No. There isn't *life* after liberalism; just a bunch of dead men (GOP) wondering the earth with black hooded robes and scythes.
17
It does not matter what we call these philosophies, whether Liberalism, Capitalism, Libertarianism etc. Good, ethical moral, wise, compassionate people will all gravitate towards the same philosophy: Wisethingism.
It's the people, stupid! Idiots in power will consistently bring Idiotism!
Look at the Evangelicals... They are so lost they ignore immoral behavior and support this new vile ism: Trumpism.
25
This suffers from the journalist disease-- "ism-ism": castigating "liberalism" without defining it.
" the crisis years that gave us both F.D.R. and Hitler...the ...the liberal order" ...a stagnant-seeming liberal West [to be replaced by]... populism." [Populism?]
Dineen's "bracing argument"--"the liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix... depends...upon pre-liberal forces and habits...communities...moralism and metaphysical horizons of religion, the aristocracy of philosophy and art."
"Aristocracy of philosophy and art??" "Aristos" is Greek for "best"--but political/economic aristocracy is rule by inherited capital/wealth. Only the rich think they are superior.
The present always depends on the past--but that was Feudalism/Mercantilism/Christendom (FMC)--mythologies of peerage, zero-sum economics and divine right.
Once upon a time "liberalism" meant "free [from FMC] enterprise" .
But now--it is "Conservative".
"Where it once delivered equality [old] liberalism [now conservatism] offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity. It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled"
Indeed--the Trump/GOP idea is not "populism" but neo-Feudalism/Mercanitilism/Christendom.
15
Hey, Bannonites...
A party already exists that looks after worker and would spend freely on things like infrastructure. It's called the Democratic Party.
The catch is that the Democrats no longer tolerate racism or sexism. So you need to leave those behind.
Now you can keep your racism and sexism if you stick with the Republicans, but they will never do anything for you, ever. See the recent tax bill for example. They will just take your votes and pat you on the head.
So, that's your choice. Better material well being or ineffective white supremacy. You must choose, cause you can't get both.
40
How gratifying it would be, Ross, on days when the swamp is overflowing, the stench of the republican party's cowardice on the world's most pressing problems in search of a quick monetary gain is gagging us all, if you would just hand your column over to one of your children to write. Or the cat. Liberalism is the only way forward, liberalism is a trope towards the truth.
10
With President Trump leading the country no one has to kill or even harm liberalism.
He is making it passé.
Can you imagine if he continues to change the country at the pace he has in his first year what liberalism will look like. A worn out dishrag.
The effects of the tax law changes have not had a chance to hit yet, and the economy has completely turned around.
The African American unemployment rate has registered the lowest ever.
Today's NYT tell how those without a high school education, and even ex confects are finding jobs.
Etc. Etc.
Three more years of this ( not to mention 7) will change the face of this country.
A tall order for liberalism to match.
4
the system works for all: just get up and about and do something. Do something you like if possible but do somethin.
Be it with liberal slant, or libertarian, or conservative, or whatever...just do sumthin.
In 3 years plus Trump will be a fading bad dream.
2
CapitalismCapitalismCapitalism has ravaged us. It is so difficult to survive let alone be creative and generous in a culture that eats you alive because it can. Everyone needs so much $$ to get from point A to point B. The rich are not better. What a waste! Liberalism needs air to live and breathe. ..not just donor pocketbooks and the OK from Dick Hurts, the US favorite to win the race.
3
Will there be life after Trump?
1
I thought this looked like an interesting title and article but then I saw it was Ross Douthat and thought that it would be valuable time I'd never get back. So, no.
9
Calling Scandinavian regimes ‘far left’ just undermines the credibility of your argument, Ross.
16
" . . . Tocqueville’s fear that liberalism would eventually dissolve all these inheritances, leaving only a selfish individualism and soft bureaucratic despotism locked in a strange embrace, may now fully be upon us."
This conservative trope that "selfish individualism" will inevitably lead to "growing conformity and mediocrity" fails to reflect human life experience. Humans, above all other animals, have been given the gift of Free Will, the ability to chose whether to live within the laws of nature that restrict all other creatures, or not: to choose for ourselves who we will become. Our lives are a product of the choices we make as individuals. Those choices have revealed a highly diverse, ever-advancing civilization that is creative, self-sustaining, compassionate and inter-related.
Human civilization manifests and advances as a result of the "selfish individualism" each person expresses.
If humanity had no Free Will, no ability to be involved directly and intimately in the manifestation of one's life, what value would life's experiences hold?
4
I absolutely agree with HapinOregon, FDR and Kennedy!!
Liberal democracies work well as long as they keep the religious and wealth crazed at bay. When the religious and wealth crazed break loose it takes a long time to return to democracy. Clearly republicans and especially southern republicans are a grave danger to our democracy. Anyone supporting Trump cares not for the well being of the people of the U.S. nor will they ever. Selfishness and greed are a mental disease.
Douthat wants a Christian Dominion government where the people of color and all women are subservient to entitled white men. He does not seem to understand how the enlightened European countries work. The main goal is to protect their democracy and their citizenry, and to ensure that every citizen has a vote.
I can hear Douthat clutching his pearls and screaming defiance "Nooooo. Never every citizen!'
8
Why does the New York Times waste Op-Ed ink on dressed-up pseudo-intellectualism? Do the editors not notice Douthat makes no attempt to clearly state his thesis, never mind defend it?
Depending on how defined, liberalism was never tried or currently underpins the governments of 3/5 of the world's population. No one seriously asserts that nativism, xenophobia, or capitalistic greed were vanquished.
Liberalism isn't in retreat. It isn't becoming oppressive. Authoritarianism isn't on the rise, either. Yes, America elected Trump, but by -3,000,000 votes. It also elected Obama (and popularly favored Gore), and Canada elected Trudeau.
If Douthat thinks this country will elect another Trump, or worse, let him so declare. The evidence is not: Trump has done more than anyone to energize democratic forces. Trump and Trumpism are already as dead as Bannon's nationalism, for the simple reason that their remedies were as wrong as their diagnoses, to the extent they were ever sincere. Trump is riding the economic wave he inherited from Obama. When he falls in a hole, and it will happen, he won't be able to get out, and will be abandoned by party and country.
11
In the 1930’s, every country was in the throes of the Great Depression. Germany had the additional burden of having to pay huge reparations after WW I, in what they saw as an unfair treaty. (Many now agree that the reparations were too high.) The Germans were so financially desperate that they were willing to follow Hitler into restarting the war.
Educated, financially secure Americans have not recognized that a large segment of society lacks a college degree and feels financially insecure. Many of the latter who are working still worried that their jobs will be taken over by undocumented workers or by hi tech. Tens of thousands more are not working, even in this economy. They are not counted in the official unemployment figure because they have become too discouraged to look for work. Others have only part-time jobs when they want to work full-time, or they cannot find work at their level of ability, and are thus, making less than they should be. For these Americans, we are in a financial depression.
They see our country paying for the education, health care, social services, and so on of millions of undocumented immigrants when, they and their own families are suffering.
Many of them voted for Obama in the hope that he would revitalize the economy. When he failed to do so, and made matters worse by trying to legitimize the undocumented, they voted for Trump.
3
Liberalism is oppressive? Not when the likes of Bannon, Trump and this columnist can still spout off. The problem is liberalism hasn't gone far enough. The only really civilized countries on this planet are social democratic, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden....you know, those countries that do NOT immigrate to the US. We already know what happened with unfettered capitalism. When people get tired enough of losing lives, limbs and children to the oligarchs, they organize and inject some progressivism and liberalism into the mix. We just haven't found the right mix. But the examples are out there.
9
The comments it seems that readers really don't understand how radical Mr. Douthat's call is. When he is speaking of liberalism in this essay he is not referring to welfare liberalism that marked the presidencies of FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton and Obama. He is using the term in it's generic or classical sense. This is what we mean when we refer to everything from Rand Paul to Reagan to Clinton and Sanders as all part of a liberal order. To say that this order is failing means that one is calling for a rejection of 1 or more of the basic principles of classical liberalism. What he decries is that we cant get beyond such "failed" notions as civic citizenship, constitutional government, the separation of church and state, free speech, individual choice of lifestyle, or the free market. A true alternative in Ross's sense might include some blood & soil nationalism that would purge those wo the genetic profile that the State would choose, it might be a clerical state where a single legal Church would determine acceptable values and scientific truth, from what he says here it might even embrace a renewed Maoism. Look more carefully as his invocation of FDR or Mussolini. In act as well as word FDR did exemplify a liberal order. Thus it would appear that only the Italian dictator who wrote that one is only a person as long as one is with the state is used as an example of the "workers populism" RD calls for. This may simply be the most un-american column this paper has published.
5
Chicken Littles. Our government actually runs quite well despite an entire political party dedicated to throwing monkey wrenches in the gears of the state. Imagine how well it work after we throw these nihilists out
5
(sigh)
"Is There Life After Liberalism?"
Yes, I read the column. No comment. But I did click some really good ones that others had made.
What I wish was that Ross had written a column that asked: "Is There Life After Libertarianism?"
He could have interviewed the Theil boy or Gary Johnson or Rand Paul and used the framework of the Libertarian Party Platform that they put out in the last Presidential election.
That would have been interesting.
But "liberalism"?
I never trust what any person means when they use that term.
Do they mean 'progressives'?
Do they mean 'conservative parties' like Japan?
Do they mean the religious streak of ethics that was so hated by the Papacy?
Or, do they mean that 'middle-of-the-road' bunch called the "Fabian Society"?
You see, there's no way to tell what Ross means.
You need to sharpen up, Ross.
Or play a better avoidance game: Leave off the over-used terms that you would prefer to not clearly define and go off out into the untrampled pastures and write about the obscure.
Like Libertarianism.
And their 'Platform'.
I look forward to that, Ross.
Oh, and you might do us all a favor when you do, and clear up that bizarre confusion that exists over why the males get full autonomy - but the females don't. That the males can do as they like - but women must conform to the dictates of the "community'.
Boy, that would sure help us a lot, Ross.
You get back to us, you hear...?
12
Liberalism is not extinct. All you need to do is read publications like the New York Times to see that it is alive and well.
This is probably not the way the word was intended to be discussed but this was the association that first came to my mind. Liberal as in liberal vs. conservatism.
2
If liberalism is on the decline in the U.S., it's thanks to 50 years of conservative Republican evangelical politics. Ross fails to point this out. He doesn't mention how Republican ideology has led to income inequality, the war against women and secularism, the degradation of the environment, and of course endless military conflict.
The so-called populism of Bannon and Trump was a ruse, an overt appeal to racist white attitudes ("he just says what they think").
Yes liberalism is having a tough time now. There's no guarantee right-wing hate and isolationism won't win. The 2018 elections will be an indication of which way the country may go.
8
Sorry to be a "nattering nabob of negativity" Ross but how is it that you write essay after essay that never mention the elephant (appropo) in the room of unfettered, unhinged class division via unregulated capitalism and clear corruption of the founding principles of this experiment. That roughly 400 people can control as much wealth as the lower 150 million people is hard to miss. And the politicians - particularly the GOP - have become nothing but lap dogs for the 400. The powers are not separated now, the Supreme Court is stacked against everyday people's concerns. Get a grip on reality Ross.
13
Ross it’s sad to see a mind go when a mans dreams go up in smoke of his own making.
What liberal order in America?
You “conservatives” have run amok quite literally with torches. Failing liberal societies
I guess like Norway where the outflow of Americans leaving the country is double Norwegian inflow.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
7
Bannon, the Marat of the Trump era. in which sustenance of the peasantry can be summed up thus: "Let them eat hate!" The sooner liberalism is restored and this crew in the dustbin off history, the better.
4
Are you telling me that a puerile, authoritarian plutocracy, which is what modern American conservatism is, is an answer to the arrogance of the progressive liberal? I remember when the Arts of America were literally bubbling over in the 1970s. Hundreds of classical composers in SOHO with Artists, Dancers, Opera composers, etc. All of that is no dead. Gone with the Reagan revolution. Instead we get childish stories about how we don't need advanced education and the courts shouldn't be concerned with righteous justice. How the only people to give America an original music is now considered "unamerican" is something the rest of world sees through and makes us all look like idiots. Conservatism ala Buckley, Lipman etc. is certainly no answer. It's just old European hogwash recycled.
3
"well, then maybe the crisis of liberalism isn’t real, maybe people are just play-acting"
Correct that is the case. The real problems are 3 problems:
- tackling consequences of Globalization
- sorting through the impact of Global Capital and
- dealing with looming job losses through Automation, AI & ML.
Western Liberal Political Order based on increasing equitable 'elections'; that is the core mean to address these issues.
Everything else - do not know makes much sense.
"Deneen's portrait is sometimes a caricature..." So is this column, Ross Douthat. Plutocracy, greed, enhanced surveillance and intellectual mediocrity are the realms of conservatism, not liberalism. I can prove this by making one request of you: In your next column, provide 10 specifics of how liberalism is failing, backed up with three specific examples apiece, using the Daniel Patrick Moynihan standard for facts. We will never see such a column, because a conservative is incapable of responding to such a request.
2
All “isms” by their nature must promise nirvana which means they will ultimately fail. Since people are involved in any system, they insure that system’s failure; people can’t stand success. People are fearful, selfish and insecure, worried someone is getting too much or going to cheat them or steal their stuff. Then someone comes along and panders to their worst instincts and promises only he can save them from those others. People drop the latest ism and like Disney’s lemmings follow him off the cliff
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity. It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled."
For a minute there l thought he was describing Walmart.
3
Writing on a blackboard "Liberalism is dead" one thousand and one times doesn't make it so, no matter how sincerely and fervently you and David Brooks (his tepid, unconvincing defense notwithstanding) dream about it.
Without liberalism, we're the Confederate States of America or worse.
All things being equal, I could see you being "OK" with that.
3
It’s funny to me that, a while back, everybody thought that the Republican party was dead. Now they’ve won, and we act as if the Democratic party is dead. The world is not a binary place. Progress is made and then regresses a little.
We see this everywhere. One day it seems like house prices will go up indefinitely, then a crash, then a recovery. A fire takes its toll, but eventually a new forest flourishes. Markets and movements rise and fall, but inch forward.
As my dad used to say “relax and enjoy it.”
4
In other words, conservatives blame liberals for failing to stop them from implementing their ruinous programs. Lovely.
8
Interesting argument but for my money you are forgetting or ignoring an important difference in the rise of Conservative Liberalism as we know it right now and that is the injection of religion. While the Conservatives talk about personal freedom, never have our freedoms been more under attack. Their attempts to control how we love, pray and speak expose the hypocrisy of their arguments. When it comes to the 2nd Amendment, they are all for the Constitution. When it comes to separation of church and state, not so much.
4
Here we go again, Ross Douthat linking Scandinavia with the "far left". Scandinavian or Nordic countries are liberal democracies with free-market economies. Yes, they have more advanced social programs than the US, but far left or socialist they are not. They are not even "democratic socialist", whatever this monstrosity of a term even means. The combined population of Nordic countries is not even 30 million and yet they have created some of the biggest corporations in the world. On the measures of median salary and quality of life, they are wealthier than the US. These countries have performed far better in capitalism than expected from their size. To label them "socialist" or "far left" is an example of the kind of ignorant stupidity that led to Trump's election.
9
As I am reading the article, I was wondering, what did Douthat mean by "liberalism"? And what are the problems caused by this liberalism?
Douthat reported of Deneen's analysis, {liberalism now offers plutocracy... appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state... growing conformity and mediocrity. It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled.}
I AGREE! Except, these are the problems I see caused by corporatization of our society, and who worship, coddle and protect by any means corporate interests? Our right wing politics inhabit by the GOP and the conservatives!
Maybe Douthat has confused evangelical brand of angry and self righteous religiosity with genuine morality, humanity and spirituality upon which I do think are the foundation to cohesive and stable cultures and communities.
I can see that Douthat's intention is good. But the length and depth by which he misses reality scares me. Because if this is what a good and well intention person thinks of the politics on the left, what hope do we have of any meaningful dialogues between the parties of our democracy?
4
Oh please. Put on your glasses. In the most successful societies on earth, liberalism, or the societal safety net, is taken for granted. The details may get tweaked, but not the concept, OR the widespread acceptance among the denizens. Nobody is trying to emulate us. Think about it.
4
This would be one of Douthat's better columns if he did not so predictably and thoughtlessly condemn "liberalism" as an amorphous bogeyman.
"Liberal" has numerous meanings, even when limited to the narrow context of political theory. I have no idea what Douthat or any other conservative means by the term "liberal."
Surely, Douthat is not referring to 18th and 19th century economic laissez faire "liberals" such as Adam Smith who Friedman's progeny and other so-called "conservatives" idolize.
Surely, Douthat is not referring to the 19th and 20th century social liberals John Dewey who have struggled in vain to overcome conservative racism, anti-intellectualism and elitism.
Most likely, Douthat is referring to the New Deal liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt, but that philosophy was abandoned by Democrats with the ascension of Bill Clinton's welfare-reforming and bank-deregulating centrists.
It would be very helpful if Douthat could provide a description of a "liberal" sufficiently specific to enable a reasonable reader to visualize a bogeyman a little more realistic than an Hieronymus Bosch painting.
From my perspective, a liberal is an "open-minded" person who strives to keep in mind at all times that his/her beliefs almost certainly are at least to some degree - wrong.
It is unfortunate that conservatives such as Douthat are constitutionally unable to share such self-doubt.
4
Don't know whether Mr. Douthat is using "liberalism" to mean the philosophy of Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, or Eleanor Roosevelt, but this thought piece is a meaningless word salad.
If the word "conservative" as used from Barry Goldwater and Bill Buckley were substituted throughout the essay to mean a philosophy which has lost all meaning and relevance except as a libertarian ploy to increase the wealth of the 0.01% from merging capitalism with representative "democracy", the essay would be spot on.
Pot, meet kettle.
4
Conservatism as practiced in this country has the effect of subjugating a population physically, socially, economically, morally. Sorry, Ross; in the absence of protecting the well being of citizens, it has no future other than a dead end road.
4
Let's back up and review some things about Tocqueville.
Ironically, he was sent by the French government to study the American prison system. But at a time when monarchies of the world were stressed and under challenges, Tocqueville instead made a sociologically important study of USA.
He said that our unique equality--which was liberal compared to monarchies--resulted from number of that era's factors changes starting both in the Old and New World: such as granting all men permission to enter the clergy, widespread economic opportunity resulting international growth of trade and commerce, reaction against royal sale of titles of nobility as a monarchical fundraising tool, and the abolition of primogeniture.
The modern changes led, he believed the "habits of mind" of the American people to play a more prominent role in the protection of freedom.
He especially noted that these American behaviors include:
Township democracy; Local mores, laws, and circumstances; Rule of the majority; Freedom in choice of religion and beliefs; More power of each family; Individualism rights; Access by all to various associations. He noted that in America there was more respect for " self interest" and materialism.
All of this he described as being a society based on liberty for masses, "liberalism", versus the stratification in monarchy societies.
It is absurd to say that those factors Tocqueville found no longer exist in USA.
4
It's interesting that Douthat thinks that the "crisis" of "... the liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix we all inhabit..."" is a result of "liberalism" and not, say, "capitalism" (or democracy) particularly when Bannon's "solution" was meant to address or exploit the economic unfairness felt by labor.
Could anyone ever believe that Donald Trump would represent any interest other than those of Capital?
It's amazing that the Right can always been wound up to blame Government or Liberals, when the takeover of Democracy by Capitalism is staring us all in the face.
Follow the money. Always follow the money.
4
Pray tell, Ross, how any suggested alternative would not immediately be branded "ridiculous or nostalgic or utopian or totalitarian" by the prevailing regime that has already foreclosed any discussion of a different path by declaring that "there is no alternative?"
At the risk of appearing both nostalgic and utopian, I would suggest that we start imagining an alternative by looking back to what liberalism had evolved towards before the neoliberal reaction began to undo over a half century in the evolution of the very concept of liberalism. I can hear the "harrumphs" already - but a good working model might be the New York City of my youth (sans the marginalization of people of color) in which the value of public infrastructure was a given, the public provision of human services was considerably more robust than it has become and both were provided by a tax structure that recognized the importance of both.
3
Are you looking for the liberal arc of history Mr. Douthat? Well, we've been ascending that arc for a long time and there is more to come. Tocqueville's lamentation for the wreckage of the best aspects of traditional society by liberal capitalism has been repeated innumerable times, from Owen to Marx, and from Polanyi to Mr. Deneen. A society dominated by markets devours its own children and all those who stand in the way. All else is subsumed by the market function.
3
Almost all the comments and the general commentary thread in this section is far more informed and erudite than the article itself!
Liberalism is an idea. It gives fuel to make ourselves better, evolved citizens. It more of individual and collective action and less about political delivery. It has survived for centuries and continues to do so at the societal level. The Right and the Left will come and go. Liberalism will endure.
3
The liberalism that worked was the economic liberalism of the New Deal. This left social issues alone and concentrated on the economy. By raising taxes on the rich and corporations and spreading the wealth around the Roosevelt administration ended the Great Depression and created the largest and richest middle class in history.
The policies of Franklin Roosevelt were so successful that President Eisenhower, even with a Republican Congress, did not dare reverse them, like President Trump is reversing the policies of President Obama. He tried to administer them better at less cost.
The liberalism that has failed has been the social liberalism of the 1960's, particularly the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement. The result of the sexual revolution have been significant increases in illegitimacy and divorce. Children raised to adulthood by both parents living together in matrimony tend to have fewer problems in life.
The civil rights legislation was well intended. Unfortunately the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was followed by five years of black ghetto rioting, and more durable increases in black social pathology. Black academic performance has hardly increased at all, despite expensive programs like Head Start and No Child Left Behind.
This has led to the Republican backlash that has made it impossible for the Democrat Party to address its best issue: the growing income gap.
2
With technology (where it is available and allowed) providing ways for people across the globe to communicate AND if we don't kill the environment that sustains us or set off the nukes, a rational path forward should be global citizens in a global community. More wars, more bombs, more violence is all the current global disorder produces. We must finally evolve into one race, the human race.
1
Just forget about liberalism as Republicans don't even believe in a Democracy anymore and they are shredding it day by day. There isn't one Republican who will stand up for Democracy today!
2
The Liberalism that Ross Douthat writes about might exist within the cloistered walls of an academic institution. What we have in our country today is an "Institutional Corruption" philosophy at its most refined. There is no form of Liberalism to be found anywhere. Neither are political philosophies smugly spouted by the main political parties. It might be what they want but they have succumbed to power mongering and control of big money, leading to? wait for it...corruption on a massive scale.
Let us not ascend into conversations about political philosophies by Tocqueville, or any other 19th or 20th-century thinker. Mr. Trump cannot absorb a few minutes of teaching on the Constitution and he's probably not alone. Tocqueville's books will send him into a catatonic state. If you threw one of Tocqueville's book inside Congress, the janitor is more likely to read it than any of our politicians.
2
Mr. Douthat has confused the ills brought on by global capitalism and the concentration of wealth with the failures of liberal democracies (small L) and LIberal policies that recognizes and activates the duties of government to care for its people. His assault on the policy dimension of liberalism is only vaguely disguised by his esoteric critic of liberal democracy. He knows better, I suspect.
1
I think that in many of the comments here the writers are confusing or conflating "liberalism" as it is used by Deneen and Douthat with the simplified, fast-food dichotomy of "liberals vs. conservatives". This is the one that is foisted on us by people and politicians who don't want to explain themselves completely, and is consumed happily by a public that doesn't have the will or the time to consider multifaceted issues, problems, or solutions. This may have been Ross's intent, unfortunately, and it results in a large number of off-topic posts.
There is little hope for any broad, philosophical discussion about the focus of our social contract and the direction we shall take "as a civilization" in our present social/political environment. Over the past 40+ years, our education system has all but scrapped the human sciences, opting for vocational training and leaving an entire population with utter disdain for any thinking that doesn't revolve around "real world" gains. This is perfectly reflected in the comment section where most people see the column headline and assume it means "liberals" vs. "conservatives." It is a sad and truly sorry state we live in where ethics, philosophy, sociology etc. are restricted to the musings of artists and dilettantes.
I highly doubt that anyone will create a new philosophy of organization within the next couple of decades. I also doubt that we're just going to stay politically stagnant. Given that most of us still want to retain a real democracy, the elites will be forced to deal with things they have no idea how to deal with, and the results will be totally unpredictable.
We have some politicians that have a vision for positive changes. We could try some of those for a while. I think the pull back to local and state governments over time will allow more average people to redefine their ideas about democracy with more direct results, and what emerges will hopefully be more down to earth than previous elitist philosophies.
The future is unknowable, and I'd rather see it emerge naturally through community dynamics than through complex, elitist ideas. The elitists will be thing more than referees in this, throwing flags when they think people are making mistakes, but also upending many of their existing ideas in favor of whatever emerges.
1
I don't see how we as a nation can move forward in any direction when obviously much of cultural conciousness is rooted in racism and bigotry? much of our population has not evolved. They do not judge men by the content of their character. I wouk d also say that past performance is not indicative of future results. Digital has ushered an unknown landscape. Who knows where we go from here? We are in uncharted territory. We do need new ideas and I hope bright people will come forward with a humanitarian solution but I'm not optimistic.
By electing Donald Trump and an aura of excitement about the potential of Oprah Winfrey as his successor, I can only think that we are embracing a rebirth of Nihilism.
Emotion will gain ascendancy and we will no longer embrace facts, expertise and the scientific method as guideposts. Logic and reason are destined for the scrap heap of history.
1
The post war synthesis: Unions, Social Insurance, inexpensive quality public education and robust public spending worked pretty well although it was highly segregated. Conservatives had a "new idea" bring back the old days when capitalists controlled almost everything. We have tried this idea for 30 years and it does not work.
After WWII we rebuilt Europe. Now we can't even restore electric power to Puerto Rico. We don't need to search for "new ideas" we need to dust off the old ones.
1
Most of the commentators have the wrong end of the stick. The "liberalism" of de Tocqueville has a different meaning than the "liberalism" of the American political scene.
In pre-modern times trade was (mostly) controlled by the king or queen. If you wanted to buy/sell cow hides, for instance, you needed a nod from the crown. Where the crown had permitted the formation of autonomous towns and cities the guilds took over this position.
Liberalism was the end of this. If you could acquire the hides and get them to market you were free to sell them for whatever price you could get.
Thus, here in America, both the "neo-liberalism" of the Left and the "conservatism" of the Right are basically fundamentalist free-market philosophies. A less vicious/austere version of this idea is the under-lying assumption that we all share.
Mr. Douthat's essay is actually very astute.
It's the fudamentalist's obsessive focus on business and profit that has so upset the nice little world that our forebears created and left for us. And now, having fallen down this rabbit-hole, it's hard to see how we'll ever get out.
Liberalism (or what we often call "libertarianism" now) has an innate logical flaw: reductio ad absurdum. Classical Liberalism as described by Hobbes, Locke, and other social contract theorists concludes that a world without government would be "nasty, brutish, and short" with "every man at war with every man." Capitalism says exactly the opposite: if you move government out of the way, everyone will just get richer and richer as the "invisible hand" governs human activities. So, which is it?
Our answer has been to treat government as some kind of organism that exists outside of the society and the economy poking at them with a stick. We use phrases like "government intervention" and say that the "government steps in" because we assume that things should go well without government or, even more telling, that government gets in the way.
The truth is that government is part of the human condition. Humans in the "state of nature" are humans living in a governed society. Government doesn't get in the way or intervene. Government is the way. Marriage, child custody, money, business establishment... all depend upon the legitimacy of central governing institutions for their own survival.
If we are going to move forward with the ideals of liberty, freedom, and democracy then we must first embrace the central institutions that make that possible. That means we must stop talking about what the government "does to us" and start talking about "how we govern ourselves."
1
Liberalism has not failed, not at all. Same sex marriage, legal marijuana and much more reminds us that progress is still being made, though facing difficult headwinds from scared right wing reactionaries who cringe at any change.
The biggest headwind to progress is the current ascendancy of money in politics as exemplified by the Koch brothers political organization fueled on high octane money courtesy of the execrable Citizens United ruling of recent infamy.
The fact that Bannon's "bold populism (has been) subsumed into the same old, same old Republican agenda" merely proves that vested interests and big money have exited Trump's Trojan Horse and resumed sacking the U.S. Treasury like it did when G.W.Bush was dotard in chief.
We will fight the Koch brothers, the Mercers, all their money and the utter immorality of the greedy usurpers of democracy with the facts, with the truth, with the inevitable march of mankind's progress, and with our votes.
The current horror of big money politics is a mountain we must climb, but we will climb it, we will plant our flag, and we shall overcome. We shall.
3
What many commenters ignore, as does Mr. Douthat, is an essential element of Tocqueville's analysis of Democracy and capitalism: the absolute need for active and effective regulation. The same urgent call issued by Adam Smith and every other early theorist of capitalism.
The failure here is not of liberalism, but refusal of the wealthy to countenance anything that limits their ability to grab and keep whatever money they set their sights on.
We're brought to the point where it's considered foolish, looser, idiotic behavior to meet obligations to the community. It's an affront to God to be concerned with one's fellow citizens, and de rigueur to treat the wider world with suspicion and contempt.
This is not the sarcastic counter to such arguments, that 'the rich are evil'.
What they are is blindly self-interested. Willing to risk the society that spawned them.
