[Hong Wu]

I was thinking about some passages in the bible earlier. Namely, not yoking an ox to a donkey, not mixing types of fabric in clothes, pearls before swine, holy things before dogs etc. To me, these things are all about class/caste mixing, or specifically why not to do it. An ox is significantly stronger than a donkey, mixing wool and linen together would probably look horrible, etc. These are just my interpretations, or ones I've read that I agree with, but this train of thought brought me to another conclusion.

Two common criticisms of liberals is how thoroughly they self-segregate (not just in colleges, but in high rises, suburbs, etc.) and how intellectually cowardly they are from a point of view.

It might be obvious to some people but I only just realized that there is a correlation between these phenomenon. The act of self-segregation is really an act of cowardice. Many of them have never tried (and never will try) to actually live in an inner city environment, or be among the people they praise/disdain. Some of them don't even take mass transportation, they go to private schools, they live behind a lot of security and/or physically far away from certain kinds of people. All of these things could be classified as acts of cowardice. After having physically run away from the degenerating reality in their countries, they also run away intellectually by rejecting the nature of the problems that they refuse to cope with personally.

As such, their tendency to segregate themselves and their intellectual behaviors are actually extensions of the same thing, a thorough lack of courage.

Getting back to the bible, their behaviors appear to be a corruption of these texts; or following the letter and not the spirit. They don't mix these things but they also refuse to criticize them or apply any discipline because a lack of criticism is the coward's version of compassion.

[Thunderhawk]

Many of them have never tried (and never will try) to actually live in an inner city environment, or be among the people they praise/disdain. Some of them don't even take mass transportation, they go to private schools, they live behind a lot of security and/or physically far away from certain kinds of people. All of these things could be classified as acts of cowardice.

Alternatively, it could be viewed as a desire to live at a higher and comfortable quality of life for those with means, and an inability to live in a higher and comfortable quality of life for those lacking means. Or would you call that a fear of financial consequences for the poor, and a fear of loss and declining health for the wealthier?

[The Immortal Goon]

It might be obvious to some people but I only just realized that there is a correlation between these phenomenon. The act of self-segregation is really an act of cowardice. Many of them have never tried (and never will try) to actually live in an inner city environment, or be among the people they praise/disdain. Some of them don't even take mass transportation, they go to private schools, they live behind a lot of security and/or physically far away from certain kinds of people. All of these things could be classified as acts of cowardice. After having physically run away from the degenerating reality in their countries, they also run away intellectually by rejecting the nature of the problems that they refuse to cope with personally.

It's actually generally the opposite.

Assuming you are using "liberal" incorrectly to mean, "vaguely left wing."

Inner cities in Seattle, Boston, LA, San Francisco, Portland, and others are all being completely invaded by the types of people you are describing. And as things gentrify, they move to more places looking for mass transit and being around the people and all of that stuff. And you end up with dynamics like this, where these people moved to an inner city—markets flooded in to cater to these people—and then they moved to the places where all the poor people were moving to escape them.

This is actually not that unique. More than a hundred years ago, the Bohemian movement started during the Belle Epoch in exactly the same way. At around the same time, middle class Russian liberals (in the real sense) were moving to obshchinas in order to live with "the people." And the Edwardian world was little different.

Hell, you could say that going off to India amounted to more or less the same thing.

And I think that it has to do, in large part, with the idea of authenticity.

An aspect of modern society has to do with a sense of alienation. The need, the desire, for authenticity is an attempt to reconcile this. The individual senses that something is not authentic, but cannot reconcile it because it is not understood that this is a product of commodification of material reality.

...Anyway, the exact opposite of what you're saying is a long known and studied phenomenon. Look up anything on, "gentrification," and it should come right up.