Posted on 03/20/2015 8:26:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For decades, the American left has contrasted the U.S.’s allegedly hidebound approach to economic and social issues with the enlightened way nations like France, Germany, and Sweden typically handle those matters. It’s a framework that seems to be falling apart, according to New York magazine’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells, mostly as a result of Europe’s overall shift to the right.
“The [European] continent is no longer a subject of liberal pining and aspiration,” wrote Wallace-Wells in a Tuesday article. “Europe and Israel have…been examples of alternative ways in which American society might be arranged, if it were less individualistic, more communal. But after the news of the past few weeks, and in many ways the past decade, these dreams for Europe and Israel have rarely looked more like a fantasy than they do now. America and Europe seem to be moving in different directions.”
From Wallace-Wells’ piece, which was posted not long before the polls closed in the Israeli elections (bolding added):
[A] quiet turn…has taken place throughout the Obama era, as Europe has come to seem an uglier place under economic and social stress: The continent is no longer a subject of liberal pining and aspiration. We've fallen out of love with Europe.
Israel has a way of making the matter more poignant and fraught, and so it was interesting when yesterday, with the election there drawing to a close, Paul Krugman turned his attention to the "disturbing transformation" in Israel's "income distribution and society," in which a putatively prosperous place had returned almost all of its gains to a tiny oligarchy, while the share of Israel's population in poverty had doubled and the portion of its children who are poor has quadrupled…
Europe and Israel have…been examples of alternative ways in which American society might be arranged, if it were less individualistic, more communal. But after the news of the past few weeks, and in many ways the past decade, these dreams for Europe and Israel have rarely looked more like a fantasy than they do now. America and Europe seem to be moving in different directions. Obama has for most of his presidency been an ideologically isolated figure. Conservative politicians have held power in most of America's closest political allies: David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Stephen Harper, and Felipe Calderón. (France has been a mix of left and right, but it is hard to see any Obama-ists in there.) The gap between the social safety net in Europe and the United States, often understood as an inextricably cultural phenomenon, looks somewhat narrower now, with the push [in the U.S.] toward universal health-care coverage…
Today, for a fleeting moment, liberals may find something improbably hopeful in Israel…But I suspect that the real subject of liberal idealism will soon, once again, be America. In a subterranean way, this may be helping to strengthen the current spasms of anxiety over a Hillary Clinton candidacy [and] a heartfelt clamor for a more authentically liberal figure like Al Gore. Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of good domestic reasons for progressives to look askance at…Clinton. But the matter of the Democratic presidential primary bears just a little more stress and weight if you believe that America, for all its limitations, is what liberals have got.
Well there’s always Cuba and Venezuela...
Pff. I don't know. "It sucks to be stupid." That's about it.
Wait, I thought the whole premise was that they were becoming LESS leftist?
The Left are Locust.
I seldom use bad language but this bit left me sputtering and muttering expletives like a street punk:
“...a heartfelt clamor for a more authentically liberal figure like Al Gore.”
There is not an authentic bone in Al Gore’s super-sized body. Perhaps liberals cannot tell the difference between hypocrisy and authenticity. Their love affair with the Clintons certainly supports that sad notion.
You mean liberals are on the *way* here?
Depressing huh? Now that we not only have to put up with illegals and Dumocraps, but more brain-dead Euros..
Sounds like the average european is feeling enough pain from the “joys” of multiculturalism, feeding and housing the invading leaches, and the guilt trips he’s had to put with to finally put his foot down and say enough is enough.
Personally I don’t think they’re quite there yet. We’ll know that they’ve truly arrived when one of their despicable “leader” is tarred and feathered and when the EU no longer exists.
I wish they would spray for liberals, the way they sometimes spray for mosquitoes. Liberals are worse bloodsuckers than mosquitoes.
Send them all to Europe. Or maybe send them over to Dumbfukistan, so they can impart their “superior” intellect to the Muslims.
thier sh## dont stick so thier looking for a new host
Yup. They've run out of other people's money.
Or Australia. They seem to be easily led.
Liberals should have all their property confiscated, and be exiled, or given life sentences in reeducation camps. Or executed, I'm pretty flexible. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.
The Far left Liberals hate America....WTF...with that headline!
I gotta hit da hay, Ernest! G'nite! (grin)
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