Liberalism 101

Modern Liberalism is quite often confused with Socialism. Mostly by Americans. Liberals... are not socialists. There are quite a few differences there, most notably that a modern Liberal – at least in theory – doesn't care about equality.

I hate the word 'equality' (not the concept, the word), and I'm not going to explain why I hate it right now, but I do. Just know for the moment that I'm referring to equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity* can go sit in the corner for a while to let it's ugly step-sibling take up the attention. A Socialist*** wants everyone to have an outcome which is... roughly equal. Fair, at least. Some might think that effort should be exactly proportional to reward, and that everyone should thus be able to have exactly the same quality of life as anyone else, no matter what awful mistakes they might have made in the past. Some might think that all reward should be equal and thus that everyone should work for the good of the collective, rather than their own selfish ends. Some might think that effort should be based on contribution... there are a lot of Socialisms. But the point is that the outcome should be roughly equal in some way. Noone should be left behind. If anyone is, it'd be because they refuse to do any work. They're probably evil capitalist landowners who live on the sweat of the poor, downtrodden masses, and are incapable of being of benefit to society, like the salt of the earth workers are*****.

Modern Liberals don't, inherently, care about this. This might seem like a rather counter-intuitive statement, since modern liberalism seems to have sprung entirely out of concern for the poor. A large part of the point of the development of modern liberalism was that the 'freedom' of the classical liberals was all very well, but that this freedom might be, for the poorest in society, actually no more than the freedom to starve. It was modern liberalism which brought into being in the UK the beginning of the welfare state, which takes care of its citizens from cradle to grave. But the difference here is illustrated by the ideas of a classical liberal – Hayek (and no, the dates don't matter). He said that what we should have to protect people from poverty is a minimum level of provision – a line which noone would be allowed to fall below. Modern Liberalism carries on this tradition (despite predating Hayek). They care about lifting people out of poverty^††, but not necessarily about how far above 'not in poverty' the top – or even the average – member of society might be. Whilst Socialists care about the range of wealth levels, modern liberals are focused on the minimum.

Of course, the distinction is not always this clear cut. Even in the time of Smith, it was recognised that there were such things as positional goods, goods the utility of which is based upon the position of the rest of society. What is absolutely vital to a modern westerner might be not classify in the same way if you happen to be a Medieval Spaniard – a car, the internet, proper nutrition, etc. And this means that a greater objective level of wealth may be required in some places, times or societies, and for some people, to achieve the same level of utility – giving results similar to a sort-of system of relative poverty, but one with entirely different motives – one concerned about a basic level of utility (or standard of living), one concerned about equality of outcome.

The spread of liberalism also, at least arguably, has a tendency to increase the drive for equality. In a feudal society, a peasant might consider themselves 'wealthy', regardless of falling short of the poorest king, because a king is not measured on the same scale as a peasant, and so the presence or absence of positional goods in the life of a king is not to the same extent an influence on the happiness of the peasant. As social mobility (or at least the perception of it) increases, and society becomes less organised into castes, people start comparing themselves to a larger portion of society. So whilst a peasant might not compare themselves to a king, a worker will compare themselves to their boss in a modern liberal society – and moreso as class mobility increases. So someone who is objectively better off, living further up a much more liberal society, may actually feel worse off than someone who is further down a poorer society, simply because of who they're comparing themselves against.

So Modern Liberals support universalised healthcare, unemployment benefits, and all those myriad other things that prevent someone's life from becoming a hellish living drudge, from which the only escape is death. But their motivation is the extension of freedom, since 'work twelve hours a day or die of malnutrition' is not really freedom. Meanwhile Socialists tend to support far more radical wealth redistribution programmes, and their goal is equality.

So yeah. Modern liberalism is not Socialism. There's a difference – a huge difference. Liberals don't have to be modern liberals, either. And I'm focused on the Liberal side of things here. Being, y'know, a Liberal. Also, the UK isn't socialist. Neither is any of the rest of Europe, but some bits do have more of a Socialist bent than others^††††.

I have run out of things to say. I will now stop typing.

*The good kind of equality, but that's just my opinion**

**And also the correct one.

***As the term I used today in political science, or at least in the kind of political science I've studied.****

****On the USSR, I wrote an essay once on whether they were actual socialists or not. I should update it one of these days.

*****The salt of the Earth is, if I remember my Mill correctly, the kind of intellectual/revolutionary person who massively improves the world, but in small quantities – you couldn't have a society made entirely of that kind of person, in the same way that you wouldn't want to eat salt, but you add a little bit of it to something, and it improves it. I have no idea how this ended up meaning what it does now, but I'm guessing it was probably the Illuminati. It's usually the Illuminati.^†

^†OK, fine, yes, I do also know about the Sermon on the Mount. You should never trust me again. But, honestly, I prefer the version above – which makes sense in a modern context – to continuing to use it in a way which not only doesn't, but which also probably wasn't the way Jesus meant it.

