Is Liberalism Dead?
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to believe liberals believe in liberalism anymore.
With the obvious global meltdown of Keynesian economics, how could anyone remotely intelligent support the continued deficit spending that is driving the Western World into bankruptcy?
And yet a large proportion of our population still backs Barack Obama for a second term. Yes, some of this is due to the reactionary identity politics the Democratic Party has practiced for so many years and some to the large number of people working for the government and therefore voting their self-interest. Even so, it’s difficult to avoid this conclusion:
Liberalism as an ideology is in its death throes. Only the power trip remains.
An indication of this ideological flimflam is the recent braggadocio from various MSNBC hosts that Obama is really the King of Austerity and has spent less than other presidents. Apparently, this assertion was based on the misleading figures of an economist who lumped nearly a year of Obama’s expenditures under Bush, including at least half the stimulus, but never mind. What you have is MSNBC, of all paleo-liberal outlets, bragging about their man’s lower government spending. Whatever happened to liberalism?
Similarly, and for some time, the Democratic Party is running as far as possible from the Occupy crowd and the relentless demands. Most Democratic leaders know what the majority of the public knows. The Occupyers are retreads from the Summer of Love more likely to be freeloaders or con artists, even rapists, than people with something positive to contribute to society.
Democrats — more of them, I imagine, than will publicly admit it — are recoiling from Obama’s attack on Bain Capital as well, anyone with an IQ in triple-digits knowing private equity firms have more potential to revive our economy than recycled government programs out of some five-year plan.
Democrats and liberals are confused. They have to be.
Would that it were true. I’ve often wondered why seemingly intelligent people continue to so fiercely defend policies that are such demonstrable failures.
We are running huge deficits and a huge debt and we must do something about it. Okay, since lowering tax rates has been proven time and again to raise Treasury revenue, why then doesn’t everyone support lower tax rates? If we know it works, why don’t we all demand our elected representatives vote to lower rates?
We know government solutions just make things worse because it has been proven historically. So why do people support politicians that advocate government solutions?
I think it’s something to do with a clan or tribe mentality that can be illustrated by our love of sports and identification with a certain “team”. It doesn’t matter if our quarterback or star pitcher is a wife-beating thug that’s fighting a drug possession charge. We just want our team to win.
Once you identify with a team, be it democrat or republican, red or blue, you just want your team to win because then you see yourself as a winner, too. Nobody wants to lose or admit they’ve been wrong, even if America is the ultimate loser.
Ill,
You have raised an interesting observation about investment in an ideology. I have pondered your concept for several years and continue to wonder how you attract people to change their minds about such investments. Some, union types and academics, have no incentive to change as their economic future is tied to their liberalism. I wonder what events cause others to reform and change. I did, going from socialist at 19 to conservative at 21, all while attending a liberal university back in the 1980′s I observed too many poor results to continue to believe in Marxist doctine. The evidence contravened the rhetoric and theory. But thats just me.
“I wonder what events cause others to reform and change.”
Speaking for myself, the conversion away from the snuggly, pompous club of Liberal self-delusion and all of its self-aggrandizing (and patently false) pap was when I actually LISTENED to a few of the speeches of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
My conversion took a few more years to complete but leaving the big snuggly club of Leftism with all of its self-serving feel good assertions and the thought-free safety net of “comrades” of like mind can be quite a wrenching experience. I believe there are three basic types who naturally gravitate to Leftism: 1) The needy who desperately want to belong, 2) The guilty who desperately seek absolution for their superior talents or inherited “success”, and 3) The most dangerous of all, the Power Hungry pseudo intellectuals who specialize in packaging Leftist Theoretical Pornography and who demand that everyone thank them for assuming power over us all, since they are the most enlightened who have ever lived.
Your comments relate to something I’ve said often: Socialism works for the lazy and the powerful while the rest of us work for Socialism.
I agree. Having worked with numerous Liberals, I think you nailed it. It’s a cult with ideology replacing cognitive thought, which explains their continuous reliance on Gregorian like chants. Tribal and stone age in nature.
The power hungry pseudo-intellectual is our POUTS, a Gulager if there ever was one.
a serendipitous typo
I congratulate anyone who can see reality and have the guts to embrace it. There is an old saying, “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re still a liberal at 30, you have no brain.”
I know the sports team analogy is simplistic but I think it works for the vast numbers of uninformed liberals who vote D because that’s what their parents did. I grew up in a democrat household and my folks always voted democrat until Jimmy Carter. (They’ve been voting republican ever since.) As a young man, I had long hair and identified with the social causes of the 60′s but I always believed that I was “lib-eral” because I believed in “lib-erty” and individual freedom. And being young and naive, I assumed all the other liberals were for the same things. Being a liberal was being anti-government and pro freedom, at least in my book. Well, I’m still anti-government and pro freedom but apparently that’s 180 degrees from a being a liberal today. I didn’t change, they did – or they were lying in the first place.
They have become what they once protested and despised because once they got a taste of the power, they liked it.
I don’t get the sense that Democrats were lying or that they’ve changed their views per se since the ’60s. During the Civil Rights era the Dem Party conspicuously took up that cause across the board, black folks, women, gays, and still do.
I think the difference is that the Dems felt that since they had a righteous cause, that over the years that meant whatever they did was righteous, and they stopped checking themselves.
I think of it like us Americans during WW II: we thought we were in a righteous war and as the years passed afterwards, we simply assumed anything we did was the same – good. How else does one go from WW II to a war crime like Viet Nam?
So, how does the Dem Party go from defending against bigots and racists to becoming a party comprised of bigots and racists? Maybe that’s how.
There’s a difference between defending the cause of race and feminism and homosexuality and advocating those things. The first is trying to be equal, the second is a form of supremacy – in present day terms, moral supremacy, where, to be a woman, gay or person of color, is to be given a sheen of morality. It’s frickin’ scary hoodoo – it’s the same intellectual space as Goebbels. The Dems think they can do no wrong. How else can you blithely speak a completely racist and bigoted language, cozen racists, and be unaware of it?
“How else does one go from WW II to a war crime like Viet Nam?”
A tendentious accusation. Viet Nam policy was not a crime. It was, in many ways, an error. This is fairly clear once one realizes that it was a small sideshow in the tremendous effort to rebuild Europe after the physical devastation and near-universal bankruptcy caused by WW2. Unfortunately nobody bothers to explain any of this stuff to the voters. The simple form of the argument might go something like this -
1. The war against the Fascist alliance was over, but one of its consequences was that it left the Communists in a position to dominate the wreckage.
2. Key to the defense of Europe from a strong Soviet Union would be a strong Germany.
3. Key to the defense of Europe from a strong Germany would be a strong France.
4. But France was not strong, and likely would not become strong in the near future. Something about the disastrous battle of Verdun seems to have changed the French permanently. One can sympathize, but not ignore the problem.
5. So, if France isn’t strong, the next best thing is to pretend that it’s strong.
6. And part of that pretense was the fantasy that France remained a world power, with its colonies in Africa and Asia. The biggie in Asia was, of course, French Indochina.
This is where the US made an error. When even Britain was disposing of its colonies, the task of reconstructing France’s old empire was doomed to failure. However the basic Western strategic plan for Europe was a huge success. Not a complete success, of course – the reconstruction was along basically Socialist lines, and we can see right now how that’s working out. But at least most of the continent wasn’t submerged in the Soviet swamp for a half century.
The Democrats were in favor of civil rights in the 60s? That’s rich! It was the Democrats, led by Robert Byrd, who fought and filibustered the Civil Rights Act! Byrd, a former KKK recruiter, personally filibustered the Act for almost 12 hours.
When that failed, they concocted welfare to keep the blacks down on the new Democrat plantation, keeping them poor and dependent so they would never be a power in the country.
The Democrats haven’t “changed” to become bigots. They’ve simply become more honest about it.
“Being a liberal was being anti-government and pro freedom, at least in my book”
it was in the my and every liberal i knew book too. liberal use to fight against big brother now it is big brother. only it is not liberalism but progressivism in liberal clothing
…and even few liberals realize just how anti-liberal the “progressive” agenda actually is. It’s all about a ginormous state controlling everything. Maybe you can have sex with whomever and however you want, but your wallet – and your soul – belong to the State.
The roots of modern progressivism are there to see in the “scientific management revolution” in corporations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coupled with the “professionalization” of the civil service. The idea was build a sort of corporate democracy, with the democratic bits of government acting as a sort of corporate board, with a professional management bureaucracy running everything in the government – and in society. Leninism took this to its logical conclusion by having a single “state capitalist” corporate entity running everything, so it could “force the march” towards True Communism.
Frankly, I think we should go back to the old spoils system, where the President hired his buds to run the government. At least we’d be able to “throw the bums out” when we change Presidents. A professional, careerist civil service is fundamentally undemocratic.
And for liberals, supporting this sort of thing isn’t exactly “sticking it to The Man”.
“If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re still a liberal at 30, you have no brain.” That would be Winston Churchill.
Merkel of Germany is taking a beating for reining in the spending, standing accused of over the top restraint, of causing hyper austerity. Same with Greece. How is it that cleaning up after a global fiscal train wreck, with what seems like common sense solutions, can earn such an assault and it actually sells, even internationally, it sells? Leading the troops and tribe right over the cliff is selling. Just, amazing.
Simple: greed.
50% or more of the population gets rich off of stealing from the rest under the guise of “fair taxation”, “redistribution of wealth”, “punishing the rich”.
I see the problem as this: curiosity has been stigmatized for many centuries as an illicit passion, and so putative “liberals” are hedged round with anxiety about crossing the lines laid down by their Tory ancestors. I wrote about this here, with reference to HOUSE and the Sherlock Holmes go-it-alone tradition in literature and other media. See http://clarespark.com/2012/05/24/curiosity-and-the-femme-fatalejew/. If you want more on the campaign against “Captain Ahab”, i.e., Herman Melville/America, this is for you.
“I think it’s something to do with a clan or tribe mentality that can be illustrated by our love of sports and identification with a certain “team”.”
That sentence really showed you are on to something about the human condition.
That kind of zealotry in the face of reality can be really hard to explain. This human fault defies rationality and even rational people can succumb to its allure.
I see that kind of thing first hand living here in Pittsburgh; home of the Pirates. I have several close friends who are ultra-conservative, ultra-anti-Obama and well versed on the failures of socialism.
