Has Liberalism Grown Flabby?

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First, when I say "liberalism", I am not treating this as synonymous with "partisanship of the Democratic Party" or even progressivism; I am referring to the philosophy born of the Enlightenment and Age of Reason. Although the triumph of liberalism has never been absolute, liberalism has, at least in Western countries like the United States, accomplished its main objectives: We have no king or nobility; we have a separation of church and state; speech and other freedoms are guaranteed; etc. Of course, threats to liberty and democracy remain, but sometimes they seem to take the form of absurd caricatures like Rick Santorum rather than existential threats.

Does anyone else feel that this has made liberalism complacent, unable to see the big picture, and unwilling to fight?

That "absurd caricature" Rick Santorum is now the #2 candidate of one of America's two major parties. That qualifies as an existential threat.

If I were to make a living by spending other people's money on "enlightened" social programs, I'd grow flabby too!

Liberalism in America doesn't seem to have many Che Guevara. They seem to be more like Mr. Van Driessen from Beavis and Butthead. It's kind of hard to take the American left seriously.

We have a government including a party which considers itself 'liberal'. However, the party is only 'liberal' in economic terms, and blatantly conservative in anything else. As they've been ruining lives using false rhetoric to stay in or near power for the past twenty years, the very word 'liberalism' has grown to cause a bit of resentment among many groups in society. When they're tackling such expensive 'issues' as spending on higher education and preventing poverty, they sometimes refer to their ideology.

It's not really about the type of freedom people cared about in the early 1900s-1920s anymore. In fact, the largest party in our parliament that considers itself 'liberal' usually supports 'law and order measures' that allow the government to spy on people, keep them in longer detention without proper justification, and tries to put pressure on judges to introduce longer sentences. The only freedom it strives for is freedom for corporations to make profits and strategically ignore concerns about salaries and working conditions.

Many of the personal core values of liberalism, though, appeal to a large part of our population, which is why the 'alternative', a 'very progressive social-liberal party', is growing.

There are lots of existential threats! In fact, there are far more existential threats than there used to be!

Corporations, the U.S. government, and defense companies have formed an iron alliance which means that it is no longer possible for the electorate of the United States to politically oppose globalisation and perpetual war.

If you take an average of the opinions of climate scientists, climate change is the very definition of an existential crisis. For everyone. And yet public opinion on climate change is steadily going away from the scientific consensus, thanks to a soundbite media sponsored by people who don't want us to believe in it.

Flabby? Quite the opposite, actually. US liberalism is ripped nowadays. It has absolved a rigorous military training and strapped on combat boots. It went to war, cracked down on medical marijuana and stomped on people with AIDS, cancer, chronic pain and MS. It stood by and watched as peaceful protesters were assaulted with pepper spray by thugs in uniforms. It bent over for Wall Street banks and ignored the protests and cries of the disenfranchised 99%.

That's not liberalism anymore, imho. It has first mutated into centrism and then taken a few steps further to the right. The fact that Republicans continue to call it socialism and communism shows how far they have moved their goalposts toward theocratic fascism.

Quoted for truth. People forget that no candidate, no matter how absurd, is unelectable in a country where the words "god" and "Jesus" trigger a Pavlovian response among many voters.

Anything out of the Enlightment is at least 200 years out of date. When Enlightenment started to fade, there was only a start of industrialization in England only, the society was mostly the same as in the Middle Ages and most governments were monarchies with relatively inefficient bureaucracies.

The word "liberalism" as it is used today has little to do with what it did because the issues have changed so much. "Liberty" was a change when industry was at the mercy of guilds. If the "philosophers" lived today, they would be much closer to social democracy and some varieties of socialism, if that makes any sense.

Last edited by enrico_dandolo on 09 Mar 2012, 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Grossly fat on the riches of others. Enlightened social programs are elaborately justified systems of plunder. Outright theft in the name of Need. Theft in the Name of Greed is infinitely more noble than theft in the Name of Need.

ruveyn

Is that because the former doesn't typically rely upon a pretext like the latter?

So if the government organisations that run social programs were to keep the money to themselves instead of helping people in need, you'd be fine with it?

If I hadn't read you before, I would think this was sarcastic. I still hope it is.

Is wealth a higher right than health? (Read "life". It just sounds better.)

ruveyn has stated multiple times that he cannot understand sarcasm.

So I will just assume he is just being the same nut as usual.

It just seems like the moral majority Christian right are more adept at polarizing the other side, and are more willing to march lockstep to achieve support for the talking points of the day. I don't agree with their philosophies, but it would be nice to see a little less conciliation from liberal politicians. I don't see them winning a "swift boat" victory against Obama though.