It's crazy to assert the wealthy, corporations in particular, are willing to see their country go down in flames for more cash, yet here we are.
Like climate change it's happening, it's dangerous, and there are massive forces encouraging it along its way. Like Evangelicals praying for war in Israel to force Jesus to appear at their command.
The failure is our political system, our democracy, laid down and offered itself to the highest bidder. At every step, these rich and venal people pervert the very structures of government to obliterate debate and create a permanent underclass of Dickensian proportions.
2
Wrong. It starts with the corrupted definitions of liberals & progressives. Today's liberals are neoliberals (Rockefeller Republicans) and "progressives" moderate, centrist liberals of decades past who adopted the name when the right-wing noise machine turned "liberal" into a disparaging term. Millions of Americans (witness Bernie's support) believe in a truly liberal set of ideals. Not everybody agrees on everything, but we believe in a much fairer division of the GDP pie, a truly progressive income tax, a strong middle-class in the majority, with both the poor & the rich brought closer in income to the middle. Rebuilding the trade unions equalizes the power of workers & management. We favor single-payer health care (nobody complains about other single-payer systems, like flood insurance, Interstates, or the military). We are not for bigger or smaller government, but government that actually works for the benefit of the people. We believe in one-person-one-vote, eliminating the slanted Electoral College, an independent Elections Commission that would ensure the same rules are followed for ALL federal elected jobs. Upon birth or naturalization, every American is automatically registered to vote. The measure of a society is how well it treats its least fortunate, not it's most. Power must be bottom up & rest with the Sovereign people. Their representatives must represent them, not their donors. Individualism & community responsibility must both be honored. And so much more..
1
"sometimes you can’t renew an order, as ours clearly needs renewal, until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different." It is difficult in our era to sustain any concept in contrast to the values shoved down our throats by the forces of a Brave New World. Obviously, most people will deny that because our culture's political imagination, as implied, is dead.
1
Mr. Douthat, i admire you effort to avoid using the term "conservatism" in your assay. Not defining "liberalism" for today's reality, which is obviously different from Tocqueville's, leaves evryone scrambling to figure out what the classical liberalism has to do with this country where 40 years of conservatism, with predominantly conservative policies, has left it in debt and in deep social crisis. Is Trumpism a final version of American Conservatism or is it still some representation of classical liberalism?
You have comically over-interpreted the simple tendencies that have always existed in capitalistic society, and which now have arose with Reagan again, where plutocracy, including religious moneyed interests (yes, religious groups do profit hugely from the conservative resurgence), use their power to control the society. This alliance of religious groups with plutocracy made it particularly effective. Trumpism is their new ideological vehicle to use in a semidemocratic way. Nothing to do with classical liberalism and nothing to do with modern liberalism.
Give it a rest!
1
Any new order will have to include the needs of nonhuman systems and entities. Anything else will just get swept away, which may not be a bad development, and could well be the probable one. In place of such an outcome, can anyone offer a model for a more-than-human politics?
Liberalism is, by far, the most successful politics in all of history. Every advance in freedom, every improvement in economics, a world with increased fairness toward all, has come through Liberalism. What passes as "Conservatism" today is, in fact, Right-Wing Radicalism, coupled to a false portrait of the past, and a refusal to place rational thought over ideology. We know, for example, that providing health care to the poor helps them to work, and so profits the nation, yet today's "Conservatives" say that the poor will have to work first, before they can be assured of good health. We know that the Republican tax scam failed in Kansas, yet the "Conservatives" have just pressed it onto the entire nation. Today's "Conservatives" are good at blocking liberal policies with reasonable-sounding, but ignorant ideology ("make 'em work; lower taxes will boost revenue this time; spending money on elections is a form of speech; Mommy didn't say we couldn't not bounce the ball one more time, and the Constitution doesn't specifically say we can't withhold our consent for Obama's Supreme Court Justice!"), but that is not necessarily an honorable or constructive skill. Liberalism is not failing. Ideologues are blocking its success.
Unfortunately, Ross, I have become confused with the arguments presented by yourself, David Brooks and others. The stress and strain in the liberal order, certainly in the United States, is caused by a design flaw. Baked into our liberal democratic ideal is the notion of private property and the protection thereof. The US Constitution never once mentions that capitalism is a required economic system. However, capitalism is implied based on the constitutions codification of property rights. So be it. But unfortunately, the business of any business is not to control property but to control a market, other people, which ultimately is a totalitarian outcome.
Rent seeking is the goal of any business. Internalize all profits, and externalize all cost. This system is maintained by the state and is codified in laws and regulations. The goal is to maintain an asymmetrical relationship between business, employee and consumer with businesses and business owners having the upper hand. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties have supported this asymmetry but the Republican Party has taken it to its awful conclusion. Cost is born by the community at large. That cost comes in the form of many of the measures now being viewed alarmingly as evidence of a breakdown in our communities and the liberal democratic order.
3
I don't see how Bannon's goals and thus Trump's goals can succeed in what Douthat claims they want to succeed if they depend on racism to be the core of their base support. Whether your talking about the liberalism of the left or the liberalism of the libertarian, racism is antithetical to liberal ideas.
With regard to the brainwashing of people to be pro-consumerism and anti-family that is more the fault of say Reagan and intolerance, the drug war, and a justice system that targeted specific populations through the drug war and other laws that were used only to punish and destroy minority families and communities. These techniques are used by many fascist, which is the true GOP and not some libertarian ideology.
Douthat ends with "sometimes you can’t renew an order, as ours clearly needs renewal, until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different."
Liberalism (understood as a political philosophy that trusts in social responsibility, rationality, science, political freedom, civil rights, pluralism, and economic freedom) cannot be renewed by something different. It can be replaced by illiberalism, which would be a mistake. Renewal of liberalism can only occur within its philosophical structure. The failures of liberalism are due to the weaknesses and contradictions of human character and culture. The new order should focus on changes in character and culture, not philosophy. new
1
You’re premise is incorrect. It’s conservatism that’s inflicted “a selfish individualism and soft bureaucratic despotism”. The supposedly conservative Republican politicians have been largely in control of the elected positions i this country for at least a generation. Their objective has to dismantle government and the social safety net and shared sacrifice thru progressive taxation. They have been quite successful. It’s disingenuous to blame our current dilemma on liberalism. Mr. Douthat, you always start with the assumption that failure to enact conservative solutions is the cause of our problems. Please broaden your thinking.
1
A conspicuous difficulty of Dr. Deneen's view (insofar as I understand it) and the subsequent of comments of both Douthat and Brooks is that "liberalism", as a term, goes undefined, as many here have pointed out. It seems they mostly have in mind something called "classical liberalism", which in current vernacular is partly called "conservatism". But he problem is not simply that "liberal", which has numerous renditions, is ill-defined, but that in my view it is treated wrongly. In so saying, I suggest that treating liberalism as an ideology (e.g. Denneen), comparable to "fascism" and "communism", is to miss an important aspect of liberalism. Liberalism is much less an ideology that it is a philosophy. As an illustration of this view I again quote Bertrand Russell:
“The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
Liberalism is not a collection of immutable (political) beliefs, as often suggested by conservatives (e.g. "liberals are for big government"). Rather, it is an attitude one brings to a discussion of any subject that, in essence, seeks a "best solution" regarding the matter at hand; if that solution doesn't work, try something else.
1
I believe liberalism can be resuscitated, if a balance between classical liberalism and modern liberalism can be achieved. Such a balance existed in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century, as reform presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, used the power of government to encourage laissez-faire economics, and unalienable individual rights. The Republican ascendency of the 1920s brought that to an end, leading to the expansion of liberalism under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which expanded government significantly to deal with the economic collapse of the Republican experiment in the 1920s. Born out of the New Deal, modern liberalism reached fruition under LBJ’s Great Society, which realized Kennedy’s commitment to the “welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties.” At that point, liberalism failed, as veered off to unbridled progressiveness, permissiveness and, may I dare, say promiscuity. Since the 1970s, the pursuit of civil liberty has devolved into an indulgence of permissive and promiscuous conduct, sanctioned by political and social structures that embraces progressive liberalism. This new liberalism champions identity politics, abortion on demand, and decriminalization of so-called recreational drugs. Until these trends can be reversed, liberalism will further erode, to be replaced by radical populism which will make Trumpism look tame. Thank you.
2
Ah yes, the Republican longing for the simplicity of a conservative, reactionary mind. Bannon may just be a misguided religious/racial warrior and Trump a vindictive opportunist. Both have been subsumed by the Republican Party Inc, that group of party apparatchiks who buy and sell elections for mega-wealthy inherited as well as corporate wealth. When Paul Ryan talks about the Republican "product" he's talking about the policies that the donor's want, his customers. I don't think Tocqueville ever imagined what monsters the market place has created. "Liberalism" means nothing if it doesn't recognize the duality of freedom and oppression. One person's freedom is another's oppression. The Ryan crowd think they can bribe everyone into submission.
The fundamental cluelessness of the denizens of our political discourse is amazing. If only they would take a break from counting their money to actually seriously look at the problems we (humans) should be facing. Instead we get "rededication to localism and community" mush. At least Douthat, unlike Brooks, appears to understand there is a crisis with "liberalism" and we shouldn't look to those who profit from that crisis for leadership.
It's truly bizarre to see the crimes and deformities of capitalism blamed on "liberalism," the fundamental heritage of the Enlightenment.
Do you believe in the founding principles of free speech, free press, free association and free religion? You're a liberal.
Do you believe power should rest with the people and not with autocratic leaders? You're a liberal.
Do you believe in universal human rights? You're a liberal.
Do you believe in eradicating superstitions and prejudice and educating the population to reasonable standards of literacy and community? You're a liberal.
Look to your history, look into the Enlightenment and what was fought for and won with the Enlightenment.
What we have in its place are contrasting views on how capitalism, taxation and finance should be governed. None of those are inherently liberal issues.
It is simply baffling to me that Mssrs Doithat and Brooks insist on focusing on "liberal" issues while making passing mention of the cancer that is modern Conservatism.
1
Liberalism isn't failing for any inherent flaws. Internally, it has seen and survived far worse than Trump. Externally, it has triumphed over far more compelling competitors than Putin's Russia or Europe's blood and soil nationalism.
Liberalism is straining under the weight of moral failings our society has always been guilty of, but has previously been able to push out of mind. But these moral failings exist everywhere! Every system, Putin's oligarchy and China's authoritarianism included, is straining just as ours is.
Social media and the internet have made it impossible to ignore racism, inequality and injustice. But, again, this is happening everywhere and not just in liberal societies.
Liberalism's free press and free speech mean we see the cracks sooner and more clearly. Where we bend and groan and stress, illiberal societies are brittle and silent. They are subject to the same forces, but they will seemingly be immune to those forces until they break violently and with little warning.
It would be a terrible mistake to find fault with our proven, cherished liberal society. It is the one thing we get right. The moral failings causing each current crisis run counter to and could be solved by more and better liberalism.
Maybe Libealism is just a pathyway like a street. It describes a processus not an outcome. In fact all "isms" are pathways to an outome. People argue about the pathways and ignore in most cases the outcomes. Take Socialism for example. There is Democratic Socialism, Christian socialism, National Socialism, Communist Socialism etc. The outcomes of these have been different in the last 100 years. The issue really is what is the outcome you are looking for. If you are Germany or Europe you do not pick National Socialism or Communism because you know the outcome of those two, 70-100 million dead massive destruction of homes and lives.
When you look at liberalism you need to define what is the path you mean. That is more important and difficult for humans to do, look objectively at the outcome. If the outcome is not what you wanted, or worse, you need to reassess the process to get the outcome you want. This is difficult. Many a great liberal of the first 1/2 of the 20th century was never able to see the poor outcome of the Communist experiment in Russia. Just as difficult to understand is the revival of Nationalist socialism in Europe after the slaughter and destruction it created in just 12 years in Europe between 1933-1945. The history of the last 100 years should be able to get the philosphers to come up with a better path for Liberalism. That is if they can define the prize and make sure the path leads to the outcome that is acceptable to the majority of the population.
The myth to be busted here is that there ever were any societies built on the at least mostly pure tenets of liberalism. There weren't. Liberalism as a governing philosophy grew out of the Enlightenment and the age of reason and finds reasonably pure expression in Thomas Jefferson's words in the opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths ..." And yet, the framers, Jefferson included, and the capitalists standing behind them were anything but committed to such a world view except as it pertained to themselves and their class of elite white men who owned land in the colonies, usually by gift or grant from a European king or queen. America was built in the image of European colonialism and empire and the wealth of cotton and slaves and landless, indentured serfs forced to labor in northern mills to produce finished goods from slave produced raw materials. America was built on the expropriation of lands from indigenous peoples and the importation of a permanent slave class from Africa to work in conditions that white European-Americans deemed to difficult for themselves. America was built on the ethnic cleansing of native inhabitants. America was built on the same caste system that shaped Europe in which only land owners had any rights. It's just taken us this long to see through the fog of one war after another and finally realize that the promises were always a sham, that America is an empire like all the others that came before it.
Mr. Douthat is honest. He admits he believed that Steve Bannon's incoherent historical theories had some basis in reality and therefore might produce something useful. Mr. Bannon's self destruction reveals how nonsensical his theories were. But Douthat's propensity to swallow such theories remains. Consider his response to "Why Liberalism Failed". He is disappointed that its author, Patrick Deneen, did not offer an alternate political order. There is a simple reason for that. He can't, anymore than Mr. Douthat can. An alternative political order would require Douthat and Deneen to offer burdensome specifics explaining how an alternative order would work. That would be a laborious undertaking, requiring some intellectual precision. How much easier to rant about "appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state". What is anyone supposed to do about that?
1
". . . the crisis is still here, because the system of liberalism is failing, . . ."
Uh, no. Liberalism is not failing, liberalism has been systematically attacked by the GOP for the last 27 years and sabotaged from within by a bunch of self-serving neoliberals some of whom have the last names of Clinton and Obama.
Real liberalism gave the United States its first middle class during the post-war years; it gave us the baby-boom; it gave us the American Dream of owning a house; it gave us a strong labor movement with overtime pay, paid sick-leave, weekends, workplace safety, civil rights for minorities, Social Security and Medicare.
That most of these things have survived the sustained attack of the GOP and the sabotage of neoliberalism is testimony to both their popularity and strength.
If you want to see how dead liberalism is, watch the midterms.
For starters read: Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson, Analyzing Oppression by Ann Cudd. Two political philosophers rethinking basic liberal themes.
World wide political Conservatism as practiced in the USA, Israel, Russia,the Phillipine's, the UK, and other European countries is what's ailing Liberalism, broadly.
More liberalism, more liberal policies and politicians is the answer to reviving Liberalism, as defined by Douthat in this piece.
Pretty simple.
Why don't we give it a try?
"Put a little love in our (mankind's) hearts"
John Kenneth Galbreath once stated that "It is the job of government to put a human face on capitalism." Over the last 50 years, the US government has failed to perform that job.
1
There are plenty of people, organizations and movements who offer alternative paths to "liberalism" as Douthat defines it. The MSM, including the NY Times, just does not allow, encourage, invite or acknowledge the alternatives.
1
I always am confused about the terms "liberalism", "conservatism". "social democrat " etc. What do they mean? How does one group react to the term when heard? Bet you could ask 100 different folks about what they think these terms mean and get 80 different answers. We need to escape these terms and deal with issues themselves. How would a person want to solve the actual policy problems? Abortion. infrastructure, health care, environment ,tax cuts, women's rights, wages, racisim, etc. A "liberal" will have different ideas on some versus a so called conservative but they may overlap on many.
I think we add fuel to the division of our nation using labels. We need to deal with specific issues facing all of us and see if we can get some common ground to solve problems not increase them.
23
At its core, liberalism is a centrist cluster of ideas and practices focused on individual rights within a market system governed by the rule of law. It is distinct from the social, authoritarian right and the radical, group-oriented left.
Within the liberal center, we can broadly distinguish between the center-right (libertarianism, which advocates minimal government) and the center-left (characterized by the values of FDR, Bernie Sanders, and the philosopher John Rawls, which emphasize a greater role for government in ensuring political and legal equality and minimizing social and economic inequality).
In my view, enacting Rawlsian values of equal basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity for each person into our law would yield such results as single payer health care, far less expensive public education, and a constitutional amendment dealing with Citizens United v. FEC, i.e., an amendment authorizing Congress and the States to enact comprehensive campaign finance reform while removing any First Amendment barriers to this goal.
When Bill Clinton bestowed the Presidential medal of freedom on Rawls in 1999, three years before the latter died, he said that "Professor Rawls has placed our liberties on a brilliant new foundation," i.e., an updated version of the social contract. It is notable that John Locke, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx all had their greatest influence in the century following the death of each one. I hope the same will be true of Rawls.
3
What does Douthat mean by Liberalism? I remember a great conversation with Siah Armajani, the emigre Iranian environmental sculptor. His mantra was moderation in all things. Moderation in the Emersonian mold. The Greek thinkers, even the early historian Hesiod said the same. Our democracy in trying to correct crises, moves right and left, and once a turn is made, it is hard to correct or turn back. If moderation were the watchword we might be more flexible and pragmatic in all cases. Liberalism needs moderation to function well.
4
Hmmm, so why you didn't define "liberalism" yourself? What do you mean by "liberalism needs moderation? Which liberalism? Trumpism?
No. I think what you mean by liberalism is not dead. The social market economy of Europe has done very nicely, thank you. Tocqueville--coming from centralized France--was too thrilled by lack of order. Tellkampf, from a then totally disorganized Germany--saw the need for systematization in law. https://books.google.com/books?id=9gcOAAAAYAAJ
4
Mr. Douthat worries that "someone will need to step forward and ... invent the new order," rather than imagine "just a more Scandinavian one for the far left or a more Polish one for the far right."
I'm wondering whether Mr. Douthat's skepticism that "the political imagination [is] capable of imagining something different" is based on any serious attempt to read what philosophers have produced on this score. Not to mention politically engaged thinkers outside of universities, such as those who contributed to the platform of the Movement for Black Lives. That would be a great assignment to avoid the laziness of the long-term op-ed writer: to cover "the political imagination" like a beat reporter.
Channeling John Markoff: "Waves of democracy" come from the hinterland rather than the metropolis. So the most compelling visions of a political future are likely to come from people of color, colonized peoples, women. A great place to start is https://policy.m4bl.org/
3
With his usual combination of deafness, blindness and clogged mental gears, Douthat has become enamored of a book promoting the imaginary notion that we are living 'after liberalism'. That would be a dire situation indeed, since a deranged form of conservatism is poised to kill us off. Douthat should be careful what he wishes for, even if he prefers his cakes half baked.
15
No.
"Bannon’s vision" is not "pretty much dead", Mr Douthat - it's broadcast daily by our racist-in-chief. I would say his broadcast is in living color, but can't, because it's being broadcast with the most vile, racist denigration of color, a sickening whites-only tirade that deserves only our disgust.
The only worry about liberalism that we need to focus on - how do we stop the warring among democratic factions and join under the big tent to elect only Democrats in 2018 and 2020!?!
8
Brooks has a far better take on Deneen's argument...
Liberalism. Douthat just can't wait to be done with it. And replace it with some Holy Order of one kind or another.
9
Exactly. The biggest drag on progress is usually our religious component.
They fight change because they're scared to death by dire predictions from motor mouths like James Dobson, Pat Roberston, Falwell, etc, and flaming screamers like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, et al. Look at how Phyllis Schlafly killed the Equal Rights Amendment with her religion-based fear mongering.
A large part of the religious component have poor critical thinking skills. They abdicate their requirement to think and turned their minds over to total charlatans who steer them on a course straight back to the dark ages.
We will continue to make progress and throw off our yoke of ancient dogmas.
3
Adolf Hitler and FDR responded to fear of communism. All of modern liberal thought came from trying to meld the good of communist thought with the good of classic liberalism. But when communism failed, the need to restrain capitalism and give it a human face disappeared. And we ended where we are today. We have simply converted class warfare to identity warfare.
Back in the 1960s an alternative to global capitalism was preached by the economist E. F. Schumacher in a lovely little book called "Small is Beautiful." It's too bad that his thought is never a part of the discussion of the future today.
7
Only ONE question, Sir: Choose between Trump OR Obama. Your answer will reveal everything about your integrity and honesty. Period.
8
Liberalism powered by capitalism is like a dog tethered to a pole by a long leash. The dog runs round and round the pole, eventually wrapping all of it's rope up.
"Game over!", says the planet.
3
Haven't the Koch brothers placed a lot of professors?
Is this guy one of theirs?
7
This column is so full of nonsense I don't know where to start. Liberalism hasn't failed and true conservatism hasn't failed. What has failed is Republicanism.
15
Than what the "true conservatism" actually is? Those supposed "conservative" principles, like family, conservation of resources, justice and order, personal freedoms, etc., are now more associated with progressivism.
True conservatism, in a American Conservatism sense is a myth, it never truly existed.
2
One very simple question, Sir: Do you prefer Trump OR Obama ? Your answer will reveal everything about your integrity and intentions.
Just saying.
6
Perhaps we should just bring back liberalism, since that which has replaced it has been so adept at sending the US spiralling into decline.
4
this helps me understand conservatism better I feel. Or at least that one might understand a reluctance toward liberal values. Ultimately both sides have screwed it up. Politically as well as culturally. One can hope its a time for reset - not a collapse into the past or outright.
1
Liberalism is a loose word. In a sense, all people who believe in indivual human rights, and that states exist to ensure the common good are liberal. Classic American conservatives have been on the liberal spectrum. They deny this just as racists and nationalists deny tge commom coin of humanity. Mental cases.
3
Just look north. As Bono and later Obama said: "the world needs more Canada."
3
Do you guys have room for 260 million Americans? If I was younger, I'd consider leaving but it's way too cold up there and I'd rather stay and fight for America's future.
3
Acknowledging your humanity and using it for others as well as yourself, Liberalism, cant be the liberalism Cardinal Douthat is speaking of.
Perhaps that was the liberalism that charlatans from Corporateville sold to some of our richer folk, Capitalchismo!
But it hurts us all this kind of charlatan smoke throwing displayed by this author. Even in opinion there are facts.
2
First, stevie bunion always got far more coverage than he deserved. His "undoing" ? From what... he's a marginal crackpot who manipulates the media into giving him a pulpit, which he is doing again, thanks to you, Ross.... so, he's not 'undone'.
But neither is he the issue.
Moving forward we need a vision to pursue. I vote for a more progressive, a wiser, liberalism, that takes into account a vastly changed world.
Is democracy up to the task ? I think it is, simply because so many are so desperate to undermine it.
Who is it on ? The voters !! But Ross, you too have to do your part...
So stop looking back into that dank sewer full of vermin, and start working toward creating a vision that will rally our better angels.....
4
There is a right-wing would-be dictator in the White House. That is a lot more disturbing that the faults of liberalism. Give me a break!
4
The fate of the liberal-democratic-capitalist order in the U.S.?
I just watched an episode of Comedians in Cars with Seinfeld and Carrey. At one point Seinfeld remarked that orange juice now has various pulp levels, orange juice is increasingly broken into types. Good image of American society. Increasingly the purity of a basic orange, equivalent to a citizen being able to see the whole of society, get a rough grasp of it, know it in its essence, is lost.
What citizens get is various pulp levels of truth and insight into their own society. At bottom, you get no orange, just a little juice and chunk of pulp, your bit of trickle down and rough matter and it's questionable whether you're experiencing an orange at all. In the middle you get pulp of right wing and left wing thought, you're constantly choked with the stuff, it's this righteous orange juice from both sides, groupthink globe of orange and juices running down your chin. We have vast numbers of producers and consumers of these two varieties of juice and where an orange is in all this who knows.
And behind elite educations, in secretive corridors, armed with computers and vast surveillance, you have people sucking on true oranges, or as true an orange as you are likely to get. And they sit there sucking and spitting seeds, pulp, juice in this whole clockwork orange society. It's really a question of an orange. I would say at this point it's doubtful the average citizen knows an orange or even the color orange.
The worst part of dying liberals is that they don’t realize that liberalism in the United States has been dead since the Reagan presidency. Clinton shifted the center to the right and Obama was neutralized by an extreme right Congress.
Those multi-billionaires, who just got a huge tax gift financed by the lower classes and stand at the top of the one percent of the pyramid aren’t defenders of liberalism but a plutocracy who pay conservatives to crush liberalism.
Just because Bannon has been “purged,” doesn’t mean Bannon’s vision “is dead, its rumpled leader sacked and ritually denounced, its bold populism subsumed into the same old, same old Republican agenda.”
That “same old Republican agenda” is the one crafted by conservative thinkers and pundits like the Carl Schmitt’s, his student Leo Strauss, the Buckley’s, the Freidman’s,’ the Podhoretz’s, Kristol’s, and now the Bannon’s and Ryan’s etc.
Instead of Brown shirts and jodhpurs, they wear conservative suits, create algorithms and write academic papers while on the corporate jets owned by the “one-percenters.”
The “30’s” that Bannon regaled is not “coming” but omnipresent.
2
When Douthat says liberal order is increasingly oppressive, what he really means is, successful.
"Liberalism" is not a political party, it is social progress. It is the freeing of society FROM oppressive forces, not the reverse.
"Liberalism" does not need to be reinvented, it simply needs to continue going forward, carrying human civilization further and further away from rigid conventions and twisted regimentation.
R.D. Laing once said that the progressive era of the Sixties - the awakening - was humanity's last best hope for saving itself from its self-destructive impulses.
Liberalism has since then been dragged through the mud to the far-right and falsely re-designated Libertarian by some.
That liberating time of the Sixties and Seventies in the West has provided a rich basis for continued progress.
But fascistic forces are reasserting themselves here and abroad and are threatening all we've gained in forty years; Herr Bannon is himself a psychotic neo-Nazi who was dreaming of reviving a Hitlerian-type Social Democracy. (50 year rule! - he's not subtle.) One down, the rest of the Trump administration to go.
It's the mentally unstable anti-socials who are trying to block further progress and insist on shoving us all back into brutal authoritarianism.
We don't need to reinvent anything. We need to keep the deranged nuts out of office, and continue the long march forward.
3
If liberalism and conservatism are at war, let's check the score.
In the '60's liberalism finally ended a century of Jim Crow that had followed the century of slavery that had been destroyed by liberalism. In between those events, liberalism finally gave women the right to vote, labor the right to organize and work in safe conditions, children the right not be be laborers.
Very recently liberals have helped give gays the right to marry, drastically reduced the number of Americans without health insurance, passed regulations on industry to reduce their destruction of the environment, provided increasing access to public spaces to the handicapped.
The death of liberalism is easy to exaggerate when taking the short view, but altering the arc of progress to our civilization coaxed by liberalism is a river that can't be damned without destroying civilization first.
3
Philosophical mush if you ask me.
2
That's "felt" inferiority.
“you can’t renew an order [...] until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different”
It’s not “political imagination” that is lacking. The problem is usurpation of democracy by a few weirdo wacko wealthies who have bought the GOP Congress body and soul.
3
*Liberalism* offers plutocracy?!? Does Douthat even read his own newspaper?For modern conservatives, words seem to mean only what they want them to mean.
2
Ross suffers from pundit myopia. A year from now, when the Dems run the house and senate, and the impeachment hearings start ramping up, most will be bemoaning the death of conservatism.
What killed conservatism is a total disrespect for facts and an embrace of propaganda promoting a white plutocracy.
2
In 2009 a black man became President and a group of terrified white supremacist oligarchs bought every Republican senator and congressmen they could find. It wasn't hard to find them, they've been skulking around since the Civil War.
In their grand bargain they bought mostly fools, liars and cheats. These are people who can't win on a level playing field, they must cheat and lie to win and they did "win." They won Trump and Bannon and fools and cowards like McConnell, Ryan, Cotton, Perdue... the list seems endless.
We only have to read papers like the NYT to know that liberalism isn't dying, it's getting energized, angry and off their duffs. You and Mr. Deneen can stop wringing your hands.
4
"...until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different."
Maybe the limited political imagination is due to the fact that the 1% of the American rich people do not feel threatened by any serious political alternative aiming to subvert radically the liberal order.
The worldwide communist threat was alive in the 30s and USA and Europe were obliged to react: the first with the New Deal and the second ones with Nazi after the Fascism.
When the worldwide threat disappeared, the ultra-liberal, greedy rich people have come one century back and do not care a bit for those left aside.
Ross is on to something...Perhaps when Trumpism CRACKS like Bannon-ism has cracked...then will come liberalism's correction...
>
"Is There Life After Liberalism?" (NYTs)
Yes, it is called fascism.
"Tomorrow, after my death, certain people may decide to establish fascism, and the others may be cowardly or miserable enough to let them get away with it. At that moment, fascism will be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be as much as man has decided they are."
J. P. Sartre
1
This illiberal administration and its GOP abettors must go: head first, feet first, head over heels, kicking and screaming, perp walked, duck walked, frog marched. Or voted out. One way or another. In the words of the song by the immortal Blondie, 'One way or another I'm gonna find ya | I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha'
Resist.
2
What kind of sad sack democracy do you live in that is existentially threatened by the likes of trump, Kelly and bannon, the three alt right stooges of the moment? This country was formed in revolution, steeled by civil war, humbled by depression and called to greatness by addressing its sins of racism. The people forged by that history will remember that Jefferson said the tree of liberty must be manured by the blood of patriots every 50 years. We have been blessed to have sacrifices of the Douglasses, the Dubois’, the kings and the lewis’ s, who give ironic meaning to Jefferson’s words. As Langston Hughes said: life ain’t been no crystal stair, but don’t you sit down cuz you find it kind of hard, cuz all the while I keep on climbing. Ross you look in all the wrong places for inspriration
2
Ross, is this where Oprah makes her entrance?
