Two Divergent American Trends

The paths of conservativism and liberalism are increasingly heading in different directions in America, as these three articles indicate:

Via Orrin Judd, George Will looks conservatism’s 40-year climb to dominance, while Jeffrey Bell & Frank Cannon track “The Rise of the Values Voter”.

Meanwhile, radio man Raymond S. Kraft looks at the conundrum the War on Terror poses to the American Left:

The Liberals are supposed to be in favor of human rights, civil rights, liberty, freedom, and all that. But not for Iraqis, I guess. In America, but nowhere else. 300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq, not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let’s multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you want another country to help liberate America?

“Peace Activists” always seem to demonstrate where it’s safe and ineffective to do so, in America. Why don’t we see Liberal Peace Activists demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The Liberals are supposed to be in favor of human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. American Liberals who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy. If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism.

And American Liberals just don’t get it.

I think I’d spell it with a small “l” myself, and put it this way: American conservatives are now responsible for saving–and spreading small-l liberalism–which is no irony when you think about: conservatism is classical liberalism after all, something American liberalism has increasingly abandoned.