PrintJanuary 27, 2008
The 13 Steps of Liberals Anonymous
Liberals Anonymous (LibAnon) is a nationwide organization of current, former, and recovering American liberals and Democrats. Its sole mission is to establish and maintain recovery programs designed to help similar individuals overcome the plethora of congenital illnesses inherent in postmodern American liberalism with which they are embittered. Liberals Anonymous accomplishes this worthy goal by making the idiosyncratic elemental disease nature of liberalism self-evident to the afflicted individual.
LibAnon then educates him (or her, as the case may be) in the cold steel of factual investigation and inoculation. This is followed by repetitive, supervised exercises in analysis and synthesis of actual and accurate concrete data, combined, when necessary, with occasional doses of reaction-formation therapy and electroshock treatments. After this, a documentary collection and a psychological baseline of Conservative opinions is established for the recovering liberal. These are rooted firmly in a substantial, PaleoCon strata of clear, hard fact. The individual's "factual baseline" is used as his daily touchstone to impede potential program backsliding or worse - withdrawal, followed by a return to magical thinking, renewed liberal ideation through collective association, and re-infection with its attendant self-deification.
LibAnon then educates him (or her, as the case may be) in the cold steel of factual investigation and inoculation. This is followed by repetitive, supervised exercises in analysis and synthesis of actual and accurate concrete data, combined, when necessary, with occasional doses of reaction-formation therapy and electroshock treatments. After this, a documentary collection and a psychological baseline of Conservative opinions is established for the recovering liberal. These are rooted firmly in a substantial, PaleoCon strata of clear, hard fact. The individual's "factual baseline" is used as his daily touchstone to impede potential program backsliding or worse - withdrawal, followed by a return to magical thinking, renewed liberal ideation through collective association, and re-infection with its attendant self-deification.
Many LibAnon members have never before experienced an opinion actually based in either fact or the experiential real world, much less both. Academicians, politicians, and Episcopalians are the organization's most difficult members in which to affect even a semblance of thought moderation - much less cure.
An important part of the recovery program to which Liberals Anonymous subscribes is set forth in the chart below - 13 Prescriptive Principles or "Steps." These principles can be traced to experiences of LibAnon's membership following Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's unsuccessful attempt to stack the U.S. Supreme Court in order to impose by handpicked judicial fiat what he could not accomplish through Congress nor the ballot box.
Each of the 13 Principles was developed from years of successive approximation carried out by members' trial and error experiences freeing themselves from the pernicious grip of liberalism by confronting it and its progenitors head-to-head. The purpose of each step is to encourage, effect, and maintain spiritual, moral, cultural, fiscal, and political sobriety in the courageous recovering liberal. This is frequently quite difficult to effectuate in the aftermath of a life lived either partially or in toto (and in many cases, painfully destroyed) by the solipsistic confines of America's left-wing continuum - a continuum which extends from "caring progressives" to liberally fascistic, would-be totalitarians who embrace the consolidation of power in their own hands as the self-elected, self-justified and who are quite certain they know precisely what is best for everyone else while being equally prepared to compel it.
Each of the 13 Principles was developed from years of successive approximation carried out by members' trial and error experiences freeing themselves from the pernicious grip of liberalism by confronting it and its progenitors head-to-head. The purpose of each step is to encourage, effect, and maintain spiritual, moral, cultural, fiscal, and political sobriety in the courageous recovering liberal. This is frequently quite difficult to effectuate in the aftermath of a life lived either partially or in toto (and in many cases, painfully destroyed) by the solipsistic confines of America's left-wing continuum - a continuum which extends from "caring progressives" to liberally fascistic, would-be totalitarians who embrace the consolidation of power in their own hands as the self-elected, self-justified and who are quite certain they know precisely what is best for everyone else while being equally prepared to compel it.
Each LibAnon member uses these 13 Steps in an individual way, and so, unfortunately, results cannot be guaranteed. However, the principles are highly recommended as a program of recovery for even the most egregiously opinionated but uninformed, as well as for the intentionally deluded, for the faux-sophisticate, the youth-induced progressive, and every other cultural or academic leftist-inspired opinion, hallucination, or delusional ideation -- including, inter alia, that: capitalism is evil; Che was a hero; anthropomorphic global warming is factual and more dangerous than Iran; Al Gore won in Florida; Israel is the "cause" of the Palestinians' problems; the world owes you something; illegal immigration isn't a problem; Islam is a religion of peace, love, and tranquility; all opinions are of equal value; "Hollywood" is real; pro-abortion proponents occupy the moral high ground; there is a dime's worth of difference between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama; the government owes you (pick your poison) a living, a handout, free day care, free medical care, free retirement in Florida, etc.; gender is a cultural construct; tribal, tree culture is as meaningful and valuable as that of the ancient Greeks; something for nothing; freedom without attendant responsibility; the United Nations is a worthwhile institution; karma makes more sense than Christ; free and easy sex without physical, spiritual, fiscal, or temporal consequences; Ebonics; and Keynesian (consumption) economic theory; just to mention a small handful.