1
Why is he so angry and dissatisfied? Douthat needs to write his novel or make his music or do whatever it was that he clearly dreamed of doing as a boy and then got thwarted and gave up. He is bitter about something and is adolescent grumpiness is tiresome.
2
It is apparent that some readers have misinterpreted Douthat's use of the term "liberalism," which in this context refers to liberal democracy, not to 20th century progressive politics. The title of Alexis de Toqueville's seminal work, published in the 1830's, is "Democracy in America." The central question posed by Douthat is whether or not Western democracy - the liberal order - will survive the trends toward national populism, plutocracy and selfish individualism in the 21st century.
7
Paul K: Exactly. The linked description of Mr. Deneen´s book says this clearly.
Unfortunately there was no clear hint in the Op-Ed text itself.
Then th reference to a "far left Sweden" at the end of the article lead to a false connotation "Ahrgg, conservative Ross is hunting liberalism in the (twisted) American political sense - rightly "slightly leftist" in European sense - again" and this in turn was leading immediately to this blunder in the discussion favored by disregarding all developments in modern philosophy and history from de Toqueville to Trump in this article.
Because I haven´t read the book I cannot say whether Mr. Deneen or Mr. Douthat is to blame for this detrimental "de Toqueville - Trump - welfare state Sweden (nothing in between)" shortcut destroying this discussion. But I can sys that European terms are superior because a misunderstanding of "liberal" as "left" is excluded. European "liberal" is the "liberal" Mr. Deneen and Mr. Douthat are writing about. The detrimental results ot typical dissolution of standard definitions and terms in American linguistic usage are plain to see.
Fact is: Only very few were interested in philosophy but most of all in social security and wealth distribution - all social democratic issues. This is no miracle because 20th and 21th century are ruled by these issues getting stronger right now. So demand to discuss this was much higher than to discuss a retro-book resulting in a apparently insufficient conclusion.
1
Mr. Douthat:
It seems to me that both you and David Brooks are not that interested in solving any problems, save one: how to get people to know their place ... and stay in it.
Of course, what that place may be shouldn't be left to the masses to decide.
13
The downfall of Liberalism is the overwhelmingly unproductive approach of its proponents.
Take the immigration debate.
Liberals are quick to whine when Trump says that we take too many immigrants from basket case countries. The Liberals are up in arms, defending the immigrants from these poor countries, finding examples of successful immigrants from those countries, while studiously completely ignoring the point.
When choosing people to immigrate to the US, how should we choose?
What is the Democrat suggested immigration policy? They don't have one. The policy is to oppose any improvements or changes whatsoever and allow as many illegal aliens to enter and stay as possible.
The strategy memo from Obama's ex-aid makes it clear that Democrats view illegal aliens as a political chit, simply as a way to gain political advantage. This selfish, crass position has no regard for the American people at all.
Opposing and whining vs. constructive improvement.
The American people can tell the difference.
5
Ken, you are definitely wrong. Democrats do have an immigration policy and it includes reducing the inflow of illegal immigrants. President Obama deported many more illegals than W. Democrats do not pick and choose based on race or religion. Show me some constructive improvement from the Republican side. So far I have not seen any since Trump was elected regardless of the subject.
4
Mr. Douthat is not writing about current political parties, or their views, but about liberal Western democracy. There's a definite difference.
1
Besides confusing the meaning of "liberal" as a political philosophy and "liberal" as the antonym of "conservative", Mr. Douthat fails to offer any outline of what he would prefer. I know that he thinks of himself as "conservative", but I'm not sure that he realizes that the philosophically "liberal" attitude of individual freedom is at the center of his "conservative" beliefs.
In other words, I think Mr. Douthat is just plain confused.
4
I live in Utah, a state that is a de facto coalition government between elected Mormon politicians and anointed Mormon clergy. So declaring liberalism a failure seems premature given it’s incomplete implementation in some of our states.
8
As hard as it might sometimes be to accept these days, we have control of our own destiny.
2
Two points:
1. In the US the liberalism of Ted Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey, Eisenhower and, yes, Nixon did not dissolve, there was no arch of history that pushed it aside. It was intentionally undermined by uncaring oligarchs purchasing politicians while the liberals slept.
2. This same liberalism survives in Massachusetts, California, Washington State and a few other enclaves where the regulated free market rewards the fortunate and cares for the unfortunate.
7
Todays divisions are not about the life or death of liberalism, or conservatism. It's about the corruption of capitalism. Follow the money.
9
Is Trumpism the innoculant (a little piece of the disease itself) that builds up our defenses against rank populism devoid of forward looking policy? Will it enable Americans to reverse the fifty or so years of the cancerous philosophy that government and its liberal proponents are intrinsically bad?
3
Mr. Douthat, the "liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix we all inhabit" ONLY depends on the mammalian lower brain stem functions of survival, reproduction and early childhood imprinting on those who look like us.
1
Do we need any "-isms" at all? Douthat seems to offer us only a choice between discredited extremes, which is an old debater's trick.
5
Material conditions in the west are still too comfortable for the vast majority of people to rebel against them (look at the fate of unions; no one's desperate enough to risk a Matewan or Ludlow massacre). The revolution will really come when overpopulation and exploitation have degraded the environment sufficiently to affect the majority in severe, indisputable ways that can't be attributed to any other cause. And that revolution is unlikely to be for the better. Those dystopian fiction writers know what they're doing.
5
It's too bad the word "liberal" is in the government typology Liberal Democracy, "Also called western democracy, it is characterized by fair, free and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people." (Wikipedia) Almost all conservatives would approve of that definition of Western Democracy if it weren't for that dirty word "liberal" in the name.
There are two great rivers of human organization sweeping America along, Liberal Democracy and Unfettered Capitalism. Neither defines our condition by itself. The "new something different" we need starts with openly identifying - and fixing - the flaws in both, starting IMHO with carefully fettering capitalism again.
4
I think that those voters who believe that they are a conservative and castigate "the liberals" have no idea what either of those terms mean philosophically. What I believe it means to them is that somebody is going to get something that they don't deserve and they are going to have to pay for it. Unfortunately they take this ignorance into the voting booth.
1
"... liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity. It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled." I suggest that this result comes from authoritarianism and not liberalism. Authoritarians from either the left or the right throughout history have always stamped out individual liberty, perception, information-based decision making and incrementally oriented problem solving. I wish Douthat would put down his catechism and read about neurogenesis, astrophysics and think as he reads that is was a science oriented Jesuit who theorized about the Big Bang, a dynamic which unfolds over time. Power dynamics are pretty stable; polemicists just change how they label the winner and losers.
Countries like Denmark and Norway don't seem to have these problems.
They don't have the poverty we have. They have good schools for working class. They have universal healthcare at half the cost.
All done by government.
And Germany remains a manufacturing power. They train their workers for high-tech manufacturing. BMW is even stepping in to retrain Americans for high-tech manufacturing in South Carolina.
With 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an Opioid crisis that has made a lot of money for the pharmaceutical industry.
Part of Europe's problem is recovering from the economic recession started by the subprime meltdown.
Part of Europe's problem is a single currency which the did themselves.
And part of Europe's problem is taking in all the refugees, a consequence of Bush going to war for "weapons of mass destruction" with the help of Netanyahu telling us the Saddam Hussein had technology so advanced he had centrifuges the size of washing machines.
On the other hand, the US got Trump and the UK got Brexit, a different problem than Europe.
They have in common Reagan / Thatcher.
An incredible increase in wealth in Wall St. and the City.
An incredible increase in inequality.
And Rupert Murdoch.
7
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy;"
No. Classic liberalism delivered FREEDOM, and freedom is not equitable.
I think most of us jumped the bandwagon of castigating Douthat and the GOP while his essay is quintessentially saying that economic freedom has been employed by few to gain advantage - call it the ensuing forces of capitalism. Trump is an example who has effectively employed Libertian principles to fool the masses.
1
So long as we insist upon a binary world-view that artificially partitions policies into "liberal" and "conservative", we will fail to correctly analyze and comprehend what's happening and what to do about it. Both these conceptual models are rigid and narrow. The real world doesn't fit completely and properly into either one, so applying these labels distorts our understanding and perpetuate our mistakes.
Western political and economic freedoms defeated both Nazism and communist totalitarianism. Americans as a whole are vastly more wealthy than we were in the 1920s. Economic inequality is to some extent a result of personal choices, but is exacerbated by the pretense that unregulated market choices are always good or even best.
Let's get away from limited, labeled thinking and recognize that our choices in the world are almost never binary. There are always several ways to describe and solve problems.
1
Between this and Brooks' latest, we're to believe that things are a mess because people don't go to church, not because their rich friends have aggregated Gilded Age-level wealth over the past four decades. Let's all focus on the sideshow of "cultural rot" rather than the real failings of the economic arrangement.
2
The early modern precepts of “liberalism” (‘freedom’) were championed by elements of a growing mercantile and professional middle class that quickly gave rise to capitalism as Western Europeans extended their violent domination over the other continents.
Once plutocratic capitalists grew powerful enough to threaten social stability “progressives” and “social democrats” invoked ideas of “checks and balances’ or “countervailing powers” to try to curb the power of concentrated private wealth.
Divided power and competing institutions were always fundemental to liberalism and “liberal democracy” which is based on the recognition that pure majoritarian democracy was potentially dangerous to ALL minorities, not just the 0.1%
Democracy and liberalism are inseparable. But the fear of “economic democracy” is primarily inspired by democracy’s inveterate enemy, the 0.1% who exercise excessive control over our society’s surplus resources (now concentrated wealth under private control).
1
That Mr. Douthat can say--and many might accept--that the fever dreams of "the far left" run all the way to the extremes of (gasp!) Scandinavia says volumes about how far right the center of political imagination has shifted.
The rest of the piece tells us how badly Mr. Douthat wants to keep it there.
What a mess of an article. By conflating classical "liberalism" with modern "liberals" Douthat manages to tar the Left with the sins of the Right. For the ills he recounts are those of the GOP - too large an emphasis on individual rights over collective responsibilities; the celebration of material culture (prosperity gospel anyone); the abandonment of treasured norms (Mitch McConnel, we're looking at you as well as President Trump); and, the abandonment of "social and family relations" (Blue States do better on almost all measures than Red States).
3
Unbridled capitalism has undermined the democracy. There is a real inequality that extends beyond economics and is striking at the character of the country. Our whole concept of what it means to be a success has to undergo some kind of evolution for the better, if we are to be a society at all.
When it comes to income/wealth, how much does a person really need? How much is enough. Should we be supporting totally lavish lifestyles that incur enormous wastes of resources? On and on and on. At some point, the redistribution of wealth, at least from an income point of reality, has to be pursued. Education, health care, food and lodging should not be a crap shoot. Equality for all must have meaning.
We could start by re-educating ourselves and throwing off decades of capitalist propaganda, which has frightened people away from concepts that are far more productive for a society. We are a nation of considerable ignorance and prejudice, involving race, economics, education and spiritual well being, just to mention a few.
All of this is made more obvious by the actions of the Republican Party, today, and even more so by Mr. Trump. Some people will resist. We must help them by absorbing their anxiety about needed change. We must bring people back to making an accurate assessment about how things effect their own lives and the importance of making decisions that are good for all. We must be real in assessing whether something hurts us or not. We can not make things up.
3
Liberalism as defined as individual freedoms above all else is stifling oppressive for anyone without the means to defend against the will of the individually powerful. It’s an apt description of Trump and his donor class. It also describes and supports racism to some degree.
Liberal as defined more like JFK, or heck, even Jesus, is liberating. I don’t agree with everything Scandinavian or Western European, but it is liberating to not worry as much about healthcare, getting old, making sure your kids are educated, etc. I would suspect many Trump supporters never have the opportunity to learn about it.
I suppose “liberalism” depends on your wealth status; if you have lots of (inherited) wealth you want your unabashed liberty to do what you want without consequences, if you are a middle class person then having life’s basic needs available is liberal. Of course there are shades in between.
2
This is just silly.
I am an architect, and as an architect am bound into my profession by hundreds of thousands of professional agreements that regulate the safety and reliability of everything from my actions to the gaskets holding sheets of glass in place in every window through which we gaze. This is liberalism, the international order of liberalism to which every single red and blue voter pledges allegiance with hundreds of small decisions every day.
Liberalism is the reason you are likely still alive. Disease is not local. Ninety percent, or more, of our increased life expectancy is the result of international preventive medicine.... public health, Go back to localism and go back to flu deaths by the hundreds of thousands every year, and infant mortality rates of more than fifty percent.
Mr. Douhat continues to write ridiculous foolishness.
4
"...everything might be up for grabs: not just electoral coalitions, but the nature and destiny of the liberal order. Which would be a terrifying prospect but also an exciting one, since it would mean that the long “end of history” that followed the Cold War had irrevocably ended, and that it was time to imagine radical revisions to a stagnant-seeming liberal West." Mr. Douthat's thought, at least at one time, that Bannon might be the one to guide a country through such crucial psychological, social, political, spiritual territory indicates just how bad his judgment might be. Follow Steve Bannon through this perilous landscape? Anyone who thought that, I'm afraid, disqualifies himself from the claim to be one who would conserve a Western spiritual heritage - as Mr. Douthat projects himself to be.
1
What Mr. Douthat defines as 'liberalism' would be considered to be smack in the center of the political spectrum in European states, if not even slightly center-right in some.
1
This a well written article and cogent, and sentence that "liberalism degenerates into plutocracy" is the series of events which we are witnessing today. Who forgets that last election was between two billionaires, and that Barack Obama, while he was not extremely wealthy man before he became President, is certainly 1 now. Heard that his speaking fee surpasses that of the Clintons, who in their heyday would not have deigned to give discourses for less than 1 or 2 hundred thousand. Am reminded of JFK's crack about John Connally that once he entered political arena, nothing less than $300 suits, custom made, would do!($300 in 1950's would be equivalent of $3,000 today).But liberalism today is not democratic. None of the ruling elites in the West who live in gated communities and send their children to private schools have ever bothered to consider that before allowing a million immigrants to enter a country it would be democratic to hold a referendum to see if the electorate desired such a thing. Likewise in the US, Obama flooded the country with the undocumented, his definition of transforming America. Trump's counter revolution will change all that, "ojala!"By the way, does Mark Zuckerberg send his kids to public school?But RD merits "une fleur " for his clear writing and astute observations on liberalism's failure.
As progressives, committed to a relatively liberal form of democracy and even more committed to a FACTUAL and SCIENTIFICALLY consistent evaluation of our collective and individual situations, we will be fine.
What is happening now is essentially a temporal revolution of imbeciles. They get a chance every once in awhile to help many of us remember their utterly arrogant irrationality and stubborn commitment to stupidity but in the end, their little moment in the spotlight will fade and we will prevail.
1
“Liberalism” is a confusing term since it’s meaning has evolved as others have said here. Maybe call our unrolling failure by another name, insufficiently regulated captialism. Isn’t that what has led to plutocracy, income inequity, global warming, and Citizens United?
1
Ross assumes (erroneously) that what we’ve had for the past 40 years is liberalism. It’s been anything but! This country’s politics have trended conservative beginning with and since Carter, really; and certainly since Reagan. Democrats, when they held the presidency and/or Congress, simply have slowed the march toward the right. Arguably, there was a brief period of liberal ascendency during the first two years of the Obama presidency and we (and Trump) are still reaping the benefits of that short progressive turn today. (Trump’s longer term effect is yet to be felt.) However, the longer downward trend experienced by most Americans is directly due to conservative policies that have held sway since 1980 — weakening of labor protections, neo-liberal (read “conservative”) economic policies, destruction of the safety net, the favoring of military spending over domestic concerns. It’s laughable to call what’s been going on “liberalism”. There hasn’t been a truly liberal administration since FDR.
3
The Republican Party is made up of con artists, liars, greedy, corporate bootlickers. racists, mean spirited sociopaths, etc...there isn't any ideology, political theory, humanism, intellectualism, none. Donald Trump is their apt leader. What Douthat has written is a fantasy, completely irrelevant to our present day nightmare.
4
What are you so happy about, Ross? If Liberalism is dead, then Fascism has won. What part of freedom do you hate and fear?
5
??appetitiveness??
2
douthat admits that he knows nothing, and his paycheck is unaffected
2
I think liberalism is just changing, not failing. Concepts of community well-being, rather than heroic individualism, of the inherent luxury of simplicity and sustainability, of ecological understanding and natural balance, these are the ideas of an evolving liberal order. They have been seen as enemies of capitalism and religion, but actually act to regulate capitalism and open spiritual windows for those will not abide religion. This is going on in pockets of enlightenment all over the country.
2
Liberalism caricatured as Limousine liberals throwing billions at welfare queens and allowing unions to wreck the American work ethic. The truth is there haven't been any liberals since the times of the growth Great Middle Class in the 1950's. Keynesian economics is now being replaced by a hodge podge of supply side tax cuts and relentless Republican efforts to instill white working hatred of "big gov't". This plutocratic tax cuts recently made law by the Republicans has been touted as concerned with raising wages rather than merely enriching rich people. They could prove that by immediately raising the minimum wage to 15.00 per hour as the law of the land. Making health insurance affordable. Increasing immigration to fill the needs being left by a yawning labor shortage. The progressive agenda of controlling green house gases and not letting plutocratic greed kill the economy with the mad obsession for short term profits are certainly still on the table.
5
Liberalism has been replaced by neoliberalism aka globalism aka unfettered finance capitalism on a global scale. In the USA, democracy has been replaced by extreme inequality of wealth, legalized bribery and Twitter.
53
Ross has a demented view of liberalism. Liberalism is the promotion of that which is good for all people.Though religion is not relevant to liberalism, it is liberal to examine a situation by asking is that something I would want to happen to me? Knowing that all people are the same is liberalism. Conservatism on the other hand is that system that embraces competition and disdain for the vanquished. Liberalism is on a steady course to universal good that people like Ross cannot stop, no matter what they write.
2
Sloppy thinking in this piece. Douthat blurs the distinction between Enlightenment philosophical liberalism and contemporary American political liberalism.
I have not read the Deneen book; however, the descent into dystopian tribalism it describes may be arguably attributed to hard work of Douthat’s Republicans to bring out the worst in all of us.
The author should attend to the mote in his own eye. As penance I suggest that he reflect in his next 10 columns on the moral collapse of American conservatism.
7
The idea that liberalism is upon us fully fledged can only be the pipe dream of someone like an Irish American Roman Catholic (hold the hyphens!) who has little personal knowledge of the message of Christ. The idea that America was ever liberal is a very bad joke suited to the days of Trump and his various apertures.
Tut tut! How can anyone other than a satirist couple "true religious" liberty with "true intellectual" liberty? Fake trueness?
1
A bit too much ill concealed gloating here for me, Ross. If liberalism is really dead, I think a very dark era awaits humanity. You might want to talk to a Jew about what it was like to live under an illiberal, pre-Enlightenment political order. Do we really want to terminate liberal notions of human rights?
Societies based on a strict definition of community will, of necessity, have to exclude others. Pluralism will have to give way to varying degrees of “tolerated” participation. I don’t much care to live in a world like that. But then I am old and can hope for an exit before the advent of such a society.
4
“Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity.”
How is this liberalism’s fault? The plutocrats and conformists are conservatives.
4
We face a crisis of unparalleled magnitude because so-called "conservatives" have completely lost their moral compass, prop up an unfit President, redistribute wealth to the richest, take away health care from the needy, attack the free press and independent judiciary, and rape the environment for corporate profit. And, facing this, Douthat talks about the faults of liberalism?
None are so blind who will not see, Ross!
4
Ross, how would u characterize Jesus message in terms of politics today?
1
I've been to Sweden, I like Sweden.
5
Ross,
If you're going to put forth a coherent argument (and you haven't yet), then please define your terms specifically.
Liberalism.
Liberal democracy.
Capitalism.
Then I suggest that you tell us how you feel they are inter-related. Because, according to your piece (and, it seems, Mr. Deneen's work), they are one and the same (your "matrix"), and, in today's world, inseparable.
Are you then saying that capitalism has failed?
If not (and I'm sure you aren't, being the good traditional conservative that you are), then please take the time to dis-assemble your matrix and tell us what failures you describe can be attributed to each of the three?
Then, and only then, will you be in the realm of coherency.
3
If you missed Bannon's alt-right dog whistle, instead admiring its "bold populism," it's because you're a Bannonite to the core.
3
Once again your pen outpaces your mind. You are very talented at seemingly cunning, Jesuitical dissections of what are really very simple and obvious things. Did liberalism go too far in some areas of economic and social policy? Yes. Is the alternative, right wing republicanism, better? No and no again. You are trying to be William F. Buckley, dear boy, but the sterling conservative Camelot you perpetually pine for, if it ever existed, was immolated decades ago by Gingrich and his cronies. So please don't self-righteously scorn Trump without admitting to the republican monsters that birthed him, and stop speaking down to liberals who produced a leader of grace and empathy in president Obama.
2
Liberalism didn't fail; it was demonized by the right and abandoned by the left long ago.
None of those consequences outlined by Mr. Doubtat were produced by liberalism - the plotocracy, the surveillance state, conformity, etc. - they are all anti-liberal.
No - look to those whose villification of liberalism never wavered; who still to this day sow contempt for liberal values, who care about no one else's rights but their own, who try to delegitimize our political system all while they give phony lip service to the Constitution, who would trade democracy for autocracy, who tout their superiority over those less fortunate than themselves, who would rather punish than heal. The white supremacists, the wall-builders, the mysogynists, the neocons. Look to them for the fouling of America.
Liberalism is about individual rights, yes, but not individual selfishness, greed, the zero-sum game, every man for himself because no one else matters - no, those are the province of the anti-liberals.
Is there life without liberalism? Yes, and its face belongs to Donald Trump..
1
Mr Douthat,
When the American Revolution arrived Edmund Burke was the loudest English voice extolling philosophical liberalism and Robbie Burns was the singer songwriter though some might not call Burns' musings English.
As much as I despise Donald Trump I have long supported his reach for the Presidency as only someone with his lack of historical knowledge and his propensity to lie can bring truth back into the political discussion.
Many Americans of Irish heritage talked about the hellhole that was Ireland during the starvation and how their ancestors fled Ireland for America.
This is a false history. Ireland was no hellhole and very few fled, they were deported and the men who loaded them on the coffin ships were paid a ransom for loading them on board.
From 1845-1852 Ireland had a shortage of potatoes but Ireland was a food lover's paradise. Each year Ireland exported more than enough food to feed all of its citizens for the seven years of its starvation. Ireland and the world's 1% owned all the land which produced the great pork, beef, cheese grain and vegetables that were the source of Ireland's giant food export economy.
Three million hovel dwellers disappeared during the Irish starvation and the history books and journals like The Economist tell us the death or deportation of three million Irish souls was not an accident it was deliberate and it was of great economic benefit to the 1%. It was the economics of America 2017 that created the Irish Hellhole.
1
This column may make sense to those who think “liberal” is a bad word, but to everyone else it gives no indication as to why liberalism is failing or why one should be happy with that.
the referenced Brooks writes a whole self twisted column without very coming to the obvious reality that the golden rule is not a religious construct but inherent in most people, and in any successful society
The Catholic church has a great deal to answer for, in the present with its unaddressed abuse evils...how many abusers does Dineen know, and how many did he turn in? Does anyone imagine it is zero known, or more than zero turned in? In the past with its oppression and political control for profit. In the future with its absurd opposition to birth control creating misery for billions and perhaps quakes in civilization itself, as millions overpopulate and starve out of their home countries.
Let’s hope instead for an end to conservatism that dominates America and the world today, and a beginning to decent, competent, healthy society
Douthat’s descriptions of liberalism are a fantasyland. Treating your fellow citizens with decency under the rule of law is hardly plutocracy tied to unconstrained consumerism. If anything it describes the soul-less Trumpism into which the Republican Party has descended, except Tumpism adds pure hatred if you are not a rich white male. Douthat’s thinking would be SAD if it wasn’t so dangerous to us all.
1
One simple question, Sir: Trump or Obama ? Answer that, and I will know the level of your integrity and intentions. PERIOD.
Movement back to those "pre-liberal forces and habits, unchosen obligations and allegiances" does seem to be losing steam. May we have more MAGA caps, sir?
I don’t think Donald Trump will read the book by Professor Deneen nor even look at the summary of that book in this column. His attention span isn’t long enough for reading as he seems to live in a “post-literate” world while claiming to be a genius and “ really smart.”
2
Ross, your every column is a limpet mine that you attach to the "liberal order" as if it is some evil target that will inevitably be destroyed by the conservative idea. Rather than read scholars with an outdated thesis of the current order, you should be paying closer attention to the "president" that--despite your protestations to the contrary--you helped to elect.
Donald Trump, with his morning tweets and mid-afternoon pronouncements about anything--outpaces the twice-weekly columns that is your joy to bore us to death with. They hardly make sense and they are as out of style on Sunday as the "president" dropped an atomic bomb of unholy (note the pun, please) proportions on Friday, an egregious affront to decency, morality, and geopolitical outreach. Your timing is really poor.
You might do better to dress up in the intellectual's honorable clothing--directness--rather than sliding away behind the curtains as it is your wont to do. America, sir, is an evil country. Begin there, for we have today that for which we wished. You, too.
Start with the original "boat people," the fleers of the tyranny of monarchy. Speak, sir of the religious principles of Christians who went on to traffic in slavery. Speak of the hypocrisy of the Southern Baptists. Speak of the tribalism that lifted an obscure, wild-haired salesman to the West Wing. Speak also of the ruined Republican Party that shields and protects this abomination from scrutiny.
Leave, please, Alexis de Tocqueville alone.
4
There will be an attempt to censure President Trump in Congress for his racist statements. Of course, mostly Democrats will be pushing for this censure resolution, but why shouldn't the majority in Congress push for censure? If you want to know why liberalism is dying, watch what happens in Congress. And, please, stop wondering aloud what will replace liberalism. It's like asking what will replace Obamacare. The answer is.... either nothing good or nothing at all.
Unfortunately Liberalism today comes down to everyone whining about how they were hurt or damaged in some way. Now male models, enogh already. Rescue dogs, where are we headed. There are rescue dogs and their owners proudly display inside their Range Rovers. How about rescuing people? No, todays liberals just want the recognition of being so darn aware.
Gee, I don't know. We've only been doing Liberalism in ernest since after WWII.
Do you think we would have made it to the Moon or developed to a superpower, by following only what benefitted Judeo/Christian religions and unregulated capitalism? No.
1
The cris is in capturing the attention of an audience. The audience sensory overloaded, digitized and traumatized by the spectacle endocrine gratification feedback loop.
When in doubt as seen today, the art of obfuscation that shrilly follows Goering’s maxim. “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.“
The “attack” definition can be applied to a multitude of venues with a “war on this or that”.
There is a need for new mythologies that can adapt to the kaleidoscope of change. They need to provide a narritive of norms, morays with civility and discourse. That oldye time religion, Zarathustra booster melody is past it’s prime.
Shake your head, Ross, and try to remember that liberalism won the popular vote by a large margin.
Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
1
Deep thoughts. I would prefer more Democrats in state houses.
1
Didn’t Christopher Lasch make a similar criticism of American Society back in the seventies in ‘ Culture of Narcissism ‘ ?
1
Regulation, regulation, regulation. The lost world Ross and other conservatives bemoan was characterised by the thing they are most opposed to: regulation. Tocqueville's vision of liberal democracy is at root one of regulated freedom. The "pre-liberal forces and habits, unchosen obligations and allegiances" Ross describes here are forms of regulation.
True, these were not *government* regulations, since they were broadly religious in origin. But secularism is a different though simultaneous process to liberalisation. We're not going to persuade everyone to believe in a Judaeo-Christian god again, just because the presence of authority is healthy.
So why won't conservatives smell the coffee? The world Republicans and Democrats want is the same one: strong freedoms supported (and defended!) by strong regulation. Republicans are more at fault here, since their stance against regulation is the hypocritical one. When theocratic authority declines in an age of secularism, temporal authority - government - needs to pick up the slack. Republicans who think we're going to hell in a handcart need to put more trust in government.
1
I know that to be published I must be gentle. The writer has never been a liberal, does not understand liberal thought or intention, and is not qualified to be commenting on the failures of liberalism, which he assumes here without any demonstrable proof. This might have been an opportunity for him to opine on the failures of conservatism, a subject more within his area of expertise.
2
Pardon me, I meant Mr. Douthat, not Mr. Stephens, in my previous comment.
1
Your editorial sent me to the dictionary to see if there was a definition of ‘liberalism’ that I’m not familiar with. I did a global search and replace substituting ‘liberalism’ with ‘capitalism’ and your article made a lot more sense.
1
The liberal order hasn't failed. It has yet to arrive. Maybe for white people in the Jeffersonian era or in the decade after Roosevelt, but that left 13 percent of the population out in the cold. What we have is a Republican order, and that is failing. It is known as oligarchy. So impose a Swedish style economy, and then wait a few years before you begin writing your essays full of doom and gloom. And retitle your essay: Is There Life After Republicanism? Yes, Virginia, there is.
