The Hubris of Western Liberalism

Liberals in the West are facing a very dangerous epidemic. This isn’t something like Covid or Bird Flu, no, this is much more dangerous. The epidemic in question is excessive hubris.

Let me be clear: when I say liberals, I specifically mean the ruling elite of Western nations. People like the Biden administration or the Sunak Prime Ministry and the Macron Presidency. This isn’t solely meant to be referring to the US normie political spectrum of liberals vs conservatives (both sides of which are differing degrees of liberalism anyhow).

I am speaking of the idea that has dominated the landscape of the modern Western democracies for generations now, birthed from the post World War Two anti-communist order that reached worldwide dominance in 1991.

The dangers

Such an epidemic is more dangerous than any infectious disease. The Western regimes have come to the wrong conclusion that the post-1991 liberal world order is absolute. As such, they have come to believe that they are invincible.

This in turn has led to reckless behavior on the part of these governments. We have seen this time and time again during the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Western governments will continue to give Ukraine more and more dangerous weapons, which Russia has warned would lead to a tit-for-tat response.

We even are seeing the beginnings of French military deployments in Ukraine, despite this not being made public to the people. There is a point coming where we might have a direct confrontation between Russian and NATO military forces. At that point, all bets will be off.

This reckless behavior is seen in other parts of the world as well. The West has given unlimited military assurances to Israel which in turn could potentially get us into a conflict with the Iranians and their Axis of Resistance forces stationed around the region. We are already in a conflict with Yemen’s Houthi group, despite nobody wanting to admit that it is a war.

Meanwhile, in Asia, we are continuing to thinly extend ourselves in order to make a fortress in Taiwan to deter the Chinese, while at the same time building a fortress in South Korea in order to deter the North Koreans.

The most obvious danger here is the fact that our leaders have overextended themselves. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans have all been playing a strategic chess game since Yeltsin was ousted in 2000. The West, on the other hand, brought checkers to this match.

Why?

The reason why the West thought that they could win this generational chess match with a game of checkers is simple: they thought that their foreign enemies were stupid, just as they think that their domestic enemies are stupid.

This is what happens when most of your leaders come from a bubble of elite university graduates, lawyers, corporate cronies, and lobbyists. They get these gigantic heads and believe that, since they are so educated and accomplished, their worldview and actions must be the correct course. Everything else is stupid.

In short, our leaders have entered this paradox where, despite their high levels of education, they have resorted to making stupid and lazy decisions.

Remember how for the longest time, we had experts claiming that the Russians were running out of ammunition? That they would freeze during the winter because they didn’t pack winter gear? Or that they were running out of missiles?

Then as the years went on and everyone could see that their assessment was dead wrong, there was no mass ridiculing or removal of such people from their positions. No, they stayed where they were, or continued being considered a person to be taken seriously.

There is no retrospection in the West because there are no consequences in the West when you are a political leader or a member of the class of people that matter. We say there are, but we aren’t. We practice a form of despotism just like the other nations do, except we are less honest about it.

Sure, you won’t be put in jail for criticizing the leadership, but when was the last time such leadership was ever punished for wrongdoing? You don’t need to put people in jail for criticizing you if their critiques aren’t going to ultimately harm your position.

As such, we have gotten to the point we are at today, except now we are applying that logic on an international scale instead of the domestic scale. Unlike the domestic stage, the international stage has the potential to deliver consequences to the Western ruling elite because whether they like it or not, the Russians, Iranians, Chinese, etc. are not beholden to their rules.

Now our ruling class, who have been safe from the consequences of their own actions for decades, do not know how to deal with the people who can bring the consequences. This is why they continue to treat the Russians, Iranians, etc. as they would their domestic opponents: people who aren’t to be taken seriously.

This isn’t surprising. Ever since 1991, the West developed this attitude because we became the sole world powers, and we didn’t think we would ever have to deal with people who would challenge our rule. The Soviets were gone, after all.

Yet because of that we have forgotten the art of de-escalation. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a good example of this. The US and USSR were about to come to blows, but after careful consideration by both sides as well as negotiations, the issue was diffused.

The leadership of the United States and the Soviet Union, while against each other, also knew that they had to treat the other as a serious and equal party. The modern-day US and West does not do that, it speaks to the Russians as if they were children. Nuclear armed children.

Much to the dismay of the ruling Western political class, there will come a time when these nations remind us that they are not children. When that time comes, any form of retrospection will be too late. At the end of it all, Western leadership will never look back and say that their approach was the wrong one.

Conclusion

People might take me for someone who is anti-west. I am not. My ancestry is purely western, and as far as I know, I have no ethnic ties to places like Russia or Iran. However, I want to continue living on Earth. To do that, we have to try to find ways to deescalate things.

I truly believe that we are the closest to nuclear war now than we have ever been history, and that includes the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is why I write about the things I do. Consider my pieces as warnings. I am but a humble messenger of the people who would prefer to raise our children on a lush, green planet and not an irradiated fallout style wasteland.

Whether you listen to me or not is your choice, but do not shoot the messenger.