From time to time, I get on a kick where I listen to old lectures from important people such as Justice Antonin Scalia, Milton Friedman, Justice Clearance Thomas, the Founding Fathers of America, and so on. I do this to reinvigorate my values in liberalism, and the idea that liberty, freedom, and responsibility, are still values to believe in. However, it has been a few years since I last listened to these series of lectures; The last time I had listened to them was before the pandemic in 2020. I was in the middle of going to university, and I felt as though the world was still fairly open, and people, while somewhat misguided in small ways, did still hold similar values that Americans always had.
Listening to them now, the classically liberals espoused, values I had been learning since 1st grade, seemed completely alien to everything I had heard over the years. I still found myself strongly agreeing with everything stated in the lectures; The purpose of a just government IS to protect rights, property, and to enact justice on those whom break the social contract. People DO deserve to reap what the sew, whether it is good or bad. We SHOULD treat our neighbors, and strangers, with the dignity and grace we expect others to treat us in turn. But compared to the rhetoric that I hear constantly, openly stating that tyranny is good, and that the power of the state ought to be used against those who do not hold similar values, was stark.
I’m unsure if America even has Americans in its borders anymore. It seems like everyone is fine with the current paradigm that the federal government has unlimited power vested into the President to act as though he were a king. Political violence is justified because those who do not hold similar values to the tribe do not deserve to be treated as human beings. America has never been a perfect place, and there has been a lot of strife and political conflict throughout the entire history. However, everyone more or less agreed on what American values where; They just disagreed on how they should be applied. What I hear nowadays is an overt rejection of the liberal values we were founded on. People more or less want a monarchy, or an oligarchy, or some sort of theological caste. This applies to both the left and the right.
It is clear to me that there is a perverted mind virus that has infected America.