… is from page 184 of Thomas Sowell’s March 19th, 2001, essay in Capitalism Magazine – an essay titled “Forced to Volunteer” – as this essay is reprinted in Sowell’s 2002 collection, Controversial Essays:
The term “liberal” originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people – mainly from the oppressive power of government. That is what it still means in various European countries or in Australia and New Zealand. It is the American meaning that is unusual: People who want to increase the power of government, in order to accomplish various social goals.
Typical of what liberalism has come to mean in the United States today is a proposal by California Governor Gray Davis that the state’s colleges and universities make “community service” a graduation requirement. His plan immediately won the unconditional support of the state’s largest newspaper, the liberal Los Angeles Times. There was no sense of irony in its editorial claiming beneficial effects for “students who are forced to volunteer.”
Forced to volunteer. That is the Orwellian notion to which contemporary liberalism has sunk.