However, when it comes to the ‘Buckos’, despite two decades of failure and without any obvious attempts to improve or upgrade the “team”, they remain true believers. They argue angrily about how “this year will be different”. They protest loudly about how I just have to “keep up hope”. When I try to point out that the Pirates have a 20 year record of failure and that nothing significant has changed (and so, logically, things will remain the same) I am met with glassy-eyed blank stares and zombified mutterings that, “This year will be DIFFERENT”.
I think, therefore, that the only difference between liberals and conservatives is a matter of degree. We are all crippled with some sort of mental blindness; whether it is the attractiveness of our wives or the accomplishments of our local sports team. We all have a sacred cow that we refuse to believe could be anything but what we think it is – despite all evidence. I think the difference between conservatives and liberals is just that liberals have a lot more sacred cows.
No one pushes programs that they know will fail. our problem is that you beleive that we are all on the same team. No, Leftists aren’t on the same team as Americans. Leftists are all the people who can’t fit into normal society. Some simply aren’t Americans, as people (i.e., non-NW Europeans), some are sexual perverts, criminals, mentally ill, and just plain misfits and *ss-holes (Madeline Murray O’Hare). Not being acceptible to normal society, they have allied to try to destroy society. Marxism, homosexual rights, ecological terrorism, animal rights are rationales for attacking every aspect of existing society/culture. I think C.S. Lewis said that Leftism was an unceasing attack on everything normal.
I, Liberal
I’m sure that there could never be
A man as virtuous as me.
I’ve honed my precious self-esteem
In ways no common man could dream!
To feed my moral vanity,
I preen for all the world to see;
I thrust in everybody’s face
The noble causes I embrace.
And lest there be the slightest doubt
That I’m no bitter, clinging lout,
The bumper stickers on my Volt
Affirm that I’m no right-wing dolt.
As these credentials will attest,
I am the brightest and the best –
And true to my enlightened soul,
Utopia shall be my goal!
The planet should be mine to run;
I know what’s best for everyone.
My Nanny Squad will nag and scold,
Until the plebes do as they’re told.
My Social Justice Ministry
Will outlaw inequality –
With good intent unwavering,
I’ll redistribute everything!
I’ll be obscenely generous
With subsidy and stimulus;
To fund my drunken spending sprees,
The fat cats’ profits I will seize!
For those who fail, my heart will bleed,
But woe to those who dare succeed.
I vow to vanquish human greed –
To each according to his need!
There’ll be no want, there’ll be no war,
My Welfare Corps will feed the poor.
There’ll be no limit to my grace,
When I control the human race!
I’ll heal the Earth, I’ll low’r the Seas,
My Healthcare Force will smite disease –
And all will rightly worship me,
The Savior of Humanity!
Obamastiltskin is my name!
Nice work, Winslow, come the revolution you will be The People’s Scribe and Poet Laureate – now, how about a limerick?
Mine are not for a family publication.
Oh, now that is so good! Set it to music, you could be the next Gilbert/Sullivan!
The first two lines remind me a bit of Kilmer’s “Trees”. This can be sung to that tune or any with a similar meter. Even “Hernando’s Hideaway”!
…and where is my participation trophy?
Excellent!
I HAAAAAAATE POETRY
BUT…… BRAVO WINSLOW BRAVO
HUZZAH HUZZAH
I WILL PASS THIS ON!
I WANT TO HEAR MORE OF YOUR WORKS
Bravo, Winslow!
The liberal creed, indeed. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to forward this to everyone I know.
**smile** That was pretty cool.
Liberalism isn’t in its death throes so much as it’s a suicide bomber on his run.
Good one!
Liberalism and Islam are both dead ends, based upon lies. Vicious, counter-productive circles of blame and failure.
The Deep Insiders KNOW its all lies, (roe vs wade, mohammads bogus visions) and thus forbid all questions to its ligitimacy. It is Supreme because they say so, and all dissenters must be destroyed.
Neither system can bring dignity or prosperity to those forced to live under it. Perpetual Evidence of this fact simply enrages them, and they must destroy that which they do not control, to keep the Game alive. OWS, suicide bombers, eco-vandalism, Munich ’72.
Same mindset, same approach to “problem solving”
Failing up is the new form of colonization.
Land is already taken.
Automated or mechanized production has made posture and graft the largest industries in the world.
The good thing about Obama? His character (as in actor) brought this to the fore.
Now more people, like me, are deeply interested in how the world Really Works.
A shadow civilization, only partly visible, has been operating in tandem with capitalism for a century. The cracks are beginning to show.
OK with the idea of attacking the progressive/socialist bitter-enders now clinging to power — but we must remember that merely voting them out isn’t enough. There’s plenty of room for investigations and special prosecutors to ensure that charlatans like, say, Holder don’t get to merely grin and shuffle away to a K-Street sinecure.
Can we agree to drop the badly damaged word liberal? — it impedes clear thinking. Example: And yet….the polls still show Obama even with Romney. How can we explain this?
Well, Occam’s Razor: the biggest reason is that Romney is a very unattractive candidate. To the everlasting shame of the GOP/RNC, voters now have a choice between a paperweight and a doorknob. The election will be determined not by dumb idealogues on the left or by hapless federal troughers, but by angry voters who figure out the best way to deal with Hobson’s Choice. IMO, they’ll do just fine by delivering up Romney to the WH hamstrung like the trussed turkey he is.
Romney is in fact very well qualified. He is running a great campaign and will win decisively. He will make an excellent President. The polls which show him even with Obama generally oversample Democrats by 5-10%. Bernie Goldberg exposed the dishonesty behind liberal polling with in his book BIAS . The 10% who are now undecided will break 2-1 for Romney.
What are the differences between obama and Romney on the issues? I can’t find ANY.
Good boy, Devildogger. You get a raise!
No, best friends, Romney is an unattractive candidate in your opinion. My opinion is that he will make the best President since Reagan. ABO2012
Do some research on Romney’s history growing up, his early days in his marriage to Ann, his missionary work, how he handled the Olympics, Bain. He has done many, many good things. Like Terry & Jim, I believe he will make a good, if not great POTUS.
Romney will make a good or even great president. First of all, he is an adult, as compared to our adolescent-in-chief. Second, he’s comfortable in his own skin. He long ago accepted who he is and is self-assured and confident about who he is. Third, he is a moral man, strong in his faith and devoted to family. Fourth, he has business experience. Obama has never even run a lemonade stand or had a paper route, much less manage employees or make a payroll. Fifth, unlike our current president, Romney is a true American who loves his country. Obama is a foreigner culturally, and if you read his books, study his associates throughout his life, and really listen to what he reads off his teleprompter, you know that he is deeply anti-American.
I agree. He seems to have the same skills his father did and he hauled a lot of troubled companies out of the doldrums. Mitt, himself, has a good head for business and most important, he can see a problem and solve it.
How anyone can say he and Obama are the same needs new glasses. Obama couldn’t find his rearend with both hands and a compass even if he had a map. He’s in way over his head and seems to be doing all he can to torpedo his own campaign – one thing after another – think about it. It makes the thought of about half our country still thinking he’s a good president all the more puzzling. Any other candidate, having run out of feet to shoot, would have had an 8% approval rating.
You need to study Entrepreneurship 101 in Business School.
In 1982 my husband and two other engineers started an electronics communication company, initially working out of Al and Jane’s guest bedroom. Five years later the company employed 250 people.
Companies like Bain Capital funnel money to new and upcoming companies, with good ideas, good technology, and qualified, well-educated leaders. Bain didn’t fund my husband’s company, but another company like Bain did so.
Did they get their money back? Yes. Did they get multiples of their investment back? No. Bad timing. The 1999 high-tech bust wrecked their hopes of going public. C’est la vie. Bain lost $100,000,000 on trying to save the Kansas steel company. C’est la vie.
If you think the USA will be innovative or robust without the Bain Capitals of the world, you are either uninformed or delusional. Raul Castro “opened” up Cuba a few yeras ago to foreign investors and now they are quietly leaving. The Castro brothers are mafia-type thugs, demand “protection” payoffs to themselves and their friends, and there is no rule of law.
If the US government adopts a “Raul” attitude to business, and hostile to investors, I expect we will have eventually have Cuban living conditions.
If President Obama gave his anti-business speeches in Spanish, he would sound remarkably like the leader of the Cuban government.
I find NOTHING to appreciate about Romney, but “it’s his turn” after all, and we know how that works out.
The electorate is now so dumbed down, in every house a chicken in every pot, from the government, the people will go along to get along, with Romney.
Americans have figured out how to vote themselves largesse and democracy will fail. Romney is the quintessential example of the worst of Obama. Thankfully, those examples exuded from Romney and Obama are now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Vote for the Template to Obamacare. Vote Romney. LOL!
Democracy is meant to fail, it has never worked in this history of the world. Thankfully we are a republic and there is some protections to keep us from going down the road of democracy.
A mob is the purest expression of democracy.
You are thanking the Supreme Court and they haven’t done a damned thing yet? Don’t count on those goofballs. They allowed Government to take your property, under imminent domain, if your government can show that the private beneficiary of their theft can pay more taxes than you can for your property. This because higher taxes to the government translates as improving the “general welfare”. Government can declare imminent domain on my property in order to have a shopping mall built there, thanks to this Supreme Courts interpretation of the meaning of the “general welfare” in our Constitution and you think we should expect sanity from SCOTUS? I have other issues with your string of comments, but this one seemed to me to be the most egregious. ABO2012
You are too optimistic Roger. I work with dozens of Euro-Canadians and American liberals. They don’t even believe that the “blue state model” is in economic trouble. When it does fail, they will be convinced that “capitalist roaders” subverted utopia.
…and “stateless cosmopolitans”.
That’s rootless cosmopolitans.
Boy Roger, I would really like to believe your thesis, but I think it is unfortunately more likely that liberalism, progressivism, Marxism, what ever you want to lable it, is simply in a retrograde phase. I agree with your bankruptcy analysis, but not the conclusion of death.
Our population and the media, due to over 100 years of progressive nonsense and assault, have brought us to a group think that values ideology and emotion over fact and truth. We are a society that is now more influenced by feelings and theory, than science and logic. A dangerously large portion of our population, when shown fact, puts its collective hands over its ears, closes its eyes, stamps its feet, and cries out a monotone “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah!!” in an attempt to drown out unpleasant information. Conservative logic may prevail in our upcomming election, as it did 30 years ago, but look at liberalism’s advance since Reagan and Thatcher. Look at our societal norms now and our disassociation from fact.
