Posted on 03/27/2005 9:28:53 AM PST by quidnunc
Roughly one week before Howard Dean declared Republicans "brain-dead," the long-time editor-in-chief of the intellectual flagship of Democratic Party liberalism, Martin Peretz of The New Republic, declared such liberalism "bookless and dying."
As if to add insult to the introspective injuries inflicted by Peretz, the cover of the magazine’s 90th anniversary issue depicts six historically prominent liberals with a floor being sawed out from underneath them, the youngest of whom, Martin Luther King Jr., died 37 years ago.
Beyond the intentional and unintentional symbolism of such a cover, the symposium contained therein reminds us once again of the ideological confusion that afflicts American politics in general and what we call American liberalism in particular.
Peretz is wrong about the death of liberalism, of course. What we call classical liberalism, defined as belief in individual liberty through limited government and free enterprise, is stronger than ever and now even beginning to make inroads into such previously inauspicious regions as the Middle East.
The liberalism represented by the Scottish Enlightenment, John Locke, Adam Smith and the American founding fathers constitutes the most influential ideology in human history; in some accounts, the endpoint of history itself. We are all liberals now, at least in the sense of all intelligent creatures believing in the virtues of markets over planning and the desirability of constraints upon governmental power through systems of checks and balances.
Peretz and his fellow contributors misdiagnose the condition of liberalism because what they are assessing isn’t liberalism at all, but a variant of socialism masquerading under the banner of liberalism. Put differently, it is socialism as a creed to which much of the American left subscribes and which is increasingly "bookless and dying," not liberalism.
Visitors to America often express bewilderment at our unique use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative," usually asking why those who are considered socialists everywhere else we call liberals and those everyone else calls liberals we call conservatives, a query which accurately suggests that we’ve had the labels backward for the past century or so.
The ideology that has motivated the bulk of the American left since roughly the New Deal, and with special force since the 1960s, is virtually identical to the socialism of the Swedish and German Social Democratic parties, the British Labor Party and the French Socialist Party, allowing for a few tweaks here and there due to historical context, cultural variation and electoral expediency.
The problem for those who mix and match elements of liberalism and socialism is that they represent competing philosophies based on antithetical assumptions, with the most stark difference found in their vastly different views regarding equality, liberty and the role of the state for advancing those values.
Liberalism gives pride of place to individual liberty and assumes that such liberty can be preserved only through limitations on the power of government. Socialism since at least the days of Marx and Engels begins with the idea of using governmental power for achieving the equality of a classless utopia. Liberalism is suspicious of governmental power because it values liberty at the expense of equality of condition, while socialism in its various strains is suspicious of liberty because it naturally breeds inequality and diffuses governmental power.
If a vague animosity toward capitalism has come to be the defining feature of contemporary American liberalism, support for capitalism as the indispensable economic expression of liberty has always been the defining feature of liberalism everywhere but contemporary America; there can be no coherent conception of liberalism built upon hostility toward capitalism.
Liberalism is far from dead and can be made to look that way only if we confuse it with other belief systems that truly are comatose. The death of American-style liberalism to which Martin Peretz and many other "liberal" observers allude is more accurately the demise of the socialist God in all its manifestations as a result of the triumph of the global marketplace.
There isn’t much that is truly socialist any longer in the socialism of Tony Blair or Gerhard Schroeder, but then there hasn’t been much that is truly liberal for a long time in the liberalism represented by the likes of Ted Kennedy, either. That theorists like Peretz think their false version of liberalism is dying should be good news for those of us who believe in the real thing.
Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
You mean Chappaquiddick Fats?
bump
The word "socialism" rightly carries a stigma that most of my liberal friends don't even associate with liberalism. They don't see all the welfare programs as socialism but just as programs to "help" the poor. Yet welfareism and the nanny state defines socialism.
They also refuse to see that every dollar they receive from Pell grants and other government give aways are paid for by people who actually pay taxes.
I am a student and not yet paying my own way in life but I am well aware and thankful for my family members who are willing and able to pay my way. Also with the full knowledge that they expect nothing in return except for my success in life.
Yes, I am on a form of welfare too but it's the generous, loving and voluntary kind and doesn't cost the tax payers a cent.
I am fortunate indeed.
Liberal is just a word they use now ..it can mean anything.
This is okay as far as it goes. However, it omits two things. First, liberal in the 1960's came to mean some new things, like disdain for organized religion, and an anything goes repudiation of traditional morality. Marx invented the dialetic of materialism on which class warfare is based. That conflicts with the traditional rags to riches social mobility which made America so unique. By adopting both, an amibtious and amoral self-appointed elite emerged and has managed to keep those who don't know the rules oppressed to their advantage.
You give me hope for the future of our country. Thanks.
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