And yet, historically, liberalism is the ideology that gets crushed first.
Because liberalism is designed for peace, while collectivist movements, both revolutionary and counter‑revolutionary, are designed for war.
Liberalism assumes that politics is a negotiation. Collectivists assume that politics is a battlefield.
This mismatch is fatal.
Liberalism assumes that politics is a negotiation. Collectivists assume that politics is a battlefield.
This mismatch is fatal.
Liberalism treats opponents as citizens; collectivists treat opponents as enemies
Liberalism insists on procedural fairness, open debate, and the legitimacy of disagreement. It assumes that even your political adversary has rights.
Revolutionary and counter‑revolutionary collectivists do not. To them, disagreement is treason.
- The revolutionary Left sees dissent as “harm.”
- The counter‑revolutionary “Right” sees dissent as “subversion.”
This is why liberal institutions get captured so easily: they refuse to defend themselves with the same ruthlessness their enemies use to attack them.
Liberalism disperses power; collectivists centralise it
Liberalism decentralises authority — courts, parliaments, markets, civil society, private life. Collectivists centralise authority — party, leader, ideology, State.
Decentralisation is excellent for freedom. It is terrible for ideological warfare.
A decentralised system cannot coordinate a unified defence against a centralised ideological assault. This is why:
- Marxists captured universities
- Bureaucrats captured public institutions
- Activists captured media and HR departments
It didn’t.
Liberalism relies on norms; collectivists rely on power
Liberalism is a high‑trust system. It assumes:
- honesty
- restraint
- good faith
- respect for rules
- willingness to lose elections without burning the country down
- free speech → to spread propaganda
- academic freedom → to capture universities
- tolerance → to demand intolerance of dissent
- procedural fairness → to block reform
- rights → to dismantle the rights of others
Liberalism is slow; collectivists are fast
Liberalism requires:
- debate
- consensus
- legislation
- judicial review
- public persuasion
- a slogan
- a mob
- a decree
- a purge
Liberalism refuses to mythologise itself; collectivists thrive on myth
Liberalism is rational, procedural, and modest. It does not offer:
- a heroic narrative
- a chosen people
- a sacred destiny
- a cosmic struggle
People crave meaning. Collectivists supply it. Liberalism supplies paperwork.
This is why liberal societies produce prosperity but not passion, and why collectivist movements can mobilise passion against prosperity.
Liberalism tries to hold the centre; collectivists try to destroy it
Liberalism is a balancing act. Collectivists are demolition crews.
The revolutionary Left attacks the centre as “oppressive.” The counter‑revolutionary “Right” attacks the centre as “decadent.”
Both agree on one thing: liberalism must go.
'Liberals get the bullet too - Antifa “Graffiti”
And so, liberalism gets crushed between two forces that hate each other, but hate liberalism more.
Liberalism refuses to recognise that neutrality is impossible
Liberalism believes institutions can be neutral. Collectivists know they cannot.
Every institution either:
- protects individual liberty, or
- enforces a collective ideology.
When liberals try to stay neutral, collectivists fill the vacuum. When liberals try to compromise, collectivists take the concession and demand more. When liberals try to appease, collectivists interpret it as weakness.
Neutrality is not a defence. It is an invitation.
The Result: Liberalism Gets Squeezed to Death
Revolutionary collectivism attacks from the Left. Counter‑revolutionary collectivism attacks from the “Right”. Liberalism stands in the middle, insisting that both sides should calm down and talk it out.
They don’t. They crush it.
And unless liberalism learns to defend itself — not with collectivist methods, but with clarity, courage, and unapologetic confidence — it will be crushed again.
Because the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. He is simply your enemy’s enemy — and he may be coming for your freedoms next.
--------------------
14 comments:
Good article on CLASSICAL liberalism here - note the change in the meaning of the term 'liberal' with the americanisation of English (over there, 'liberal' = PC).
Let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment.
I am at heart a Classical Liberal which means that I believe in democracy, meritocracy, egalitarianism, etc........ but that makes me the meat in the sandwich between the 'right' and the 'left' both of whom are intent on destroying me.
