The history of the last 2600 years of man is essentially the history of the liberals battling the illiberals. Those who belive in rationality, self-interest, liberty, and triumph are locked in an eternal, deadly struggle with those who believe in irrationality, self-sacrifice, tyranny, and defeat.
The philosophy, culture, society, and lifestyle of liberalism -- centered around, and based upon, lofty, pure reason -- is the north star, heavenly standard, and golden ideal under which the Holy Individual achieves far more greatness, nobility, pleasure, and happiness than any other way. And his civilization achieves far more cooperation, harmony, social dynamism, cultural richness, wealth, health, vitality, and heroism than is otherwise possible.
History tells us that reason, logic, epistemology, science, and philosophy were discovered and invented in the early 500s B.C., in eastern Ionia, by Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. No known mention of mythology or polytheism was made by these first "physicists" and "naturists."
But early on mysticism and superstition morphed into the world's first true religion or monotheism, known as the Greek "mystery cults." So the first battle between liberalism and illiberalism was the city Miletus in eastern Ionia vs. The city Eleusis in western Ionia.
Later it was Athens vs. Sparta and Jerusalem.
Then Aristotle vs. Plato.
Then the Aristotelians, Epicureans, Stoics, and Cyrenaics vs. the Pythagoreans, Platonists, Cynics, and Skeptics.
Then, perhaps, Horace vs. Tertullian.
The scientists and philosophers overall vs. the religionists and theologians.
Cicero vs. Augustine.
Abelard vs. Anslem.
The Greco-Roman classical intellectuals vs. The Dark Age feudalist Christians.
Venice vs. the Vatican.
The clean, healthy, athletic, educated, wise, fun-loving, light-hearted, happy people of the bath vs. the filthy, sickly, etiolated, ignorant, foolish, dutiful, grim, miserable people of the monastery.
The Renaissance vs. the Dark Age.
The reborn Epicurean elite vs. The established conservatives.
The 1600s Scientific Revolution vs. The reactionary Scholastics.
The ambitious, intrepid Enlightenment vs. the old, cold, vicious, malicious religiosos.
Rebelais, Montaigne, and Bacon vs. Berkeley, Hume, and Fichte.
The Diest aristocrats vs. The god-fearing masses.
Voltaire vs. Rousseau.
Jefferson and Madison vs. Hamilton and Burke.
Locke and Smith vs. Marx and Lenin.
Mises, Hayek, and Hazlitt vs. Keynes, Galbraith, and Krugman.
Rand vs. Kant.
Science vs. Religion.
Philosophy vs. Theology.
The philosophical, rational, true Objectivists vs. the religious, dogmatic, malicious, weird, authoritarian, faith-based, pseudo-Objectivists.
Rand the relentlessly logical, fearless truth-seeker vs. Rand the charismatic, temperamental, manipulative cult-leader.
The world may have gone into a severely illiberal philosophical and cultural decline, and Dark Age, beginning in 1914. The planet may have been mostly irrational, self-sacrificial, communist, and defeatist by the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Eisenhower conservatives and and hippie progressives differ little, despite what virtually everyone today believes.
But now liberalism has started a comeback. A Second Renaissance is currently underway. Ever since the 1980s and the liberal radicals Reagan,Thatcher, Gorbachev, and Deng, the Good Guys have been ascending and winning. Tyranny, crime, communism, fascism, religion, mysticism, self-sacrifice, anti-heroism, and defeatism are declining.
It's true that since the 9/11 jihadist attacks the illiberals have been strongly counter-attacking in America, Europe, Russia, China, India, South America, etc. The United States foolishly and depravedly responded to the spectacular Muslim massacre by violating the privacy of its citizens via mass spying and by jailing and torturing suspected jihadis without trial. These two stunning acts of illegality devastated the liberals and radically empowered the illiberals worldwide. But these two terrible evils are now in decline. Liberalism is still mostly rising.
And as of 2004-2007 a fresh liberal phenomenon has occurred: New Atheism.
And around 2008-2012 there was another: the Tea Party.
And more recently still another: transhumanism.
And so, 26 centuries after they began, the philosophical concepts and personal ideals of reason, self-interest, liberty, and triumph are ascending again. And all these standards and goals continue to flow into each other: they supplement, complement, coincide, and reinforce. These liberal disiderata and ideals are natural, powerful, irrepressible allies of each other.
And now it's time for the Good Guys to finally win out.
High time for the neoliberals or New Liberals -- the true libertario-Objectivsts – to crush the Third Worlders, communists, and Muslims. And obliterate the far more formidable conservo-progressives and anarcho-Randroids.
Death to subhuman religion, martyrdom, slavery, agony, and annihilation. Life to epistemological rationality, ethical self-interest, political liberty, human happiness, and spiritual triumph. And total victory to pure liberalism.