When I hear anyone use the term "liberal", I can safely assume that what follows is some Fascist rant that imagines some fantasy world of runway shows and welfare queens.
A world that doesn't exist in any way shape or form.
I defy Ross to define what "liberalism" is in any of his reports from the front lines. I guarantee you it will be absurd.
1
The author says the 1930s were crisis years that gave us FDR and Hitler. The United States, faced with destitution heretofore unknown chose hope and grace in FDR. Germany chose hate and blame and they suffered for 50 years. We don't need someone to tell us what the "new ideals" are. They are the same American ideals we have always had; that Jefferson put in the Declaration and Lincoln in the Gettysburg address. All men are created equal. They have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We are all equal. We deserve the same opportunities. When times are tough the government for the people steps in to help. We fight and die for our collective well being and freedom.
"American Amnesia," by Hacker and Pierson, is the book Douthat, Brooks
and all serious Americans need to read.
1
I read this and could not understand what the point was.
2
Is there life after liberalism?
Sure. We're living it.
Ross needs to give it up. This Wolff book has really knocked him for a loop.
If liberalism is antithetical to faith, family and community, then why are the social pathologies that cut against same (divorce, substance abuse, teenage child birth, lack of education, etc.,) so prevalent in conservative red states and far less prevalent in liberal, oppressive, authoritarian, politically correct, bureaucratic, despotic, blue states?
The continued MSM meme of "what is wrong with Democrats/liberals/progressives is getting really, really old.
1
I grew up in the Jim Crow South. Everything I hear from Trump and his minions today I have heard all my life. None of it is new. The only thing that is new is that after decades of Republican pandering to these people who think like Trump, one of them actually took over the party and drove out the Northern, country club Republicans. And this was partly due to the gerrymandering they worked so hard to achieve. The only thing to do is work to beat back white supremacy as we have had to do time and time again throughout our history. Trump is hardly the first white supremacist to hold office in the U.S. He is the most dangerous and the stupidest but not the first, and he will not be the last. But we have to pull ourselves together and fight like the suffragettes and the civil rights advocates and the labor/union leaders and all the other Americans who have pushed back the forces of illiberalism throughout U.S. history. Why did we imagine all the battles hand been won and we could coast along on their accomplishments? The battles are never all won. It is our turn. Quit whining, suit up, and go fight for our republic.
1
This column is bizarre and off base in so many ways. First, the inferred comparisons between Hitler and Mussolini and FDR, as though they are somehow leaders with philosophical differences, is a sort of false equivalency that gives Hitler and Mussolini an intellectual heft that just isn’t there. And it’s also ignorant and offensive.
Second, we haven’t had a purely liberal society in the United States. Not now and we never have. At the moment. We have a crazy, narcissistic and bigoted leader whose party controls the legislature (and increasingly the courts). I suppose you could argue that this mix means that liberalism has failed to attract a suitable alternative. But again, we’ve never had a truly liberal society in the United States. Even with the social reforms of the 20th century, we know today that the civil rights act, the voting rights act, social security and Medicare didn’t go far enough in creating a safety net that is comparable to what we see in more liberal countries in Europe.
Finally, with our Republican president continuously attacking people of color, the poor and other vulnerable populations, destroying immigrant families through draconian policies and orders and at the same time continuing surveillance techniques that conservatives decried, it’s disgusting and dishonest to call liberalism oppressive.
There sure isn't life after Trumpism! (unless of course you're part of the 1%)
You understand nothing. Nothing! Liberalism didn't fail. The GOP took control of the House for most of the past 16 years and decided to do nothing but loot the country's economy. Two massive tax cuts that didn't benefit the workers and were intended to make it impossible to pay Social Security benefits to future retirees. Wars that were based on testosterone instead of national interest. Complete obstruction after they destroyed the bank system. And, of course, institutional racism from the bottom to the top of the GOP. It's despicable and ignorant to think otherwise.
1
What a farrago of complaints against a favorite conservative whipping boy. Is there something about the word "liberalism" that short-circuits coherent thought in the minds of conservatives? How blame plutocracy (not to mention kleptocracy) on "liberalism"? How blame the surveillance state, an avatar of fascism and its foot under the door, on "liberalism"? How blame "smashed social and familial relations" on "liberalism", as opposed to the blaming the grinding oppression of poverty on family life? (Any way, what family relations does Douthat think are smashed? Could it be a veiled complaint about freedom to marry that person one loves, regardless of gender? Or gender itself refusing to be rigidly dual per religio-conservative strictures? )
1
Todays Left believes a modern version of Socialism is the answer -- but more Lennon than Lenin.....Perhaps these deluded souls might want to check with multi-millionaire Yoko Ono on this matter.....
Who made Steve Bannon the pope? (It's just an expression.) If he was so full of bright ideas, why didn't he run for president? Why saddle us with this TV-addicted, semi-literate mad king?
We'd have done better with a transparent hologram. Of course, maybe that's what we've got, courtesy of Breitbart/Mercer programmers. No way Donald Trump is real world.
1
For Toqueville, individualism and democracy are tied together. Toqueville, like Jefferson, argued that democracy as a social and cultural reality is rooted in economic equality, participation in local government, and a literate, enlightened citizenry. Toqueville, more fully than Jefferson, also argued that democracy is rooted in the practice of and value of work. Both were opposed to the dominance of finance over communities and government. They viewed individualism as an accomplishment that required institutional and educational support rather than an axiom. Toqueville, moreover, was highly critical of the potential for an emerging aristocracy of manufacture that would exercise power over the every lives of people. With the power of finance, the concentration of wealth and greater inequality, monopoly power, and attacks on education for participation and citizenship, it is no wonder that democracy and the individualism associated with it are in steep decline. We must build new foundations for them to emerge and thrive.
There is no "after liberalism". Humans have and will continue to strive for equality. It is a difficult struggle always hampered by those whose greed for wealth and/or power gang together to suck up more than their share. Rule by an elite minority thrives best in an atmosphere of fear.
In the darkest days of WWII both Roosevelt and Churchill warned that fear was the greatest enemy, and so it was. So it always will be. The Republican Party wields fear like a sword-fear of other religions, fear of other races, fear of other nations.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Write it on a post it note and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Read it every day before you leave home. Have a wonderful and hopeful day.
58
So, the task that awaits us, should we choose to accept, is:
Discover why our ideals are so much beneath us, when we and our descendants would be better served if our ideals could be above us.
Germany in the 1930s and 40s is a shining example of a conservative alternative to the excesses of liberalism. The question should be do we want to live under that kind of regime?
1
I believe Douthat has this backwards and upside down. It is the Conservatives who are destroying everything liberals worked for over the years. We used to have a feeling of noblesse oblige— a feeling that we owed other people our consideration and support even if they weren’t in the upper classes. Without liberals, civil rights would never have happened, nor would we have recovered from recessions and depressions. We have reverted to the age of the robber barons who took everything for themselves, leaving nothing for the rest of us. That is not a liberal idea.
3
Or maybe it’s best to end political science and endless punditry and build a world based on respect, gratitude and mindfulness. You know like most of try to live every day.
"Liberalism" has not failed as much as it has been undermined and sabotaged by the GOP, ALEC, and minions such as Grover Norquist.
They may not have "drowned the baby in the bath tub", as Norquist once proposed, but the "conservative" agenda and policies of the last 37 years have cratered the Middle Class, and crippled our Republic.
Tocqueville noted the uniqueness of American free public education for all. Right wing "conservatives" ideologues have done all they can to bankrupt it with charter schools for profit, instead of repairing public school systems.
They have simultaneously undermined and underfunded higher education and vocational schools, adding to the income inequality we now see. When monthly college loan installments equal or exceed what would be a mortgage payment, it does not bode well for our economy or our Republic.
Unlimited, mindless greed combined with senseless consumption is in no one's "rational self-interest", as Ayn Rand described the basis of capitalism in "Atlas Shrugged".
Her acolytes, such as Paul Ryan, succeeded in bamboozling the booboisie, scamming them into voting against their own self interests. They have wrecked the economy and the "liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix" Americans that benefitted from for the past 70 years.
We have seen "liberal" and "conservative" over the course of the last 6 decades. Read the definition of each in the dictionary, recall recent history, it's clear which will best meet 21st Century challenges.
6
The challengers to the "system of liberalism," as Douthat calls it, have nothing to offer except the struggle of all against all.
It is true. We have become individualized to the point where we have become isolated from one another because we have lost the sense of family and community. We do not know or neighbors or care to know. Families are splintering. We have the vanishing community book store, record store, movie theater, bowling alley, video store. They mostly still exist, but its a drive to get to one. Belief in God and attending church and temple has turned to spiritualism, a term that has the same definition as religion but is now used by individuals to mean they do not go to a religious institution but have this vague notion of a god, or more often angels. Respect for the elderly has given way to glorification of children. Facebook has replaced genuine personal interaction or even friendship. What? Are we afraid of each other? We go home from work and stare at a box for several hours day in and day out. Television can be a curse.
The answer to this is the political philosophy Communitarianism. Communitarianism has some aspects of 20th liberalism and conservatism, but may be better understood as the opposite of libertarianism. Libertarianism is just a recipe for anarchy or the corporate state, depending on the believers political bend. Communitarianism strides to bring about a sense of fraternity in our society, to bring us closer together. The state plays an important role. It does not do away with individualism but to bring the individual and community together.
I don't know what a right-wing workers party is supposed to be, but to me, it sounds very much like what fascism was selling in the thirties. And as far as the "liberal-democratic-capitalistic matrix" that Messrs. Douthat and Brooks argue can only be revived by a return to more religion-based moralism and community, I would respectfully disagree with both of them. What is failing in the "matrix" is not the liberal-democratic sides of the triangle (notwithstanding some hiccups on the democratic side by interference with peoples' voting rights), but the capitalistic side of it. Unchecked capitalism, where might is right, where money is synonym to free speech, and where all the spoils of a nation seem to belong (by right) to the few rather than to the many, is what is ailing the liberal-democratic order. Fix the capitalistic side of it, and we may have a chance to return to a more balanced triangle, one in which the ideas of liberalism, democracy, and capitalism will again flourish.
And since Norway seems to be our president's latest love affair with what is good in the world, let's indeed sprinkle our capitalistic orgy of a system with some more Nordic flair, and we may be half-way there.
2
You conservatives are an odd lot. Conservative thought has dominated American political discourse since 1964 and government since 1980. You state, "Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity." Plutocracy rose from a threat to a problem during the time conservatives and Republicans dominated government. It is a product of K St. and conservative laissez-faire economics, not liberal philosophy of appropriate regulation. Liberals and Democrats did not give us the Citizens United decision and Shelby County v. Holder. Those decisions are the products of conservatives and Republican. The great leap forward of the Surveillance State occurred under the Bush Administration.
Clinton said "it's the economy stupid" 25 years ago. Today he probably would say, "It's the conservatives and the Republicans" and still be right.
5
You speak of the “failure/crisis of the liberal order”. Come down outa your tree Ross, we have systematically dissembles that liberal order. Especially since the 60’ and 70’s this country has voted and decided not to tax wealth, that by whatever hook or crook people make money that it is immoral to tax it back. Remember when the top tax rate was 90%? Apparently not. The problem is the dismantlement of the progressive tax structure put in place after the Great Depression and the disparity of wealth that that has produced, full stop.
2
I wondered how Douthat would respond to Trump's statements this week. I have my answer, for Ross racism is simply not important enough to speak about. If Trump's comments had to do with Catholic states this would have been the focus of the entire column. Share this column and never forget it.
2
Ross is looking at things through the wrong framework. The tension today is between democracy and capitalism and capitalism is winning. We have allowed democracy to be bought by the highest bidder. That is what is delivering plutocracy and a new Gilded Age. The values of the marketplace crowd out all others as profit takes precedence over other values. The result is a coarse and crass commercialized consumer culture.
The answer is reform of the system and a restoration of a better balance between market and democratic values. A fairer distribution of income is a place to start, but the basic notion is that the system has stopped working for most and that is what must be reversed. Note here that my idea is one of reform rather than overturning the market system. Capitalism works but left unchecked, it works for too few.
We were in the same place at the turn of the last century and through the Progressive Era and New Deal, reformed the system sufficiently to achieve a workable balance between these competing values, all while defeating the two great evils of the 20th Century, fascism and communism, while building the greatest middle class in human history. The formula already exists. What is lacking is the will to apply it.
Global capital, which is what is creating the current crisis for "liberalism", needs to be counterbalanced with strongly organized civic groups that can pressure governments to rein in corporate greed. These groups need to be global as well, rather than nationalistic (never mind "community-based").
We are seeing tremendous steps in this direction: there is renewed interest in workers' unions, support for immigrants and of course the various identity groups have risen in response to Trump's victory. The main thing is to always keep in mind that we, the average citizens, are all in it together. Global corporatism has always succeeded in dividing the opposition, and once again there are signs that we're falling into the same trap. Black vs. White, women vs. men, US vs. THEM; we'll be beating each other up as the oligarchs laugh their way to our dystopian future.
Classical liberalism has lost its association with today's American liberalism in the same way classic conservative thought seems lost on many so-called conservatives. The liberals/progressives of today don't seek tolerance, they seek compliance; they are often at odds with free-speech; and they rarely are concerned with the rights of individuals versus the right of the state to control their lives. If you look at Europe, that is where today's liberal wants to take us.
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy"
Clearly Douthat is conflating modern social liberalism with libertarianism.
People who want to raise taxes on the rich identify as liberal; people who want to slash or eliminate taxes or make them regressive tend to self-identify as libertarians or conservatives, usually the latter.
1
Most of the indictments Ross pulls over from Deneen read very much to me as sharp and fairly accurate condemnations of capitalism. To the extent that economic liberalism (which I think many would see as more akin to libertarianism than political liberalism - ie: what the Economist Magazine from London fully preaches) has ushered in a consumerist culture that is all about acquisition and none about art, community or planning for our great grandchildren (ahem, capitalism: climate change is real), I'd say Deneen is right.
What is the answer to the rapacious, destructive maw of laissez-faire capitalism that is, it seems, the core failing of economic liberalism? We can return to regulated capitalism, or we can try some of the economic systems I'm sure Ross would find even less palatable.
Letting the world ride on corporate statism isn't likely to be sustainable. I hope that was the point Deneen was making but dared not bluntly state.
2
There are so many confusing definitions of liberalism in the public discussion these days that any effort to clear it is liable only to add to the confusion. But if by liberalism we mean classical economics, with its delusion that the pursuit of private gain will always equal the public good, then the very use of the term "order" to describe the chaos it can cause is a misnomer. I'm willing to tolerate and welcome classical economics under some conditions, provided there is a social safety net to underwrite its limits and victims. I'm even eager to welcome "free trade" (and especially NAFTA) provided we understand that a North American COMMUNITY is what we're really aiming at. But the Trump disaster is throwing all of this into a hopeless disorder all its own. In any case, the Republican conservatism on family and morality is in its own irreparable conflict with its love of the beauties of savage capitalism. Until it gets its house in order in this respect, the Republican Party will be an intellectual and moral wreck posing as security, order and peace for America.
1
Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, how can the mind of Americans be so limited by these terms. The number one problem in this country stems from the way campaigns are financed. There are good Democrats and bad Democrats. There are bad Republicans and I assume someone who knows more than I can tell me that there are good Republicans. Capitalism is not the problem, Capitalism in America controlled by the greedy and immoral is the problem. Change the tax structure to a progressive system,. No public college tuition, free Health Care, cut the defense budget in half, spend that half on infrastructure. Wake up.
1
The current state of democracy and liberalism is a function of the folks who built it, but the future path of our government and society will be built by the youngsters coming along--that is the place to watch, not books and article by calcified curmudgeons. You can't give away your mother's china these days because 20 year olds don't want stuff. They want a good job, minimal cares and lots of activities. And for these things, they want a simple government that keeps out of the way and does so quietly. They have little faith in government as evidenced by the wide belief that there will be no social security for them when the time comes. I suspect the value of our freedoms will escalate but the idea that our government will protect them is declining. Hence liberalism is alive and well, just not in the bold print of FDR or DJT.
2
Steve Bannon is more out of touch with the people of this country than Hillary Clinton ever was if he believes the policies he endorses will be endorsed by a majority of the populace. Hopefully his recent fall from grace is not short lived.
While I have not read Deneen's book, his assumption that liberalism has failed seems false. Our current state of affairs should not be blamed on the failure of liberalism leading to selfish individualism. Instead, the rise of ultra conservatism and nationalism has warped into a singular sense of me, me me. A true liberal will always acknowledge the needs of the all citizens and work to protect those across all groups. Without the blockade of Congress during President Obama's term I think there would have been a more successful foundation laid for liberal policies moving forward.
1
One of Douthat's more frustrating columns since he takes a good question - what comes after liberalism - does some exploratory opining and then just ends it there.
Well, here's a possible path forward - a return of power and control to localities first, states second, while destroying the overweening control of the federal government, big corporations and special interest. Some easy areas this would be productive:
Education. All our federal and state testing are a lot of churn with no results. Get rid of the Dept of Education and even state control. Let localities determine what's best for their children. And that includes books. In this internet age, appropriate text books - with or without evolution - can be printed in small batches on demand.
Transportation. A federal gas tax that is then just passed on at the beneficence of Congress and the President as transportation funds to the states is wasteful. Get rid of it and let the states and localities decide to spend it on roads, bridges or mass transit.
Corporations and banks. The federal government's abuse of the interstate commerce clause has gone unchecked for too long. Return responsibility to the states and let big businesses adhere to the requirements of 50 different states. In the internet age, the homogenous products across an intercontinental nation with 300 million people is an anachronism.
Yes, we need some centralized standards for health and safety. But, local empowerment needs to be restored.
I suggest the commenters here (and Americans in general) take a look at Locke's 2nd Treatise, in particular his chapter On Property, before we all start touting liberalism. The truth is, this is a word that people throw around without really knowing what they are talking about. Locke makes it clear that having a limited government is imperative in order to protect landowning merchants from royal authorities above and envy below. There is also a lengthy explanation about why it is actually good for the more ambitious to take as much land as possible leaving others to having to sell their labour in order to make a living. In other writings, Locke is more than clear that laborers have no rights to self rule: because laborers were not "reasonable" enough to grab as much land as possible they should be subject to the rule of those who are more "reasonable". Does this sound familiar?
If you want to read someone who saw where this philosophy would lead us, check out the far less popular Thomas Hobbes, who made clear that a limited government would lead us exactly where we are. Naturally, Hobbes' argument is problematic in many ways (he argued for monarchy), but his vision of where liberalism would end up was dead on.
By the way, talk to people from the East about what they think of liberalism. They have long thought that this was the moral mask the West wore as it robbed the world. The history produced by liberalism (slavery, colonialism, etc.) seems to prove their point.
2
The headline of Mr Douthat's piece is a bait-and-switch. I hope that he himself [as opposed to the headline writer] did not intend that.
Anyone reading the headline in 2017 would quite reasonably assume that Mr Douthat would be speculating about the demise of the social and economic policies championed [most of the time] by the Democratic party since FDR's New Deal, through LBJ's Great Society, on to the substantive program's HRC eventually embraced during the 2016 presidential campaign.
But no.... he is really talking about the ideas championed [in doctrine, if not always in policy] by classical liberalism: freedom of expression, free trade, free markets, etc. Not that 20th century American FDR-style liberalism has failed to champion those ideas, along side the redistributive policies now most closely associated with it; it is just that the ideas Mr Douthat has in mind as definitive of liberalism have [in the main] been shared in America by Democrats and Republicans.
Therefore, the title invites us to ponder the possible demise of a a set of ideas and policies associated with only one of the American political parties, whereas the body of the piece actually ponders the possible demise of a set of political ideas and policies pretty much shared across the spectrum of American politics. Very misleading.
Perhaps my beef is with the NYT's editorial headline writer. A better choice: "Is There Life After Classical 19th Century Liberalism"? Less sexy, but more accurate.
The "alternate political order" to liberalism that Douthat is so desirous of hearing about is called fascism. We have had our share of that alternative political system during the last century.
Signs of fascism (e.g., sycophantic behavior of subordinates towards Trump, xenophobia, attempts to use police/justice authorities against political opponents, a continuous assault on the truth and the English language) have been all too evident during this president's first term.
1
Many people who call themselves Liberals are actually conservatives (with a small c), whereas many Conservatives are really more closely aligned with Totalitarianism, Corporative Fascism, or Monarchy. The answer is indeed local politics. In our interconnected global society, a localized direct democracy can interact with other localized direct democracies all over the world in a way that benefits all parties.
1
What alternatives to liberalism? Politically, not a whole lot. The United States already has a structure that allows great power in decision making to local lawmakers. It is a federalist system, and unlike Scandinavian countries which have to deal with the mess that is Europe, America is pretty homogeneous in terms of language and, surprisingly, culture. Try being a Swede working in France. It is far more complicated than being a Californian working in Texas. There are strong disagreements regarding the role of the government in private health insurance etc but Americans would be surprised at the degree of conflict such questions cause in Europe. It ain't all peachy here. The US federalist system has in addition led to single-payer systems in some states. If this has failed at the national level it is perhaps not a flaw but rather a strength of a system that allows such large scale decisions to be defferred to the local level. To enact such laws people should take control of local legislatures.
So my recommendation would be to stop looking at the color of our grass. If you like the weed, move to Colorado. At least they speak english.
1
Great piece. It’s telling that “livability and sustainability” are key to liberalism across the political spectrum. They are also the only workable ideals to reform the greed-is-Good order; Fortunately there is a spokesman, Pope Francis. Let the evangelical Christians test their faith on that godly mission
One thing missing from historical contexts is over population. The psychic effects of overcrowding have been predicted for decades. There are no words to describe what life will be like in the 21st century.
This article is just nit picking the details of the process of disintegration that began with the age of industrialization.
The first order of business is to remove Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress. That time will start with the Fall elections. I'm not willing to let liberalism go so easily without a hard fight.
America has to save itself and the machine to be used is called the election.
1
I've got news for you Douthat ... liberalism, progressivism, is the very essence of democratic ideals. This is something conservatives have never understood, and never will. Liberalism under-girds the economic and social advancements of the 20th century, and now the 21st .. having withstood, to this point, the atavistic and destructive attempts of conservatives to burn it all down. It remains to be seen whether conservatives succeed, this time.
1
Sometimes I find Ross Douthat's sociopolitical analyses to be insightful. When he takes on something as vague as liberalism, though, I usually think they are laughable. Obviously there are lots of things about the modern world Douthat doesn't like. There are lots of things about it I don't like ... compared to the way I imagine things could be. But just because I think there could be improvements, in some cases vast improvements, in modern society, I don't attribute the fact that the world is not, according to my lights, better than it is to liberalism or atheism, the way Douthat does.
Another point. Douthat often seems to commit the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc--because the world suffers from some severe problems after the rise of liberalism, then liberalism is the cause of these problems. To argue thus, even if the argument is fallacious, you need at least to show that the problems at issue did not exist before. When exactly was it that equality had been achieved and plutocracy was absent? When exactly was liberty rather than appetitiveness the order of the day? And when was there true intellectual and religious freedom rather than conformity and mediocrity? If you are going to argue the rise of liberalism caused inequality, intellectual mediocrity, etc., you better be able to point to some pre-liberalism era in which your preferred social attributes actually prevailed.
As usual, a conservative analyst blames the "failure" of liberalism as due to its inherent flaws, rather than deliberate, persistent sabotage by "conservatives" who swore an oath to defend that liberalism.
Deja vu! I used to hear arguments from my Marxist acquaintances that the capitalist West's failures in the 1970's were due to the inherent flaws in Capitalism, but that that the far worse failures of the Communist East were due, not to the inherent flaws in Marxism, but due to inherent flaws and sabotage by the Capitalist West.
Barack Obama, rather than proposing a single payer health care system, proposed a Republican / Conservative alternative test driven by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. But SOLELY because it was proposed by a Democrat, SOLELY to sabotage any chance at bi-partisanship, SOLELY to benefit politically while damaging the American people, every single Republican voted against it.
Dictatorship, tyranny, and exploitation by the most violent and powerful has been the norm since before the dawn of history. Liberalism is an attempt of the last few centuries to put that war-lord-ism away. Naturally, it has been continuously attacked in every way possible, frequently successfully.
It is under attack now. Make no mistake: Liberty and Liberalism are the 2 sides of the same coin and you cannot have one without the other. It's simply not possible.
Every attack on Liberalism is an attack on Liberty.
1
Douthat is deep into obfuscation whether intentional or not. To what definition of "liberalism" does he refer? Or is he drawing upon various definitions of liberalism to suit an argument which, at best, opaquely concludes the need "...of imagining and desiring something different." Much of the column seems to urge for less government as a necessity to "free up the people" in pursuit of bettering their own economic condition. If so, this is just a regurgitation of right-wing republican philosophical and policy orthodoxy which denies a commonweal in favor of unregulated, unrestained individualism. Failure on the part of the individual is the indvidual's fault entirely and no broad common policy should be allowed to intervene. (to which must be added that intervention on behalf of corporations, capitalism, and profit are all perfectly acceptable).
Liberalism has many shades, some of which we would refer to as conservatism today. Perhaps Douthat should rewrite this column but begin with his personal definition of liberalism and refer back to it to make whatever agrument he is attempting. Nevertheless, a pretty good column sir.
Liberal doses of gerrymandered Congressional Districts lies at the heart of our nation's ills. That and the Electoral College, voting machines, and unfair Senatorial representation by coastal, heavily populated states.
The GOP arsonists intent on burning the liberal order to the ground with nothing better in mind are in the process of self-immolating.
1
The problem with liberalism is the Republican’s success at thwarting its implementation; change the strategy, not the philosophy.
1
Once you embrace freedom, you have to deal with the reality that success begets success, and if left to their own devices. a few people will soon own everything that people need in order to live. The concentration of the ownership of necessities is in full swing, and as it progresses, government-sponsored freedom won't be able to feed you, house you, or get you an education or health care. As things are now, the Kochs, Mercers, Trumps and Kushners are free to use their economic leverage to exploit everyone else.
At what point does the freedom to buy half the housing in New Jersey conflict with my freedom to move where I want to? We're not there yet, but it's coming, and when it does, these two fundamental freedoms will become incompatible.
Whoever dreams up the new liberal order will have to include a provision to prevent any person or group from controlling the things that people need to survive and have a reasonable life. Otherwise the rest of us will be free from the government, but will be servants of the new owners.
Perhaps that is the right wing's grand plan; to give ground on personal freedom while tightening their grip on the economy.
1
The main problem is material wealth. No matter how bad things are, as long as everyone is living well, nobody is willing to take any chances with fundamental changes.
If you deny everyone is living well, just compare today with the daily reality we had 80 or 90 years ago. From a materialist point of view, we have it made, and technology will make us even richer.
2
That is true for most of us reading the NY Times.
I see people working minimum wage jobs, no education, no healthcare.
One woman when she needs money to get her car fixed or see a doctor sells blood.
She is waiting for her oldest daughter to turn 18 so the daughter can sell blood, too.
The do have cell phones but they don't have cable nor Internet at home.
And they have jobs and work.
1
Being a truly liberating and resilient idea liberalism has the capacity to renew and readjust itself to address the challenges of the time as could be exemplified by its transformation from the classical elitist to the modern attuned to the mass democracy. The failures attributed to the liberalism are not due to the inadequacy of the liberal philosophy but because the institutions of governance it had inspired, and the spirit and purpose to which these institutions were to be devoted to were made to become subservient to the vested interests by the elite that treated liberal ldeology simply as the means to power. With committed faith in liberalism and correct practices there's no reason to believe that tliberalisn falls short of providing answers to the modern problems and challenges.
9
Deneen’s ameliorative, a reenergized localism rooted in civic virtue, actually seems to be happening over the past year. While our online politics is as foul as ever, I have noticed a more robust and civil engagement in my community.
Hopefully, this portends a reenergized sense of American identity rooted in fairness, respect, and moderation.
5
Liberalism and capitalism have become intertwined in a way that leaves us believing that economic success is the sole measure of societal success. We've come to believe that the next incremental gain in GDP will certainly cure all our ills. Yet, what truly ails us is a loss of community and family, often lost in pursuit of career and material gain. Worse, once locked into that cycle, we believe happiness lies in pursuit of more financial gain at even greater sacrifice of that which really matters. Eventually, we find ourselves adrift, angry we don't have more, while it is our pursuit of material gain that's cost us what we really crave.
7
Hey Ross! Remind us of the period in history, pre-Liberal, tribalism and aristocracy promoted the general welfare, serfs with benefits, etc. We are a little discombobulated by the idea that history ended post Cold War (we've been watching the ebb/flow of women's rights, workers' rights, racial, gender rights, and it feels, well, historical). The West doesn't feel stagnant. The persistence of greed and evil through-out history really is not a failure of liberalism. It's a failure of conservatism. The Notre Dames cranking out threadbare theology and silly social musings. De Tocqueville is meant to be read for amusement. Those pre-liberal unchosen obligations - noblesse oblige? Crikeys, Ross. There's a Church in Montreal near the Italian enclave.
Houses with fenced gardens, tomatoes and basil in abundance. Nice mural of Benito in the Church. Maybe you should move. They've got a stellar farmers market too. And you could pray to the old values. Pre-liberal. Fascist even.
