"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.

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."

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.) -- kdwmson

What have you been smoking, KD? I used to think that shooter held the black belt for argument-by-assertion, but this is high dudgeon of such exquisite perfection that the planets are halted in their rotation at the sheer audacity of it. Birds fall senseless from the branches, snakes are pulled stunned from under their rocks, and the people prostrate themselves in amazement.

I gotta hand it to you, you're the finest sophist in the neighborhood these days, no doubt whatever about it.

I'm no populist, as I'm sure I've made apparent, and God only knows why the American people like the things they like. I don't get NASCAR or "American Idol" or most of our other pop culture touchstones. Americans like getting checks from the government and they don't like gay marriage. They like the war, they hate the war. Bush has huge approval ratings, Bush has dismal approval ratings.

There's no secret elite pulling their strings.

But I have to assume there's a reason that smart liberals in politics are afraid to call themselves liberals, and it's not because Rush Limbaugh is doing a massive Jedi mind trick on the electorate.

That's pretty low dudgeon, I think, Bill T.

Everybody thinks their ideology is something other than an ideology. It's just The Truth, right? It's just good sense.

Russell Kirk famously wrote that conservativism isn't an ideology but is the negation of ideology. This observation became part of an ideology. A fixed part of a pretty well-defined ideology.

Is liberalism really so different? My experience suggests that it's not. (Nor is libertarianism, for that matter.) Ideas calcify, and philosophies become enemies lists. That's the danger of dogmatism.

"Birds fall senseless from the branches, snakes are pulled stunned from under their rocks, and the people prostrate themselves in amazement."

Happens to me every day. It's a gift.

When did Faux Noise create a news division? When did that happen? Nobody told me!

You guys are pullin' my leg.

Way to demolish that straw man, KD.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/07/olbermann_hume/permalink/99dfa0c38d5508be48ff8157594e7b4a.html

other than Paul R sensed a libertarian in the room and started firing on anything that moved ( sorta like Dick Cheney on a bird hunt.)

For the record my political compass scores are

Economic Left/Right: -2.88

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.74

I noted that its interesting when libertarianism gets discussed.

Based on the fact that there are now over 372 comments on this thread, I'd sat that my interest is justified.

So why the personal attacks?

The mind reels.

KD, I hate to disillusion you, but you aren't standing on a high place watching the ants below, and your judgments, unlike the almighty's, aren't value-free. You're here in medias res with the rest of us, and part of the dialectic just like the rest of us. So spare us the philosopher king pronouncements, and tell us who, exactly, has to be banished to make this the best of all possible worlds?

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."

kdwmson: Paul's comment above so perfectly describes (and, consequently, eviserates) any possible rational response defending "libertarianism" (with or without a capital "L"), that I think you really ought to retire from the field. In fact, your latest comments reflect a sort of desperation. Give it up, sir, before you're completely naked.

Libertarianism or libertarianism? I (mostly) concur with Paul R in regards to the former, but concur with you in regards to the latter. Of course, it's really easy to game that questionnare. We need something a bit more sophisticated, I think.

BillT:

I'm not sure I want to banish anybody. I'd like to make a bunch of commissars unemployed, maybe banish them to the private sector where they can look for useful work to do.

My central claim is that free processes (free markets) do a better job of producing goods and services than unfree processes (central planning). I think that's a hypothesis that can be tested. I don't think that I have a magical political map to the best of all possible worlds. In fact, I think that utopian thinking is usually antihuman. I think that people ought to be left free to pursue their own ends.

I think that many of the things we think of as being necessarily tied to government action are actually goods and services better provided by free markets. I think things like Social Security and Philadelphia public schools are a pretty good argument against government-provided goods and services.

I don't know that any of that constitutes philosopher-king pronunciations. I'm intimately familiar with the height of the place on which I stand, which you correctly identify as not a particularly high place, so I don't feel that I am especially in need of your kindly offered disillusionment.