So if I want to survive and have a say in what happens from here on in, I have to throw my lot in with one of the two camps.
Being human, I will choose the camp that offers me and mine the best deal (I will, of course, dress that choice up in flowery language that makes it sound as though I was acting purely on principle).
That camp has to be the 'right'...... well, yesterday's centre, but now considered 'far right' by the 'left', and the label appears to have stuck.
I didn't make the rules but I have little choice but to play by them. If things get rough, I know which side I'll be gunning for.
I disagree with liberalism as you have described it.
Individual rights need to be balanced with individual duties, as given in the Treaty of Waitangi.
Limited government is not the objective. Government should be assigned whatever responsibilities are required to coordinate and govern us and sized accordingly. (Even so, we could do with firing half of the present public service.)
Treating people as individuals is simplistic. People are both individuals and members of a collective.
We have much of liberalism now and that is not producing sustainable prosperity, stability, and personal freedom. New Zealand is falling apart at the seams due to the utopian fantasy of the Enlightenment.
Liberalism is only one side of the coin, and we need to synthesize that with its opposite of collectivism. And then find the opposite of that and repeat.
Re Barrie Davis
So, you want to "fire" half the public service?
You really want half as many police, health care workers?
Or are there some ministries and departments that you are specifically gunning for?
Quite interested in a response. Too often blanket statements are applied across issues where there is a perceived problem.
Yet what is needed is something more targeted.
I would suggest dismantling the Waitangi tribunal first and go from there.
Hi Barrie, I thought a reply to you was worth its own article (at No Minister). If I've done it right, just click my name to go there.
Anonymous at 12:18 PM, no I don't want to fire the Police. I was thinking more like the people mentioned by David Lillis, here:
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2026/09/david-lillis-holding-chief-executives.html#more
Colinxy, thank you for your response. The following is not a fully argued case, but I hope it is sufficient to get my points across.
First, you are putting too much emphasis on the Treaty, which I intended as an example. Want I am saying is that there are two sides to the ‘Rights’ issue which is so frequently cited. Along with the Rights which the collective bestows on you, you in return need to fulfil certain ‘Duties’ or responsibilities so that those others who participate the collective may share your Rights.
My main point, which I have made elsewhere, is that it should be recognised in our constitutional arrangements that We the people are the source of sovereign power which we bestow on Parliament to act on our behalf.
(The fundamental reason why We are the only possible source of power is because that power is the ‘life force’, which Freud called libido. The evolutionary purpose of life is to have and to raise children until they are in turn of an age to reproduce. We act to fulfil that purpose. That is the one and only power and it can only come from us, not Parliament.)
In return for empowering Parliament (and the judiciary) we expect to have constitutional control by democratic means which are elections and referenda. By means of that control, we should be able to regulate Government including the public service, regarding its function and size. We at present do not have those means; for example, Christopher Luxon has denied us a referendum on the TPM.
My argument does not prioritise the collective.
When I say we need to synthesize the opposites, I am talking psychology, not Hegelian philosophy.
I said we need to synthesize individualism and collectivism because humans participate both. Humans also create logical arguments from the opposites; that is our thinking strategy. When you say liberalism versus collectivism, I think of individual differences of which cognitive psychology has identified five dimensions, two of which – open openness to experience (curious vs. cautious) and conscientiousness (easy-going vs. organised) – correlate with voting Left or Right.
I suggest that synthesizing opposites such as individualism and collectivism results in Rationalism, which is a function of the uniquely developed human rational faculty.
When I said rinse and repeat, I was alluding to yet another higher pair of psychological opposites; namely our conscious rational faculty and our non-conscious non-rational faculty which we share with other animals. We need to synthesize those as well.
We have within us two intentional agents and we cannot ignore our non-conscious animal soul or it will resurface at inopportune times. We are experiencing that now with the resurgence of Maori tribalism, which is regressing us back down the evolutionary path. That will almost certainly fail, probably spectacularly.
So, we must not only develop our rational soul, a process Jung called individuation, but we must also account for the ‘instinctual drives’ (Freud) of our ‘collective unconscious’ (Jung).
