Because I'm sure we dealt with all the tropes that kdwmson just trotted out. Especially the one about how the American people somehow just didn't want to hear what the Democrats had to peddle. Wonder why that might be? Surely it must be some sort of a priori; how else do you explain why people "just don't buy liberalism?"

Or must it? A quick survey of the historical, psychological, and sociological literature would quickly dissuade such notions as it would highlight the way culture is shaped by elites, and how those elites came to be elites. Not by some a priori qualification to be elite, but by conscious deprivation of others' rights.

Unless one posits, like Mona (and, apparently, kdwmson) that those rights never really existed, they were just a figment of your imagination. Just words on a piece of paper. But wait, aren't "men are endowed with their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" also just words on a piece of paper? Why not junk the entire Western liberal tradition while we're at it, start over with something new; something that, y'know, justifies the status quo.

Oh, wait, it's already been done - they call it "conservatism."

"Cherles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Upton Sinclair, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and finally, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation, and Rachael Carson."

I count five writers of fiction and one government-made economic catastrophe.

Howdy, all:

I suppose it's possible that the presidents are just getting worse, but I don't think that's the most likely explanation. Far be it from me to profane the hallowed name of Millard Fillmore, but .... (I'm willing to entertain the idea that congresses have gotten worse almost without exception.)

If you don't think that American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction, I suppose there is nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. And that's because American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction. Try getting a Democrat to give a fair hearing to a school-choice plan someday and see if that doesn't change you mind. (But, of course, nothing will change you mind, because ... American "liberalism"/progressivism/lite-leftism is a rigid ideological construction.)

Excellent citation of a work of fiction for your "reality-based" case, though. I liked "Our Mutual Friend." (Boy? Boy? What are you, Foghorn Leghorn? Is this Georgia?)

It seems to me that the American people did not rally behind the idea of invading Iraq because Halliburton bribed them, because Fox News brainwashed them, or because Diebold pulled a switcheroo on their ballots. They asked for war because they wanted to kill some Muslims. Democrats didn't get shellacked by Bush in 2004 because there was a conspiracy. They got shellacked because the voters weren't buying what they were selling. You can't be a popular movement without the people. (And if you think you know what the people want, you're wrong, because they're going to change their minds tomorrow.)

Men on the Moon and the creation of the middle class? I suppose progressivism makes the sun rise and the world turn, too? Not to mention making the rains fall and the livestock fruitful. A Mighty Fortress is Our Ideology, right?

"But the locution that "real liberalism has never been tried" is one that I, for one, have never heard in all my born days." Sure you have. Just read the letters, here. Forty years of "progressive" rule in Congress produced less than significant positive results, but that's because there were evil Republicans lurking in the White House. (That's why you'll read about "Reagan deficits" and not "Tip O'Neill deficits," as though Reagan or any other American president ever got a budget passed.) Progressives made the sun shine and the water sweet (even if the darkness personified, Richard Nixon, midwifed the EPA) but were done in by the Iagos of the right. It's mythology, much like the myth of a pure and dewey "real Marxism" and the like. It's a comforting story and a nice way to cast yourselves as heros, but it's Manichean fiction. That's what allows "progressives," captured by the Democratic Party, to watch Ted Kennedy write No Child Left Behind and then denounce his own bill as a Bush plot against schoolchildren. It beggars belief.

The real story looks a lot more like politicians shifting from right to left to right to left as fast as they can to follow a conventional wisdom that is more often than not ignorant, leaving a trail of waste and destruction behind them, and trying to pretend that government is something significantly more than a monopoly on crime.

It's like watching kids play cowboys and Indians. And it comes down to (stop me if this sounds familiar): If you're not with us, you're against us.

So rather than engage in the ideas as ideas, you're left with "unmasking" me as a "drooling" class enemy — as though that were a substitute for argument or for having a single original thought.

if it comes to that.

...while we're recommending references.

While I'm asking questions.... what would the benefit of equality be, exactly? What would happen to make redistribution worthwhile?

-- shooter242

Or J.S. Mills.

GG:

He took the question to be "about the Politico's journalists" even though the questioner started off expressly talking about funding and asked about who owns and runs the Politico. That's believable.

Uh huh. Well, I guess he must have one of those jobs where you don't get a whole lot of practice reading and interpreting other folks' words.

I'm sure we'll be seeing that big Politico expose from him any day now

Oh, yes. He'll have his eye on them now!

kdwmson

Paul R channels Michael Savage

Projection much?

Writes Paul: "One way or another, the libertarian philosophy is based on what works best for those in privileged positions in privileged societies--or those who strongly identify with same, whether through wish-fulfillment fantasy, or other psychological mechanisms."

So, paraphrasing Michael Savage, you're arguing that classical liberalism is a mental disorder?

Not at all. For those well-favored it's a perfectly rational rationalization. But when you see folks like Clarence Thomas getting down with it, well, one does have to wonder.

Claiming that people who disagree with you must be acting out of bad faith isn't argument; it's a way to avoid argument.

But that wasn't put forth as an argument. The argument against "classical liberalism" (a misnomer I just didn't have time and energy to deconstruct today) is Cherles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Upton Sinclair, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and finally, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation, and Rachael Carson. In short: reality, dude! An 1830s philosophy in a 2001+ world.

Okay, I'll relent: "Classical liberalism" is a misnomer because there never was a time in which the "classical liberal" package existed--unlike, say classical music existing in the time of Hayden, Mozart and early Beethoven. It's a patchwork quilt stuck together, with different pieces taken from different times, ignoring some of the older parts it doesn't want to acknowledge, and claiming some of the later parts that could never have arisen if the parts it leaves out had never existed. But it's solid core is 1830s British laissez-faire economics that produced such horrors it lead to the complete intellectual revamping of the liberal tradition in the 1870s by the British New Liberals--a full 60 years before the New Deal.

In striking contrast, the more pluralist/pragmatist tradition of American liberalism has been the main engine of political progress in America at the governmental level throuhgout nost of its history--with large helpings of pushing and prodding from more radical traditions that have never had much institutional power, but have shaken things up considerably, nonetheless.