Experience demonstrates that many LibAnon members' repentance, comfort, and future long-term success establishing a new and balanced Conservative sobriety based in fact rather than in incoherent utopian flights of fancy depends, to a large extent, on their understanding and acceptance of reality as reflected in this world coupled to the transcendent/immanent nature of the next. It also depends upon a burgeoning understanding of and love for liberty, freedom, and the Founding Fathers' America as well as a realization that "equality of outcome" is not possible in a truly free society because everyone (contrary to liberal doctrine) is not the same. Everyone is instead unique, not only in the eyes of God, but in this world too - and that translates into difference, difference, and more difference, not sameness.
The final precursor to each member's success is the degree of their dedication to practicing each of the 13 Steps in their daily lives.
CAVEAT: The only requirement for LibAnon membership is the desire to stop being a Liberal. This can occur as a Heisenbergesque quantum leap or a lengthy, drawn out process. If the morally-relativistic, anti-capitalist, all-expressions-of-thought-are-equally-valid-moral-and-ingenious, who-am-I-to-be-discerning liberal in your life is aghast at the idea a formal code of behavior may actually be required to live genuinely in this world (and make amends for his past), you can put your mind at ease - eventually, either in this life or the next, he will see the light.
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THE 13 PRESCRIPTIVE PRINCIPLES ("STEPS")
OF LIBERALS ANONYMOUS
OF LIBERALS ANONYMOUS
1. WE admit we are not powerless over liberalism, but nevertheless, that we have allowed it to make a mockery of our cities, our schools, our universities, our borders, our foreign policy, and our daily lives.
2. WE have finally, belatedly, and bearing well-deserved shame, come to understand and know that a Power incalculably greater than ourselves can restore us to spiritual and moral sanity.
3. WE made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as He is rather than as we would have Him be for our convenience and self-esteem.
4. WE made a searching and (hopefully) fearless spiritual, moral, cultural, fiscal, and political inventory of our liberal, progressive, and/or socialist, opinions, views, selves and associations.
5. WE admitted to ourselves, to another as-yet-unrepentant liberal, our parents, a pollster, and a voting booth the exact nature of our previous wrongs, as well as the lack of either factual bases or reality to have supported much less committed them.
6. WE are entirely ready to have all these defects of character removed. Permanently.
7. WE humbly pray for the removal of our shortcomings and "good intentions" before they result in America's burial somewhere along the road to either a world-rendering nuclear "oops" or perdition.
8. WE made a list of all persons we had harmed with our kooky opinions, views, and acts by looking up everyone we ever knew in the telephone books for every city in which we ever resided and became willing to make amends to them all. Somehow.
9. WE made political and societal amends to Conservatives whenever and wherever possible, except when to do so would cause injury to anyone other than ourselves.
10. WE continued to take personal inventory of our liberal tendencies and when they are exposed promptly admit it, and symbolize that admission by making a generous contribution to the G.O.P. or a Conservative political action committee.
11. WE sought through hard work and dedication to improve our conscious contact with Conservative principles as reflected in Biblical teaching and Western Civilization, and prayed for the strength and ability to constructively carry them out.
12. Having experienced a political awakening of conscience, reality, and responsibility for this and future generations as the result of these Steps, WE evangelize the Conservative message to Liberals, progressives, academicians, and anti-American activists of every stripe wherever we can find them, and practice these principles in all our affairs.
13. Having experienced all of the above, WE vote only for true Conservative Republicans in every election, and plaster our automobiles with the biggest support stickers we can get as a visible outward sign of our inward moral regeneration.
If you have questions or wish to obtain further information about the program nearest you, please contact your local LibAnon chapter. Each LibAnon chapter has but one purpose - to carry its message of redemption to the Liberal who still suffers. The only requirement for LibAnon membership is the desire to stop being one. Call today.
