LOSING OUR DELUSIONS: Not Much Left (Despondent Liberal on state of Liberalism)

New Republic ^ | 2/17/05 | Martin Peretz

[Gum Shoe]

"I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, speaking in the early 1960s, the high point of post New Deal liberalism, who pronounced conservatism dead."

Interestingly, socialism was THE major political innovation during the early half of the 20th century. But not anymore. Socialism offered new ideas to counter the stale monarchies and sluggish industrial machinery of the world. Perhaps the high water mark of modern socialism can be seen in the "early 1960's" as stated above. I believe old socialism (liberalism) has now become the conservative force against political change. The liberal does not want the change or innovation offered by the Republican Party. That's why they can offer nothing but obstruction. They have nothing to offer in the face of innovative political theories but inflexibility and immobility. Liberalism is dead.

[Born Conservative]

[gitmo]

Europe is also making the disenchanting journey from social democracy, but via a different route. Its elites had not foreseen that a virtually unchecked Muslim immigration might hijack the welfare state and poison the postwar culture of relative tolerance that supported its politics. To the contrary, Europe's leftist elites lulled the electorates into a false feeling of security that the new arrivals were simply doing the work that unprecedented low European birth rates were leaving undone. No social or cultural costs were to be incurred. Transaction closed. Well, it was not quite so simple. And, while the workforce still needs more workers, the economies of Europe have been dragged down by social guarantees to large families who do not always have a wage-earner in the house. So, even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.

Sound remarkably similar to the immigration arguments in the States.

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 2/17/2005, thanks pissant, wherever you are.