^††Absolute poverty, by the way – not the whole stupid 'relative poverty' thing, where you can lift people out of poverty by causing the right kind of recession, and where people can fall into poverty for no other reason than that even though their lives are actually improving in economic terms, there are some other people hundreds of miles away, whose lives are improving faster.

^†††France. I'm talking about France. In case that wasn't clear.

The Scouring of Greenland (with thanks to HP Lovecraft)

|Well, that 'post early in August' thing worked out! I wrote this story about 18 months ago. I really hope I've improved since then. A lot... ugh.

It occurs to me that possibly I should explain this. I just kinda started writing something else, and got distracted. For a month.
            After the unification of Ireland under High King Conn, and their subsequent annexation of Wales under his son, King Art, an effort was made to avoid a costly war with the English, and alternate means of expansion were sought. Thus it was that the Irish explorer Naos UaDonaill came to discover Greenland, and despite the hostile conditions, a small colony was established. So, when war did come with England upon Art’s death, and defeat seemed certain, a large proportion of the inhabitants of Ireland fled to their colony in Greenland, leaving King Lugaid with only a very small force with which to fight the English. Needless to say, England’s conquest of Ireland followed quickly.

            The relationship between the sudden influx of new settlers and the prior inhabitants of Greenland is far too complex to be briefly documented here. However, suffice to say, that by the time of the Wars of the Americas, their society was remarkably integrated, albeit with  the Irish settlers forming a clear overclass. During the Wars, with the American Continent fully occupied by various separatist factions, it was decided that Greenland would form an ideal staging point for the reinvasion of the North. The government, due to their clear military inferiority, agreed to this, but there were still memories within the country of having been forced to evacuate their homeland, and many factions within the country objected strenuously to allowing such access. Still, historians are puzzled to this day as to how they might have achieved such destruction, and many believe that contemporary sources have misattributed to human action a natural phenomenon, although no credible explanation as to what this phenomenon might have been has yet been proposed.

            My name is Jonathan Smith… Actually, that’s a complete lie. I work for the government of the British Empire. Since noone ever uses my real name any more, it’s really just easier to stick to ‘Jonathan Smith’. I had a wife once, but she left the first time a tentacled aberration the size of a small ship crashed through our wall. It’s a pity – I really cared about her... Where was I? Ah, yes. The British Government. Actually, I’ve never really seen it that way. The job of the British Government is the protection of its citizens (or taking over the world – whichever). Mine is making sure that noone destroys the world. So the way I see it, they work for me.

            Yes, of course. Because when you tell them that leaving Greenland before rebels summon an abomination from beyond time to turn the entire country into obsidian, they do it immediately, don’t they? So there’s no way you might ever have to go traipsing through a frozen waste looking for a cult which you have no idea of how to even start to go about stopping, even if you do manage to find them.

            And I have a voice in my head. I think it’s probably a result of losing my last regular human companion when my wife left, combined with far too much time spent dealing with various creatures from beyond God’s creation. He claims to be one of the Virtues, but I really don’t believe him.

            And as you might’ve worked out from that, I’m currently in the middle of Greenland, looking for a world destroying cult. So, tangent over, back to my story. My name is Jonathan Smith. I arrived in Greenland just over two weeks ago to try and prevent the summoning of Cthroorn. I still remember my first arrival here. The frozen wastes stretched as far as the eye could see. So imagine what it was like when I left the capital city. And when my story starts, I’m on a coach going to a castle in the middle of nowhere. Not even knowing whether or not there’s anything there. I only know about the summoning at all because someone named Kaiwan told me about the cult, their plans and that this was the place to go to find out about it. You might’ve wanted to examine that one a little more closely. He seemed nice, though.

            No. No. No. That’s no way to start a story. Noone wants to hear me talk about the boring details of my job. My name is Jonathan Smith. I fight crime. No you don’t. If you consider causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and undoing God’s creation to be a crime I do. And I do. Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I started my story here. This is where the interesting bit starts. I was approached by someone calling himself Sean. Of course, I know now that that wasn’t his real name. That’s terrible! What kind of despicable person would use a false name? Shut up. Sean asked me why I was travelling to the castle. So I told him that I’d heard reports of strange things happening there, and I was visiting him in order to try and find out about them. In retrospect, that was kinda stupid. Well how would you have gone about finding information? Obviously, though, he said he didn’t know anything about strange happenings in the castle that he informed me he’d never been to before, and I didn’t think anything of it.

            Nothing else of particular note happened in the time between that conversation and our arrival at the castle. Except the deep one. Yes, except that our group was attacked by a deep one. I’m not sure how the thing had got there, but about half of us ended up dead. That was incredibly relevant, thank you for reminding me. Always happy to remind you of your devastating failures. There was nothing I could do. Even with the best reverse engineering available, a musket isn’t going to do much against a deep one.