No Roger, I am mightily afraid that we have so very far to go to overcome fantasy and replace it with reason. Too many voters have fallen for Marixist doctrine and the conventional Fabian thought that perniciously has seeped into the collective consience. It will take many years for that damage to be undone.
Liberalism might have returned to its corner with a split lip and bunged up eye, but it is drinking water as its cuts are cauterized by its team of media elites, academics, and union trainors. It’s early yet, there are many rounds to go, and the sustainers of falsehood are not going to go at all quietly.
That should have been “conscience”.
In the realm of science, the leftists have taken to distorting and falsifying results and then presenting that material as correct “science” at the highest levels. Then they try to preserve their positions by blocking publication in professional journals of valid studies that counter their assertions and by controlling grant money to prevent the funding of any work that could undercut their claims. The damage that is being done to “trust” in our scientific community will take years to undo. Groups like the AAAS have become the AAAPCS, American Association for the Advancement of Politically Correct Science.
Every few years some pundit announces that liberalism is dying. It hasn’t. It won’t Religions do not die.
Um, how about the Greek Gods, the Romans Gods, the Druids … Some religions do die.
But I see your point, liberalism is, by definition, a religion. It even has its own sacraments: abortion, selfishness and homosexuality (unless the miscreant is a Republican, at which point the left is obligated to mock and ridicule the conservative’s distorted lifestyles); ministers: Al Gore, Obama, Gloria Steinem, and any snake in Hollywood; and churches: public schools, town halls, union covens.
The Greek and Roman gods are alive and well. They’ve just relocated to Hollywood.
@Mr. Simon
“Our job is to bring them over. To make them comfortable.”
I disagree with you there. You cannot reason someone out of their beliefs, as liberalism is a quasi-religion, if they are not prepared to be honest with you or, mainly, themselves. It’s easier to dismiss and ignore anything that runs contrary to their misinformed opinions.
Ignorance remains bliss and if there are negative consequences to said beliefs they will not question their dogma, but make execuses and find others to scapegoat.
“You cannot reason someone out of their beliefs, as liberalism is a quasi-religion, if they are not prepared to be honest with you or, mainly, themselves.”
You’ve reprised what is, I believe, originally an aphorism of Jonathan Swift: You cannot reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into in the first place.
“Liberalism” of today is nothing like the Liberalism of old, “Classic Liberalism”. “Liberalism” today is objectively fascism.
The Democrat Party today is where the Communist Party in Russia was 40 or so years ago and the Left hasn’t had an original idea since FDR. Since the 60s, the Left has tried to make its thralls, including a permanent black underclass, as credulous as possible that they still care about them.
Given the current economic situation, it’s something that can’t last. When they look back, I think they’ll see the election of the Messiah as the worst thing that could have happened to them. He gave them everything they wanted as used his power the way they always have wanted to use it, and it was that which destroyed them.
Today with Marx I brew, tomorrow with Engels I bake
And then the hopes and dreams of millions, I will take
For very few yet know my sly little game
That Hussein Vissarionovich Obama is my real name!
For those who aren’t major history buffs, Vissarionovich was Stalin’s patronymic, what we in the West would call a middle name. Stalin’s real name was Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili; Stalin, meaning “Man of Steel”, was a pseudonym he adopted as a young revolutionary. Stalin’s father’s first name was Vissarion Djugashvili and the tradition in that part of the word was that the father’s first name became the “patronymic” of the son, therefore his son was Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili.
The last name is where your family is from. vili is son of. Djugash is place. Stalin was born in Gori by document but his father was most likely from Dzhugaani or someplace close to there. So he would have been Joe son of Vissarionovich from Dzhugaani or Jugaani as spellings are variable in that region depending upon the local dialect.
“Liberalism as an ideology is in its death throes. Only the power trip remains.”
Only the power trip and the entitlements, too. So long as you have a class of people willing to live off of the Federal government and all the benefits it can shovel out, you will have a substantial part of the population supporting liberalism. Just look at that stupid comic strip the Obama people put out concerning “The Life of Julia.” Some people thought it was silly. But, in fact, it was quite chilling, showing what an all powerful welfare state would do for its people and how much money and services people would continue to get from a liberal welfare state. So long as you have people like “Julia” out there making a living off of our government, you will have liberalism. Only when you dramatically shrink the size of our government will liberalism really take a big hit. Hopefully, that time will begin in November with the end of the Obama administration.
I posted this on as many newspaper websites as I am registered at. I know I am probably wasting my time. But if even one person stops and questions the sustainability for welfare statism, I guess it was worthwhile.
If you haven’t looked at the Treasury debt chart, you ought to do so. It is chilling.
“Well, Julia, Hope you enjoyed Head Start, and all the rest, because payback time is coming.
According to a US TREASURY website page, “HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC DEBT”, the public debt is $15,692,368,000, and your share and mine runs to $50,000 and change, and is growing by $5,000 a year.
See: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd_debtposactrpt_0412.pdf
Did you learn Algebra, Julia? No? Well I’ll run a regression curve for you on the growth of debt since 2006.. The debt-growth curve is looking perpendicular, dear, not so good.
Things are really out of control and it is all Bush’s fault! But wait, until 2006, when the Dems won both houses, public debt was $8 trillion. It is now $15 trillion. Good work, Dems!
Julia, the money the president spent on you was borrowed from China, Japan and Saudi Arabia. Right now we are able to pay them the interest, and they kindly roll over the principal.
However, things don’t look so good for 10 or 20 years out, when the Chinese and Japanese and Saudis may object to us stiffing them on interest or even principal. Who will be America’s best negotiators? Let’s send the crack Obama team that pummelled GM’s feckless secured creditors down to 10 cents on the dollar.
Let’s assume our negotiators fail. Our creditors want 100 cents on the dollar. What if our creditors force us into austerity? Think Greece and the EU troika. Could be unpleasant. Google: “Retired Greek pharmacist commits suicide”. for over a million hits. Mr. Dimitris Christoulas’ suicide note said he refused to root in a garbage dump for food.
Julia, since we elect grown-ups, we should give them a chance to prevent this mess from happening, But, just in case we run short on money to pay China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, what might they settle for instead of the cash? Property: We have Hawaii and Alaska, plus the military bases across the Pacific! Minerals? Wahoo – We could offer up our coal and oil rights in lieu of cash! Not enough? Well, we have brainy people. They want workers, serfs? Well, OK, what ages and how many?”
Liberalism will never die because you can’t kill stupid.
Enough of the people are stupid enough to think the government exists to hand them free stuff. Enough (well, practically all) politicians are willing to encourage them to gain power.
Stupid can be encouraged by turning schools into daycare centers full of feral children who learn nothing but feel really good about themselves and entitled to live like a rockstar simply because they exist. Stupid can also be forced by getting people on the dole long enough to break their wills and make zombies of them.
However, there may be a vaccine that can slow the spread. The simple question: Where does the money come from? If enough people get it into their heads to ask that any time a politician opens their mouth, maybe the contagion can be slowed or even reversed for a time. Stupid will always be there, it is up to the everyone else to keep it controlled before it wipes us out.
pseudo-liberalism is dying – it’s the liberalism of the “progressive” left, which is truly reactionary and racist.
true liberalism – classical liberalism – lives on, on the right.
“Maybe it’s just me, but I find it hard to believe liberals believe in liberalism anymore.”
Maybe true, but the ones I know have not given up. Some still beat the drum, others have gone full blown socialist claiming the government needs to run everything.
I think many of them are just hiding, cause the smart ones smell the end is near.
One other thing remains as well: the religion of liberalism. Remember:
– Propositions that can be proved or disproved: Mathematics
– Propositions that can be disproved but never proved: Science
– Propositions that can neither be proved nor disproved: Religion
I must add a qualifier to the above. An honest religion is protected against disproof by reliance on assertions that are impossible to disprove with objective evidence. Liberalism is protected against disproof only by the stubbornness of its adherents. Cite objective evidence that crosscuts their claims and they’ll simply reject it…usually by calling you a racist.
I suppose that makes liberalism a dishonest religion, or perhaps a cult. But many cults retain enormous power over the minds of their adherents. The results can be horrifying (cf. Jim Jones).
Beware. Moonies and Hare Krishnas only want your money. Liberals want your life — all of it.
“Propositions that can be proved or disproved: Mathematics”
Kurt Gödel might take issue with this.
(chuckle) Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Perhaps I should have been more precise: Only in mathematics do we encounter statements that are provable, though (according to the Incompleteness Theorem) an omega-complete mathematic — one that is capable of constructing self-referential statements — will also contain formally unprovable statements.
The fascinating thing about the Incompleteness Theorem is that Godel was unwilling to consider proof by contradiction as a specimen of formal proof. Take, for example, the classic Godel demonstrator:
Statement G: “Statement G cannot be proved within its mathematic.”
Statement G is obviously true, by contradiction. But “formal proof” in the Godelian rubric omits the possibility of a “two-pass” proof. All proofs in that vision must proceed linearly from postulates through implications to conclusion, without side trips or return matches. So one of the most important approaches regular people take to proof is disallowed.
Apologies. I used to play in that particular sandbox, and old habits die hard!
Nicely stated.
Couldn’t resist.
I object on the grounds that you just declared Christianity to be science and not religion, seeing as the Faith rests on the falsifiable but not empirically provable claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
(chuckle the 2nd) Your objection would have merit, if the Tomb of Christ had been kept under continuous surveillance, from the time of Jesus’s interment until He was first encountered on the road to Emmaus. That would lead to an arguable condition of falsifiability — arguable because eyewitnesses are not terribly trustworthy, and there were no objective recording devices in 33 AD. But apparently that was not the case…for reasons about which we of the Twenty-First Century can only speculate!
(Full Disclosure: I’m a devout Catholic.)
(Fuller Disclosure: I write Christian-tinged fantasy and science fiction.)
(Fullest Disclosure: Discussions of religion can be a lot of fun, but they also have their hazards. Keep them outside the home, away from sharp objects and flammable substances, and be sure to wear your knee and elbow pads. Remember, God loves you…God alone knows why.)
