There was an article in the New York Times this past Saturday by Patricia Cohen entitled “Proclaiming Liberalism and What It Now Means”. It was a fascinating summary of some recent or forthcoming books about the future of liberalism as a defined political ethos in the next election and beyond.

These new original books and essay compilations come as a result of the increased partisanship and cynicism of the general population toward President Bush whom they see as a personification of conservativism in practice, however nonsensical an assumption this is. Additionally, these works are also meant to also engage the liberal base for the 2008 presidential election and give them a platform to stand upon with moral and religious voters.

In Cohen’s piece, which is well researched and very well written summary of some complicated matters, she quotes essaying Amy Sullivan who believes that Republican voters “are choosing the political party that talks about morality and religion over the party that doesn’t.” Her claim is that liberals have ceded moral issues on account of a reluctance to talk about morality and religion and thus have lost people who normally would have believed in many of the things that traditional liberalism advocated such as social justice, education, and economic fairness.

According to writers like Sullivan, a back to basics approach is needed to define liberalism as a moral movement as a way to encourage moral or religious voters to see the appeal in the liberal moral belief in common decency, fairness, and equality. Before the word liberal became taboo during the Reagan era, it was synonymous with societal reform and social justice, and it is the hope of the neo-liberal movement to convert wayward conservatives to this mantra.

And this does have some appeal to people like me – diehard centrists who are skeptical of government and disenchanted with what conservativism has become. Sure, liberalism has some appeal because many of the things that I believe in are, well, liberal values. However, at the very foundation of liberalism are three things that I cannot accept no matter how they are packaged.

First, is the irrational belief that humanity is itself capable of great good because human beings are naturally and progressively, good people. That society, with encouragement, can lift itself up with enough support from the government. History contradicts this belief and the generational ability of human beings to commit repeated atrocities confirms it. When left to our own devices as beings to make moral judgments, humans are a sorry lot.

Second, the very liberal belief in radical acceptance of fanatical relativism to the point where people are too afraid of making “value judgments” to actually believe in anything of any substance. This speaks for itself. Religious and moral people love value judgments – it is after all how you separate moral from immoral behavior.

Third, there is a passive bigotry among liberals toward the unenlightened. In plain English, religious and moral people think liberals think that they’re stupid. There is good reason for this – a lot of liberals do think we’re stupid because we believe in God. Look at the graphic at the head of this posting and tell me, honestly, that the left doesn't think Republicans are stupid.

The reason moral and religious people lean toward Republican candidates is not, as is claimed in the Cohen article, because liberals have pushed them away, but it’s because they don’t share a common worldview with liberals. It is because moral and religious people are anti-relativist – they believe in definitive systems of right and wrong and largely have a dour view of humankind (something that both Catholics and Protestants believe, I’ll have you know). They are also, possibly, less accepting of what they consider things immoral, and to a lot of Christians this means homosexual marriage, divorce, and abortion.

Though I am to the left of my party on these issues, I have a substantive disdain for people who lack moral fortitude. I have a bigger disdain for being talked to like I’m a child. Liberalism seeks to infantilize citizens under a paternalistic federal government. I have my religion to talk down to me; I don’t need my government to do it too.