            Nothing else of particular note which is actually of relevance to my story happened before we reached the castle. When we did reach it, accommodation, at least, wasn’t a problem. I may not be able to end wars, but I do have at least enough influence to get myself a place to sleep. You bribed someone. And you still couldn’t get into the castle itself. Why must you constantly correct me on the most minor of details? In this case, it’s actually important. Although it is true that his interruption might’ve been justified. I was, indeed, forced to take shelter in a small, windowless hut in the village surrounding the castle. The next night, I heard a knocking on my door. It had probably been going on for some time, since I’d tired myself out making sure that the hut was safe for habitation.

            I am not some untrained lordling, who runs across a cult whilst exploring his heritage. I was trained for this. When you’re investigating a world destroying cult, and someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night, the correct response is not to assume that they’ve got the wrong door. I’d put a bullet through the door before I was even fully awake. It’s a good thing you live in the modern day. In the past, you might’ve had to get up in order to commit random murder. It was self-defence, and you know it. So you say. It’s going to be rather embarrassing when you have to tell people you shot your landlord. It is true that, as I now know, the person I had just shot was, in fact, the owner of the place I was staying, as Sean later informed me. At the time, however, I was rather more concerned with the fact that cultists tended to come in swarms. And, indeed, there now seemed to be a mob trying to break down his door. I managed to get off a few more shots before my door gave in.

            Another brilliant invention of the modern age is the socket bayonet. So I did still have a way of defending myself. You didn’t, though. Fighting people when they can fight back? Sounds dangerous. Better to wait until there’s a door between you. Gah! How am I meant to tell a good story with these constant interruptions? There must’ve been about fifty of them. Twenty. Regardless. There were too many of them still standing for me to deal with. And the hut I was staying in didn’t have any windows. They’d probably been planning this. Unfortunately, I was, as I pointed out before, trained for this, and trained rather well. One of the first things I’d been trained to do when I was sleeping in someone else’s house was to make myself an exit that they didn’t know about. With the work I’d already done, it took me less than half a second with the bayonet to make a hole in the wall. I grabbed the bag I’d stored next to it, and was out of the hut before the mob had crossed the room.

            Another fortunate habit I’d managed to developed was sleeping in clothes I could go outside in. It might be rather uncomfortable to try and sleep in a full length coat, but that’s nothing compared to having one’s toes fall off whilst one tries to flee a town. So if you could escape any time you felt like it, why did you have to shoot someone just for knocking at your door? Good point. I should probably explain that. It’s not that I particularly enjoy randomly murdering people who I’ve never even seen. Liar. Quiet. Even if they didn’t know about the hole in the wall, they might’ve surrounded the hut. Besides which, leaving behind the only place I have to sleep and losing most of my possessions into the bargain isn’t exactly convenient. As I was saying, I was able to outdistance the mob, probably aided by the fact that they seem to have paused to burn down the hut. I’d say I wasn’t sure why, but given that most of my important possessions which weren’t in my bag had been hidden in various places, it was probably the best way of making sure they’d destroyed all my possessions. Which is exactly what cultists would do. Or people who’d just seen you murder their friends, and wanted to make life as difficult for you as possible. But they weren’t. They were cultists.

            As I ran, I tried to think of what to do next. I think it’s probably safe to say you made the wrong choice. I haven’t got to that bit yet. I decided that I probably shouldn’t go to the castle for help, since there was a pretty good chance that they were in on this. Because they wouldn’t let you sleep in the castle and laughed at your identification? Wouldn’t that be what most people would do? Do you have to criticise everything I do? As it turns out, I was totally right, so I don’t think you’re allowed to criticise me for that particular call. But it didn’t exactly leave that many choices as to what to do. Fortunately or not I hadn’t really started my investigations yet. I always find it better to have an escape route before I start asking the homicidal maniacs suspicious questions. So the only person I’d told was Sean. Pity you didn’t exercise that level of caution with Sean. Actually, it was a good thing I didn’t. Or I wouldn’t have had any leads. And having leads worked out so well for you. Just let me tell the story. I decided that what I needed to do was track Sean down. Of course, when I got to the coach he wasn’t there. I hardly expected him to be, not when there were actual beds nearby. But I thought I could wait nearby until he came back. Then I saved the day. Then the voice in my head revealed that he knew how to track people. I’m not really sure how he knew that, since I never learned it. Because I’m a Virtue. Why wouldn’t I know how do things you can’t? Or I did learn to do it at some point, and repressed the memory. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen to people in my line of work before. Why is my being a Virtue so hard to believe? Because I have a passing knowledge of theology. Virtues don’t deal with humans. I’ve told you before. My job is to ensure order in the cosmos. I don’t like the idea of things like Cthroorn being on the loose any more than you do. But I’m not allowed to just smite people. So I work with the tools I’m given.

