Francis Beckwith on liberalism

This is quoted from the comment section of Amy Hall's January 19, 2009 blog post, "Judas, Christmas, and the Inauguration.

In the world of liberalism, as long as you love humanity as a whole, it is perfectly permissible to hate individual persons, unless those persons are the sort whose behavior, no matter how heinous, is the result of "root causes." So, you can hate George Bush, but not Osama Bin Laden, since the latter is doing what he does because the West made him do it, and besides the Palestinians are oppressed. In liberalism, the abstract stranger is always more important than the concrete brother or sister. In liberalism, you should care for your neighbor's children by not resisting the government's extraction of large sums of money from you to support them. On the other hand, to request that those who sire and beget their own children should care for them is "mean." However, if you choose to kill your own children prenatally, you are exercising a responsible choice.

This is why President Obama can speak eloquently and persuasively of the importance and necessity of sacrifice for the common good. But if his daughter is pregnant, she should not be punished with a child. So, as long as sacrifice is about the other and the all, not about the particular and the familiar, it will remain a cross that we claim to bear but never carry. We will bull***t ourselves, yet again.