
I value observation, not your theory. If you have 10% people in area with placards calling for someone’s beheading, I can’t take its logarithm multiple times and reach to .001%.
I value data, not your feeling!
I value facts, not your fantasy!
I like the flawed reality, not your Utopia!
But you won’t understand. Liberalism has unfortunately become like a religion. The very thing it was supposed to question.