I hope you are wrong when you refer to these as “Two worldviews, two foundations, two incompatible priorities.”
I believe that the only hope humanity now has is to reconcile these opposites. To do that we need to develop our rational faculty still further (individuation) and manage our collective unconscious.
Individuation means to strengthen our ability to reason, it does not necessarily mean to promote liberalism; it could mean to restrict it as I suspect that liberalism is significantly influenced by our instinctual drives.
Barrie, thank you for the follow-up. Let me clarify my position.
The Treaty is routinely misused in modern discourse, so it may be better to use a less contentious example. I don’t regularly read the comment section, so I don’t know your background or prior arguments.
On “We the people”: I agree with the sentiment, but only in the context of liberty, which is where the idea historically sits. Collectivism, in political terms, usually means arrangements that subordinate the individual, and therefore liberty, to the group. Marxist movements routinely obscure this by branding themselves as “liberation” movements (Black Liberation, Feminist Liberation, Gender Liberation, Liberation Theology, etc.). I hope you’re not conflating those with genuine individual liberty.
On your psychological distinction: I appreciate the difference between philosophy and psychology, but you are still invoking the unity of opposites. That concept originates with Heraclitus, and Heraclitus is the intellectual ancestor of Hegel. The Hegelian dialectic is the unity of opposites formalised: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis (or in Hegel’s own terms: Abstract + Negation = Concrete). Antithesis means contradiction or opposite, BTW.
Lenin amplified the notion with “accelerate the contradictions”.
Given the historical consequences of this unity of opposites framework, I would caution anyone against recommending it. The death toll produced by dialectical systems — Marxist, Fascist, National Socialist — is overwhelming. Good intentions do not neutralise the structure.
For that reason, I cannot support your argument, even if well-intentioned. The dialectical strategy, whether framed philosophically or psychologically, has a track record that speaks for itself.
Colinxy said ...
I’m highly sympathetic to the libertarian worldview, and I still believe in maximal freedom for the individual. I just don’t believe libertarianism is the vehicle to get us there anymore.
Barrie Davis response:
The individual really has no freedom. Your behaviour is determined by your genes and your culture. That is why Dawkins called his book The Selfish Gene.
You have the illusion of freedom because of your rational faculty which has an apparent freedom of thought. But it is an inflation of the ego to think that is freedom of the individual.
You are instead pursuing the purpose of life, which is determined by the evolution of your genes.
Not all of us have this evolutionary world view Barrie 8:54 PM . Some of us believe we are built for truth and our brains are not the product of blind matter and blind forces . That our thoughts reflect actual reality , is beside the point . from the evolutionary view .
>"...our brains are not the product of blind matter and blind forces"
The alternative is the teleological fallacy. However the term 'blind' here is being used in a more emotive and question-begging sense than as a serious proposition.
>"That our thoughts reflect actual reality , is beside the point . from the evolutionary view ."
Hm, interesting discussion point here. My plug would be that the better we can visualise reality, the better we can respond to it (by maximising opportunities and minimising threats) and being able to do so becomes adaptive and is thereby selected for. Counterpoint?
Get used to the idea that you are just a vehicle for replicating the gene-gods. And that's only if you are a woman. If you're a man, you're not even that.
But Barrie, females are programmed to mate for quality rather than quantity. Sexual selection is a very potent factor in the evolution of the higher vertebrates. So us blokes do count after all :-))
Huh, I'm just a sex object! I'm not having it.
Up until recently, in addition to the germ cell, men did provide a role of providing for a family. But now the girls can look after themselves and the men are largely redundant.
We are experiencing significant, rapid change to the environment which we adapted to fit and we are having difficulty coping. Hence the need for a revised Social Contract.
Not all of us agree the teleological view is a fallacy , either .
Different world views do exist and tolerance doesn't mean acceptance Barend . Liberalism means being tolerant of a materialistic world view and a teleological one as well . I have a teleological view but don't feel the need to cancel; out your view , every time it is brought up . Where's the Tolerance ?
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