It is not power for the rank and file liberal/progressive; it is self identity. Their circle of friends, their social and charitable outlets and every thought is political and has been built up around their ideology. They have even raised their children with this ideology. The older they are the more entrenched. For some (professors, lawyers, government workers) it envolves their paychecks. To admit they are wrong now and really change would involve, too much. It is possible, but it is so hard most cannot unravel their lives without unraveling themselves. Most people are not that brave or strong.
We can hope for one thing. When they go into the privacy of the voting booth, and no one is watching, they do the right thing.
Liberalism is the rich man’s (or woman’s) inside game. Despite Warren Buffoon’s grandfatherly image, he a Mr. Inside working things to his advantage. He’s part of the environmental group that stopped the Keystone Pipeline. Why? So he can ship the Canadian oil on his railroad. Its like hiring the mob to carryout their wishes, only they “donate” to their favorite congressman/woman to do it for them. Then they buy “protection” by running around supporting increased taxes on the “rich”. At the same time, Warren has been fighting the IRS over a billion dollar of taxes. If Warren was really sincere in his beliefs, he would drop the case with the IRS and write the
check for a billion dollars.
No matter how much liberalism fails, they keep trying and they keep loading up the federal government with mandates, programs, bureaus, agencies, and laws. Because only the insiders with enough resources can possibly navigate such a labyrinth of government. Little guys are shut out or harassed like Gibson Guitars.
So you say they are for the poor and middle class. Ok they have lots of goodies for the freeloader class because they know they’ll always have the Peter vote if you rob Paul to pay for them. And they have just enough of the middle class hooked on entitlements that will clamor for their stuff, too. But, don’t they really care? No, no one who had this nation’s best interest in mind would trash the constitution at will. They aren’t constrained by much of anything. What they are really, really good at is accumulating power while appearing to be generous.
Maybe the thing ‘liberals’ have to be reminded of is that liberalism has been taken over by leftism. Liberalism isn’t dead. This country has a strong liberal tradition. But people who think the solution to every problem is a greater role for government are not liberals. They are leftists. Maybe conservatives can help with the revival of liberalism by insisting that leftists be called leftists not liberals.
Leftest have simply degenerated into a religious cult, abortion being their “holy” sacrement. You know you’re in a cult when you try to leave and they don’t let you. Look what they’re doing to Lovetz. The other lefties see what’s going on and are cowed into silence.
There are other sacraments. Climate change, ban the bomb, human rights and feminism. All these areas meld together for mutual support. Nerds are us. They have never forgotten being ostracized in High School.
I recently engaged in a political discussion at a party attended by many international guests. One of my comments regarding liberals was met by quizzical looks and head-shaking. It seems that Europeans maintain the classical definition of liberal, which is pretty much what Americans now call libertarian.
What power is it that the left has that lets them hijack perfectly good words that we all agree mean a particular thing and twist them to their Orwellian ends? I’m old enough to remember when “gay” meant “happy.” Within a few weeks of the first time I heard it used as a descriptor for homosexual, I heard a homophobe use it pejoratively.
The effect of changing what you call something on the attitudes toward the thing itself are fleeting. It’s hardly worth the havoc it plays on our ability to communicate ideas. Still, it plays into one of the notions that rules on the left, that you CAN pick up a turd by the clean end.
This essay is predicated on accepting the communized corruption of the term liberal, and not the actual meaning.
Accoding to the free dictionary:
1. The state or quality of being liberal.
2.
a. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.
b. often Liberalism The tenets or policies of a Liberal party.
3. An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.
4. Liberalism
a. A 19th-century Protestant movement that favored free intellectual inquiry, stressed the ethical and humanitarian content of Christianity, and de-emphasized dogmatic theology.
b. A 19th-century Roman Catholic movement that favored political democracy and ecclesiastical reform but was theologically orthodox.
Many who call themselves liberal, or conservative for that manner might look at this and retch and say they are not liberal. Fair enough.
However to me there is nothing liberal about being financially stupid , nor about being anti liberal. There are real rifts between authentic liberalism and conservatism but human liberty is really not one.
“a. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.”
1. Left-liberals do not believe in the natural goodness of humans. They believe in the natural goodness of certain classes of humans, who must be defended against certain other classes of humans who are naturally bad.
2. Left-liberals do not believe in the autonomy of the individual. They believe the individual is part of a collective and must function primarily as a member of the collective.
3. Left liberals favor civil and political liberties only insofar as they do not conflict with #2. It is also an article of faith that only the bad classes of humans are able to exercise their civil and political liberties, while the good classes are kept powerless and disenfranchised. It is this power imbalance that makes the good classes good and the bad classes bad.
4. Left liberals favor government by law – the more the better.
5. Left liberals do not believe in the consent of the governed. The governed are a client class who must be cared for by an educated, wealthy, enlightened patron class (themselves).
6. Left liberals believe that arbitrary authority is acceptable when used in a good cause – usually to protect the good class of humans from the arbitrary authority of the bad class.
4. Left liberals favor government by law – the more the better.
I disagree with this statement. If you mean that liberals favor laws or edicts that further left-wing ideology, then you are right. However, I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said that America is not a nation of men, but a nation of laws. That is why we operate under the Rule of Law. The liberals would like to do away with the Rule of Law.
Once again, I encourage people to read Hayek’s brilliant book, “The Road to Serfdom.” In particular, read the chapter on the Rule of Law. Lefi-wing governments such as fascism, socialism, and communism must eliminate the Rule of Law in order to impose their liberty-crushing policies. This is why democrats/liberals think our Constitution is a pesky nuisance.
Liberalism is face paint, tiger fatigues, camouflage for Communism. More than the death of liberalism, it is undergoing a metamorphosis into its full-fledged Marxist, despotic end state; shucking its worn out shell … and the Democratic Party. Now, we need to figure out how to drive a stake through the heart of this matured and vibrant Marxism.
I wish people would stop asking this stupid question.
“Liberalism” in the form of socialism and outright communism is doing just fine.
Nearly half the people in this country don’t pay taxes; over a quarter are on some sort of public assistance. “Liberals” control the government of pretty much ever urban area. They control most of education (i.e. they’re in our kids brains…). The People’s Democratic Republic of California is circling the bowl because it can’t imagine spending less on Unions and public assistance freebies. “Liberals” pretty much control both houses of Congress. The presumed GOP candidate is the former governor of the Bluest State in the Union. Anyone who thinks he’s a conservative is outright deluded.
It is us conservatives who should be asking “How much longer can we hold out?”
“Liberalism”, will never die, it’s proponents control 90% of media contact hours with the public, 90% of the educational apparatus in the US, it’s tentacles are so deep in EPA, DOJ, and State that the cancer is inoperable.
Plato said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” JustAl says, “Only the delusional think the enemy is just going to go away”.
As Marshall Mcluhan might have put it, the power trip is the ideology. Deception goes part and parcel with liberalism. That has been the case for decades. And it is not even a particularly convincing deception, and has not been for decades. But it works because it is the philosophy of the “in” crowd. As long as that is the case, liberalism will be alive and kicking and thriving. With Obama still the favorite to win in November, with Obamacare still the law of the land, with Obama’s “open mike” moment now successfull burried by the media, with the HHS mandate only receiving timid opposition, it’s hard for me to see liberalism as anything but alive and thriving.
The only thing that will change this is a counter-narrative. And that has to come from liberalism’s opponents, i.e., Republican politicians. They need to articulate, and they need to criticize, and do it in a confident, blunt, non-apologetic manner. No more phoney “civility,” no more floating “above the fray,” no more cringe-inducing and unjustified compliments made about Obama, and no more passive submission to reporters’ take on the issues. They need to act like they are the “in” crowd, rather than hoping the cool kids will allow them to sit at the end of their table at lunchtime. When people see there’s an alternate “cool,” when they see that Republicans aren’t embarrassed by who they are, when they see Republicans arguing instead of forever “reaching out” behind closed doors, liberalism will have a chance of dying.
Liberalism isn’t exactly dead, it’s just that those who call themselves liberal are really not and those that still are actually liberal have migrated to the right leaving the commies, braindead left, permanent welfare class and unionized rent-takers behind.
There’s a great book about these types. By Thomas Sowell, it’s called ‘The Vision of the Anointed.’ I’m reading some chapters online. Although it’s from the mid nineties, it’s as apt today as it was then.
They don’t change much! That’s what he calls liberals – the ‘Anointed’. That says it all really. According to him they see us more conservative types as the ‘Benighted’………..
Is liberalism dead? As the Professor periodically posts:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.” (Robert Heinlein)
Liberalism isn’t dead. It may change its name to Marxism, Progressivism, Communism, Socialism, Crony Capitalism, Feudalism, Environmentalism, Collectivism, the Divine Right of Kings, or Democratic Republics but the intent is always the same – to concentrate power in the hands of a few, stifle competition, destroy property rights for the many, and rule the unwashed with an iron fist.
You may have seen the PBS show about Niall Ferguson’s six “killer applications” (competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic) that led to the rise of the West. All of them have been under attack for the last 80+ years with the purposeful intent of concentrating power at the national level. We’ve seen an all-out assault on “We The People” in the name of “the people” by politicians who wish to return us to man’s nature state of abject poverty. This country was founded on competition with independent Republics… those are now gone; this nation was founded on individual property rights (called democracy by Ferguson)… those are now gone by judicial or regulatory fiat; this nation was founded on a work ethic where you got to keep the fruit of your labors… now the “fairness mob” rules and only fools work; science… yeah, we’ve got your consensus; medicine… how ’bout that nationalized healthcare, no more innovations for you; consumerism… “we own 2% of the world’s oil reserves and we’re using 20% of the world’s supply”… you’ll use what we tell you to use and you’ll like it.
So no, liberalism isn’t dead, it’s going to be re-branded as “bad luck” or “unintended consequences” but the result will be the same… poverty, disease, wars, famine and barbarism. We could sure use some hope and change about now…
“Liberalism as an ideology is in its death throes. Only the power trip remains.”
———————–
Not so long as the Left control our schools and universities.
The higher education bubble may help take care of that.
And the public employees unions are doing their level best to create and pop the education bubble in the public schools (k thru 12). Cheers -
“Is liberalism dead?”
I dunno about dead or alive, people defend what they call classical liberalism and contrast it with the obvious morass of today’s progressives.
