Modern liberalism, so apt to see every social pathology as a form of mental or emotional illness, invites the application of a similar perspective on itself. Whether the issue in question has to do with teenage promiscuity, adultery, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, kleptomania, school shootings, child abuse, gang warfare, or corruption in government (though never corporate greed, tax evasion, or white-collar crime), the liberal is always in a hurry to attribute the cause to the irrational yet irresistible impulse to antisocial behavior. But this Weltanschauung that dims and enfeebles the moral imagination is a form of mental and moral addiction, operating on the mind and soul much as cocaine or whiskey act upon the body to induce intoxicating highs in the short run and intellectual deterioration, moral laxity, and self-indulgence in the long one.

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