As a physician, I often find myself comparing everyday situations and political problems to medical dilemmas. I suppose it is only natural to do so. I am trained in medicine, and I am more comfortable with medical issues than I am with other subjects.
I was fortunate enough this past weekend to travel down to California to visit my sister and her beautiful 2-year-old daughter. I began thinking about conversations I previously had with people from California both in the state and in many different parts of the country. I remembered a road trip to Yellowstone several years ago with my wife and children. I recalled conversations with people who had left California for greener pastures that they found in beautiful settings that were then populated by few people – people who were quite different from those they had left behind in California.
The conversations I had with the Californians usually began with a friendly hello, followed by introductions and the inevitable discussion of present goings on and past lives. Pretty much without exception, the people who had moved from California bemoaned the crowds, traffic, high taxes, high crime, expensive real estate, social discord and decreased livability of California. Interestingly, however, their political attitudes had not changed. They were invariably liberal, yet out of disgust for what it had become, they left a state they had helped to remake into a far-left liberal Shangri-La. Even so, they were hard at work trying to remake their new communities in the political image of California. They had in many cases successfully converted these communities from conservative red to liberal blue in short order.
Idaho, Wyoming and Montana: Large sections of these bastions of conservative individualism were being converted into pockets of far-left liberalism. I wondered how it could be possible for these people not to realize the irony here. There seemed to be a total logical disconnect. They had succeeded in making California a place where every liberal wanted to live. High taxes, widespread social programs, lack of traditional morality. Yet after years of regulating California into the far-left haven they craved, they jumped ship looking for simpler places, simpler people and less regulation. Was it possible that these malcontents were so numbed by their ideology that they did not or could not see what they were doing?
I began to think about how modern liberalism could be compared to malignancy. Not a pleasant thought but an applicable thought. A well-known conservative radio personality wrote a book entitled : "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder." I began to consider that it may be a malignant disorder as well.
A human organ is made up of many billions of tiny cells. Each cell in the organ, with its own purpose and individual strengths, is grouped together with similar cells, then grouped with other dissimilar cells to make up parts of and ultimately an entire organ. These cells work individually, industriously, seemingly with a singular purpose. Yet in their individuality they are still mindful of their neighbors and the common good. These cells, simply put, are good neighbors. They have physical connections with nearby cells and biochemical connections with others within the organ and beyond. As long as the cells act within a broad range of acceptable behaviors, they continue individually working in their own particular way. When cells begin to act in ways that could present a danger, other cells act as police, secreting suppressor substances that are designed to bring the stray cell back into the fold, in most cases preventing malignancies from forming. The good neighbor cells go on living, working, producing and sometimes making new baby cells, behaving as good neighbors.
Cancer! The very word sounds evil, apart from the group of diseases that it represents. What is cancer really? It begins with an interloper – initially, a single cell that decides it wants to be completely free. Why concern itself with the constraints of the society of the organ? It is obsessed only with its own self-perceived beauty, its own goals. It no longer cares about the constraints of the other cells. It casts off suppression molecules like a Californian casts off his or her clothes on a sunny day. Liberation! Freedom! It doesn't matter that the newly liberated individual cellular freedom seeker will be redistributing the fruits of the labor of the other hard-working cells yet will produce nothing except pain and suffering. "Cell Guevara." All cells will be free or die. Why should this emancipated interloper work or contribute?
First there is one invader, then there are two and two become four. After a brief interval, the organ is occupied by self-loving, freedom-fighting guerrilla cells that now band together to fight for their singular purpose: their collective freedom. "Power to the malignancy," they cry. "Power to the Individual Cells"! Carrying aloft their manifesto they prevent the growth and reproduction of the original cells, ultimately killing off those normal cells that try to hold on to their outdated ways. Messages are interrupted between the normal cells, restricting the communication so vital to their cooperation. The new "fairness doctrine" of the revolution substitutes other messages, causing the previously hard-working, highly productive cells to become confused, transformed and if not compliant, die. Finally, when these freedom-fighting, substrate-stealing invaders find that it has become too toxic for even their own unrestricted growth, they break away. They're tired of the situation they've created and seek greener pastures. They jump onto the superhighways called lymph vessels and transport themselves to other places of beauty and symmetry.
On arrival, they don't assimilate into the culture of the new organ. They again begin aborting the production of normal cells, finally destroying their new home as well. Freedom, rights without responsibilities, lack of concern for cellular tradition. These are the evils of malignancy. The old ways of doing things have been replaced.
Is this liberal metastatic propensity simply an inability to understand cause and effect? How can liberals maintain this single-minded commitment to an ideology of absolute freedom leading invariably to progressive dysfunction and death? This is the undeniable similarity between modern liberalism and malignancy.
Liberals misunderstand individual freedom in the most fundamental way. The word freedom is derived from two words, free and domination. Freedom is the right of each person to be free of domination and by their own efforts to work toward a life of their choosing. Freedom does not guarantee perfection in society nor equal outcomes for people of differing individual abilities and initiative. Liberalism replaces individual responsibility with collective guilt, promoting the idea that everyone's desires must be guaranteed. In so doing, the freedom of those who object is suppressed.
The sad reality is that with all of their concern for society, they are really only concerned about themselves, and when they do metastasize they always pick the most unspoiled and beautiful destinations. Yes, liberalism is truly a malignancy. The question is whether we will have the moral strength to prescribe effective therapy before it destroys us all.
Â
Frank S. Rosenbloom, M.D., is president or Oregon Right to Life.