I’m ashamed to be living in a country where the accepted level of debate over the public airwaves is so stupid. In recent months, “progressives” have tried 3 of the dumbest arguments imaginable, to wit:
1. there is a republican war on women;
2. the attack on “private equity”;
3. (trotted out yesterday) the Obama administration has lowered spending as a percentage of whatever by 60%.
The stupidity of what apparently comes out of “strategy sessions” in the Oval office boggles the mind. These people are desperate and/or their working assumption is that every American is as dumb and as gullible as their base.
If purveyors and promoters of such ignorance, whatever label they wear, are wiped off the map, or at least wiped out of Washington DC, the country can only be the better for it.
Thank you, Roger… you echo what I have tried to convince many conservatives of for some time now.
That most leftist, especially the elite, KNOW that they are wrong… but will throw anyone or anything under the bus, even just to hold on to what they have. But they will never ever admit it. Because if they did, their base of power, the almighty state and all its perks, would come crumbling down.
Tragically, there is no arguing with the 20% leftist minority. Like spoiled children in adult bodies, they simply don’t care… because they want what they want, regardless of consequences.
It is the rest, conservatives and mainstream Americans, that need to be warned about and be made aware of the destructiveness of the left.
November, 2012. ABO
“Our job is to bring them over. To make them comfortable.”
They will have nothing of that. Remember, to them, we are all a bunch of knuckle-dragging, room-temperature IQ’d, redneck hayseeds.
Our job is to defeat them. Preferably without spilling blood but I fear that one day, it will be necessary if we are serious about preserving our basic freedoms & human rights.
“Bring them over”? Bring them over to what, Mr. Simon? A movement that refuses to invest in the future as it continues to obsess over legislating what goes on in people’s bedrooms? A movement that’s only uniting characteristics is a collective hatred of everyone else not associated with the party? A movement that has so irrevocably lost the youth vote that it’s only winning move is to keep them from voting? A movement that mindlessly rants against regulation of any kind? A movement that boos homosexual soldiers, cheers for the death of the uninsured, and reflexively defends its Limbaughs against all criticism, regardless of whether it is deserved? This is a dying movement of blowhards, grifters, sociopaths and fanatics. This is a movement running on the fumes of hatred, victimhood and PAC money. If it could be summed up in a phrase, it would be “I’ve got mine, **** you.”
Sure, the liberal ship is rickety and has a few leaks, but at least it is still manned by a crew that cares for the fate of this country, as opposed to the craven profiteers of the GOP who daily pimp this nation out to China and Saudi Arabia. As long as your vaunted movement is merely a long con based on duping the religious right into buying Palin books and voting for paid-for candidates who will do the bidding of the Kochs, yours will continue to be a movement that anyone with any moral fiber will avoid like the plague.
“A movement that’s only uniting characteristics is a collective hatred of everyone else not associated with the party?”
The Democrats famous love for everyone not associated with their party was exemplified very recently by their attack on S.E. Cupp in Hustler. See this article for more information: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/24/fellatio-photoshop-of-conservative-pundit-sparks-outrage
Oh, forgive me, but please remind me which congressional seat Larry Flynt holds? Oh, he doesn’t hold one? Them please tell me which liberal or Democrat organization that Mr. Flynt spearheads? Oh, you mean he’s just some nut who runs a nudie mag? Well, then, good day to you sir.
Well, when Bill Clinton was in the midst of Trousergate Mr. Flynt very sportingly came to his aid with an offer to “out” various GOP congressmen whom Flynt claimed were hypocritically carrying on their own extra-marital affairs. He made the offer to the Democratic party organizaiton which (reluctantly I expect) turned him down.
I doubt if Larry would make a similar offer to the Republicans if a prominent GOP officeholder found his wick in a similar fix.
Aren’t you Leftist freaks (and I mean that in the best possible way) always wailing on about money in politics (except, of course, when it goes to Leftist candidates)?
Well then that’s why Flynt matters – he generates money for your ‘rats. Ergo, he has influence over politicians. You guys demonize the Koch brothers (the largest union employer in the U.S., BTW) and then question why Flynt matters.
A smart, enlightened, member of the annointed should have been able to figure that out for yourself.
Good ol’ Pastor,
Please keep believing the voices in your head. You are likely in for one hell of a rude awakening on the 6th of November.
Poll after poll, state by state show that your hero and his merry band of wealth destroyers are turning off a majority of the electorate. The President opened a campaign office in Oregon three weeks ago because internal polling showed him up only 4 points. That would be akin to a Republican being in trouble in Texas.
Your candidate may still win, but he has an awful lot of blue territory to defend and his poll numbers are slipping alarmingly in states like Wisconsin, Colorado, and Florida.
Keep calling people names and maligning free markets and free enterprise. Sounds like a winning formula to me.
The alternate reality of the liberal mind. Wait until the “youth vote” gets a gander of these stats.
http://www.theunion.com/article/20120522/NEWS/120529976/1001%26parentprofile=1053
“Sure, the liberal ship is rickety and has a few leaks, but at least it is still manned by a crew that cares for the fate of this country”
—–
Hmmm, so how does that jibe with:
“We don’t have a plan, but we know we don’t like yours.” — Timmy Geithner
I would think that to care for the fate of the country, you would, y’know have a plan and maybe pass, or at least propose, a budget once in a while.
The Dems are adopting the McCawber School of Economic Philosophy and hoping that “something will turn up” because they don’t care about the fate of the country as much as they care about keeping their phony-baloney jobs.
Don’t think so, Roger. This New Age of liberalism is as much a way of life as Sharia. Every ‘progressive’ I know is smitten with their “religion.” It dominates every thought, every conversation, every decision.
These progressives are as vested in their way of life as any rabid fanatic and you cannot speak to these people for two minutes without the conversation turning toward politic. I know – my neighbor is avowed socialist in one of the most conservative zip codes of America.
Case in point:
She’s a master gardener and I asked her the other day about a plant. Not 30 seconds into the conversation, the discussion had turned to global warming, the idiocy of the XL Pipeline running over an aquifer, and how France does it so much better than the United States. NPR was blaring in the background. I tried my best to get back to small talk to no avail. She could not leave her agenda alone.
The divide is too great. Either we declare war and win it, we separate ourselves from their ilk, or we go down with their sinking ship.
And we are fooling ourselves if we think beating them at the ballot box this election is the answer.
Right you are, Tex. You’ve covered the bases. American Marxists (euphemisms like “left”, “liberal”, “progressive”, mislead) have for decades set themselves to the work of destroying civil society from within while conservatives naively ask why should they want to do such a thing. The pillars of faith among the pre-marxist Left were long ago abandoned, serviving today as instruments of aggression. In that connection your reference to Sharia is a just one. Similarly your reference to war; they are at war with the rest of us, and we haven’t bothered to notice. Time we did. There’s no persuading this lot; they will only understand utter defeat.
Note to self: meant to write “surviving”.
I don’t think it’s that liberalism is dead. Jim Crow is dead, which is a good thing; women do have equal rights; we no longer lock up homosexuals as criminals or as mentally ill; so there have been some good, important reforms. The problem with modern “liberalism” is that it has been co-opted by marxists. And marxism, economically (along with every other aspect) speaking is a failure. Liberals are going to have to purge themselves of the marxists in their midst, if they have the will to do so. Frankly, I’m not sure they do.
We have a large number (about 130) of those marxists sitting in our House of Representatives and making policy and laws for us. They’re known as the Progressive Congressional Caucus and the Black Congressional Caucus. Go to their websites to read their mission statements, which are loaded with communist code words, such as “social justice” and “economic justice.”
You know their names: Lynn Woolsey, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Sheila Jackson Lee, Emmanuel Cleaver, Pete Stark, and the list goes on. How did American voters elect socialists and communists to govern our country? These politicians live a lie. If they told the voters what their true ideology is, they would not be elected. And this is the problem with left-wing ideologies: they are so abhorrent to normal people that they must be masked to make them palatable. It is stunning that these communists think their ideology is so great and so good for people that the truth about it cannot be told for fear that it would be rejected. Does this make sense to anyone other than them?
Allen West called them out as communists a few weeks ago and was widely derided. That doesn’t change the truth about them. They are communists and they want to destroy everything that America was founded upon and replace it with a left-wing utopia.
Roger, my friend…by now you know what I am going to write, I imagine.
There are no liberals, the radical leftists ate them whole.
Frankly, the “liberals” who remain, are simply in love with the idea of liberalism and won’t detach from the pastel images of their fading self-portrait.
Liberals NEVER advance (out loud, or on purpose) the radical leftist arguments. They NEVER admit the existence of radical leftism. They refuse to acknowledge the abject failures of fiscal irresponsibility. They wallow in denial at the hypocrisy of journalistic conspiracy, their serial “projections” concerning tolerance, their fascist indoctrination techniques, their closed door and closed mind policies on hiring and promotion, the treatment of women by leftist power players who always get a pass and their divisiveness, nee treason against this land of ours, against Israel and and people of faith with a Judeo-Christian moral underpinning.
Anyone remaining who averts their gaze from the destruction being wreaked by radical leftists, clinging bitterly to “peace, love, dove” and Woodstock images is in love with the idea of having an idyllic identity, encased in a protective bubble against the thuggery, treason and jackbooted fascism that post-modern radical leftism is today is delusional.
We should stop calling them liberals. They are nothing of the kind. They also are not “progressive”, “elite” or even “academic”. The radical leftist is nothing but a spouter of the Inversion Narrative…combined with the Wayback Machine Narrative.
The latter being a cynical attempt to take yesterday’s societal issues and trying to pin them to today’s reality. Pollution…is today global warming. Every conflict is Viet Nam. They try desperately to keep racism alive as it existed in the 60′s, so every non-leftist is a racist. They subvert the truth about who hates Israel and the Jewish people and who defends them today. They serially slander the South and devout Christians, even venturing into drawing a line in the sand against Catholics today.
They now spit on the Constitution, thumb their noses against the Rules of the Senate, dare us to complain that they won’t produce a budget, sue our own border states, and are openly hostile to capitalism, the free market and business in general.
How is any of that “liberal”? It isn’t. It is extreme radical leftism.
Worse, they also openly have a Propaganda and Lies Ministry that is willing to forge documents, photoshop pictures, stage events, edit out key words, fuzzy up key visuals, distort, conspire and gang rape the information stream.