6
There is already a perfectly fine system in place. Egalitarian social democracy, which allocates the resources of a society according to the agreed wishes of all the stakeholders, business, government and citizen/worker. Decent societies, with healthy, prosperous, creative, happy people. Not utopias, but delivering a standard of living Americans would envy, if they ever entertained the idea they could actually learn something.
5
SOCIAL CONSERVATISM IS THE ANSWER: THE INFRASTRUCTURE BANK
We must make it selfishly profitable for the wealthy to invest in the poor, not try to take their wealth from them by force of redistributive taxation.
We must create the labor shortage needed to get private investment in bringing unemployed, unskilled, or otherwise marginal workers into the paid workforce. Corporate relocation history and barrel-scraping hiring in areas of low unemployment today confirm that profit-making businesses will seek, hire, train and manage marginal workers when the labor market tightens sufficiently.We must spur investment in infrastructure construction and maintenance, healthcare, crime prevention, education, and other non-exportable segments of the economy requiring intially unskilled labor.
So how can our government do this without burdening taxpayers and raising the national debt? By funding an infrastructure bank paying a government-subsidized, slightly-higher-than-Treasury interest rate on private investment vehicles. That bank would pursue high ROI investments of the form: tolls, fees, and future taxes paid by converting welfare recipients into taxpayers, plus savings in welfare costs, repay pump-priming investments by the government and ongoing interest-rate subsidies. It could attract hundreds of billions of dollars of private money seeking higher yields to investments benefiting the poor.
A simple, potentially bipartisan solution: No?
4
Denmark seems to do well without your solution?
Why is that?
1
This article and many of the comments confuse different forms of liberalism. Tocqueville was talking primarily about pluralism. Liberalism in the United States context has been defined as a move towards a welfare state, but the neo-liberalism that is now dominant refers to unfettered markets and privatization. It is this latter form that has given rise to extreme inequality and plutocracy. Nothing would be wrong about a move toward Scandinavian social democracy, but this ideal is constantly undermined by the power of right wing ideologists. Douthat’s argument that it is the weakness of our culture that has produced the weakness of liberalism has no particular basis.
18
Susan, I've noticed that, lately, the conservative pundits like to mix liberalism and neo-liberalism together so the word "liberal" has bad connotations no matter which side of economic or social policy is being attacked.
I agree with your observation completely.
1
Ross says Blah-Blah-Blah about liberalism as if we were actually practicing liberal policies in our daily lives. The problems today are born out of crony capitalism and neo-fascism that exist in The U.S., the West and the East. It is a global issue as the corruption controls the economies and political China, Russia, India, the U.S. and most of Europe. We need only look at outcomes for guidance to building a better future. Republicans like Ross will always refuse to accept responsibility for supply side economics and the income inequality it has generated. The populism and anger of the far right have been successfully directed against the agents of liberalism only through the manipulation of the media agents of crony capitalism such as FOX in the U.S.,RT in Russia, and other state entities. The crisis for Republicans will be when even a small percentage of those independent voters confirm the obvious leanings of Trump policies, his own corruption, the complicit actions of the Republican party, and the overwhelming evidence of foreign influence to manipulate public opinion starting with Russia. No, Russ, the end of liberalism is not near, but the beginning of the end of Republican cronyism and support for policies benefitting the extreme wealthy begin in the fall. Alabama and Virginia are only the first ripples in the wave of change that is coming. My hope is a fair and balanced order will emerge that will allow all of us to share in the American dream.
14
One of the great paradoxes of this discussion is that the moral underpinnings of the religious right is actually more aligned with the progressive agenda. Yet these regressives don’t see the disconnect between the Republican platform they support and the teachings of most major religions. This can be laid at the feet of the politicized leadership of their faiths.
11
Huh. Mr. Douthat' synopsis of Deneen's description of the "failure" of liberalism sounds exactly like current Republican policy. I especially like the contrast of religious freedom with mediocrity and conformity. What a perfect pair of adjectives to describe the American religious right wing! Perhaps Mr. Douthat should contemplate the question "Is there life after conservatism?".
10
Is there a better word we can use instead of “redistribution?” To most of us, the R word is acerbic, like communism. Virtually all our national failings, our many challenges, are due to excess – guns, greed, 1%, etc. The only way it is possible for one to generate riches of a million or two or more dollars (or even less) is by using a system and other people that allows one to do so; it certainly isn’t from the sheer sweat of one’s brow or the absolute brilliance of one’s mind. No one can work that hard or be that smart. A controlled system of laws, rules, regulations, infrastructure, currency allows people to amass incredible riches. A lone rancher in the hinterlands can be wealthy (plenty to eat, warm, safe housing, etc.), but she/he cannot become “rich” as in capital without a market, infrastructure, monetary systems, rules, regulations, etc. Wealth is a good thing, pooling (hording) of capital is not. Redistribution is critical to move a society forward to say nothing of being humane, Christian-like (and all religions-like). Let’s call the R word, balancing or anything to get us out of the rut of thinking that taxes (and increasingly so the more money one amasses) are evil – they are essential to balance. This is related to Mr. Douthat’s piece – think about it.
4
Hey comment writers: I'm pretty sure Liberalism in this Op Ed refers the Western Democratic Liberal Order established after WWII. Not "liberal" meaning left leaning Democrats in the American political spectrum. There is a difference. See: History 101.
3
Neo-Liberalism killed any meaning that Liberalism had. I.e Clinton.
What does the situation in the US have to do with liberalism, failures or otherwise? Douhat's has a willed, partisan blindness to the real issue - oligarchy and a political class that is prostitution ring for mega donors using bigotry to distract rather than to embody the daily grind of true representative government. The tattered remains of liberalism are all that's left to protect the average citizen from this oppressive mess that the far right is 100 percent responsible for.
9
A democracy might be considered as a feedback control system achieving the desired result using “the wisdom of the crowd” as a feedback element. A properly designed system will be stable, like the cruise control of your car. Imagine the result, though, if the only two commends the cruise control sent to the car were “step on the accelerator,” and “slam on the brakes.” Your car would speed up past the speed limit, then slam on the brakes, then speed up and slam on the brakes again. It would be unstable, or oscillatory.
If the feedback system reacts too fast and too emphatically, an unstable control system results. Now consider the advent of social media, and the attendant distortion of the “wisdom of the crowd” caused by Fake News. Not only is the wisdom of the crowd diminished, causing erroneous feedback, but the reaction of the system is so swift that it becomes unstable. The result is that you can easily jump from a president such as Obama to one such as Trump.
It is not so simple as to say voters have become more conservative or more liberal. Voters have become more ill-informed and have become quite fast to react.
2
Mr Douthat's column is yet another example of how conservative thought is lost in a cloud of theory and unchallenged terminology. Let's go back to basics: Social Security and Medicare remain extremely popular in the USA across the political spectrum. Only one party is avidly attempting to dismantle these programs. We don't need Douthat's cloud of words to see the way forward. The issues have been clear to all for a long time. FDR and the New Deal saved capitalism via an injection of socialism. Finding the right, fair balance is the proper conversation to have. Right now, it's looking like the younger generation, largely cheated out of the ability to build wealth, are going to be reading something other than columns like this. They will have more important fish to fry.
4
Liberalism has not failed. It has suffered a temporary setback due to a stolen manipulated election. Principally 77,000 votes across 12 precincts in 4 states. Progress will resume in fits and starts, as it always does, when death takes care of those afraid to lose the status quo.
3
To look at the present plight of liberalism, you need look no farther than capitalisim. Unchecked capitalism destroys a liberal democracy from the inside out as moneyed interest buy off government and attempt to impose a profit motive on institutions such schools and a healthcare system. It weakens our citizenry and creates financial inequality.
10
Is life so hard for the West European nations who chose a social welfare system to soften the vagaries of capitalism? How can we address the serious problem of economic inequality in America? Why can’t our wealthier Americans give more so that our working class & middle class can adequately share in our national prosperity? I see Fox News spreading anger & fear of “those others” protecting our irresponsible rightwing oligarchs.
2
Now this puts the boot on the wrong foot. Liberalism isn't looking for something new and untried. There isn't such a thing. On the contrary, liberalism has lately found itself the conservator of American morals, traditions, health, safety, and welfare; and conservatism has found itself endorsing a crude and vandalistic nihilism and a sexual utilitarianism that at least in Judge Moore's case includes underage girls, and in the President's case includes a long history of everything his party (whose slogan back 1n 1992 was "family values") used to say they detested and abhorred and opposed.
5
Our system works beautifully for the progressives and humanists -basically all of blue state america.
The GOP has found a gold mine of easily propagandized people in the red states where xenophobia and racism and white populism can be extorted into political power.
They have a powerful propaganda force in fox news and the triumph of trump is their temporary cultural zenith.
Fortunately they have destroyed there future viability and america will quickly return to a path of progressive competence and liberal cultural resurrection. (including those unwiitingly left behind by their oppressors)
2
I bet the tens of thousands of blue state homeless sleeping on the streets of L. A. might disagree with you about how well the system is working.
I don't believe liberalism is dead, I do believe it went to sleep. There is too much evidence that people, placed in certain situations to the liberal thing---they, in the words of Richard Rorty, make every effort to reduce pain and humiliation. But, as with any belief system these systems work well when people discipline themselves to go to the "liberal gym" each day at work at being liberal. The relative prosperity of the last few decades have allowed to many of us to skip the gym in lieu of the "good life." So, we don't read, we don't volunteer, we don't vote, we don't run for office, we don't dialogue--now we all see what those years of no gym time as done to this nation. Having said that, I do believe Trump has gotten a lot of us off the couch and into the liberal gym.
1
"the system of liberalism is failing"?
Sounds like the 1930s that you refer to, Mr Douthat! NOT the optimistic New Dealers, but rather the fascists and Stalinists, both of whom ridiculed unwieldy "liberal democracy" as a worn-out, dying system, with it's "inconvenient" emphasis on democratic proceedings, the rule of law, and other such "inefficiencies" and "weaknesses"!
What's REALLY happening in the USA is that the system of democracy "is failing" -- viz, the rise of Trumpism and alt-right right-wing extremism -- and it's not at all clear that it will survive.
Let's see how much smug, dissimulating columnists and the rest of us like it when/if democracy fails completely and we're left with Trumpism, authoritarianism, or anarchy -- or all three!
2
I can believe I'm agreeing with something Ross Douthat has said. Of course liberalism has failed, miserably. The new system we need is socialism.
1
Maybe we should be talking about life after capitalism.
The problem in the U.S. is that measurable financial return seems to be our sole benchmark for success. To evaluate the state of our nation we look almost exclusively to GDP and to stock market returns. We ignore many important metrics that provide far more relevant reflections of the health and well being of our society. We now find ourselves at a moment in time when unemployment is historically low and the stock market is historically high, yet there is little or no real wage growth and income inequality continues its decades long increase. And, incredibly, life expectancy has gotten shorter.
Neoliberalism will die if we don't re-imagine the measurement of our success. This can only occur if our leaders are willing to drive truly philosophical discussions about the goals of our society. Republicans just finished pushing healthcare and tax bills that had no coherent philosophical rationales. Yet Democrats have historically failed to articulate meaningfully different philosophies that could engage a significant portion of the electorate.
When viewed against the sclerosis of our current federal government, the accomplishments of the 20th century almost seem like fantasy. We need new national projects that benefit everyone and politicians willing to imagine them. The younger generations don't view socialism as a dirty word and will be a more receptive audience for radical thought. There is hope in this.
4
As the conservative political house is in flames, with its supporters dwindling to a small cadre of fascists and racists, Mr. Douthat whines about the fall of the house of liberalism. No, sir. Liberalism will return. The movement of history is once again a movement of the pendulum, and the right has seen the end of its arc upward. There is no conclusion to the evolution of the state. There is simply change. And thank our stars that we have an election in 2018, because that change could not possibly occur at a more vital moment.
1
"if even liberalism’s sharpest internal critics shy away from imagining a truly different regime (not just a more Scandinavian one for the far left..."
This one statement illustrates the problem Douthat just spent his entire column elucidating; that being some hypothetical avant-garde neo-neo-liberalism (or whatever you might want to call it) requires, in Douthat's own words, "political imagination."
To say that Scandinavian-style liberalism is "far left" is equivalent to saying that today's football game between Feudalism and Marxist socialism will be played on a 20-yard field starting from Feudalism's end zone.
Gail Collins said it best a couple days ago with this statement, "...if we just changed our immigration rules, droves of Norwegians would flee the oppression of generous pensions and quality health care to become American citizens."
Mr. Douthat, in order to have a real discussion, you first need to set realistic boundaries. The US today is slipping dangerously close to feudalism while Scandinavian countries are, if anything, dead center on the political playing field.
2
Steve Bannon finds the current political atmosphere to be as exciting as the one which ushered in World War Two? Where to begin with that analogy...
Bannon also last year triumphantly announced the end of "the Administrative State." Strikingly, Bannon has yet to articulate a viable alternative. No word on how, for starters, the military will function, interstate roads will be maintained, or disaster relief will be offered.
Bannon has been dubbed "Sloppy Steve." That goes not only for his disheveled appearance but his thinking, too.
"Why Liberalism Failed" ... copied from Amazon:
Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution.
My criticism of Deneen's book, and by extension Mr Douthat's article:
'Liberalism' is an ill-define label that is vague to the point of being vacuous.
Political science is not a science, it is alchemy. Relying on terms such as "natural end-state" or "political evolution" borrowed from natural science to concretize concepts fails. In political science, what exactly is a "natural end-state" or "political evolution" ??? In physics and biology "end-state" and "evolution" are well defined. There is no actual "there there" in political science.
Deneen and Douthat are simply expressing their opinions, nothing more, nothing less. In my opinion, the post WW2 period up until Reagan (I'm a boomer) was the apex of American civilization. America has been in decline, starting with the rise of conservatism (another utterly meaningless label).
Nobody knows what is going on.
2
The key statement, and quote, is this one....”Deneen declines to envision any alternate political order; instead, he rejects ideology and urges a rededication to localism and community, from which some alternative political and economic order might gradually develop.”
This is what is happening right now. This is the current Trumpism, not a movement of change but an act of retrenchment, of stasis, a chance to let the fields lie fallow and become fertile again. Only then can a new arc be started.
1
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
- George Washington
1
No no offence but I am grateful not to be American.
1
"...the idea of Trumpism as an ideological revolution, whether akin to Roosevelt’s or Mussolini’s, has mostly evaporated."
There's no revolution here, ideological or otherwise, and never was. What we have is a self-absorbed and ill-prepared president who has, ironically to say the least, harnessed the anger, resentment and umbrage of huge swaths of the American population who are fed up with the likes of Trump for taking an increasing share of the wealth that America produces.
Why they think Trump is their savior is beyond me. While it may be fun and even politically expedient for conservatives and pseudo-populists to convert words like "liberal," "snowflake" and "fake news" into the equivalent of four-letter epithets and bromides, all it proves is that hatred is a far greater fuel and tonic for those emotions than are attempts to find common ground and real solutions, which actually requires hard work and yes, serious thought.
The massive inequality and privation and plutocracy in the U.S. will only be corrected by socialism.
2
I think we would all be better off to focus our analytic efforts on what has transpired in the past (the perplexities of history) and what seems to be happening in the present. This crystal ball gazing into the years to come is a simply a projection of wishes and fears of political commentators such as Douthat and Brooks.
Who would have imagined three years ago we would have a White House occupant of the Donald's ilk? Or, to choose an example broached in today's column, one year ago would Bannon himself have imagined that today he would be sticking out of a trash can? The future is not very predictable. As Hamlet opined on such questions, "Ripeness is all".
Whatever...How about starting a liberal resurgence and re-dedication of social programs with providing us with a single payer health care system European and/or Canadian style? Then take it from there.
Mr. Brooks and Mr. Douthat who both had read a book I haven´t read like most of all commentators either have both now written very different Op-Eds about the author´s conclusion. How comes?
It seeems that the conclusion of Mr. Deneen isn´t convincing anybody. In my eyes his proposal sounds unplausible both for Mr. Brooks issue of avoiding a failing of democracies as well as for Mr. Douthat´s issue what might come after the failing of liberalism. Quite apart from the question who has understood Mr. Deneen focus better - if the answer neither fits the one and the other and the porposal for any solution is unplausible by all means it does not make sense to discuss this issue too long.
Maybe it could it be more useful to look for a core of truth in Mr. Deneens´ too simplistic plea for localism. The advantage of "going local" as Mr. Deneen is proposing is: If a system is corrupt it will take a "back to the roots" adjustment to align a new order with simple facts of life at arms length. Maybe Mr. Deneen is advocating this. He is certainly to blame not to make it clear.
Anyway. I would make a suggestion for Mr. Douthat going far beyond a "Scandinavian sabbatical" as some other commentator has already proposed.
Do the "NYT 52 Places To Go" trip, Ross! This could give you a first idea of societies outside USA you were writing about for years like France UK Germany, Vatican without knowing anything what´s going on there - as you did again in both last paragraphs of this Op-Ed.
Mr. Douthat only wishes liberalism was dead so we can all return to the Inquisition and burn those free-thinkers at the stake. Liberalism is indeed under constant attack by the anarcho-capitalists who want to restore the pre-liberal order and the divine right of real estate developers. American democracy and liberalism have evolved over 250 years to be more inclusive, egalitarian and moral. The crisis of liberalism is the counter-revolution of the plutocrats, which has made advances less because the party of Lincoln has become a corrupt pig sty of greed and sneering contempt for anyone without gold-plated faucet handles, but because the party of FDR has become a broken, debased collection of dilettantes, led by addled septuagenarians incapable of mounting any effective response. How the heck else do you lose an election to Donald Trump? There is no leadership for liberalism. Without that, of course the monarchists and theocrats win.
1
Greater acceptance for a variety of people in western society is not a failure, but movement toward a future we can all share in. Trump is likely just a last cry by fascists against what is the inevitable improvement of society through greater acceptance of all.
1
The problem is that the pre-liberal world was a very nasty place, with many community-based evils from discrimination to war being much more commonplace than they are today. Liberalism was extremely successful at reducing those things, and it succeeded in doing so precisely by putting the individual above the community, weakening the unchosen cultures that told us to hate our neighboring tribe, and promoting the view that all people have equal dignity regarldless of what community they were born into. What this article decries as the “anticulture” is really just an organic attempt to find common ground between people all around the world.
1
What Ross is bemoaning is the loss of a basic consensus, at least among some intellectuals, that there people have inherent rights to freedom of thought and belief and that the government was truly democratic, not run by an aristocracy or self-interested capitalists. There was general agreement that individuals should live in a society that promotes the improvement of the lives of people, families and communities.
Democracy demands that we settle our differences peacefully through honest debate. There is plenty of room for disagreement to reach those ends by different means. Some may favor a more activist government and others a regulated but free market to achieve those goals, but there was, at least in principle, an agreement of what those goals were. Compromise is essential. This is what seems to have been lost. We have one party still dedicated to the basic principles that were the basis for founding our country and the other has descended into tribalism, greed, corruption and power for the sake of power. The GOP is increasingly trying to force unpopular ideas and policies on the majority. Rather than promoting the advancement of all, the modern GOP has become wedded to helping only those who are already well-off and can provide for their own needs.
Obamacare was a compromise offered by our last real president and the only functional party toward the end of broadly improving the lot of all Americans. The response of the GOP has been to tear it down with no replacement.
91
I really wish that columnist who discuss "liberalism" would define this term before analyzing it. I had no idea what Brooks was saying, what Douthat was saying, or what the book they both reference was saying.
Define terms. Writing 101.
2
The progressives are getting their revenge.
Classical liberalism is the conservative-libertarian thinking of today. I'm disappointed that Ross didn't make the distinction between that and the nearly socialist liberalism that we have seen destroy economies over the past century.
But this was the whole idea when the Hard Left decided to call themselves liberals. They need a power and control-oriented national government so they can control spending. THIS is why we owe so much as a country and as so many Democrat-dominated states.
Worse, the individual's place in society has been warped by the big-government thinkers. When Dems made the federal gov't a nanny state, their chosen clients - just enough to keep electing vote-buyers to office - became the victims of low expectations.
Jennifer Palmieri at the Center for American Progress admits that without a stream of no-talent, lo-energy immigrants living off the gov't largesse, the Democrats are doomed.
Of course, any reporter mentioning this in the coastal media would be immediately canned.
Revenge is a double edged sword. It will be particularly easy for us to roll over people who have no idea what they are talking about.
1
The Conservatives, including the author of this OpEd, opine against Liberalism, as if Liberalism is the great Crime, the Scourge that has been ravaging the nation for decades - especially so in recent years. What a delusional viewpoint!
The country's Great Liberal Legacy, the one that lifted the US into the realm of Wonder, a titan of opportunity in the modern world, has been under endless assault since the early days of Reagan. We suffer not from too much Liberalism, but far too little of it. Some liberal policies may not always have worked, but their intent: to Lift Up theCommon Wealth, to provide a fair opportunity for every citizen, to ensure a strong, vibrant future for the nation and the world... these have always been worthy goals. Conservative Ideology is now so destructive, so warped, that even the more radical elements of it are metastasizing - replaced with a horrific strain of nation destroying toxicity straight from the depths of the John Birch Society. Right Wing Authoritarian Fantasy has taken hold as Reality, resulting in the rise of a Plutocratic Oligarchy. Trump and his Russian Treason, along with the GOTP Enablers in Congress: these are our true emergency!
We the besieged majority are beyond tired of hearing endless fantastic diatribes about the "Liberal Crisis" at the heart of the nation's emergencies and illness. The crisis is exclusively with the Right Wing: root out the Robber Barons, Liars, and the Treasonous! Conservatives, look to yourselves!
Populism, as currently defined, in not the new liberal order. The key word, here, is "order." Liberals still need, and appreciate RULES, which are absolutely necessary for civilization to succeed.
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; ... instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity"
It is not liberalism -- the political philosophy of Smith, Ricardo, Hobbes-and Mills - that has failed. The failure and corresponding conformity / mediocrity lies with TV, technology, gadgets, powerful lobbies, marketing, the celebration of greed and a dumbed-down population.
Think McDonald's, football, NASCAR, cheerleaders, sit-coms, reality TV shows that promote greedy and confirming consumption over education, critical thinking and mindfulness.
Imagination, basic decency, empathy, community and the celebration of diversity over conformity have all been stunted, muted and pulverized by thees forces.
Liberalism -- including its tenets of freedom of thought and the marketplace -- have been undermined by mass marketing by corporations, Hollywood, Fox News, social media, the NRA cult and the lobbyists.
Fortunately, there is life after your columns that twist "happenings" to fit your theologically based conservative narrative.
2
"Liberal" is rooted in liberty. Douthat--and the illiberal right--create whole narratives about liberalism having "failed," by which they mean liberalism has become illiberal. This is a contradiction in terms. Why does the press magnify their silly semantics?
2
"It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products."
I would have thought capitalism was to blame for that, not liberalism.
2
Amen.
Ross, you cannot say that Liberalism is a goner, and then at the end of the column gloss over the Scandinavian countries. I know that Scandinavia in particular is real problem for you. First there is all that income equality, happiness and society that takes care of one another people. But, the real problem for you is that they do it without the Catholic Church, specifically, and without religion generally. These countries work so well because they are largely humanist non religious countries.
If we could just shake off all the theocracy and religion, and embrace humanism, oh what a wonderful world this would be. Now, that's true Liberalism.
2
What you have described is capitalism run amok. Only occasionally has liberalism been a match for the unbridled greed that our system loves. Your entire article reminds me that there are NO conservative intellectuals.
2
Dear Mr. Douthat, I have a question, is that liberalism, or libertarianism?
The former attempts to provide the safe space outlined in the Declaration to all of us, while the latter seems to be to make things safe for those who would seemingly allow militia rule with a thin false front of evangelism.
1
Well, there is an option - one country two systems. We can allow states to go fully their own way and see how it goes. Kansas anyone?
1
Yes there is and will be, life after Liberalism. In fact, America is having its way prepared; hills leveled, valleys smoothed. Any still doubting whom God favors, need look no farther than the spiritual character of Donald Trump's naysayers.
de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" remains the best tool for understanding the United States and Americans.
(This comment from an immigrant...and the book itself, from an extraordinarily brilliant tourist.)
The great threat to liberal democracy is simply this: we are governed by officials who no longer represent those who elected them. Instead, they represent those who paid to get them elected.
This is the deliberate legacy of the conservative movement's investments in the Supreme Court, which gave them Citizens United, and in the congress, which just delivered the real goods- drastic cuts in taxes for its wealthy patrons.
The real contribution of Douthat, Brooks, and their ilk is to put an intellictual skin on what amounts to a racketeering enterprise.
"Liberalism now offers plutocracy." Wrong. Unless you become like a child you cannot enter God's domain. And so a bronze little girl stands before a charging bronze bull on Wall Street. This juxtaposition reflected the liberal complaint of the Wall Street Protest of the inequitable wealth gap between the 1% and the 99%. It was a protest against plutocracy! Service to and evidence of government by oligarchs, i.e. plutocracy, can be seen in the so called "Bread and Circus" bill labeled "Tax Reform and Job Creation" Bill in which 80% of the benefits go to the 1%! Ross, tell your story straight!
There is no science in politics. There are too many unknowns and variables to fashion the double-blind controls that provide repeatable predictable results. Politics is gender, color aka race, ethnicity, national origin, faith, socioeconomics, education and history plus arithmetic. A political "theorist" is akin to a fortune teller or a soothsayer or an oracle or an op-ed journalist or a historian or an economist or a talk show host or reality TV star with an opinion or two.
What matters in politics is our biological science genetic DNA primate ape nature that evolved fit in Africa 300,000+ years ago. We are driven to crave fat, salt, sugar, water, habitat, sex and kin by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation. What really matters is the nature and nurture of our political leaders.
Whether or not there is life after Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Reagan, W, and Obama seems inevitable only in hindsight. Whether or not there is life after Trump is known only to God or Mother Natiuee.
1
As many religious people and even my leftist friends, Mr Douthat cannot imagine that society may live & prosper without explicit "big design"; on all encompassing ideology with few easy to remember slogans.
Today's liberalism is a pragmatic movement, and off course, the sum of the actions creates some core values, the "trivial" and "political correct" humanism.
If you need a transcendental principle, you could lean against UN declaration of Human Rights, not as a God (whatever this fairy tail entails) given dogma but result of centuries of human experience.
We should learn and respect our own history.
Similar arguments are thrown against Mr Macron in France, the political class brought up on "ideologies" have problem positioning our President. is he Right, Left, President of the Rich, Liberal, whatever. While Mr Macron was chosen on a set of a common sense solutions to burning problems of the french society, almost none of his proposals are new, he just picked what worked in different countries of EU.
...and there is a lot of real issues that need resolution in US. First is restoration of democratic processes and strict regulation of money in politics.
Rather then spending time on sterile ideological debates, what does Mr Douthat thinks needs to be done to repair the damaged US democracy ?
This is a typical conservative article. It gives a broad statement that "liberalism has failed," without explaining how it has failed, or really defining what liberalism is. Is Douthat refering to "neo-liberalism" or is he talking about left of center policies according to the U.S. political order. And again it goes back to the classical conservative rhetorical device of simply stating something without giving proof or data to back up his point. So thank you Russ, for wasting my time.
I am stunned to discover that a political philosophy such as "Liberalism" put into effect 250 years ago in the U.S. could be tainted in any way by citizenry who want to fashion it in such a way that best benefits them. Who knew?
Deneen writes that Liberalism " conceived humans as rights bearing humans who could fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life...." -- Well, that covers just about the entire range of human existence. Obviously, those who have the power have always been able to fashion and pursue their perception of the good life in any type of political philosophy.
"well, then maybe the crisis of liberalism isn’t real, maybe people are just play-acting, as Steve Bannon turned out to be play-acting the 1930s, within a system too settled to really be moved except by inches."
Many human actions and activities are ultimately play-related, but things are far more complex than Mr. Douthat hints at. See Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johannes Huizinga.
1
Douthat, Brooks, and Kristoff have all written insightful critiques over the past week about the current state of western democratic political systems. I would LOVE to see the 3 of them - and perhaps others - continue this analysis in dialogue with each other, actually coming to ideological and practical proposals for how our nation could/should move forward at this critical moment in our history. Please, stay focused on this and help us find our way forward -
leave your silos, work together, set an example...
SOMETIMES a caricature? Sometimes?
One wonders why it never seems to occur that the roots of our problems aren't in liberalism at all; they're in what came before it and has persisted, in a whole set of authoritarian and repressive approaches to the world.
In, you know, all the stuff that Ross Douthat cheers for bringing back.
Liberalism thrives when the fate of working families improves — not the other way around.
The Industrial Revolution was triggered by a reduction in the cost of manual labor of a factor of 1,000 brought about by the advent of motors. This resulted in the dislocation of most workers, the Great Depression, WWII and the subsequent inflation. There were many times during this upheaval when liberalism was feared lost.
Since 1972 we have been witnessing the accelerating impact of the IT revolution during which time the cost of computation has fallen by a factor of 1,000,000,000, and we are again witnessing the seeming destruction of liberalism (certainly a Trumpian politician would not have been politically viable in 1972). Now with the advent of learning machines we are can expect the rapid elimination of jobs by technologies such as self-driving cars.
If liberalism is to survive, we need to take a hard look at the requirements for a stable and sustainable economic/political system. I submit that, in its simplest form working families must be able to afford to purchase the fruits of their labor. This will require two fundamental constraints on corporations.
