A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
—President Gerald Ford1
The renowned illusionist Harry Houdini was a master of the art of deception. In the early twentieth century his illusions gained him great fame in America and Europe. He performed one of his most notable illusions in New York’s Hippodrome Theater when he made a full-grown elephant disappear from the stage. To prevent dwindling audiences he routinely performed new acts to appease the crowd. He also accepted challenges from the public, always escaping through his inventive schemes and manipulations of reality. Unfortunately, one of Houdini’s challenges resulted in a ruptured appendix that led to his death.
The success of the illusionist depends heavily on never revealing his secrets and never allowing an audience to see beyond the deception. If the deception is discovered the illusion has failed. The work of the illusionist is one of the least harmful forms of deception in existence because the audience expects and welcomes deception for the sole purpose of entertainment. Under any circumstance other than entertainment, deception is not welcome because it involves misleading or falsely persuading others in an attempt to gain some personal advantage.
In the realm of ideology, a veil of deception equally shrouds the motives and methods of the liberal illusionist. In their efforts to gain control of society the liberal elite use the illusion of reform as their primary device.
THE CONVENIENCE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY
The resounding appeal of liberalism rests in its call for equality of rights, opportunities, and particularly outcomes. This emphasis on equality is paramount among the Convenience Doctrines of the liberal ideology. It is the banner around which the elite rally public opinion, even though the ideal of equality has obvious natural constraints. Full equality is a utopian ideal that can never be attained, yet the elite promote its benefits while distracting attention from its limitations. They advocate equality even at the price of independence, ingenuity, ambition, progress, security, and liberty. They say what will entice voters to support this cause, knowing that most will never investigate their deceptive claims. For the liberal ascendancy the call for equality is nothing more than an illusion that serves as a means to an end.“Equality,” said Senator Barry Goldwater,“rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”2
The liberal ascendancy claims that the greatest freedom can be found only in universal equality, particularly an unsustainable equality of outcomes. They try to persuade others that there should be no winners and no losers. However, full equality can never be achieved because the desires, needs, and abilities of one individual differ from those of another, and the definition of each of these concepts differs from person to person.
The reality is that universal equality systematically removes the essence of freedom by eliminating the potential for choice. When your right of choice is taken away, you lose the freedom to make choices that can secure your own progress, prosperity, success, security, or comfort. As Aristotle said,“Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.”3
Moreover, attaining equality through the redistribution of wealth or, as President Obama calls it,“shared responsibility” is not possible because it actually removes responsibility and accountability.4 It causes rational peopl