The Occupy swine are actually more intellectually honest than the self-delusional character still calling himself a “liberal”. They are anarchists looking for an overthrow, but only one will admit it.
The only way to detach someone from their desperate clinging to a dead idyllic dream is to wake them from it. Unfortunately, they will never believe us. They are brainwashed and brain dead. They can no longer think or reason for themselves, so only the most honest and brilliant would “cross over”.
You see, Roger…they didn’t just paint “their” side in all pastels, they painted our side very dark and dangerous. You have to change the images of BOTH paintings. Not going to happen. The radical extreme leftists own all the main canvases and almost all the paint. For every one we put up, they put up 100000 that reinforce the Big Lies. Everyone they know believes as they do. How could they all be wrong?
Reality is thundering down the mountain like an avalanche. In Greece, in much of Western Europe, in the Middle East, around the globe.
The wakeup call is coming, Roger.
I fear it will come too late. For us all.
“Liberalism” is in fact anything but. It was a tool used by early to mid 20th century communists to sabotage Western culture. The mistake they made was trying to pretend to be libertarians. This was going to create a problem for them down the road, because libertariansm – the philosophy – was never repudiated by them. Now they have the problem of trying to go against this libertarian element in Western culture, which is alive and well.
Of course, they never were libertarian, but were able to pretend to be by pushing liberty only when it has something to do with sex. The donkeys aren’t even interested in legalizing pot. Their non-libertarianism is becoming more and more transparent.
This is what’s going to kill them. They can’t talk the masses out of believing that liberty is a good thing, and at the same time, can’t become more authoritarian without making their contempt for liberty in the abstract more obvious.
Culturally, Marxism, which is coming up on 200 years old, is eventually going to become so mainstream that future generations are going to rebel against the “liberal”/Marxist establishment. They won’t disappear, but they’ll become as marginal as the ideological racists. Marxism can’t be “cool” forever, because it’s so old and establishmentarian.
The answer is simple: Liberalism seeks to judge people based on their intentions, rather than their actions. That is what makes it an attractive ethos. It requires nothing more than one simple feeling. Embracing any other ethos (save nihilism) requires effort, which is something most people shy from.
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830′s, describes the Obama administration in his seminal work, Democracy In America.
“Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
Well put. Liberalism is dying but it may not go out with a whimper. Dems could lose big in November and unleash retaliatory hell on those ungrateful Romney and Republican voters during the Lame Duck session. I hope they have the decency not to; I think most dems in Congress will be tempted to but will recoil from doing anything. But one dem, the one in the WH, will probably not be so restrained.
If liberalism dies, then we will have nothing to save us from the religious authoritarianism of the right.
Authoritarianism on the left is way more threatening than far right religious extremists.
The only thing Leftists are interested in preserving or have, historically, ever been interested in preserving, is their own authoritarianism, their own pissant power.
Every move, every promise, every new burdensome law is directed to that end, and that end only.
If the conservative movement is successful in “defeating” the left, the result will be unquestionably this:
Step 1: Wholly bought elections. With no one fighting for campaign finance reform or against unlimited spending on campaigns, all elected officials will either be puppets in suits or independently wealthy. But the result is the same: elected officials who no longer represent their constituency, but merely the corporate interests who bought their congressional/senate seat. The point is, you the people no longer have a voice in a conservative government. Laws will be passed secretly. Sentences for minor offenses will be expanded. New crimes will be invented to funnel you into private prisons. Debtors prisons will be established to put the poor to work for the benefit of private companies. Private security companies will operate within the U.S. with immunity. But that’s fine, isn’t it, because the conservatives are in charge!
Step 2: Consolidation of power. The police, private security, FBI, and other para-military groups patrol your neighborhoods, cities and states looking for immigrants, leftists, homosexuals and other “enemies of the state”. Sometimes, though, they accidentally disappear the wrong person, or a routine traffic stop ends up with your belongings being confiscated. Or one of your daughters gets “detained” for a night and comes back pregnant. But look, its only temporary until we can find and lock up all these evil liberals. As soon as we get them all, everything will be back to normal! And hey, look at all these national security and corrections facility jobs we’re creating! Now shut up and go to church.
Step 3: The big economic clampdown. Now that the state is in lockdown under the guise of defeating the remnant of the leftist insurrection, times are tough. The majority of the nation’s wealth is in private hands, so good luck getting a loan to start your small business without swimming with the sharks. And also, good luck getting customers for your business: now most of your friends and neighbors get paid in company scrip, as there are no more labor laws. Maybe if you’re fortunate to have a pretty, articulate daughter, you might be able to marry her into the American aristocracy; otherwise, look forward to a life of hardship. Your best best is to fight in the neo-crusades or, if you’re clever, put yourself $500k in debt to go to law school. Otherwise, its wage slavery for you, your wife, and your 5 year old. Hopefully you don’t have a very pretty wife, because the factory foreman has a reputation, and did we mention there are no more labor laws or workplace discrimination/harassment laws? If she’s too pretty, we suggest a Stars n’ Stripes burka. And schooling? Please! The factory floor is the only schooling your child will ever need! On the other hand, you could pony up 100k annually to send your kid to the David Koch Americans Prospering Americanly Charter School, but of course, the board would have to approve your child, and seeing that one of your family members was once imprisoned for having an abortion, we’re just not sure you’re the “right” kind of people for our school. Have we given up a little freedom here and there? Sure. Is it regrettable? Of course, but it could be so much worse! Those terrible liberals could still be in charge! Remember how horrible that was?
That’s a real sad story. I’m trying to hold back the tears.
It will be a cold day in hell before I’ll look to anyone resembling a modern day liberal to stand up for anything remotely resembling freedom and liberty.
These people are doing anything and everything in their power to shut down any speech or activity in opposition to their ongoing power grab, shamelessly using any and all extra-constitutional organs of the government they have so happily grown.
Pastor,
You seriously need some help with your paranoia. You’ve lost a tight grip on reality.
I rather doubt that the grip was all that strong to begin with.
When this well-reasoned, totally non-glue-huffing scenario comes to pass, and we victorious religio-pluto-fascists are press-ganging the 99% as our personal serfs, I call the Pastor for my landed estate! His aggrieved lectures will never get old:
PASTOR: Come see the violence inherent in the system!
OVERSEER: [clonk]
Thanks, I needed a laugh!
If you actually believe the stuff you wrote, you’re too totally detached from reality to be safe in public. Really. You shouldn’t be allowed out without a minder.
Standard leftoid tactic, as perfected by the Democratic Party. Always accuse your opponents of trying to do what you yourself are either trying to do, or just tried to do but were thwarted.
Perhaps the clearest recent example was the 2000 election. The Dems threw that into the courts, whereupon the solidly Dem Florida court tried to rewrite election law on the fly; pure banana republic stuff. The Republicans responded by putting the matter to the Supreme Court, which ordered the election to proceed according to the Florida laws already in place. That was the least damage the courts could do to the electoral process; a wise move by the Supremes. That bothered the Dems not a whit – for the next eight years they shrieked that Bush was the President “by selection, not election”. But “selection” was inevitable from the moment the Dems themselves tried to pervert the election with the help of a compliant state court. To Democrats, the innocent Republicans are as guilty as the Democrats tried to be.
Democrats are a disgrace to America.
Oh yes, those dangerous right-wingers. They sure are out there somewhere…
Here’s a little principle that you should consider. I call it “fight the current threat”. Right-wing tyranny is hypothetical danger. Left-wing tyranny is a current danger.
And if the day ever comes that we face right-wing tyranny, it will be us American conservatives who will fight that too. You Lefties will join it, just like so many French socialists got with the program when the Nazis came in.
Think about it this way, if you really had the guts and gumption to stand up to religious tyranny, you’d be standing against Islamism. After all, everything that is so scary in your fever dreams about Christianity, thrives in Westernized Islam right here and right now.
Be a man.
The religious right is much more willing to avoid intruding on individual freedom than any of the leftists. And, I don’t even approve of the religious right.
I’m sure the 100 million plus people murdered by the secular leftists because they didn’t agree or were simply “surplus people” and the hundreds of millions more who lived or are living under leftist police states will beg to differ.
One reason the liberals are still here is the dying support of the Blue Model. Big Labor, Big Business, and Big Government are on the defensive but are still strong enough to slow the demise of themselves and their leftist political supporters.
None other than “liberal” Camille Paglia declaiming on the subject of liberalism, about 3 years ago:
“Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new
religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been
reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the
working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of
salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which
used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of
government power.”
“The problems on the American left were already manifest by the late
1960s, as college-educated liberals began to lose contact with the
working class for whom they claimed to speak. (A superb 1990
documentary, “Berkeley in the Sixties,” chronicles the arguments and
misjudgments about tactics that alienated the national electorate and
led to the election of Richard Nixon.) For the past 25 years, liberalism
has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style
that I often find preposterous and repellent.”
Me too, Camille.
It isn’t Liberalism, but the Democratic Party at the national level, that is moribund, mainly because they threw their liberals out in favor of looting the government in the guise of old-fashioned, dustbin-quality socialism.
And don’t look now, but elements of the Republican Party at the national level are chomping at the bit to get their chance. Remember what happened to the budget under Ronald Reagan? The tax cuts got made, but not the spending cuts, and that feeding at the trough noted by David Stockman did make trouble for us, later. A Romney administration will have the same problem. It’ll be a lot better than the present administration, though, especially if the TEA Parties can act as a restraint.
If you want to hear Classical Liberalism, tune in to Zell Miller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXSQ5BX6YXg
or read “A National Party No More.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/people-exposed-organic-foods-judgmental-self-righteous-study-article-1.1082048
Seems that organic food makes you a jerk, and liberalism is just the same.
You believe that by being virtuous, you get a pass to be the goon you long to be.
When people realize that and that it is simply a justification to impose your will on others, then it will be properly dead. I has happened before here, and will happen again.
When was the last time you heard of anyone defended eugenics after WWII?
We haven’t gotten very far from 1653 have we?
Given in the House of Commons by Oliver Cromwell
20 April 1653
“… It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartere’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.
“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”
Hopefully, Cromwell is still burning in hell for his slaughter of Irish citizens. He is in select company there with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the other mass murderers in history. Oh, and Henry the VIII who declared himself a deity and initiated policies that Cromwell followed through on years later.
Seeing Cromwell in with those beauties would be about as convincing as spotting Mother Teresa in a “Girls Gone Wild” video. Quite a stretch.