1. A cap, based upon its history, on the ratio of each corporation’s earnings to payroll ratio.
2. Break up of all regional, national and global for-profit monopolies
Until we face up to this, we will see economic reversals, the rise of demagogues and loss of human rights.
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I am not sure if there is common understanding of the meaning of liberalism. My personal definition is that a liberal is open to new ideas, rather than being a slave to ancient dogma. As a liberal, I can accept he positive aspects of religion without being bound to supernatural nonsense. I have never understood what is sinful about birth control, for instance. It’s makes perfect good sense to me to control my family size to what fits my circumstances. And that is somehow sinful??? Ridiculous!!! A liberal can adopt conservative principles if they make sense.
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James, I was formulating my comment for this section and just read yours. Precisely the words and sentences I wanted to write. Including the one about religion. Thanks
In this piece “stagnant-seeming liberal West” is the key to Douthat’s piece empathetically viewed. No full-fledge, mucsh less irreversible, dissolutions have occurred. The main threat in the US has been the arise of a South.-centered, Fox-New steered and promoted, procedurally extremist (or post-Gingrich) GOP compounded by the 2016 electoral leverage of a fragile Trumpista-Putin generation of a small white nativist working class constituency in a few Rust Belt states.
In Scandinavia, democratic socialist cultural legacies, strong Union representation of the core citizenry of working people, and disciplined pragmatic parties have, realized a robust form of progressive liberalism -a well-developed set of safety net, Keynesian, growth and employment promoting, socially progressive policy complementing robust market economies and not the statist eclipse of free-market production for profit fabricated by conservative and neo-liberal pundits) liberalism is strong. Indeed “liberal” parties not infrequently lead government.
In the U.K. one should not interpret the Brexit gaffe of a Center-Right Conservative government as an end of liberal, though gaffe may inadvertently lead to Scandinavia-like regeneration of Labour. French and German cases, more buffeted by immigrant pressures than most liberal democracies, are hardly in a death throes.
In this OPED Douthat’s illiberal wishful thinking causes him to flirt with movements
Don't be fooled Ross. Pay attention to the Alabama election in which voters came out of the woodwork in a decisively red state. America has the capacity to spot where there are uniformed and bigoted voters who have become subject to sound bites and propaganda from the GOP's own echo chamber and from its elected leaders who don't make sense when they talk. These pull out their prepared sound bites and scripts from the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) distributed daily, weekly and monthly.
You saw this in the famous live immigration debate when McCarthy whipped out his three-leg-stool demands after Pelosi asked for a clean bill and Trump who is clueless thought that was a good idea. Have you ever asked how many dreamers walked across the border into the United States and what wall would have stopped them.
America is just not going to suffer Trump or coterie as fools and you are deluding yourself if you do.
Get back to me when Trump figures out how to get his very stable genius ratings above 50% and after Mueller drops his bombs.
In the mean time we are getting to see the brains in operation of Trump's loyal legislators and surrogates. There is a new word for these brains.
1
The campaign to question the values of liberal democracy is being led by a lot
of rich guys on statins who want to slam the door on every coming after them.
Deneen "urges a rededication to localism and community." Let him take a drive down I-75 from Tampa to Sarasota and beyond, with detours down Siesta and Casey Keys, and past the ubiquitous "gated communities." What localism? What community?
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I always find it difficult to figure out if it is a hilarious joke, or a propensity towards delusional and magical thinking, when conservatives try to blame what the right, the Republicans, and more recently, the Trumpers have done to bring about all the things you blame on liberalism. Sometimes to the point of actually giving the "Liberal Order" the credit for his election. Much of your attacks on the shallowness of "American" life, the "debasement" of culture have nothing to do with liberalism (other than maybe the liberal push for media to represent a broader point of view than the bland corporate vision) but are rather an effect of capitalism. Maybe we should call it Neo-capitalism, if nobody is going to be honest and use terms like kleptocracy, corporatism, or better yet, fascism
It ought to be obvious by Ross's referencing of de Tocqueville that when he talks about liberalism, he is referring to the philosophy behind free markets and open societies, and not to "liberalism" in the partisan sense. That so many commenters don't seem to get this points to the huge failures of the American education system.
It's interesting indeed that both Ross and Brooks have produced columns about the same book in the span of one week. Even more interesting that neither columnist saw fit to examine the role of capitalism in our present societal decline.
Ross writes: "Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy...It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled."
Our economic system, which has delivered great prosperity, has devoured everything around it. It was inevitable. Plutoctacy, isolation, the atomization of society that results when people become cogs (Marx predicted this, incidentally). I'd love to see Ross or Brooks or any other of the country's public intellectuals grapple with the damage done by late capitalism.
" ... Tocqueville’s fear that liberalism would eventually dissolve all these inheritances ... " Ummm ... I'm hardly an expert in history or historiography, but it seems to me that de Tocqueville observed and wrote of an America that preceded by several decades the emergence of a fully formed, 19th century "liberalism."
The next enlightenment will flower in reaction to automation. As the population balloons, production will be centralized, and much of the labor automated. The reaction to this must be a type of socialism, maybe even a new type of communism. Perhaps currency will take a new paperless form, maybe disappear entirely. As capitalism gives way to sharing equally, the second enlightenment will be defined by hyper-transparency and aggressive equity. Individual freedom will give way to communal health and equality: Free schools, free food, free housing, free transportation, free energy, no war. Everyone living in yurts listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" on solar powered vinyl. Hot Yoga will be the new Sunday church. Alpha-hippies the new priestess. Mastering a musical instrument will be just as important as learning to read. And this will make impromptu jams in yurt-hoods a nightly ritual. Everyone will wear baggy hemp clothes. Weed will be super legal delivered like milk use to be. The NFL will dissolve. Ultimate Frisbee, backgammon, hula hooping, and dancing will be the new "sports." The only "job" people will have will be to make sure the AI is humming and the solar panels working. Instead of TV, groups will perform Shakespeare in rock chiseled amphitheaters. Food will be grown locally -- carrots, celery, garbanzo beans. Edamame will be huge. Yerba mate tea will take hold.
Then Douthat wakes up in a cold sweat, this was only the worst nightmare he's had in ages.
1
Nationalist-populist movements always end in disaster because they veer towards fascism. The Axis powers, the coalition headed by Germany, Italy, and Japan during WWII, were a classic example. Bannon’s political demise has probably helped ensure that Trump’s nationalist-populist movement does not tilt any further in a fascist direction. In fact, as resistance to Trump’s autocratic behavior increases, there will be a commensurate resurgence of a neo-liberalism (greater economic equality, social justice, racial transparency, etc.) not only in the United States, but also in the larger western world. So yes, there is life after liberalism because a reactionary nationalist-populist movement, which has a half-life of a typical radioactive substance, has temporarily replaced it.
Attention Ross: we are not going back to the Middle Ages, even if your leader is trying to get there.
1
The " liberal " order needs to be renewed? By turning our country into an oligarchy? To be run by corrupt politicians who have sold us out to the highest bidder? To an electorate that covets racism and a war on the poor and women and immigrants? Conservatives please stop telling us what " liberalism " is when all you have done since the 1930's is weaken " liberal " policies and attempt to destroy " liberal " America.
Speaking of Bannon's stated dreams (entirely unbelievable as they were) Mr. Douthat said this:
"His nationalist-populist movement, he argued, would transform the G.O.P. into something truly new: a right-wing worker’s party that spent freely, “jacked up” infrastructure all over the country, and won “60 percent of the white vote” and “40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote” on its way to a 50-year majority."
Liberalism isn't the moral disparagement the author claims in his contorted attempt to somehow tangle Bannon with general Left politics. Anyone with a brain and life's experience knows that Infrastructure has been deferred maintenance chiefly caused by rapacious Republicans wanting to forever pay less taxes.
Further, the environmental movement, presently, and for a very long time, has nothing whatsoever to do with these same self serving Republicans. Befoul the air and water, allow noxious chemicals in food stuffs, the proposed plundering of Public Lands, the proposed elimination of regulation....all concerns that Republicans in their Ivory Tower chose to ignore in their never ending quest for ever more profit.
Bannon would somehow impart sanity to the Republican lay-about Congress whose only concern is their own advance and control? Why does Douthat even mention Bannon in the same sentence as Liberal ideals?
Ross continues to tangle certain tenants of Christianity with a conservative tilt? Read the New Testament again would be my advice.
I must be living in a different country than these conservative “intellectuals”. First, the notion that the USA has actually experienced a liberal era is laughable. The liberalism of Clinton and Obama appear as mere interregnums during a lengthy conservative era. And this is why, more than anywhere else in the Western world, the USA has failed to deliver actual liberal policies to its citizenry. Education based on local property taxes is not a liberal system, healthcare based on a corporate for profit model that leaves millions uncared for is hardly liberal, and a tax policy that asks less of its wealthy citizens than almost any other wealthy nation, rendering our inequality after taxes and transfers amongst the worst in the advanced world, is not at all liberal. The conservative conceit that has liberal overlords ruling over us all is a weird fever dream that oozed up out of the Bircher swamps and has finally infected all conservative “thinkers”.
In fact, I retract the whole last sentence of my previous comment accusing Mr. Douthat of WSJ style individualism. It isn’t an accurate reflection of his views, which have always been grounded in Catholicism.
The population grows so fast now. That will pressure everyone.
Some of the people who have heralded the demise of liberalism are me and my comrades from the Left.
For Example, Andrew Kopkind said, in 1967 in the "New York Review of Books," that "The civil war (race riots and other upheavals), and the foreign one (Vietnam), have murdered (bourgeois) liberalism in its official robes."
He was a critic from the left. So am I. It isn't only the Steve Bannons and the alt right who want to crush liberalism. There are also Socialists who are re-reading Marx, seeing the accuracy of his judgments in so many ways that I can't begin to summarize them in a post (mere readers are not given much space), and who want to trash and bash the corporatist status quo that calls itself political liberty but is merely an apologist for rapacious entrepreneurial thieves.
1
Douthat practices navel gazing. These nuances of political science were once fodder for argument in the 1880's in Parisian Salons, but are quaint and meaningless today. Does Douthat long for those days? For Americans outside the Ivory Tower, "Liberalism" is just media term, no more or less than "Reality TV", "Wrestling", "Power Ball", "Alternative Facts" and "Artificial Intelligence". Liberalism has been branded by "Conservatives"(another media label) as evil by the hysterical right wing media. Understand there is little political science left in either label. We have endured a gradual take over by a powerful "AI" controlled by the New Oligarchs: through television, cell phones, internet shopping, social media and the like. Is this just a coincidence that "Liberal" and "Conservative" became such powerful words starting in the 1950's? There is little political science in economic injustice or dissolution of government. Pundits like Douthat attack important government institutions with silly labels and discussions which belong in a Political Science 101 class. The big question to ask is this: is there Democracy after Oligarchy?
It's just so disappointing to continue to come to this man's column hoping he'll unshackle his obvious intelligence from his fundamentalist beliefs and deal with the real issues of the day with honesty and courage only to find more of the same whataboutism. The question at this point should be is there life after autocracy? Is there life after greedy cheaters take over? Is there life after the self-serving class in power pretends its lusts are grounded in "philosophy?"
1
Characterizing Liberalism as "things I don't like or that scare me" or whatever it is that Douthat is proposing as an alternative that will lead to a social/political/economic order he approves as "things i like" is hardly a cogent, nuanced, or accurate account of either Liberalism or of the recent historical trends that have produced what he and the authors he cites see as a "crisis of Liberalism." In actual fact, the counter-liberal forces of reaction and conservatism are largely responsible for the economic and social problems and failures he decries. Modern Liberalism will continue to be the force that overcomes these problems and produces a more liveable, just, tolerant, and equal society.
1
Why do we need a conservative like Douthat to conservativesplain what liberal is and why it failed?
Also, Trumpism = Bannonism. Trump is all about HIMSELF and will suck up to other "winners" like Oprah. Just the other day he was on camera saying "I was on her show," as if Oprah was the next prize to aspire to.
This is the "leader' of the free world.
While Hawaii scrambles in fear, he golfs and Douthat meanders in a boring article about the death of liberalism.
2
I'm not sure what Douthat means by "liberalism". It seems to me that what's happening is that in the struggle between socialism (i.e., government providing for the general welfare) and capitalism, capitalism is crushing socialism. That's why we are moving from equality to plutocracy. It seems obvious to me that healthy societies need a healthy balance between these two forces of individualism and collectivism.
But I also think that that the problems we face are deeper than even that fundamental relationship. I would argue that we are actually facing a crisis of epistemology. We are so flooded with ideas and counter ideas in this information age that no one knows what to think or believe.
We need a new approach to epistemology and ontology. We need a new metaphysics––one that clears up our understanding of the world and brings back a deeper sense of spirituality. My suggestion is that we look at the ancient wisdom of the Buddha and the Zen Masters. Their insights actually fit seamlessly with modern science, including evolution and quantum theory. I wrote about this in my book The Ultimate Distinction: Resolving Our Biggest Philosophical, Spiritual, and Practical Problem. But it's not a scholarly work so no one is paying attention to it. So I'm going back to school to get a masters in philosophy so that I can explain what I mean more thoroughly, and in the language of scholars. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it. Today's academics seem rather rigid in their thinking.
2
Too much of the decline of community and tradition is blamed by the Right on liberalism. What you should complain about is the downside of capitalism, which Americans allowed to run amok. Capitalism has done wonderful things for us materially, but has also been the biggest driver of tearing down communities, demanding so much of us to succeed as workers that we have little to give to others, fostering immense inequality, requiring 2 wage earners to support a family, ruining the environment where not restrained by government, etc. Traditions have broken down much more from people having to adopt new habits to survive, or because the system has broken them and their spirit, or sucked the life out of small town America than it has because of liberal individualism.
162
"...demanding so much of us to succeed as workers that we have little to give to others,"
That is an excellent line, sir, and one I hadn't seen articulated in that way before.
7
"requiring two wage earners to support a family" may also be the inevitable economic result of the hundred year long feminist movement. The confusion about values, lowering of family cohesion, higher divorce rates and pressure for women to embrace certain career choices may also stem from this. Certainly the fact that two parents now need to work to afford a family home. with inevitable consequences for family, may be due to house price escalation as women entered the work force. Whether research had been done to examine this is questionable: questioning in any way the feminist movement would be highly frowned upon in academic circles. But one should maybe ask whether capitalism is the culprit because it reacted and responded to movements such as the feminist movement, or whether these social experiments are not also in some way to blame. Certainly feminism, the secular state, and globalism are all experiments human society has never experienced on this scale before. And not all at once!
Maybe the problem isn't solely with liberalism, Ross. The "pre-liberal forces and habits" of tribe and religion are as corrupting, especially in this current climate, as anything selfish individualism and bureaucratic despotism can throw at us. Holier-than-thou excuses for discrimination and exclusivity, as well as white-male centered authority, were the ills liberalism was trying to ameliorate. Let's not trot them back out like they're a good idea again. Bannon and Trump falsely promised working Americans a bigger slice of the pie. But there is only so much room at the trough, and Trump of all people is not into sharing.
As a conservative Catholic you are prone to assume a problem-solving wisdom and benevolence from your religion. But it's implementation has been spotty at best, with tenets such as celibacy being directly responsible for predatory behavior and abuse. Religion isn't losing ground because of liberalism, it's losing ground based on inherent flaws for which orthodoxy prevents resolution. The anti-science, antigay, anti-liberal, anti-feminist old white male as final arbiter is an unsustainable construct for younger Americans.
11
Got to agree with most of the other comments that Liberalism is not failing. Granted its not working well because the winds are trying to blow Democrats away from center without anyone working with them as a counterbalance. The Republicans are so off in a world of their own making, a world of the completely insane and a world of no compromise that there is a risk that if they retain power they will destroy democracy. Yes I know that this sounds alarmist, but look at Washington right now and what sounds insane is happening. Lets look at an example of what MIGHT have been. Last year Antonin Scalia died at an inconvenient time for Republicans, there was danger of losing their anchor conservative seat, so they refused to even consider any nomination from the sitting President, which probably was if not unconstitutional at least in defiance of what the Constitution intended. Maybe they might have sent a message to President Obama saying "We have a majority in the Senate and will not confirm a nominee whose politics resemble those of Elena Kagan or Sonya Sotomyor. Send us a moderate, maybe even a slightly conservative nominee and we will confirm, otherwise we will keep the seat open for hopefully a Republican President in 2017. That's how its done when two sides of the isle are at least TRYING to work together, but current Republicans aren't even in the same universe as that.
8
I find the defense offered by Brooks and Douthat to Professor Deneen to be trite and absurd. Brooks argued that nothing is wrong with liberalism because it still exists after 300 years and we just need to read more John Stuart Mill. Douthat tells us that liberalism isn’t broken because no better idea has been invented. These are as unconvincing as they are illogical.
But Douthat is correct that the localism cure suggested by Deneen seems implausibly difficult. Deneen believes localism must be the cure because the destruction of small town communities has led to our current ill state. But we may indeed have strayed too far from our small town agrarian roots to get it back again.
In the absence of a better solution, however, one must push for the solution at hand, no matter how improbable. As Wendell Berry recently said, this is the age of divorce. Things that should be together have been taken apart and you can’t put it all back together again. So you start by putting one thing back together at a time. In Wendell Berry’s case, that one thing is the locally grown food movement.
It took 300 years to destroy the moral structure built over the previous thousand years. It will take nearly as long to rebuild it. Let’s get to work.
1
Ross, each of the terms liberal, race, conservative, populism and many more used here in the Times has so many meanings that the best thing to do would be to bury them.
Then what? Perhaps we could say, let us discuss government attitudes toward science as exemplified in the USA 2016-2020 compared with, why not, in Sweden? Or to name my other passions, public health, renewable energy, classification of citizens, treatment of asylum seekers.
I will not let you or any Times reply writer put me in the box of your or their choice. Ask me what is on and in my mind and I will tell you. To reply writers, if you open by putting me in a box, I stop reading.
Having a great day here in Sweden, 14 January 2018.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
2
Liberalism hasn’t failed because it’s been outlawed since Reagan. The Republicrat monopoly evolved such that the Republican party was far rightwing and the Democrat party being right wing.
Wall Street runs both parties.
If the liberal order is to be maintained, we need to remember that the classic liberalism bequeathed us by the Enlightenment is maintained by a pendulum which swings in a controlled arc and once having swung too far one way, will right itself. When we abandon equality, education, and enlightenment and public decency dies, we lose the fulcrum on which our order is balanced and which contains the arc of that pendulum, and freed from its fulcrum, the pendulum becomes a scimitar.
3
Let us be careful not to confuse "liberalism" with being a "liberal" in today's politics. We are all liberals because we all believe more or less in democracy. I read Chernow's book "Hamilton" and he listed his reading list of thinkers at the time who had opined about the change from monarchy or divine right rule to democracy, and he gobbled them up and then he and Madison made up a government that might work. So we don't have to give up on "liberal democracy", which is still the touchstone, but we have found loopholes in our government: a uniquely bad president elected with a minority of votes, congress with no allegiance to the country but only to the agenda of their party, and the flagrant ability of money to buy policy, and finally no reliable source of good information not paid for by somebody partisan. So voters have no basis to vote on their concerns and interests. No, liberalism is not dying of old age or illness, it is getting murdered by lack of honor.
9
Mr. Douthat, there is no liberalism, so liberalism can not have failed, not can it be oppressive or anything. Liberalism, like conservatism is a convenient tagline with which you can label your imagined ideologic enemies, so as to create the illusion of a right and wrong way of thinking. This false dichotomy is fact the wrong way of thinking. There are as many "liberalism" as there are liberals, just as there are many "conservativisms" as there are conservatives, each labeled by others or labeling themselves as such for convenient reasons. In fact there is only truth, and open-mindedness to the truth. Insofar as history is teleologic, the human perspective has grown more aligned with truth, whatever that may be, and lies, falsesness and mythology have become obsolete. Unfortunately for Mr. Douthat and his argument, liberalism by and large, for all of its shortcomings has in general been aligned with truth and open-mindedness, whereas conservatism has been aligned with narrowness and clinging to false beliefs from the past. Mr. Douthat may have some other liberalism in mind when he considers it obsolescent or decadent, but it is not the kind of liberalism that is open-minded and curious. It is rather conservatism that we see in its waning days, as global warming, racism, sexual predation, economic polarization and international uncooperativeness increasing becomes the byline of the conservative movement.
1
What's wrong with Socialist Democracies like Denmark? Studies indicate it is a reasonably happy place to live. But then, they don't let Goldman and Monsanto run the government.
1
As a confirmed Realist, who gave up standing at the alter of our political parties, it seems apparent, no matter what side of the Isle folks choose, our political elite cannot, and are not capable of, realizing most folks are neither Democrats or Republicans, but so called independents. At the root of this issue is the fact, The Social Democratic Welfare State , while making for great reading, promising something for everyone, cannot deliver, after years and years and billions of dollars spent. Then we Americans had to endure the likes of Clinton and Trump as our new anchor going forward. The so called Democrat elites completely deserted their traditional base . Eight years of Obama condescending rhetoric while the Democrats base was deserted didn't go well. Now look what we have.The world has resorted to sitting on their hands until all this passes and America gets back to normal , as in non threatening. All while China and Russia , our two adversaries, have firm models in place they are executing.
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I'm not sure every one is on the same page with their definitions of liberalism, but in my definition, I believe it went off the rails when women with children screamed equality, yet enslaved another woman to do their first work. Logical? This set in motion many of the ills we see today. Up went the divorce rate, as the up-and-coming male wanted the up-and-coming female. And up went the first round of inequality in homes. The two good jobs in town ended up in one home. Now we work impossibly to accommodate all in the work force, and it's dog eat dog in the business world, and we can't afford all of us in the public sector. It's like a snowball rolling. And the kids fall farther and farther behind as many spend their early years conversing with another two year-old in an institutionalized setting. The kids are the ones who have paid the price and will continue to pay for the nonsense. I think it was greed with a small "g", and now it's greed with a capital "G", and it's created a great divide. But, it's hardly recognizable anymore, though, because no one remembers when mom once guided the home - before TV dinners. The saddest face I ever saw was at an intersection at 7:45 AM on a cold morning. The face of a little boy, who must have been 6 or 7 years-old, looking out the window of daycare bus. He was being bused from early morning care to school, and I imagine, he would be bused back again after school ended. So sad.
The old liberalism is bankrupt.
Part of the reason is that it abandoned the poor.
Remember Ted Kennedy pushing for universal health care. Many of us voted for Obama expecting Kennedy's dream to be realized, or at least for a path to eventual universal health care.
Instead, members of Congress protected their own reelection funding and voted to keep the health insurers happy.
The result is that even under Obamacare, millions are left uncovered, and Obamacare is so complicated that many Republicans have voted to restrict access to health care further.
The problem is that ordinary voters cannot understand the complicated legislation put forward by our senators and representatives. They vote against their own self-interests
Why is that? In addition to the venality of politicians there are two conflicting trends.
Even if Congress were not corrupt, voters need to be better educated now than 50 years ago because the world is so complex.
Yet, liberals have pushed for unlimited immigration and as the population grows a smaller percentage can afford the university education necessary to train as doctors or engineers. Or the education necessary to ell truth from falsehood.
US population grew by 82 million during the period 1980-2010 and funding shifted from university education to K12. And universities were dumbed down so that failure would be impossible.
In the long term, population growth has a devastating impact.
Yet it is never discussed.
2
To your excellent point that liberalism died when it abandoned the poor, the Democrats themselves including the left wing of Warren and Sanders talk almost exclusively about the middle class. Its as if the poor no longer exist. And if the poor no longer exist even in the populist left wing, then what's the point of liberalism, what void does liberalism fill in a society where poor people do not exist?
This is exactly like the argument that President Obama made racism worse in this country.
Liberalism didn't fail, it was attacked, sabotaged, undermined, and hijacked.
When Reagan decided to lower taxes and deregulate everything, and when Grover Norquist decided he wanted federal government small enough that he could "drown it in a bathtub", we believed these guys actually had a plan that made sense. They didn't. We all thought the states would have more power in this neo-conservative world where the power of the people (aka the federal government) was diminished. But we all forgot that there is a power betwixt the feds and the states: corporate America. They took control of everything, and now Douthat and Brooks claim that liberalism was a failure all on its own. Nice.
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Douthat, like his president, is a master of the look over there tactic. Today he writes about the decline of liberalism and its dearth of ideals while his party, the "conservative" Republicans is governing as the very opposite of what they have claimed to believe for decades. Unnecessary deficit increasing tax cuts. Federal intrusion into states rights. Support of a corrupt ignorant incompetent president. Support of dismantling first amendment free speech and separation of church and state. Disparaging the law enforcement and judicial system. Failure to fund and staff the government so it can govern properly. And please Mr Douthat write a column explaining how the "conservatives" Republican party denying poor children food and healthcare is a conservative value. And of course there is the conservatives demand that the government dictate to women their reproductive rights. And Mr Douthat - are racism, misogyny, mendacity, science denial, hypocrisy, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia conservative ideals? values? It seems evident to me that they are.
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Both friends and foe doubt the virtue of liberalism. One detests liberalism and yet, of the available non-eschatological alternatives, . . .
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
This editorial parallels David Brooks NY Times editorial a couple of days ago; it seems to aim at standard conservative fare justified by a decline of liberalism.
Theirs is not the way we should look at it. Liberalism in the past practice more to community, using the government as an expression of it to create a society that embraced decency. That was the New Deal model.
Both authors distract from the main idea: the political right in this country touted libertarianism and extolled the rugged individualist and the survivalist. Reagan's movement embraced libertarianism and with him, corporate America.
This hyper-individualism found its way into the Democratic Party with its Clinton/Obama gentry liberal wing. Like the corporate Republicans, these 'gentry liberals' evolved into classical liberals, embracing neoliberal economics, praising individual hard work and effort, and to a large extent the free market.
This led to the current arrangement - an increasingly atomistic society where the notion of a common good is scorned as something Karl Marx came up with.
2
The residual or end state "selfish individualism and soft bureaucratic despotism" of liberalism are features as far as I can see of GOP efforts for the past 75 years to install a plutocracy based on a Darwinian view of the social order.
Their active agency in undermining public education, effective and efficient government and in fomenting rampant racial and economic inequality has greatly impaired the community and social cohesion that a liberal society needs to flourish.
The GOP never believed in a liberal social order and has striven mightily to blow it up.
Their vision of the future is a return to the guilded age and devil take the hindmost if you aren't already born on third base...
1
David Jr. in the comments section says-
"They never notice that dependence on outside agency easily discourages local unity and shared concerns."
We already have "local unity & shared concerns." They happen to be the neighbors from our same social class. When the car's on the blink or we need a twenty dollar loan, these are the people we turn to.
The local aristocrats are very big on community projects usually including beatification & fund raising for the clubs & fraternal organizations they themselves are a part of, some of which are engaged in philanthropy.
But guess who theyd like to rely on? The home bound poor unable to take the frequent vacations & sabbaticals that they themselves engage in. The willing upper middle buddy to help on the project is often unavailable.
Sorry pal, if you want a handyman or laborer advertise in the local paper. Nobody wants to be on call for people with limited time & recall.
BTW. Social security, medicare & medicade are the "outside concerns" most of you "conservatives" want to slash or eliminate.
1
It took the financial crisis and great depression to reinvigorate a system that had become manifestly illiberal, marked by excessive inequality (about the same as today) and punctuated by rampant speculation in financial assets rather than investment in productive capital (just like today). Bannon wasn't play-acting the 1930s, he was preparing for a repeat of the crisis that all but eliminated inequality and tamed the financial sector. Does Stephens not realize that Bannon was projecting the prescription of the Austrian school?
1
Douthat, not Stephens.
Nice article.
If this were only occurring in the United States, I would dismiss it. But we see it in Europe as well.
Neverthless, I am optimistic. If any nation can respond, it is ours. America is a dynamic place and I believe it will continue to be so.
I think America was complaisant. People did not pay attention. The gift of Trump is that he has gotten people to pay attention. In paying attention attention, the majority of Americans (2/3rd's or so) realize that voting for a president is not a joke and the consequences can be nuclear. Americans also have learned how morally and ideoligically bankrupt the Republican Party is. The GOP truly is the party of Roy Moore. Rabid crazy, racist comments from POTUS are "condemned" as "unfortunate" and "not helpful." Wow.
Democrats are are not unsoiled by any stretch but i don't even think the GOP beleives democrats are nearly as lost and corrupt as the GOP.
If this does turn into a wave election and a lot of the trash is swept out, then we could see impeachment. That would at least restore a little sanity and accountability to the system. If that happens, then Mr. Brooks may be right - we may be able to reform and fix the system. Regardless, it will be a close run thing. We have no idea how much damage will be done in the interim. All we know is Trump is working really hard to wreck the country albeit unwittingly. Still, if he destroys the GOP in the process, we have a chance.
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@Al Miller:Old line from film, "History Boys " in which headmaster tells pupils that there is no such thing as general studies. If you believe Trump is wrecking the country, tell us why and how, and with which policies you disagree:Kate's law,his stance against chain immigration,bogus lottery system and which also allows anyone and everyone into the country, including ISIS zealot who killed 8 people in Manhattan,successful efforts to deregulate, opening up ANWAR for oil production, a merit based immigration system so that those who enter are not immediately eligible for life long welfare payments? What precisely do you mean, and do you not think it is necessary to give examples. Otherwise, how are we ever going to get together to have an intelligent debate based on logical analysis? Ever read First Meditations,"Premieres Meditacions"of Rene Descartes?