            Anyway. However it happened isn’t particularly important. I was able to track Sean’s footprints, anyway. Excuse me? I was-. I just said it didn’t matter. What does matter is that I tracked them, and they led to the castle. Which pretty much confirmed my ‘the guards are in on it’ theory. Because only a complete idiot would be fooled by Sean. Shut. Up. You’re just trying to rationalise what you did next. What I did next was fine. The lives of two people are really not of that much concern compared to the lives of everyone in Greenland, and many of those outside it.

            There were two guards outside. I had a bayonet, and I didn’t want to be delayed or draw too much attention to myself. So I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture. And you’re feeling too guilty about what you did to want to talk about it. I’m not really proud of what I did, I’ll admit it. But it was the right decision, and I’ll stand by it. I was able to do what I had to, and I managed to get into the castle.

            Wherever it came from, my tracking abilities didn’t work inside the castle. Have you ever tried to track someone across a solid stone floor which hundreds of other people have also walked across. You already know I can’t track anyway. But I’m sure an angel would’ve found a way of managing it. I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with humans. Think yourself lucky I got as far as I did. Unfortunately, I do have to agree with him. That particular random ability had just come in rather useful, and it would seem rather ungrateful to complain about losing something I hadn’t even had five minutes ago. So I had to search the castle manually.

            I’ll spare you the description of what, exactly, it was that I found in that place, but suffice to say that there was rather more evidence that there really was something untoward and culty going on here… Surprisingly, the voices in my head seem to agree with me on that one. Anyway, I did manage eventually to find Sean. I didn’t know that I had at the time, since everyone was calling him ‘lordship’ and he was wearing the face concealing black hooded robe that most cultists seem to favour. It makes them harder to identify. And makes it easier to sneak in. Until someone tries to talk to you. Yes, that can be a problem. I ambushed one of the cultists on the way out of the room, and went in to see what they were doing. Clever. Yeah, that might’ve been a mistake, but killing random cultists isn’t really helpful if it turns out that the actual summoning is going on a few miles away, and you don’t have a clue that you just completely failed to prevent the apocalypse. It seemed to work at first, and we proceeded without incident into the room where the summoning ritual was going to take place. You didn’t find it the least bit suspicious that your arrival should suddenly trigger them being ready for the start of the ritual?  And if I had, what exactly could I have done about it? The problem came when Sean called for the sacrifice to be brought forth, and two cultists grabbed me from behind.

            I am, as I have said before, trained for this. The very concept of not having some way of defending myself is alien to me. Unfortunately, even well trained and armed with a bayonet, numbers take their toll. Let alone when it’s someone like you who’s armed with a bayonet. The cultists restrained me, and held me in front of Sean, who lowered his hood, and revealed his identity to me.

            He told me that we hadn’t really been properly introduced, and that his real name was Cu Chulainn. I don’t believe that that’s his real name, any more than Sean is, so I’m just going to stick with Sean. He also explained to me that they’d been expecting me. Like I said, you should really have been less eager to trust Kaiwan.

            Then the ritual started. It was surprisingly painless, although given that it summoned Chthroorn inside of me, and he’s going to burst forth and destroy everything for miles around soon, I suspect that it is unlikely to remain so.

            I doubt anyone will ever find this account, but there’s hardly anything else I can do at this point. And if anyone else ever does hear this... Good luck.

            Jonathan finished his account, and put down the recording device. Like the musket, it was reverse engineered – this had been taken from a Cammora. Unlike his musket had recently proven to be, it was nearly unbreakable, so it would probably survive Chthroorn. Then he waited.

            He had been intending to simply wait for the end to come, but someone came down the hall to visit him. Someone interesting enough to shake him out of his reverie. It was Kaiwan.

            ‘You murderer!’ Jonathan sprang to his feet. ‘Why did you even come here? You’ll end up as dead as everyone else.

            ‘I severely doubt that.’ Kaiwan smiled smugly. ‘Regardless, I had to make sure you didn’t go off track.’

            ‘Sorry?’ Jonathan asked.

            ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ His smile had gone from smugness to downright mockery. ‘I’m your virtue. And now Cthroorn will rise, and it will be glorious.’

            It was Jonathan’s turn to smile smugly ‘No it won’t.’

            Kaiwan’s smile disappeared. ‘Explain.’

            ‘Cthroon’s part of me now. I can feel what it will do. How did you think I knew what its name was? Cthroorn’s not going to rise. It’s going to do what anything would do if it was woken in the middle of the night by an annoying little insect. Smash the annoyance, and go back to sleep. You’re a mass murderer, but if you were looking for the apocalypse, you’ve gone about it all wrong.’ Jonathan closed his eyes, and felt the transformation begin.

            He was right. It wasn’t painless.