I appreciate PJ Media and all the wonderfull dialouge that is produced here, If anyone here watched Babylon 5, this will make sense. When the Vorlons and Shadows left, after the final shadow war, the minions of the Shadows and Vorlons were left to continue what they were taught. The analogy of that program to the unraveling of cold war and the failed idealogies of Marx and “Controled” Free market capitalism is the reality of our world now. Post revolutinary America was drafted by a small group of courageous men who “lost it” when a beverage became more expensive due to a tax by a king of the most powerfull nation of its day. This is the true narative of our nation, which for the past two generations has been removed from the minds of the young. We are at an inflection point, The Obama term, maybe the penultimate expression of the end of this post Shadow war,and low and behold who comes back from the dead.. Captain America, the epilouge still has not been written
True, but I don’t think liberalism will die because it’s adopted a Utopian goal that can never be fully achieved.
So you’ll post BS from posters like the Muppet troll, but suppress comments by dedicated PJM readers like myself? Good luck making THAT kind of Leftist filth feel comfortable. This place is going down hill fast.
I may be leftist filth, but I write in grammatically correct sentences devoid of purposefully misspelled racial slurs or threats of violence. Maybe try that and your comments won’t get removed next time? Just saying.
“may be leftist filth.” It’s wishful thinking on your part to believe there is any slightest hint of ambiguity about the matter. There is more uncertainty about Barney Frank’s sexual orientation.
You’re one of the best reasons I’ve seen here to wish the management would install an “ignore” button.
Say what? A molester of moppets?
Muppet is unteachable, and, as such, typical of leftist brainlock syndrome.
Clinging to a body of cant and dogma, they are physiologically unable to adapt or change.
Not well people.
Elizabeth Warren Indian Love Call – Sad Hill News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWbrtzCb0HE&feature=player_embedded
you are confusing liberals with progressives. progressives have over taken the liberals and tried to silence them. i think you will find a lot of them in the tea party…lol. that’s right, we did not go home, sit down and shut up as ordered to by our (self) proclaimed (self) righteous intellectual superior progressive elite . progressives have destroyed the liberal democratic party and that is why liberal independents, like me, have suddenly found themselves labeled as conservatives. i will not vote democrat again unless they rid themselves of progressives even though I have much more liberal views than most republicans as i have NO views in common with progressives.
I think a lot of “Liberals” are Democrats who have been hoodwinked like those occupiers who chanted along with the guy who was saying, “And you can have sex with animals, if you want to.”
I sincerely doubt many of the occupiers at that rally, who chanted right along with the ringleader, actually embraced that notion. But chant along, they did.
Now, how many people in the US consider their political party affiliation to be akin to a family legacy, like religion, or sports team fandom? So, when “Democrat ’cause grandpap was” folks toe the party line, right down to redistribution and class warfare, along with greenism and all the rest of the stupidity, they may be experiencing an internal struggle, cognitive dissonance, between what they think they’re supposed to believe, and what their party of choice is selling, that election cycle.
And more of them, regular Americans with families and (one hopes) jobs or businesses at risk because of the Progressives who control their party, have to be waking up. ‘Cause if they don’t, they’ll be led blindly into the abattoir, along with the true believers. =’[.]‘=
Is liberalism dead? I don’t know, but just about every year there’s a deer hunter killed by a supposedly dead Bambi. Seems like a lot of liberal democrats are starting to bail on a President who didn’t turn out to be a classical liberal after all. I guess they got tired of having their ox gored.
Frankly I don’t see this at all.
The Deal with Jack Hunter: Goodbye to Conservatism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TS4KCaoAGM
Liberalism stands as the anti-Conservativism. Doesn’t matter that it can’t last long without roots of its own, the hardcore can survive for some time on the fear and misunderstanding of the Conservative movement.
I mean how easy would it be to except that everything you’d ever known about the government and economy seems to be wrong? Most people simply can’t adapt that quickly. Give htem time and they’ll claim to always have been left-leaning-libertarians who fought for rights of different groups and only tolerated the Socialists and Marxists out of necessity. But that’s for another election cycle.
“remotely intelligent” is the key phrase. Like self ordained ministers, Leftists
are self ordained intelligent. Where is the proof? Not in the US, not in Europe,
not anywhere. Belief in Socialism precludes intelligence. You can’t be both. Look at the evidence for the last century and a half.
This editorial is nothing but wishful thinking. Progressives are fundamentally sure of the righteousness of their cause, regardless of data to the contrary. They grow government and expand social programs without any real concern about whether this works. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, they simply get defensive. If charged with fixing the mess they make, they look to — more programs and bigger government. Regarding Keynesian economics, it isn’t that it hasn’t worked – rather it’s just that it hasn’t worked YET. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s heard that excuse.
The “Obama is frugal” porky is typical. Hayek (“Road to Serfdom”) noted that socialist use information, science, and news media to further their political agenda. It isn’t about truth at all. Lying and distortion are perfectly acceptable, even mandatory. But then the question is, if their position is so righteous and their policies so correct, why do they need to lie?
Roger: One way to begin to affect a transformation is to tear down certain comfortable self-congratulatory narratives. You would do well to commit to memory the arguments contained in this
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/300432
and its follow-up
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/301053/yes-party-civil-rights-kevin-d-williamson
You could say something like the same thing about conservatism, as the putative leader of the Republican party tries to squeeze himself into the Procrustean bed made for him by his current compatriots. Let him try to fit into the mold as he tries to run away from his record of just a few years ago (cf. health care ala the Heritage Foundation)
I think that the term “liberal” has been hijacked. Here’s what I mean: did anyone ever accuse Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, Adlai Stevenson, or even George McGovern of being anti-American? Of course not. But most of today’s “liberals” seem to be ashamed of being American, and some seem to hate what America stands for.
The people to whom you refer are not liberal. They’re leftists.
Ever since the Juvenile in Chief took over the Oval Office I’ve been saying that, once the faithful learn how bad they’ve been taken to the cleaners by these criminal Democrats, there’s going to be hell to pay.
The only problem is; They’ve been schmoozed so long about how smart and clever they are, it’s too embarrassing to change.
Perhaps this is all a setup – To claim before the ignorant “we’ve tried cutting spending, now we should try REAL stimulus”. That’s the only remotely (il)logical explanation I can come up with. They may wait until the debt ceiling debate, and spring this turnaround on everybody. It is cartoonishly disingenuous, but the audacity of stupidity hasn’t stopped this (mal)administration so far…
I would say it’s the opposite. Look who they just elected in France. People are doubling down.
“…they are willing to ignore reality and to forget their children, the ones who will suffer most from the economic cataclysm of their own ideology….” That’s the problem, Roger. They don’t have children.
I’ve long thought that the only thing the Left- and that includes the modern democrat party- believes in is power. Power for its own sake. Power by any means necessary.
Let’s take them down by any means necessary- fair and unfair. The Left is a virus on makind.
#59 has a point.
Let’s stop saying ‘liberal’ and start using the term ‘anti-conservative’.
Just call ‘em what they are, totalitarians.
Well we shouldn’t confuse the party ruling over us with liberals, as the term was used for decades from the 20′s through recently.
Some of the people who believed in that ideology were honest, and a few even rational.
But the radical leftists, call them what you will, killed off that political ideaology years ago. Now ALL of the leaders are statist tyrants of one form or another, mixed with plain old criminals who realized a long time ago that it is much easier to steal as a politician than any other way. You have a much greater change of dying in an airline accident in this country than of getting even a slap on the wrist for the most blatant polical crimes. Frankly, the criminals are a much larger number than the statists, but the “movement”, such as it is, is dominated by the wannabe tyrants who value power even more than ill-gotten wealth. Wild-eyed kooks almost always get in leadership positions. Normal people have better things to do than debauch themselves to get political power.
The handful of schoolchildren and other naifs who still believe in what used to be called liberalism are pitiful fools. 99% of their fellow followers aren’t so naive. They are the pickpockets following the mafia bosses around.
weo;
That info would make an interesting graph.
What these idiots are demanding is that SOMEONE TAKE CARE OF THEIR NEEDS.
The problem is; Democrats are convinced that the “Robin Hood” philosophy actually works.
We were here before. In 2000 liberal democrats had come very close to the center… then over the Bush years they needed to differentiate their brand and ran far far left as the reponse. You never know what people will to at these points in time. They could go even more left as a ego \ movement defense.
Give some credit to the “INSANITY DEFENSE”.
Wishful thinking, liberals have been around since the Roman Empire.
It may be hoped that this most galvanic of presidents is the last spasm of vitality in the soc/lib/prog monster…try to total up the millions of dead, but since the beginning can be traced to one Barabas (the Pueblo Indians knew that God was a trickster like Coyote) I believe it is an eternal type.
Liberalism is Communism; they are synonymous. Therefore, since they have exposed themselves–with the toxic ObamaCare, Porkulus, Dodd-Frank–with these naked power grabs. The nasty Communists are scurrying for the shadows since the light has been turned upon them. They can’t run. They can’t hide. Truth always out.
Is Liberalism dead? No, it will go into hibernation.
I would tend to agree with those who recognize that the human condition would tend to preclude the total extinction of liberalism as it has arisen in every culture in history. That said, the liberalism of today has a sort of sui generis character all it’s own as a result of the particular historical and cultural milieu that it has arisen in. I think what we see today is the remnant of a reaction to the industrial revolution that hopped on the back of the Enlightenment and began with the French Revolution and gained the character we see today in the 1840′s. While reacting to industrial capitalism, the movement picked up many of the methods and the hubris of achievement that they criticized that same revolution for. In other words, while being critical of industrialization’s dehumanization and alienation of people, liberals applied the same methods used successfully by capitalists in markets and tried to use them to achieve social goals. Thus we got centralization of just about everything and a school system that resembles a factory in every way, right down to the architecture. Long after Taylorism has been debunked in the workplace we still have it applied to our children. People no longer live in towns dominated by one factory, but we still have governments modeled after these long-gone dinosaurs. People are just now beginning to see this, whether they think in these particular categories or not. It’s there. Life is just starting to catch up with this particular brand of liberalism. And right now liberalism is institutionalized and sclerotic. Unable to adapt, in a seeming paradox, precisely because of it’s long recent (100 years) success.
I’m sure there are some well meaning liberals who believe you if you just give money to people who make bad decisions they’ll stop making bad decisions.
