Posted on 12/29/2015 5:48:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart has launched yet another debate about America's ideological direction. Asserting that the country is becoming more liberal, Beinart argues that Occupy and Black Lives Matter activists have commandeered the national debate far more effectively than the radicals of the past, to the point that the next Democratic president is likely to be more liberal than Barack Obama and the next Republican president more liberal than George W. Bush. I think not. All evidence suggests that America is growing both more liberal and more conservative. The Left is moving Left, and the Right is moving Right.
From Bill Clinton to Al Gore to John Kerry to Barack Obama, each successive Democratic presidential nominee has run either slightly or substantially to the Left of his predecessor, and the party has won the popular vote in five of the last six national elections. Americans have moved left on sexual issues with astonishing speed, growing supportive of gay marriage and transgender rights in just a few years' time. Young voters increasingly express support for socialist policies, and the polls record widespread support for immigrants and immigrant rights. The average Democratic legislator is more liberal than at any time in recent memory. For a movement liberal, the future looks bright indeed.
Following the explosive growth of the Tea Party, a movement that explicitly rejects big-government conservatism, Republicans control more elected offices than at any time in modern history. The Democrats have endured more electoral defeats under President Obama than Republicans did in the years after Watergate. Support for life is holding steady, with some evidence even suggesting that young people are more pro-life than their parents. State legislatures continue to pass pro-life legislation at a record-setting pace. Support for gun rights is increasing. Even Millennials support putting boots on the ground to fight ISIS. The 2016 Republican race appears likely to come down to a battle between first-generation tea-party conservative Marco Rubio and second-generation tea-party conservative Ted Cruz, both of whom still currently trail Donald Trump, who's raced to the top of the primary polls by moving to the right of every other candidate on immigration. The average Republican legislator is more conservative than at any time in recent memory. For a movement conservative, the future looks bright indeed.
What remains clear is that America is more politically polarized than ever. The Left is growing more Left, and the Right is growing more Right. This is entirely consistent with other patterns, including the polarization of American religious practice, which is so pronounced that “nones" -- those unaffiliated with any faith -- and Evangelicals are on pace to soon become the two largest religious demographics in the country. America is growing both more secular and more religious, more liberal and more conservative. The middle is vanishing.
Beyond increasing ideological and religious polarization -- trends that are mutually reinforcing -- America is geographically polarized to an extent that makes enduring majorities even harder to construct. Presidential races are fought in a shrinking number of battleground states, with the ideological cocoons of large urban centers and Red America leading partisans on both sides to overestimate their strength. For every conservative who believes the path to electoral success lies in consolidating the vast conservative base, there is a liberal who believes the path to electoral success lies in consolidating the progressive masses. Depending on the skill of a given candidate and the structural dynamics of a given election year, either argument could be correct.
The truly interesting question isn't whether America is becoming more conservative or more liberal, but whether there is any single significant cultural, religious, or political trend that is pulling this nation together rather than yanking it apart. The alleged gay-rights consensus has given way to new conflict over religious freedom, a cause that has united a broad swath of conservative Americans. Failed gun-control measures have given way to increasingly extremist rhetoric about confiscation, with progressives laying the political groundwork for an unprecedented level of state coercion. Left and Right are increasingly speaking different languages to culturally distinct populations.
Our nation's shared love for Star Wars can take us only so far, and polarization can't continue indefinitely without truly significant fault lines emerging in American culture. To a liberal living in Manhattan, the facts on the ground confirm a progressive view of reality. To a conservative living in Tennessee, the real ideological competition and real energy both seem to be on the right. A nation that respects federalism and core constitutional liberties can survive and even thrive in the face of profound ideological divisions. But what if the Left isn't content to let Tennessee be Tennessee or to allow Christian institutions to be Christian? Then the political stakes will be raised, polarization will increase, and America will move into some truly perilous waters.
-- David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
Hard to look at the rapid acceptance of gay marriage and argue that the country has not become more liberal.
Sadly, no.
Well stated!
Obama got elected. Twice.
Gay ‘marriage’ is legal in every state. 20somethings are backing Bernie.
The liberals have just ‘pushed the middle’ position to the left. You’re now a ‘right wing radical’ if you’re for traditional marriage and capitalism.
Most agree though the right is also moving left in that it isn't putting a stop to liberal foolishness as it once would have. The right is becoming too tolerant. All this globull warming, gay marriage and gun control carp wouldn't have been on the radar a few years ago.
“Failed gun-control measures have given way to increasingly extremist rhetoric about confiscation...”
Failed gun-control measures combined with harsh confiscation rhetoric have also resulted in skyrocketing sales of guns and ammo across the nation. Bammie letting in hordes of Muslim invaders is spurring gun sales even more.
If he wants jackbooted thugs to start banging on doors, Bammie will have to declare martial law
Molon labe!
And you are a racist if you expect black people to act civilized.
Look at the case this weekend. Black kid with fake gun that looks real. Points it at people and then the cops when they arrive. Blacks are angry cop wasn’t indicted.
So cops are just supposed to wait until blacks kill them before they do anything? Insanity.
We’re getting to the 3rd and 4th generation of the ‘War on Poverty’ crowd and what we get is angry, violent, bastard generation that’ll cost us hundreds of billions to house in prisons.
:'-)
why bother invading. Even Iran said our debt will kill us
Khrushchev was right, just about 50 years too early, and we’re doing it without the USSR around anymore.
RE: Hard to look at the rapid acceptance of gay marriage and argue that the country has not become more liberal.
If gay marriage came as a result of REFERENDUMS everywhere, the case for the country going more liberal would have been made.
But it was decided by 5 people in black robes, not the people. Therefore, the case is NOT MADE.
Your probably right about that, although its worth noting that our strength in no small part comes to our activity as voters.
The left rely heavily upon their domination in areas of Public and private education and media to sway a lackluster public that pays limited attention and votes only in ‘major’ elections.
We dominate in the minor & low turn out elections.
What is unclear is how many of them would continue to vote for liberals if they really started to pay attention. Polarization seems to suggest they would stick to their side no matter how much its killing them and their country.
Playing on Trump’s liberal past may be a good General election tactic to sway some of the ill-informed democrats to join our side the same way he did.
In the end however your right, liberalism is not content to allow people to live as they choose, as they have justified their vastly powerful governments punitive role in commanding every aspect of people’s money and life on the basis of correcting supposed evils that they feel everyone should have a right to not endure regardless of the fact that they exist as a product of nature not man, and that ‘correcting them’(they rarely ever do) under their leader’s plans involves creating still other more dangerous evil’s upon the entire of the population.
The left’s Objection to letting Tennessee be Tennessee, is thus largely directed by their leaders who recognize that their solution’s actually create circumstances in their State far worse than the ‘evil’ they supposedly corrected.
This basic reality is then blamed upon the ‘hard workers’ IE industry that leaves for freer pastures. Instead of staying there as slave labor for their ‘solution’ to supposed social issues.
This is of course untrue, as their state’s natural resources as vast as any gives them a base level of potential industry provided they don’t drive that industry completely out of business by making it impossible to work. The people will buy what is cheapest and work for whom ever pays the best. Unfortunately for them under socialism that is always in anther country that embraces more economic freedom.
The alternative is the people simply become slaves, traped within their states to labor in whatever relatively low paying job can be made available under the rules of the state’s socialist system paying whatever high priced Good is legal to buy under the same rules of the same socialist state. Thus people would always have less if they could not work and buy in freer countries.
bkmk
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