>At the heart of liberalism is the naive belief that
> people are basically good. As a result of this
> belief, liberals rarely blame people for the
> evil they do. Instead, they blame economics,
> parents, capitalism, racism, and anything
> else that can let the individual off the hook.
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Hoffman replies:
First, whoever wrote this article obviously
failed Latin.  This ranting has little of anything
to do with the historical defintion of "liberal";
which is a person who believes in freedom
of any and all types.  Strike one against the
author.

Second, the argument doesn't even follow
logically, because the argument equally
applies to the "modern conservative" also
with equal vigour.  I'll briefly discuss.

Argument A:
Liberalism, the belief in freedom, has nothing
to do with whether the majority, or all of mankind
is inherently evil, or inherently good.  It's completly
irrevelevant.

A true liberal, would still advocate for complete
and total freedom, even if it was the opinion of
all mankind, that the entire world is pure evil.
It's irrelevant to the philosophy of liberalism.
Liberalism is about giving people freedom, regradless
of whether a minority, majority, or all of mankind
would abuse it and commit evil.

Argument B:
This is just shitty philispical logic, plain and simple.
Whether a liberal or non-liberal believes that
the people of the world are all pure good,
or pure evil.... has nothing to do with extrinisic
issues such as economics or education.
17th Century Philosopher, John Locke would
surely have a field day destroying this festering
pile of horseshit theory. Morality which is intrinsic
to man, has nothing to do with the physical
externalities of the world around us.

Argument C:
Regrettingly accepting the authors misuseage
of the word "liberal," are we then to believe that
the NON-liberal believes the the whoe world is
pure evil????    Gee, maybe he's onto something.

This must explain all of the anti-freedom laws which
plague the United States, and other countries which
have laws which attempt to preemptively strip people
of every right they should be afforded.  Most relavantly,
starting with the destruction of the 4th Amendment.

It must follow, that if the "non-liberal" believes all
the world is evil, then this must explain the prevailing
attitude that we should encroch on the 4th Amendment
as much as possible to preemptively fight all the
worlds evil people.  And since the non-liberal
believes everyone is inherently evil, nobody should
be afforded any rights.  Furthermore, since the
world is inherently evil, we must adopt broadbased
philosophies of preemption.  We must accuse all the
world (except ourselves of course) of being "evil",
and so we must use violence against all threats.
Doesn't matter if the threats are real or not.  Perceived
threats are fine, since non-liberals must assume that
all the world is evil, so even if their not planning
acts of terrorism today... we'll preemptively kill
them all anyway.... just in case they were ever to
think about 80 years in the future.