Problems with Trump and the Republicans.
The appointment of Neil Gorsuch. This should have been Obama’s pick. Seeing that Trump lost the popular vote he should have nominated a moderate like Garland in the spirit of compromise.
The eventual unraveling of Obama care by eliminating the mandate and not supporting the exchange subsidies with $.
The unraveling the world economic order by careless and ignorant trade policies. NAFTA should not be carelessly thrown out. Some version of TPP should have been signed. Now China will take over Asia and Europe with the OB & OR project.
The Tax Cut act. 99% of the Tax Cut benefits will go to the super wealthy in this country turning the US into an aristocracy.
There is no crisis of liberalism. There is a crisis of capitalism. The severed bonds described by Deneen were severed by the hoarders of capital. Our leading companies are awash in money that they refuse to spend on jobs or anything that serves the public because it won’t return a profit by next quarter or raise the stock price. There is no crisis of liberal politics. There is a crisis in conservative capitalism.
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Ross is clumsily feeling his way towards a radically different perception of the nature of reality.
From Sri Aurobindo, “The Ideal of Human Unity” - A spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future… not what is ordinarily called a universal religion, a system, a thing of creed and intellectual belief… Humanity has tried unity by that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed…. The inner spirit is indeed one, but the spiritual life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means of development. A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one... It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth. By its growth within us oneness with our fellow human beings will become the leading principle of all our life, not merely a principle of cooperation but a real, inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There must be the realisation by the individual that only in the life of others is his own life complete… A spiritual oneness which would create a psychological oneness not dependent upon any intellectual or outward uniformity and compel a oneness of life not bound up with its mechanical means of unification, but ready always to enrich its secure unity by a free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression.
Ross... ironically, the Nordic countries have many of the "liberal" institutions.... paid childcare leave, free university tuition, health care for all, better housing, less inequality, higher taxes, better public transportation, etc etc.
The true irony is that many of the red staters in Kansas, Wisconsin, Texas came from and think they share that heritage. Their cultural history is actually that of the socialist European countries where the quality of life is actually better for everyone.
Liberalism isn't dead, it is just buried in a tide of GOP greediness and lack of compassion.
Can we deny that the fundamental issue is inherent human fear which produces greed, regressive tribalism, and the objectification of others such that "conservatism" (which conserves nothing but the process of wealth-transfer from working people to the already-wealthy by political deceptions) kills the host of which it is a paracite?
Our inherent fear, incited and manipulated by skillful demagoges, overrides all our higher social imaginings. We may be at a tipping point in human social evolution -- it certainly seems so -- but which way we tip is anyone's guess.
Maybe Douthat's benevolent authoritarian Almighty will place a thumb on the scale, but, given the proud ignorance, craven sadism and greed-worship of Trumpism, one fears that is the only hope for our children and descendants to live in a humane and -- yes -- liberal world.
It is a serious mistake to describe what is happening in the United States as a battle between liberals and conservatives, It is a struggle for the survival of our nation and our democracy. It is a battle between Trumpists and those who care sincerely about the future of our country. Trumpists have no respect for the Constitution, no respect for American traditions and cannot distinguish the Apprentice Reality TV show from truly governing our nation. After almost one year of gross incompetence as so-called president, they can no longer claim Trump is going to fight for the little guy and bring them jobs. Trumpists live in a closed-in fantasy world where Trump will always be a decent man no matter how many people he shoots on 5th Ave. There are three kinds of voters that chose Trump: racists and bigots, the uninformed and low information voters, and the Evangelists for whom defeating Roe v. Wade overcomes every other Christian value. That millions of American's could be conned into believing that Trump and the powerful manipulators behind him would look after their welfare is also testament to the strength of the entrenched Fox/Breibart propaganda machine, which is the voice of the super-wealthy right wing extremists that have taken over our country. The United States is now just like those so-called Banana Republics that have undergone a right wing coup. That is something that "liberals" do understand all too well.
1
It's always a little strange to read something so startlingly stupid as this from someone so obviously intelligent as Mr. Douthat. Does he really mean to imply that such "liberal" societies as, say, Norway or Denmark, are intolerably repressive of "true intellectual and religious freedom" and are "failing" as a result? Do they know this? Should we inform them on his behalf? Should we battle any tendency on the part of our own "liberals" to promote the imitation of those disastrously egalitarian policies that have raised these countries, to name only the most blatant examples, to the very peak of the world's most successful societies? I appreciate that de Tocqueville is good reading, albeit to me a bit tiring even as literature, and mostly irrelevant to where we now are; but the "de" ultimately says it in his case; it's simple to love tribe, family, and authoritarian religion if you're defined by birth as being at the top of it all.
"Is There Life After Liberalism?" Deneen and Douthat may think not, but consider a more pertinent question, "Is there life after Conservatism?"
Conservatism has been refined and redefined by Trump, Ryan, McConnell, the Tea Party and the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court. Conservatism is the label for Preservation of the White Protestant Wealthy. No effort is spared to make America's White protestant Wealthy...well, wealthier. That requires sacrifice.
Conservatism means taking out a new trillion dollar loan: the money goes to the wealthy 1%, the bill goes to the 99%. Conservatism means cutting out healthcare for the poor and raising healthcare premiums on the middle class so we can cut taxes on the wealthy 1%. Conservatism means conning the 99% out of earned social security benefits, earned Medicare benefits and earned pensions. Conservatism means the 99% should take a flying leap off the top of Trump Tower. That's life after Conservatism.
2
Sad that Douhat doesn't realize that what he's lamenting is not the workng out of the logic of an ideology, but the working out of the logic of an economic system, in ways that Karl Marx identified the causes of and predicted the course of, if not the cure for, 150 years ago.
I depends on what Liberalism the author is talking about: Classical Liberalism or the contemporary American political Left.
In both cases, the answer is "yes", but it's noticeable that, after the failure to recover from 2008, the global capitalist class is trying to revive Classical Liberalism through turbo capitalist reforms such as the TPP and the TTIP, among other policies that destroy the remnants of social democracy in Western Europe and Japan.
The problem isn’t liberalism, it’s capitalism with deregulation and a culture of greed reenforced by our tax structure. What we need is an American version of socialism that provides healthcare and affordable education. A lot of people will need support as we transition to a more automated economy in which many if not most of us will be working part time.
Great article Ross. Your points cannot simply be dismissed as boutique panderings to the alt.right as, I believe, you continue to develop essential insights that surely will earn you a Goldman-Sachs lifetime achievement award in protecting and growing political and corporate bogs everywhere.
The political imagination of the right did indeed "become capable of imagining and desiring something different" with and since Reagan. Its called anarcho-capitalism ... This has essentially involved a hostile corporate takeover of the country by the Kochs, Mercers, etc. and, now, their charming VSG. The people you are talking about, like Bannon, didn't learn a thing about the Great Depression and its causes. Equally worrisome Is that they learned nothing, much more recently, from the Great "Recession".
Concentrated markets with no rules or competition or accountability are not markets. Democracies with electoral colleges and which are controlled through billionaire funding are not democracies. A president who may be an agent of another, hostile, country is not a president.
A better question then is, after the VSG (and the traitorous leadership of the Republicans) is removed, will there be any credible right wing or alt.right left.
Populism would be a far more powerful force in American politics, if only the people had much to do with politics. Why give the people what [you think] they want, when a promise is all that's ever been needed? It's like "all the credit you deserve."
The only thing wrong with American liberalism is conservatism. For the past 35 years we have had too many so-called liberals who were actually quite conservative. Include presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in that crowd, as well as Democratic presidential nominees John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, along with just about every Democrat in Congress, governor or state rep. These "LINOs" have been more than willing to dance with the Devil, capitulating to so many conservative ideas they became nothing more than Republican-Lite. Want proof? The tax rate. America enjoyed the greatest expansion of the Middle Class in history with a top marginal tax rate of over NINETY PERCENT. That was also back when corporations paid FORTY PERCENT of all taxes. You'll know a true liberal when someone comes along determined to demolish "Trickle-Down" and get this equation back to where it should be. Most Americans are hungry for a real liberal champion. Yet the liberal arc bends onward toward justice. On the social front liberals are still winning, as witnessed by the civil rights gains for the LGBT community, the Black Lives Matter movement, the downfall of Confederacy worship, and now the resurgence of yet another wave of feminism. America started off as a liberal experiment, and has only gotten more liberal since.... it will do just fine once we rid of ourselves of the constant drag of conservatism. But first: let's allow Trump-enabled American conservatism to show us just how bad it can be.
It's truly tragic that the so-called Scandinavian model is not taken more seriously by the left and the right alike. In study after study and survey after survey the Scandinavian countries consistently rank the highest in quality of life and happiness indices. The Scandinavian countries are not utopia nor are they communist dictatorships. But what they do have in common are that they are all liberal democracies with free market economies which are sensibly regulated and highly taxed and which have been the most successful of all in ensuring a stable and high quality of life for all of its citizens with low crime and less inequality. What in the world is wrong with that? Why wouldn't national leaders want to follow best practices? Answer: because not enough of the privileged elite and the privileged dominant ethnic group are yet willing to lose their privilege. Let's hope that a more enlightened popular movement will prevail before it's too late and the dual demons of fascism and communist revolution are unleashed.
1
Is there life after Liberalism?
Oh, I thought this was about how the Conservative states would survive when the massive subsidies from the successful liberal states stop. Who will support conservative incompetents that keep believing that Douthat's ideas that have never worked in the history of the world will finally be successful?
The mind-numbing sound loop of mediocre appeals for American excellence continue as our nation careens into an uncertain future.. We may want to blame it all on Donald Trump, but we know in our heart he is but a symptom of some larger, undefinable national malady.
I am a liberal. All that means is that my country needs to see its citizens as family, people who belong, who matter, and no matter what, the basics of life are theirs simply because they are family.
So a basic job, food, shelter, medical care, education...papa cannot get rich depriving his kids of their basics needs.
This America today is more than anything, an elitist criminal enterprise that is devoted to making sure the few at the top, and their families, get the gold at the expense of the poor and the powerless. It isn't a bug in the cutthroat capitalist system that jobs left to other countries, it is a feature.
Kill capitalism, and America survives. If things stay as they are, as in most any monopoly game, our gilded 1% will rationalize more and more oligarchic pretend democracy...
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
What you call the 'end of liberalism' is actually the triumph of ruthless capitalism. Thanks to the voters putting Reagan/ALEC and allies in charge.
President Trump and his blatant racism and flagrant dishonesty exist because Conservatives shared his values when he ran for office in 2016 and 85% of them would vote for him again. Four weeks ago Conservatives including Evangelicals supported Roy Moore in the Senate race in Alabama. Yesterday, two leading Conservative Senators who were in the room at the time said they didn't remember hearing President Trump make his vile remarks about Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations. Please Mr. Douthat, spare me the nonsense about the shortcomings of Liberalism. It's not that you're entirely wrong about the flaws of the Left, it's just that your side these days has so little regard for fundamental integrity and common decency.
2
The outlines of a new ideological order will not be defined by political scientists in academia or the intelligentsia. Rather, they will be forced upon us by the climate crisis that will soon affect every part of our global civilization.
1
A clarification for some commentators: The liberalism Deneen is talking about is not our political liberalism but classical liberalism, which both Democrats and Republicans embrace, for the most part, but from different directions: free markets, individual rights, democratic elections, etc. Deneen explains that the problem with this liberal tradition is that it creates a contradictory “pincer move”: it believes in free trade and individual rights, but has to build up a state system that tries to protect us from the problems that comes from free trade and individual rights, and a larger bureaucratic state means less individual rights. It’s the same contradiction of classical liberalism that Marx pointed out, but Deneen tries to offer an anachronistic solution to a modern problem.
1
Would this failing liberalism be the kind that recognizes the need for people to eat, the kind that imagines that monetizing all forests now might make sense on the bottom line even as it leaves us with a slight problem with other matters, or the type that believes the combination of the 2nd Amendment with the insatiable and mindless appetite for profit of a publicly traded company may be a difficult situation for society at large?
Which liberalism is failing, exactly?
This description of the downfall of liberalism:
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity."
is a fine example of attributing some of the problems of our government to the other side rather than taking responsibility for them.
it would be great if right wingers would define "liberalism". for them it seems to include a lot of things like free markets, individual freedom, etc that used to be right wing causes. very confusing.
1
Spare me the pity party and apocalyptic ennui, it has become old hat. There is nothing wrong with Liberalism or our republican form of government that a healthy dose of reform won’t cure. Trump is the culmination of an almost 50-year era of deregulation.
A constitutional amendment to finally get money out of politics; an era of trust busting and breaking up of corporate monopolies; a return to the fairness doctrine for radio, television, and the internet; and a strengthening of the international order, a little global government to reign in the worst excesses of global corporate capitalism; will go a long way to revitalizing Liberalism. If you want to get rid of plutocrats, you put the people in charge again, you don’t cut taxes on the wealthy.
Douthat is blaming Liberalism for the failure of the Republican policies that this country has been under the thrall of since Reagan. Reaganism and Trumpism are the same thing only no conservative is willing to admit it.
Democrats must find away to speak to all Americans again. They are going to have to convince a lot of white voters, who have been voting Republican, to switch parties without losing a base mired in identity politics. It won’t be easy but the alternative to Liberalism is becoming China, or Russia.
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Thank you. My thoughts exactly.
2
Difference is not creative. Marx saluted the middle class as the most creative class in history. We have gone a lot farther than Marxism did in abolishing the middle class.
The basics of life are no longer affordable for the middle class. This started under Reagan and Clinton. Reagan endorsed a fantasy called "voodoo economics" where compassionate corporations (oxymoron alert!) would allow their profits to trickle down to their employees. Clinton endorsed globalism, which everyone knew would shrink the working class, which used to be the backbone of the middle class.
What we need is a rollback of consumerism, utter utilitarianism, selfishness, and pleasure seeking as the purpose of our lives. We also need to redistribute the GNP. That would be truly different. Try it.
1
If liberalism is failing, it's because of the fundamental contradiction between freedom and capitalism. Capitalism tends toward monopolistic domination in inter-personal relations as surely as it does in business. Until we get out of that trap, no renewal is possible.
2
Corporate greed has taken over our economy. The cutting edge, the newest type businesses in our economy are not good corporate citizens. Apple, Google and others don't contribute their fair share of taxes to keep our government running. As Trump said, "The tax laws allow me to not pay any taxes for a while, that makes me smart." Sorry Donald, that makes you a corporate freeloader. Our large corporations look for any and all means to reduce their costs including layoffs and robots. We need people to operate with a higher purpose. To me, that higher purpose is incorporated in the New Deal Four Freedoms. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. As long as the false idol of riches and gold is paramount in our country, we will never reach true greatness together.
6
Since the entire presence of today's liberal-progressive ideology is due to the facilitation of the transfer of tax money - and the power to spend it - we can do without the entirety of this malicious anti-American way of thinking.
Progressivism would have some logical support had it ever proved to be economically sustainable. But liberals have always spent far more than they brought in, to the point that four-fifths of our national debt is due to Democrats' laws and plans.
Probably 90% or more of state debt came from Those Who Mean So Well, also. Most of this money - these bonds and such - will never be repaid unless wild inflation reduces the value of those dollars to the fools who bought them.
Liberalism is sold to those who only FEEL and never THINK. These people have wonderful intentions but lack arithmetic skills, and when asked about the economic damage, usually respond in my presence that they simply do not care.
1
The ideal of a "liberal" society where shackles are removed from human desire for full individual expression has a dark side. That dark side is being increasingly expressed in this country. That "dark side" is the democratic right of each of us, freed from authoritarian control and norming, to express anti-social attitudes.
Liberalism (and the better word to avoid confusion in this context is libertarianism I think) has brought us such unfortunate expressions of individual freedom as the demand for the right to arm ourselves beyond all reasonable requirements. That is as much an example of the norm of "individual freedom" as gay rights but an expression of the dark side of the desire to be socially unfettered. Both demand society permit individuals more latitude from normative control-one is liberating, the other antisocial.
What we need are new norms that constrain our selfish demands for complete social freedom within the boundaries of a sense of community and common purpose. Humans, it seems, can't live without externally imposed norms, if they make up their own they often revert to fear and antisocial tribalism.
But the question becomes: who can be trusted to give us normative views that will bond us instead of drive us apart- where are the leaders who can articulate those standards with authority and be trusted? How can we be confident that that road doesn't lead backwards to an authoritarian past?
I have hope in the Millennials. I think they will revise Liberalism once they ascend as the generation in power. The elite among them (and they will be the leaders of thought and action) see their responsibility to society as something quite different than older generations have. They will carry their revulsion of Trump (and the Republican party that supports him) for the rest of their lives so I have no fear that they will embrace anything that he or Bannon stand for. What they will come up with is beyond me, but I have faith it will create a better country and a better world.
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David R...yet polling of the US Millennial's show them to be less enamored by Civil Rights, like free-speech, free press, etc. Its a disturbing trend that US Millennial's dont see Democracy as the best choice...that they see it failing them more then helping. Some theorize its because they have grown up spoiled and take for granted the social order, and do not see lessening of liberties as a big deal...having never experienced the lack thereof. They have no experience with how only recently Jim Crow was still the default position in many states. Or how women have fought so hard for their place. (perhaps this #metoo will wake them up, at least the female millennial's)
But as for economics, they see the old order, which ain't all that old, as having failed them. They favor socialism over capitalism. (not the Soviet model, but the Nordic one)
They are simply not necessarily looking at things like older liberals, and progressives. They might walk in the protest lines together, but their idea of how to make things better are likely to be at odds.
Add they are seemingly completely apathetic to how social media manipulates them and how State surveillance wants to and is using those platforms against them...and things are not as they look from the outside.
I'm still not convinced Millennial's get what Democracy is all about...and how much it got us where they could grow-up so spoiled, and demand affluence simply because they have always had it...
1
I find it a bit frightful that both Mr. Douthat & Condoleeza Rice are espousing a point of view of these times as a mere phase for leadership to be eccentric ,whether it be Steve Banon or the man he served, that there is no need to be alarmed. But there is alarm ,if the values of the current leadership is making us adapt to a very loathsome value system. Republicans are all about winning ,not how you play the game...this is all episodic, no one will be hurt. Kill life or death programs ,but no one within the realm will get hurt. Or at least no one within the walls. Ah,the elites have spoken.
I seems to me that Mr. Douthat does not understand what liberalism is.
Liberalism is the concept of valuing the individual. Liberalism is the basis of constitutional bills of rights.
If conservatives has their way, the working class would still be serving the lords of the lands.
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I agree with this column. Western liberalism is drifting rudderless into a foggy sea. But the dissolution might take longer than Bannon thinks. Why? Culture changes slowly. It took several centuries for the Enlightenment to take root. It will take a while for it to be replaced by something else. Perhaps the Chinese model? I hope not.
As evidence of this drift I see our country slowly self segregating into separate “countries”. From where I sit the old confederacy has nothing in common with New England, where I live. Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia are in many respects, foreign countries.
1
How would we know if "liberalism" has failed or succeeded? What we have is some toxic mix of a market-driven neo-liberal (aka neo-conservative) economy, a strange brew of left and right social policies, and government hijacked and broken by the far right. Hard to tar any one political philosophy when we have the worst of several.
1
Liberalism with a small "l" is the founding fathers' primary philosophy - we are created equal with right and responsibility of self-governmance. It replaced the philosophy that God anointed monarchs.
It gave birth to sub-phiosophies - Libertarianism in which the individual is the strongest link and government a weak link; communitarianism in which the community outweighs individual will; social democracy in which we elect a strong central government to manage the social welfare.
We've lived with a mix of these ideas.
We are libertarian when we choose to home school, choose our own beliefs, our sources of news, to own our own land, choose our own jobs. Bannon ran to Libertarian lines. Libertarians have won the gun control issue.
And we are communitarian - we provide roads, provide schools and police because these resources make us stronger. Labor laws, gun restrictions, zoning codes which prevent others from changing your property value, all all examples of communitarianism. Our military is a form of communitarianism - we gather our resources to protect our selves and others.
And social democracy forms around safety nets -health insurance and universal health care; social security, Medicaid, are key examples.
Liberalism with a small "l" dies when we decide that we can't live with a mix of these philosophies - when we cannot agree on the situations in which we are best served by libertarian, communitarian or social needs. Compromise keeps liberalism alive.
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Exactly right, great point, Cathy, and the best paths forward will include a mixed recipe. I think communitarianism needs to be considered more broadly, though, to include not just governmentally-sponsored infrastructure and institutions but also interpersonal bonds, relationships, and shared culture and community.
Very thoughtful post and something that is not expressed enough. Compromise is at the very core of a functional democratic system. What really worries me is how tribal we have become in our politics and how difficult compromise is getting possible to achieve. I do think that fixing the worst excesses of gerrymandering might help this. One of the most important cases in front of the Supreme Court this year.
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I think that Douthat, like many pundits, confuses 'Democrats' and 'Republicans' with 'liberal' and 'conservative'. Historically that has seldom been accurate. It was certainly true when Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, but politicians like Bill Clinton and the rest of the ‘New Democrats’ moved the Democrat party dramatically to the right. Currently, voters have a choice between extreme right-wing government and center right government. Sure, there have been a lot of changes in social policy with things like gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana, but those policies have largely been driven by popular acclaim. The politicians, even left leaning ones like Barak Obama, followed along.
So, voters have not had a real choice in policy for years. Indeed, the positive things you could say about Hillary Clinton, first woman president, competent and not Trump, were very much overshadowed by the fact that she is politically a female version of George H.W. Bush. This made it hard for many liberals to feel motivated to vote. It also motivated people who were willing to try something different – Trump.
The liberalism has been sidelined business friendly conservatism. Until recently when the Republican party has jump off a cliff on the right, there has been little choice between Democrats and Republicans. Hopefully, Democrats will realize that real progressive policy is what we need, not simply progressive symbolism backed by business-friendly conservative policy.
2
His thinking Hillary a right-winger tells us the writer views our society from the farthest-left point on the scale.
Oh for goodness sake. All we need to do is to re-establish a progressive tax structure (the rich pay more taxes than the middle class, the middle class pays more taxes than the poor); throw Voodoo Economics into the trash heap with the Bolshevism that Fred Koch got rich creating; and spend less time on conservative selfishness and more time bucking up our families, communities, and planet, and we will be just fine.
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“Oh for goodness sake..all we need to do..”
That is a tall order. Changing a culture is much more difficult than passing laws.
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Ummm- last I checked checked we had quite the progressive tax structure in place already. Statements like this force fiscal conservatives to choose “R” instead of “D”. If the dems want to attract votes from across the isle they should refrain from the tired class warfare “soak the rich” messaging.
But for any of that to happen campaign finance reform will be a necessary first step - then it will be possible to revive our democracy.
1
A Scandinavian future would be a good thing.
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Mr. Douthat falls to demonstrate how the left liberals have or are contribute to failure of liberalism. He does not acknowledge the rise of alt right, un-regulated capitalism and conservative religious ideology are the drivers for current state of affairs. He is content that the demise of Bannon is reprieve for liberalism but does deal with fact that failure of un regulated capitalism, and massive income inequalities are major factors for popularity of alt right. Local and community efforts alone will not salvage liberalism. This task will be done with resistance to current Whitehouse, Congress and the efforts to change Supreme Court to a tool for plutocrats. The path hopefully will be at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020.
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Trump isn't leading or orchestrating this populist revolt, he's simply reflecting it. This uprising started in 1968 when Nixon won the Presidency. It was amplified with Reagan's 1980 victory. Solidified with Trump's unexpected 2016 triumph. The foundation of this revolt has been the working class. They are fed up with Democratic Party. Liberal policymakers have been slow to address or even to recognize their plight. This error of omission is fueling a worker class backlash that will be impossible to stop. Right now Republicans who attack Trump are in reality attacking their own constituents. Hence their silence. However the GOP isn't throwing in the towel. Far from it. Trump will be gone one day. They will still be here. They will wait him out & in the end achieve all of their goals. Their plan is simple. Control the Supreme Court. Controlling SCOTUS is the grand slam that ends the ball game. Control SCOTUS & you destroy the liberal agenda once & for all. The legal arm of the conservative movement is probably the best organized, most far-reaching & far-seeing sector of the Right. They truly are in it — and have been in it — for the long game. Control the Supreme Court, stack the judiciary, and you can stop the progressive movement, no matter how popular it is, no matter how much legislative power it has, for decades. Long after Trump is gone, the right will be relying upon the judiciary — and behind that, the Constitution — to protect, enlarge, and consolidate their gains.
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Nixon? Hardly a conservative. Started the EPA, implemented wage and price controls, took us off the gold standard, proposed a guaranteed national income ....
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Don't hold your breath ... and good luck in your future endeavors!
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Douglas, Nixon was before Republicans lost their minds. What Bill Brown is saying is actually correct: the conservatives are destroying what's left of this country. If enough of our citizens don't see it, then they will get the oligarchy or plutocracy or theocracy or whatever they deserve, but I assure you it won't be a democracy.
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It is remarkable how many of the commenters are associating Douthat's concerns over liberalism with the specifically post-War American version of liberalism and then get defensive thinking he is attacking their views. My impression is that he lamenting the decline of the whole of Western liberalism which, in the US, includes conservatives (classical liberals such as myself), libertarians, etc.
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Finally, someone realized what Mr. Douthat was talking about. The Liberal order is not the Democratic Party. It is certainly not Socialism. Bannon was not, I think, trying to bring about a fascist government, but attacking the immense bureaucracy of the our current government, that appears to serve the elites and is destroying the Liberal Order Mr. Douthat cherishes in more subtle way, through faceless, unelected bureaucrats. Trump may offend you Mr Douthat, but he is the only hope right now of recapturing our government from bureaucrats.
Mark V, our career civil servants who make up our bureaucracy have my respect. Many of our highly educated citizens opt to work for the government because they love this country and its values.
Whether it's the EPA, the CIA, the IRS, or the State Department, I hope our dedicated civil servants will hang in there. Eventually, this big government bashing that has gone on since Reagan will end. We need big government because we are, well, a big country.
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If a majority of the US could wrap their heads around the notion that acting collectively for the common good is not actually the same as socialism maybe just maybe the pendulum will begin to swing back.
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Yes, we should all heed Gar Alperovitz's "What Then Must We Do?" Hastily written and hence poorly edited, it is still essential reading to look forward from current liberalism to a richer version, with renewed or rebuilt ideas of capitalism, the role of community, the nature of social enterprise, ... . There is a way forward if, as LADYRANTSALOT says in a post 5 minutes ago. Let's get to it.
Certainly some elements of Deneen's argument ring true, due to two devolutionary developments in particular.
First, the uber greed of the uber rich. The pie has not gotten meaningfully bigger, but the top one percent, and in particular the top one-half of one percent, continue to take more and more of it. Until recently, real wages had been essentially stagnant for many years, but the concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest has grown meaningfully larger. And yet their selfishness seems to know no bounds, as exemplified by the shameless tax reform law just passed. A few, like Gates and Buffett, have set up foundations to use their wealth for good. But most of them only take, seemingly unburdened by morality, ethics or even guilt.
Second, is the breakdown of true physical connectivity, replaced instead by "on-line communities" and "networks" in the cloud. True community groups and charitable organizations are suffering to find members and volunteers, as younger generations shun physical social interaction for the comfort of their internet-connected devices. I recently read an article in the NYT about a professional "cuddler" who sells her non-sexual service to people who otherwise have little or no human touch in their lives. How tragic and sad, but somehow emblematic of our age and decline.
I fear the selfishness of our richest, who view their wealth as a right and not a privilege, and the decline of actual human interaction, will be our ultimate undoing.
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Douhat, like many Reaganite conservatives, wants to blame all our ills on government and liberal values while ignoring the effects of capitalism and economics. But thinkers from Marx to Schumpeter identified the relentless drive under capitalism to turn everything--objects and social relationships--into commodities, while resulting concentrated economic power would erode all cultural and community relations (some of them worth overturning to be sure).
In our time, rampant inequality allows the rich to buy votes and policy. Reagan and his followers never wanted to engage with the problems of capitalism, preferring to attack a floating "liberalism" as Douhat does here. Until Douhat and others like him can see the economic forces deeply intertwined with and causing many of our social problems, and be willing to regulate the economy in favor of more human values, this type of argument is just romantic nostalgia and incomplete and misleading analysis.
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Mr. Douthat has over thought the problem.
We have in Mr. Trump a man who is contemptuous of ideas, of democracy, of thought, of manners, of common decency and, in the end, of liberty.
Getting rid of him will not solve all of our problems, but it will make for a fine start.
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Only in a broad theoretical sense does the idea of the death of liberalism make any sense at all.
In the US, the mega-rich Plutocrat, Trump, was elected as a populist with promises of liberal contributions for voters who perceived that Democrats and particularly Hillary Clinton had wavered so extensively towards Wall Street capitalists that they no longer valued the needs of the blue collar and lower classes. Even then he got fewer votes than Hillary.
Trump lied. Voters believed him. So we ended up with a thoroughly conservative small-government, authoritarian, quasi-dictatorial government. Not only have a majority of voters come to realize Trump's lies, but polls and recent special elections -- won by Democrats or not -- indicate a ground swell of voters away from the government that was elected on lies and vacant promises. Politically correct media give balanced coverage to both sides as if there were a balance of public opinion. It gives a misleading idea of where the 2018 elections and then the 2020 elections may go.
