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Can Liberalism Change?
thepublicdiscourse.com ^ | Carson Holloway

Posted on 01/13/2018 7:33:40 AM PST by RoosterRedux

It is true that Trump did not win the popular vote. Nevertheless, his victory depended on, and demonstrated, a significant shift in public opinion in a set of electorally decisive states—big states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan—that had been reliably Democratic for decades. Besides, Trump got kneecapped, too—not on a single day by the FBI director, but every day for fifteen months by the entire national media establishment. It is very possible that Trump’s positions—on trade, immigration, and foreign policy—are far more popular than he is personally.

The Toxin of Identity Politics

Enter Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and well-known public essayist. Lilla is as astute, erudite, and reflective a liberal as America today can boast. In his new book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, he offers a sympathetic critique of what American liberalism has become in recent decades. According to Lilla, the disastrous (for liberals) 2016 election was not simply a fluke but instead at least partly the result of certain defects in contemporary liberalism that must be corrected if it is to hope to govern the country again.

The key problem, according to Lilla, is modern liberalism’s embrace of identity politics, which involves serious political disadvantages both tactical and strategic, or of both style and substance. At the level of tactics or style, identity politics fosters a spirit that is insular and irritable, preachy and off-putting. Its character is exemplified in the “social justice warrior” who loves moral purity and disdains compromise. This approach either ignores (at best) or insults (at worst) those who do not hold one of the preferred identities that contemporary liberalism thinks are its job to protect and exalt, with the result that many voters are driven away who would be necessary to any workable liberal governing coalition.

(Excerpt) Read more at thepublicdiscourse.com ...


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To: RoosterRedux

Liberalism, which is really just the advance wave of collectivism, is like an octopus made of lead, wrapping its tentacles around anything on the surface, drawing it into the depths. Corruption is its oxygen.

It thrives in populations who are ignorant and morally pliable. Historically such populations are headed in a terminally downward direction, the end marked by human sacrifice, primal decadence and loss of all sexual norms. Then it is either overthrown by a neighboring nation or implodes into fragments. Which, if you study the Bible, you know is God’s doing.

So far no civilization has been able to avoid the terminal curve.


21 posted on 01/13/2018 9:57:00 AM PST by lurk
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To: RoosterRedux
This is a sin-saturated world and every thing in this world is born to die.

No matter how pure a thing might be, once in the world, it will be degraded and this is especially true of the things humans create.

Liberalism is such a thing and it has already changed many times, because its definition has been rewritten many times by and in the image of each new generation to embrace it, same as with every other belief or ideology.

That’s what we do. Listening to the same voice, we replay the sins of the First Parents in our own lives and rewrite or ignore the rules and ideals to suit ourselves, leading us/US to death.

Think about our behavior from during the last election until now, and then take a look at Proverbs 6:16-19:

These six [things] doth the Lord hate: yea, seven [are] an abomination unto him:
A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
A false witness [that] speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
No wonder the swamp is so nasty. The “liberal”/progressive demonrat and rino political parties have both made Proverbs 6:16-19 their operations manual.

I count 7 for 7, making them both perfectly imperfect in every way.

22 posted on 01/13/2018 10:14:39 AM PST by GBA (A = 432)
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To: Spok

“They never start out shooting and hanging dissidents but it’s always where they end up.”

Hmmm, Nazi Germany, the Bolsheviks, and Chairman Mao’s bunch all come to mind.

We have so much to be thankful for with regards to the last election. Had Hitlery won, we’d have been on the very slippery slope described in quotes above.


23 posted on 01/13/2018 11:20:51 AM PST by redfreedom
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To: EdnaMode

Liberalism is a religion of self-worship, which appeals to one’s ego of being capable of creating a utopia and of deserving to set your own moral standards (and NOT be accountable to God or others), and thus is very hard to give up. It is a reiteration of the original sin of pride. On the other hand, conservatism requires a humility to acknowledge that we are limited in resources, wisdom and character. That is quite a humbling step down for a Liberal to take.


24 posted on 01/13/2018 11:50:36 AM PST by DeweyCA
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To: DeweyCA

Good post. No wonder most celebrities are liberal.


25 posted on 01/13/2018 12:12:53 PM PST by EdnaMode
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To: BlueStateRightist

“Ultimately, while Lilla currently might be right, the demographic trends are on the SJW’s side.”

Actually, it’s not. In the 1970s, the leftists said that whites would be a minority by 2000. Whites still make up 70% of the population.

Families with children have deserted big, liberal cities by the 10s of millions, causing big cities to lose political power and population. Those families have created a strong and vibrant exurbia with jobs and wealth. Big, liberal cities are dying or dead.

Abortions have stymied the rise of both the black and brown populations in America. The number of births among Mexicans, both illegals and American citizens, has fallen and leveled off since 2007.

Once the alien invasion is stopped, there will be no “demographic trends on the SJW’s side.”


26 posted on 01/13/2018 1:39:13 PM PST by sergeantdave (Teach a man to fish and he'll steal your gear and sell it)
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To: RoosterRedux
Can Liberalism Change?

Nope:

1) It is based on three world views, secular humanism, Marxism, and postmodernism which will not change,

2) too many losers depend on big government for free stuff

3) too many power mongers depend on buying votes by offering people free stuff

27 posted on 01/13/2018 2:23:09 PM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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