Liberalism and Feudalism

TruPolitics.net is proud to welcome writer Edward Mahee. Mr. Mahee boasts an extensive legal background, and is an emerging conservative thinker. Expect articles from Mr. Mahee every other week. This is his third posting for the site.

Since the beginning of its movement in the late 19^th century, liberal thought has claimed to be progressive, forwarding thinking, and innovative. Its proponents state that humanity can achieve greater prosperity by embracing new solutions to age-old problems. As Barack Obama said during last year’s presidential campaign, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”  More poignantly, Hubert Humphrey once noted that, “Liberalism, above all, means emancipation – emancipation from one’s fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty.”

When observing liberalism in practice, however, what surfaces is not a philosophy of innovation and change. Rather, it becomes increasingly clear that liberalism is simply a reiteration of tried and failed ideals, which may explain its inability to accomplish its stated goal.

At this point you may be saying, “Come on Mahee, get a grip.  We’ve already been over liberalism as socialism or liberalism as soft totalitarianism.  It’s not liberalism that is rehashing old ideas, it’s you.”  And that I understand.  The truth, however, is that liberalism is not simply a reiteration of socialism or totalitarianism.  Rather, liberalism’s antecedents can be found in feudalism.

Feudalism was a method of societal organization which had its apogee in medieval Europe and Japan.  While there were many variations of feudalism, the basic structure was as follows:  On the top of society was the king; below him was his retinue of barons; below them were knights, below them were yeoman (free peasants); and below them were the serfs (peasants tied to the land on which they lived and worked).

The hallmark of any feudal society was a system of two-way obligations of payment and fealty in exchange for protection.  In other words, a serf owed his lord taxes, labor and obedience, all in exchange for his lord’s protection.  The same was true for knights with barons and barons with the king. Of course, these mutual obligations were not of equal value. When a serf was dependent on the noble lord for protection, the serf lived at the mercy of his lord, and the lord ultimately lived at the mercy of the king. 

The basic principal underlying feudalism was that ordinary people were incapable of governing themselves—they had to rely on the kindness of their lords to protect them and to govern them.  Ordinary people were therefore unable to live and work for themselves.  For centuries, men and women lived and died under the eye of another.  They were not free to choose to live outside the bounds of the feudal world. 

So how does modern liberalism relate to feudalism? Liberalism presents itself as a philosophy that, if applied, will free individuals from fear and want.  Under the guiding hand of a benevolent elite (in our case, a politician or government official), individuals will be protected from life’s dangers and granted a certain degree of prosperity.  

In return, of course, the elite demands support, votes, and taxes.  That is, they demand control.  Liberals, in the name of the protection and happiness of the collective, will control what one eats, how much one can save, whether or not one gets medical care, what kind of car one may drive, and where and how children are educated. A free person is useless to a liberal elite because a free person does not need to be governed.   The parallels to our current administration are exceedingly clear.

One reason America was so attractive, even before Independence, is that individuals could conduct their lives without explicit oversight and control. They could organize and govern themselves as they chose. But now, in the name of protecting people from themselves, liberals will promise you the moon if only you surrender your freedom to them.

For 100 years, liberals have been asking American citizens to surrender their freedom, all the while ridiculing those who resists for their “lack of compassion” or “selfishness.”  The time has come for Americans to decide that our natural born rights as free people be respected. Otherwise, we will continue to surrender our liberty to elites—as our ancestors did to their noble lords—who have convinced us that we are incapable of governing ourselves.  Liberals demand our fealty for protection.  Will we give them our fealty, or will we, as free people, say no?

-Edward Mahee from TruPolitics.net