I think many liberals, especially the politicans and Hollywood types, are Jim Jones liberals. Jones gathered people with nice ideas about people living in peace and racial harmony. Not bad ideas, however for Jones they were lies, and the followers believed if you questions his motives you didn’t believe in racial harmony or peacful living. So basically they were to weak willed to do anything but join a cult that end up with most members dead by drinking poisoned Kool Aid.
How many Hollywood liberals have talked about killing or raping their opponents? Basically, they’re pretty much evil, but saying they’re liberals means they’ll get a free base from the lemmings.
So could the impossible happen could America get fooled AGAIN by the consummate LIAR that is Barack HUSSEIN Obama, the Document HIDING man with no provable history.
Lets see well first and foremost the 13% of the US population that are Black will OVERWHELMINGLY vote for Obama again in the same RACIST way that they did in 2008 thats a given. Add to that the 20 -30% of the US population who are brain dead ideological Left Wing moonbats and you will see that it does not need too many gullible, naive ,uneducated, unimaginative stupid people to push him over the 50% mark.
Given that Academia and the Lame Stream EneMedia have been pumping out Left Wing propaganda disguised as education and information for decades now that is not too much of a leap is it.
I live in one of the bluest of the blue areas in the country. I suspect a good many folks who voted for Obama last time won’t want to admit to their friends that this time, they’ll be voting differently.
It’s simply not worth the social stigma and accusations of bigotry to admit that, in the privacy of the voting booth, they chose someone else.
That’s why a convicted felon and none-of-the-above were giving him a run for his money.
“That’s why a convicted felon and none-of-the-above were giving him a run for his money.”
That surely was some serious writing on the wall. There’s a reason to be optimistic about November.
Sorry Roger, you can’t “bring them over”. As many posters have pointed out, they are adherents of a cultish religion and the process of bringing people from a religion to a different place is called conversion.
We can (and must) smash their religion, empty the temples and strip them of their power and perques. We must deny them access to our resources, our money and especially our children. The only safe future for us is to leave them ranting impotently by the side of the road as we drive away, and NEVER turn back (lest we are turned to pillars of salt, like Lot’s wife).
The preference cascade is starting, so grab the uncommitted and wavering and get THEM to join in. A tidal wave of votes for conservative candidates in every election downline, from school board trustee to Senator will have a salutory effect of restraining the POTUS (whoever wins) as well as creating a talent pool of politicians who will dominate the political process for the next half century or more. A solid wall of our politicians enacting our legislation and dismantling the Progressive edifice will be what saves us; attempting to convert the followers of the PRogressive religion can be sone after we have secured our victory.
It’s the power trip I’m afraid of. And that’s not going anywhere, ideology or no ideology. The TSA is exhibit A.
Startlingly naive view of the Left. For instance, Left in america has *always* claimed that they are the real ‘money savers’ because their social programs ‘save money’ rather than what is true, i.e. ‘are designed to ruin america’. Left lies. Always has. Always will. THAT is no indicator that their ideology is dead.
In reality, Left/Liberalism as an ideology *increasingly* stomped america and ran it into the ground, in past few decades, and specifically, current times are the ultimate height of the Left’s fortunes—they’ve got america by the throat, and on its knees, with its back broken. Liberalism/Leftism is not dead. It is alive and well. And in the last phase of destroying america. Not only that, because of fools like Roger Simon writing for the Right, there is no way to save america from this certain death. Unless a miracle happens.
Ranting, calling people fools and proclaiming the end-time accomplishes absolutely nothing.
How many of you thought Reagan was off his rocker when he, almost alone among American politicians, asserted the frailty of the USSR in the 1980s? I’ll admit that I did. A few years later the Politburo was scattered, and the Berlin Wall was coming down. I grew up thinking that the only permanent thing in life was Leonid Brezhnev.
Often a despotic movement will seem most ferocious as it nears its end. The liberals cannot let any of their institutional advantages slip – in the schools, the unions, the media, the universities, the courts – because they know, and knew well before Glenn Reynolds described it, that a “preference cascade” will take the whole edifice down as people realize that it is “OK” not to robotically vote Democrat.
[...]“anyone with an IQ in triple-digits”[...]
HEY, that’s RACIST~!
;p
Well, Roger, you must have a high I.Q. and you were once a Lefty. I guess your smarts rescued you from the sickness that is Leftism (thank the heavens)!
So we have to keep raising the debt ceiling because we are being more fiscally responsible. It doesn’t get any funnier, because I know that when I cut spending I no longer have to ask my credit card companies to increase the limit.
To wish, to hunger, perchance to dream about a population of idiots who sudenly discover rational thought! The shame of it all history repeats itself in the fall of Rome.
One thing that you have to keep in mind is that half of the population has an IQ less than or equal to 100, by definition. But the whole population has the right to vote.
Unfortunately, most of that lower half gravitate to the end of the political spectrum which is most adept at manipulating them through lies, fear mongering, and the fostering of hate and envy. They’re simply not equipped to see through it and rise above it.
I wish I could share in Roger’s optimism.
Always fascinating to drop into a bonfire like this one.
Tell me, everyone, what definition of “Liberalism” is it we are deriding here?
Second, what is your understanding of current “Leftist” policy and how does it diverge from what we should be doing?
Third, who specifically is responsible for implementing it in this country, as seems many of you think has been done over the last 40 years or so?
Lastly, just how is it you think by deriding the intelligence of Liberals somehow solidifies your counterarguments to “Liberal” policy?
To save America from fiscal meltdown, people must see the moral aspects of economics. “The Road to Freedom”, a new book by the president of the American Enterprise Institute, should be required reading for anyone who has ever read a basic economics book and who cares about his/her children or grandchildren.
Liberalism is not dead:
http://bluecollarphilosophy.com/2012/05/liberalism-is-not-dead-a-response-to-roger-l-simon/
The reason that Liberals believe in Liberalism is because it is not fundamentally an ideology but a religious belief. An extremely dogmatic religious belief at that. It is a belief that defines good and evil, human nature, truth and falsehood, and reality itself. This is best seen with a comparison to Christianity and one quickly sees that Liberalism stands in total antithesis to it. Liberalism has been alive and well for a very long time, but today’s Liberals might call themselves Progressives to try and throw us off their trail.
This helps us to understand that the agenda of the Democrat Party is one that tries to institutionalize the Dogma of Liberalism through various policy objectives. In essence, this war against Christianity generally speaking, seeks to replace the Church with the State. Liberals really do not believe in the separation of Church and State, they just want their place of worship to reign supreme. The two most recent examples of this is the ObamaCare mandate and Obama’s recent evolution on gay marriage. If you oppose the ObamaCare mandate then you should equally oppose gay marriage since that is just a mandate on another front of the Liberal war against Christianity. So Liberalism is best thought of as a religious system rather than an ideology.
Let us never underestimate what a true Liberal believer is capable of. Truth and morality are relative and any means are appropriate to achieve their objective.
No, the ideology is not dying, it is a religious fervor that is driving their actions. They do not want to debate the issue because they believe in their heart that they are right and only an ignorant caveman would doubt their wise and just ways. They really believe anyone who dares question them is racist, sexist, elitist and “homophobic”. Their Dogma cannot be questioned and anyone who dares must be punished for their “sins” against the State.
Simon is right about power being the ultimate end of Liberalism, the goal of the Democrat Party. But this is because control and a desire to place man at the moral center of the universe is driving this, not some existential crisis about their ideology. I think the Left despises the notion of private property since it interferes with their desire to control our lives. Power and control must be obtained by Liberals in order to bring about their vision of the world. As long as there is faith in a God that transcends space and time, where moral commands are not subjective whims of some government official, there is hope to check the unrestrained lust of Liberals. We should now see that through ObamaCare and gay marriage, and even abortion, that these are issues in which they want to define in order to help them achieve that power. They want the State to define and control every aspect of our lives and which lives are worthy of life. These issues are ultimately religious in nature and we must stay vigilant in opposing the Liberal agenda, otherwise they may actually achieve the power they so lustfully seek after, and that should concern anyone who likes their freedom.
A religion is a world view and a set of values that depends on a conscious, transcendental moral force to legitimize it and to work in its defense and its expansion. Liberalism or leftism is an ideology because it doesn’t recognize this metaphysical framework as being real. They view their theories about power relationships among people and groups to be true, absolute and all that matters. Essentially, the wise, intelligent, highly educated, compassionate-to-a-fault elites of the world should control and direct their inferiors for their own good. In other words, THEY are Gods.
To be a liberal/leftist you have to be an atheist, in the sense of opposing all religions, for exactly the reasons you gave (to eliminate competition). But you can be an atheist (not having a metaphysical God) without being an anti-religion liberal/leftist. Your “power greater than myself” can be nature, which includes human nature, and you’re able to view nature as absolute.
The liberal/leftist believes that happiness for the masses comes from the mass’ relinquishing their delusions of individual liberty, while those who study human nature realize that liberty is the foundation of happiness.
Human beings like to delude themselves. Lies are more attractive than reality to most people. They would rather believe a comforting lie than stark reality which has ever been the reason humans continue to allow disastrous leaders ruin their lives (see the Egyptian elections)
I’m confused. To argue that liberalism is dead you mean, don’t you, classical liberalism which has been much in abeyance during this past half century since the statist totalitarians saw their chance to pull the wool by naming themselves, and getting away with it, as liberals. Were adroit enough to know that to chance socialists, communists, one-worlders wouldn’t cut it with their much derided common man on whom they were to large extent dependent for gaining the power they craved.
Review of their actions during this past half century, world-widewide not only in the USA, it seems far-fetched or wishful thinking to consider them liberal. They have gained virtual control of all civic institutions to enable their designs. Have done so where possible by coercion and Changing of agreed/accepted/”traditional” moral and social behaviours, and law. And advertised these destructions a “good”.
Their designs, using covert media where necessary, of ever increasing, ever unaccountable powers over “The Lives of Others”. Such temptations of power known to the worldly Founding Fathers hence their restraints, limits, on the powers of civil authorities. Clearly documented for the world to witness in that, by these “liberals” derided, fundamental Law on which ALL other laws in the Federation and her Several States of this USA are justified: the Constitution of the USA. The Model for the sea-change of moral, civic and legal authority over the common man world wide since its inception.
Everything is always about religion.