As many have observed, liberalism creates a sort of inverted reality in which everything is the opposite of what is claimed:
- “Celebrating cultures” means abolishing culture, since no culture is allowed the public authority it needs to exist.
- “Avoidance of absolutes” means forbidding mention of anything liberalism can’t comfortably deal with, thereby making liberalism itself absolute.
- “Diversity and tolerance” mean everyone has to toe the line on the thing liberals care most about—the decision as to what to allow into public life—and treat everything else as strictly a matter of private taste.
- Therefore, “freedom and equality” means that everyone has to do and think what he is told to do and think by liberals.
Tolerance, diversity, freedom and human dignity simply make no sense as liberals conceive them. As social realities, they can only be conditioned and relative. By attempting to treat them as absolutes liberalism destroys them.
It is the Right that gives those things a home in a form in which they make sense and can be realized. What right-wingers must do is hammer away at that point until it is generally understood that it is a point that needs to be addressed. The great weakness of liberalism is its refusal to argue fundamentals—that would be “absolutist.” So all the Right needs to do is create issues and refuse to lose by default. Because once it is recognized that there is are fundamental issues to be dealt with liberalism loses.
The moral: go for the jugular. Put it on the ground of principles and whose principles make sense. So if a liberal says “absolutes are dangerous,” say “that’s why human rights ideology is so bad.” If he says “be tolerant,” say “then be tolerant of how people have actually lived.” And if he says “we should recognize the value of all cultures,” say “including our own, which is why it needs a place where it has the right to set the standards.”