Democrats must follow through and provide vibrant candidates with a view to the needs of the voters, rather than Wall Street, and they can win both elections. The idea of liberalism being dead is a cute debate topic for theoretical historians, but likely not applicable to politics in the US.
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A wonderfully thought-provoking essay. But, despite Trump, his henchmen, and all the similar rulers of their ilk, look at evolution of humanitarianism, as a frame of mind closely related to liberalism.
In the more civilized countries, the macabre public executions were replaced by executions without torture, then public spectacles of putting people to death were moved indoors, and death sentence was finally abolished in many countries. Same can be said for Inquisition and bilaterally alternating burning of the Catholics and Protestants. Are such developments not signs of increasing liberalism?
the core problem : we are creating less real wealth. My piece of the pie gets smaller after doctors, landlords, banks, and lawyers, and insurance, not much is left.
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An entire column that boils down to the idea that we have nowhere to go beyond the current malfeasance taking place in government.
The reality is quite stark, when a system becomes all about the acquisition of money it fails absolutely. The people left behind don't matter, the destruction of the environment doesn't matter, in fact the destruction of the planet doesn't matter as long as the few can continue to enrich themselves on the backs of the many.
I just hope enough of us realize what needs to be done and actually take action. The future of our children and of the only home we have, this planet, is at stake. Trump is just the reflection of the total corruption of the system, an amoral, indecent, self serving human being that will do and say anything for money and power.
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A year or two of pacifist community service required of young people as they come of age would do us wonders. Cultural exposure as a two way street, the young people discovering the problems and excellences of new communities. The communities rewarding the young with the joy of making a difference, while sharing the best of their cultures, music, cuisine, traditions.
Everyone is squawking about tribalism. The selective service is random. A young person could be deployed to any impoverished American landscape, to the fires of California or the floods on our southern coasts and in Puerto Rico. Put them in prisons to tutor, homeless shelters to find solutions. Let them gain pride and humility.
And along the lines of those in military service, reward them with educational advantages, free tuition, and financial support for starting a young life. End the trite political concept that the only heroism is in the military. Let young people be touched with compassion and a sense of their power to help others.
This would change America. People would learn and grow empathy for problems of which they are now ignorant, develop urgency, and even become impatiently, and politically involved when the issues of people they now care about are terminally unresolved.
Young people are flexible and increasingly desperate to find meaning. Let them put their boots on the ground within the country, and let them open their eyes.
Its a win win, happy way, to turn things around.
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Just more slightly disguised "agony" by Douthat about liberalism, vs. his yearning for an alternative more in line with his "conservative" mindset. Ross, things are not that bad. We do need to overcome the current impulse to go backward that is expressed by Trump, Brexit, etc. But the trend line that began with the 18th century enlightenment remains intact, i.e., a future for humanity based on "liberal, secular democracy." The only alternative to liberalism is some form of tyranny.
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If Liberalism has failed, it is because today's Republican Party has refused to govern with the people's interests in mind. Every Republican President destroys the economy with tax cuts for the rich, a Democrat comes in, acts responsibly, and gets the government back on track.
Imagine how well off we would be if Republicans acted responsibly as well?
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I’m not sure which time period offered the true religious liberty the Mr Douthat recalls. As a 60-something atheist who has spent a few decades living in Red State America, I have never taken it for granted that I could openly share my world view, much less impose it on others.
This horrible social decline that we’re discussing seems pretty good to me. Most social pathology indicators are going down, and the ones that are going up seem to be at their worst precisely in the places where old school religious attitudes were most firmly enforced on people like me.
If you were a medieval lord, and you finally woke up to the fact that your peasants don’t believe in you any more, I suppose your view of the future out the castle window could look pretty bleak. But from my point of view in the fields, things are looking up.
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Along with other readers I beg to differ; liberalism is not dead; some of its foundations have been undermined, dynamited and in their places new roots of sheer unbridled individualism and selfishness have replaced it.State governments under Republican and Conservative Democrat leadership have gutted university budgets to such a degree that tuitions at public universities are unbelievable. TUITION AT JUNIOR COLLEGES START AT 2000 PER TERM. Forcing humans to borrow for their education and health care in a nation as rich as this one, must be why concepts like AVARRICE were in the lexicon of organized religion. And when Bernie Sanders proposes free education and health care, he is assumed to be nuts. That's because he has not figured how vicious will be the avaricious rich when they are asked to contribute to the education and health f any other than their own offspring. In evaluating America's shortcomings of the last fifty years, the rise of the avaricious and rapacious rich is rarely noticed.The rich of today; the Spencer's, the Kochs, the Adelsons and many others who crawl out of their mansions occasionally are not just avaricious; they are rapacious like Trump in that they are not satisfied with what they have but wish to accumulate even more. the recently enacted Tax Bill is the best example.
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So, Douthat, what's your solution to "failed liberalism"...conservatism? Conservatives have had plenty of time and power to fix things, to empower the middle-class and lift the poor, yet they have failed. What we need is a new approach, but this seems beyond the strident, emotional ideologues of both extremes. If we can ever triumph over atavistic tribalism, the answer lies in retaining the automaticity and incentives of free markets but with just the right amount of regulation (i.e., fair, balanced rules) to keep the psychopaths, narcissists, and power-hungry from ruining things for everyone. If this seems middle of the road, you're absolutely correct. But, it's not for wimps because it's the hardest place to be. It is where a quasi-stable balance lies and it's extremely complicated. But, complexity frightens most people because they prefer the simplistic, false security of rigid, binary thinking. Thus, ideology reigns. Some really good engineers know how design complex well-regulated systems that are both responsive and stable. Politicians, economists, and journalists don't.
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"It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products"
This is more a result of unbridled capitalism isn't it? We have less individualism, variety and choice due to the power of big business and corporate consolidation. Our culture is now being created for us... not by us.
Everything from food to architecture to music and entertainment is now prepackaged, recycled and made of plastic. We consume the culture that is being offered us with little to no input to it's creation.
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Interesting discussion. This is my own theory on liberalism:
Ever since the liberal movement gained momentum in politics back in the late 18th century, it has produced the same outcome over and over again: GDP grows, but the spoils are unevenly distributed. Top bankers and owners of competitive industries become enormously wealthy. The vast majority end up without assets of their own, come to rely on wages to get by and fall into debt by trying to keep up with the Joneses, or sometimes just to survive. Liberalism, for all its virtues in stimulating economic growth and producing more tolerant societies, always needs to be moderated in some way to counter this effect. If this doesn't happen, the country descends into turmoil and revolution.
This is really a Marxist view of history, I know, that capitalism will eat itself because it causes widespread proletarianization. But Marx and his modern-day followers are only right about the problem, not the solution, as the failure of various socialist experiments throughout the 20th century demonstrated.
I believe in social conservatism, encouraging even distribution of property ownership and the upholding of traditional family structures for social support, but also acknowledging that the government has a role to fill. The world famous public healthcare, education and welfare systems of Sweden were not introduced by socialists. Those elements of our society were already in place when they arrived, sometimes by centuries.
I find it disingenuous how conservatives blame the system, ideology, you name it that they are working to unravel, eliminate and disempower for the reasons for our problems rather than the success of their efforts to destroy them. Perhaps the reasons that we find ourselves in this inauspicious moment are the successes of liberalism's reactionaries who've made great headway.
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In every context, there is the instinct to hold onto what you have not earned at the unfair expense of others. That is the conservative instinct. So-called "liberals" have these same instincts, and the point at which they are given actual power is when you separate those that actually believe in liberalism--that is, that you should pay for what you get, and get what you pay for--from those that just wanted "in" on the existing game of "I've got mine, away from me cur" conservatism.
Conflating what people SAY they believe and what they actually do is something you should try, Ross. It might help you understand why some supposed liberals don't turn out to be very good people, and some self-proclaimed conservatives turn out to actually not believe in immoral and illiberal things such as inherited wealth and limited liability.
No one is going to step forward to invent the new order or describe the new ideals, Ross. The founding fathers were deeply influenced by Locke. Tocqueville defined what the founding fathers had created and its true potential. But, now, we don’t have the founding fathers and neither do we have Locke or Tocqueville. And even if, by some miracle, someone like them did appear and volunteer to show us the light, we would probably throw our deliverer over the cliff and crawl back into our dark caves of partisan rancor and ideological stupidity.
I do believe that sounding the death knell of liberalism is premature. It has taken quite a few hard hits and has definitely not lived up to its potential, but it still remains the best order that human beings have devised for a tolerable life on this planet. And, in spite of concerted attacks by GOP politicians and their masters or minions, liberalism is not moribund yet.
The future remains unknown and could be stranger than we imagine. Perhaps a completely new order will take shape in the next hundred years or even sooner. I believe that this will be largely determined by scientific and technological progress and the politicians will be powerless to hinder it. But our current liberal order doesn’t have to die for the new one to be born. We can keep its flame of life burning, by mass action at the voting booth.
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Mr. Douthat is stretching it a little to blame American consumerism, the surveillance state or selfish individualism upon liberalism. The loss of manufacturing as economic driver has made retail the biggest part of our economy. That doesn't have anything to do with conservatism or liberalism. As Marx said, "Capital will chase the world in search of cheap labor".
Our irrational fears after the 9/11 attack have led to militarization of the police and the surveillance state. Conservatives probably support this more than liberals. Finally, it's conservatives who want the benefits of American society without paying any taxes for it.
Beyond that , the core difference between the right and left today is in acceptance of multiculturalism and whether every citizen should share equal rights within our society.
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If there is a problem with liberalism it's that it hasn't been defended strongly enough against the assault by conservatism. It was sold out by those entrusted to defend it, chiefly Bill Clinton and his acolytes who imposed his Third Way politics, that was really Republican-lite. That way abandoned the Democrats once staunch base of the middle and working class, and wooed the investor class, those who seek a restoration of feudalism, whereby the few can rep the wealth of the many. This philosophy could be expected from the Republican-Conservatives, but not from the leaders of the Democrats. But a Conservative-In-Dem-Clothing is still a conservative, not a liberal.
And yes, there IS path forward for liberalism: returning to its roots of FDR when he melded populism with liberalism and created the New Deal. That is what's needed now, just as much as it was in the Thirties - a NEW New Deal.
1
The problem is that in general, and especially in America, the playing field has shifted so far to the right that the old terms "conservative" and "liberal" have lost their meaning.
The "conservatives" are really reactionaries, seeking to go back to the golden age of the 50s (whether the 1950s, the 1850s, or the 1750s is open). The "liberals" are truly the conservatives of the 1950s and 60s, trying to maintain enough of a welfare state to defeat our enemies overseas. Both groups are in the pay of the plutocracy (the 0.1%), and now relying on identity politics to get elected (white identity politics on one side, all other identity politics on the other). Remember that both parties supported the WTO, which exchanged good-paying American jobs for cheap Chinese goods.
But the good news is that Trump did do one service - he woke up the progressives from their complacency. And the populists should remember the Biblical proverb -- those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind when the Donald is replaced by someone named Kirsten, Elizabeth, or Kamala.
I would argue that liberal democracy's biggest failure was not containing the destructive excesses of the market, which is the real cause of political instability in this country and much of the West. It was oligarchs and technocrats working on behalf of the private sector that eroded the commons, civil society and civic space, that transformed people from citizens into producing and consuming units, that eroded the cultural center. Liberalism didn't create the problem, it simply failed to address it. And so will the other models of government if they don't learn to curtail the destructive tendencies of the profit system. When it comes to capitalism and the Conservatives and liberals both have a fundamental problem with pinpointing causation.
1
The only problem with liberalism is a brand identity that's been savaged by decades of conservative sophistry towards an end that delivers what, in then end? More money for the already rich? Liberals have won the argument that a functioning government should provide health insurance cards, quality education without the debt, and economic opportunity through the funding of public services and the regulation of private sector wages. Now all they have to do is to get people to vote for it.
Perhaps if it weren't for the inane, greedy, tribal, duplicitous and undemocratic interference from the right, improvement to the Liberal system might just have a chance in coming into maturity.
We swing back and forth on this pendulum of history with opposite sides, both dedicated to 'democracy' never allowing a democratic balance to be found. For nearly four decades that balance has been resisted effectively from the right. Fully catalyzed in the mid 90's by the, perhaps unwitting, cooperation of Newt Gingrich and Rupert Murdoch we are nearing the end of the pendulums arc. Will we continue to swing rightward into destruction? Will we respond by flinging the pendulum leftward? Will we come to our senses and attempt to find comity? Will we allow the peoples many voices to be heard?
Perhaps the "failure of liberalism" that Douthat imagines was brought about by its failure to be properly implemented. After all, when we look at more liberal countries, like in Europe, we don't see as many problems.
Perhaps the real problem is the savagery and "every man for himself" mindset of, say, the refusal to give people healthcare and the contempt for the lower-income worker that makes people feel too precarious to resist drugs or extend themselves for others.
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That "every man for himself" aka dog eat dog is the hallmark of unfettered capitalism pure and simple. There is no room for community, empathy, or tolerance in capitalists.
2
Exactly right. I have always been mystified by how some say in one breath that “taxation is theft”, wrap their arms around firefighters, police and the military (who pays their salaries?!?), yet deny the appropriateness of any government expenditure toward parks, social services, and healthcare to improve the lot of the majority of Americans. The answer is as obvious as the orange mop on the head of POTUS, and rooted in political philosophy that has gone without serious debate for too long as our collective attention spans have shrunk to the lifespan of a gnat. We live in a “winner take all” society now, our social fabric is frayed, perhaps beyond repair, as we are atomized by the technology that was going to “save” us.
POTUS thinks his tax evasion shows how smart he is, while declaring anyone with a social conscience that extends beyond immediate family to larger societal concerns as “a loser”. They - and I’m talking about right wing Republicans now - no longer even attempt to hide their contempt for wage earners. I don’t even think Trump is the pure racist some make him out to be - he’d be happy to golf with Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, or go to dinner with Serena Williams if they’re available. As long as you are famous or rich - preferably both - you’re OK in his book. It’s “poor” people he hates and dismisses despite his manipulation of the press he claims to despise, and by “poor” I mean anyone worth less than $20-30M...
2
What is the difference between "failure of liberalism" and "its failure to be properly implemented". Can you separate the two really? Any political system is only as good or bad as its "proper" implementation, i.e., leadership. That begins with quality education for all (for starters), and we in the U.S. cannot even carry that off.
We might just be play acting. That or Deenen simply started with a false assumption and proceeded to write a book about it. Two false assumptions actually if you consider Tocqueville as essentially relevant to complex political structures. Let's consider a different question.
Is liberalism capable of either succeeding or failing?
I think the answer is no. We're talking about a philosophical ideology. There's no unlearning liberalism. The idea is there in the collective psyche. It's not going away. Are we witnessing liberalism's recession from central authority in political discourse? That's a different question but I certainly hope so.
Personally, I'll happily live in Scandinavia. They seem considerably happier than the average American even with the long winters. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here. If only people would abandon the American concept of individual exceptionalism, we'd probably find ourselves better off. Sorry. We're just not that great. Copy what works from others and move on.
1
I'm not a fan of believing abstract systems or philosophies are the (sole or primary) source of our problems or the site of our salvation. I believe such thinking let's real existing individuals, institutions and policy settings off the hook. It's not the fault of "capitalism" or "liberalism" that Scandinavia seems far left to Americans like Mr Douthat, for instance. Moving away from such thinking would be renewal in itself - though more is obviously necessary. Strangely, Americans knew who to blame before they were "Americans" - they didn't blame "colonialism" or any other "ism" then.
This essay is a question of labels and definitions.
"Liberalism" is given conservative values, but conservatives never define themselves because there are too many contradictory ideals. In England the Conservative party is a union of plutocrats and authoritarian workers.
Socially, liberalism is triumphing through most of the West. Corruption is he force holding back progress in the right and left.
It is poorly regulated capitalism that weakens families and communities, not liberalism. Stagnant wages, lack of union protection, job insecurity and the uncertainty of the future of healthcare are unbelievably stressful. Many people struggle just to remain middle-class. Constant survival-mode turns us against one another. We are trained not to look up for the source of our trouble, but laterally, at the Other. Follow the money.
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And by "middle class" we Americans usually mean both the working class and professional classes. "Follow the money" indeed is the tool needed to know who benefits from this stagnation and decline, and who its enablers are.
May I recommend, Mr. Douthat, the book After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre? Actually, I'm kind of surprised if you haven't read it, since MacIntyre ended up a strong advocate of Catholicism. But before that, he combined the communitarian ethic that you admire with a clear-eyed advocacy for social justice. He explains how a tradition-based system of virtues can still progress ethically -- how, for example, a way of thinking that, when Aristotle invented it, was happy to say that living the good life required slaves to do the grunt work, can take on the post-Kantian rights of the individual.
This is a heartfelt book recommendation, with no ironic intent. The book changed my life.
Because, in our time, the conservative impulse seems tightly bound to the authoritarian (meaning such authorities as the Bible, not politicians), sectarian, reactionary Republican goals that you can never quite decide to give up. And, Trump notwithstanding, in the long run. reactionary sectarianism is a dying philosophy.
It seems you and Mr Brooks have stumbled upon a topic for a jointly written book, or a seminar series. There are so many ideas and points to discuss you can't do this topic justice in one column. Neither do I feel I can comment fairly without having read the book, but I'll take the bait!
"if the liberal order is increasingly oppressive and destined to get worse, why would one expect such communities and experiments to flourish [?]"
As Mr Brooks pointed out, creating more political locovores may reduce the pool of people disenchanted with reigning social and political forces in the free-for-all favored by liberalism. Such disenchantment augments the attractiveness of authoritarianism. In China a fairly authoritarian state feels challenged by various churches, whether righteously or not, an ongoing battle for generations, see only yesterday's news. I personally don't think churches are ideal choices to build communities, they too can lead to discrimination and authoritarianism, and require people to subscribe to dubious notions of what is factual or appropriate, which can explain the Chinese regime's disapproval. But they do provide an alternative umbrella for people to support their communities and tend to be benevolent. Personally I enjoy the ringing of bells from the nearby church, I'm reminded that life can be about more than shopping.
1
I can't help but come to the conclusion that Ross Douthat is inexorably sad as are most people who fantasize about the importance of reimagining the world order. This article fits rather nicely among the rantings of peak oilers and doomsday preppers who similarly waste inordinate amounts of time imagining implausible scenarios to rationalize their delusional flights of fancy that cause the old order to be swept away. Douthat's criticism essentially comes down to another political prepper didn't get carried away enough. However, the central problem remains, just because a chain of events is possible leading to some apocalyptic outcome doesn't make it remotely likely. Therefore, there is no reason to reimagine the liberal order. Who is the constituency for that, even among Trump's base. Angry white men had a moment in the age of Trump. That's all. The real question for me is what happens when the Republican party collapses as a result of Trump fever... as seems imminent. How quickly can it (or its successor) transition to something else. If Republicans can't transition, what does a generational shift to a single major party look like in a two-party democracy, and how sustainable would that be and for how long? How long can a regional anti-Deluvian Republican party exist? Those are the questions I'd like to see answered.
What we have is not the failure of liberalism, but rather the more common occurrence where we have gotten used to a system that has become well established, so we no longer recognize that what has been established is a success, but instead we think of it as background noise.
Sadly, we have dangerous politicians who look to the smallest failure within a system as a pretext for condemning the present order.
It certainly is hard to generate enthusiasm for the present order, but that only means that those in positions of influence must use their influence to remind us what we achieved - in western Europe, they achieved prosperity after the devastation of WW2 in the US, after the collapse of the Great Depression, we too created the modern middle class and widespread prosperity.
Those who exploit problems to destroy the social order are irresponsible and should be identified as such.
www.dictionary.com- liberalism definition. In the twentieth century, a viewpoint or ideology associated with free political institutions and religious toleration, as well as support for a strong role of government in regulating capitalism and constructing the welfare state.
Douthat, although the GOP and media propaganda is dominated by plutocrats who seek to transform our government into a right wing version of libertarianism (19th century definition of liberalism), the vast majority of Americans still support liberalism.
If you take the long view, liberalism is still the guiding force of modern civilization which most recently in this country has given gays the right to marry and vastly increased the number of people with health insurance.
Setbacks are inevitable but liberalism will survive and continue to transform our culture as long as we have our civilization.
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When wealth inequality perpetuates itself to the degree that the economic center may not hold, we need the sort of structural change that is difficult to get when we have the best government money can buy.
Lacking a cultural narrative that binds us together, it is difficult to redefine the common good in a way that would collectivize political will.
As things fall apart, we can make our own meaning as best we can with the opportunities and communities we have, hoping to share, or inspire, as well as learn from others.
Perhaps this is easier for individual states rather than the country as a whole.
On my third extended stay in Sweden, I find the similarities to Seattle, and Cascadia, numerous, and the pull toward Social, as opposed to Liberal, Democracy compelling.
It is too bad we don't have more time, and less influence on the climate and the rest of the world.
3
Liberalism didn’t and hasn’t failed, Ross, Conservatism has. Conservatives have, beginning with Nixon, increasingly employed any and every act available to derail the progressive, constructive intent of liberalism. Nixon went so far as to enlist racism in his Southern Strategy and treasonously sabotaged a possible peace agreement with North Vietnam.
With each passing campaign Republican candidates in rabid desire to appease an American minority displayed competitive willingness to overthrow all our society accomplished by the end of LBJ’s term in office.
Your column is an example in your willingness to ignore this well documented history.
Trump was elected by a minority, and why are we having to endure your mention of Bannon who isn’t elected at all.
You’re a pseudo intellectual, Ross, if you think this fabrication amounts to a valid argument.
33
The liberalism of the 30'sthrough the 60's was not based on a philosophy but simply on solving problems. It was conservatism that demanded a philosophical approach to governing. That's why they opposed every new deal idea that saved our democracy. That's why they opposed the civil rights acts of the 60's that brought human dignity to minorities and women. The quality of life in the Scandinavian countries is not because of a philosophy but on a willingness to use assets to make the life of its citizens better. Practicality beats philosophy every time.
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Tom: fair enough. Conservatives commissioned hacks to provide a philosophy to cover the fact that their guiding principle is greed.
1
Cannot recommend this comment enough.
Is the political correctness and the media hype philosophy or practicality? Or neither?
There was more than two reasons why George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in 1972 and another film,the Post,takes us back to those glorious days of kids marching and lawyers covering up and cabinet members later resigning.Still,he was the Bernie Sanders of his time and that did not even play well in South Dakota. But,he was right to try and stop the Vietnam War and so many corporate folks did not get it. It's not that Liberalism is all good or bad but that so few politicians understand its advantages and when to compromise.George McGovern made many of us college kids pay attention to the dark forces of capitalism and those who exploit it. He also cared about hungry people abroad and worked with Robert Dole to improve it. He also could not prevent his daughter's death from alcoholism. But,he was a good man,soldier and served South Dakota well and would probably have been a better President because he tempered his Liberal tendencies despite a Methodist background and sought progress via listening to those who did not agree and thus tried to find common ground. We could still learn from him more than the Kennedys,Clintons or Warren-Sanders ilk.
14
Societies are always in evolution, and the desire for an idealized 19th century sense of community is just nostalgia. As even a 15th century poet said, we see only the good in things past. American liberalism saw the exploitation and poverty of the people and sought to improve their condition. It saw the abuses of the great industrialists and sought to curb their power. It saw discrimination of minorities and tried to abolish it. If there is a fundamental tenet of liberalism, it is to protect the lives and dignity of fellow citizens.
Tell me in what ways, the lives of the middle and lower classes were better in the 19th century, in the 20's, 30, 50"s and I will grant you that SS, Medicare, unemployment compensation, Civil Rights, food and drug protection and other measures constitute a failure of liberalism. Indeed, as the author of the phrase "the end of history" concluded: "But there are powerful reasons for believing that it [liberalism] is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run." Of course, there are always errors and people who push things to extremes, and we tend to magnify their mistakes in order to deny the importance of what has been achieved. But as Douthat himself admits, there is plenty of criticism but a scarcity of alternatives.
17
Another one of these nonsensical tracts. "Liberalism" is just a synonym for political pluralism which with all its shortcomings is still the preferred formulation in the developed world. In short Liberalism hasn't failed.
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So far, the best vision of a post-liberal world is that held by Pope Francis. The exhaustion of global ecosystems, alienation of working-class people brought on by unfettered free-market capitalism and increasing income inequality, and a general meaninglessness of daily living in a consumerist, celebrity worshipping culture are three real forces undermining the current order. Small communities based on principles of simplicity, sustainability, sociability, and spirituality are growing and may provide a model for the future. Hearts need to change, and minds will follow.
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Why is it that the same conservatives that worshiped "the magic of markets", "rugged individualism", "self determination", and "Go West young man" are now bemoaning the effects of all this?
All of our myths seemed to work when we had seemingly unlimited land and resources. Now we have fixed borders and a global economy but we can'tt find the balance between individual pursuits and the common good.
A dollar has no conscience and markets do not solve humanitarian and societal issues.
Mr. Douthat seems to think that more religious influence into politics will work that magic. Prosperity Gospel anyone?
I suppose it is only human to want thinks both ways, but unbridled capitalism will not bring about Douthat's utopia. The unbridled pursuit of wealth will not fix our systems of education, health care, or infrastructure.
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Why are we surprised? The American Revolution was fought by our landowning founders who did not want to pay taxes to the crown. Capitalism thrived with our vast landscape with unlimited resources. With a clean slate we created a new business infrastructure that would surpass the dated infrastructure created by the industrial revolution in Europe. So it's in our DNA and we still run the country to favour the rich and big business... and the rich and big business still do not want to pay taxes. We're at a crossroads now because WE have the dated infrastructure/technology and countries like China and other smart countries are investing in new technologies like renewable energy. Our resources are stretched to the limit in the America and too many are failing to keep up. Blame them or do something about it? It's a fantasy to think that unfettered capitalism will take care of it. In Europe the revolutions sought to eliminate the absolute power of the aristocracy and the church who were corrupt. In countries like France, where I live, the new government focused on it's citizens. Today, businesses thrive, but they also have to be good citizens and play their part in the social contract. We will see if leaders like Macron can rebalance the equation to make the system sustainable going forward. It seems to be a humane approach and the statistics show the same positive growth trend as in the US. So who has the right answer?
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"We're at a crossroads now because WE have the dated infrastructure/ technology and countries like China and other smart countries are investing in new technologies like renewable energy."
Yes. We put our money into the military, into expensive wars.
Think what we could have done with the money from the Iraq war if we had had our minds on our people and not on who has the biggest button.
We no longer have the guts not to go crazy at the slightest threat. We take healthcare away from children because we think we have to (we think we can) regulate the globe.
We've met our military limits with North Korea. If anything, we should be thinking of being a country that people admire once again, one that is generous with knowledge and aid, rather than a bully with a twitchy trigger finger.
4
Rob: It seems as though Macron is trying to undo the things that made France great, he seems little more than a union busting Reagan type figure doing the bidding of his former employers at Bank Rothschild,(always of course under the veneer of “ it’s necessary to remain competitive”, whether referring to insane paychecks at the top or reducing the paychecks at the bottom)I hope France fights the good fight against the forces of globalization as long as possible but I’m afraid the Bush, Cheney, Blair war has visited such an a burden on Frances social safety net that coupled with the universal push to lower taxes and outsource labor may undo the wonderful nation that has truly defined “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
2
Ted, actually at the same time Macron introduce some common sense changes to the draconian employment rules he included strengthening the safety net for the unemployed. He ran on this and people are getting what he promised. France is still very much focused on sustaining the social contract and we will not see Banks here unleashed in the same way the loosening of Dodd-Frank is happening in the US. I'm afraid I don't see the alternative to remaining "competitive" however in a globalised world. Instead of trying to reseal Pandora's box I think we need to manage the disruption it causes humanely. The French are very much aware of the quality of their culture and history and while they complain about taxes (who doesn't?) they know what they get for it in the form of education, healthcare and support for families. I don't agree with Douthat that Liberalism is dead and I would not bet against the French spirit.
2
There is no general crisis of liberalism. The problem is that globalization and automation have put the developed liberal democracies under a great deal of stress by increasing the bargaining power of capital and reducing the bargaining power of labor. These liberal democracies have had difficulty responding to the effect that this situation has had on a segment of their populations. Of course, certain types of conservatives jump at the opportunity to claim that the problem is cultural and caused by not enough religion and tradition values.
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Father Douthat obscures the fact that political ideals like liberalism are expressed within the context of the political structure. Liberalism is doing just fine where I live, and in many other countries as well.
Where it's not doing well is in the U.S. Not surprising really. Logical outcome given: two-party, winner-take-all political system; a non-democratic Senate; structured election cycles; Citizen's United and gerrymandered districts; a propagandistic media; the legacy of slavery and racisms; and so on.
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This description of liberalism sounds like Karl Marx's critique of capitalism. The liberal order we live under is increasingly liberal in the European rather than the American sense. It is ruled by money, so that its citizens are consumers of government rather than participants in shaping their future.
In this country, preliberal forces of tribe, family, and religion were strongest in the South, and still are. Preliberal forces of religion are strongest in Saudi Arabia. The aristocracy of philosophy and art includes few who did not set themselves against the philosophy and art of their times. Selfish individualism is the key product of capitalism, and its opposite was found in labor unions and protest movements where solidarity was created rather than imported from tradition or God the supreme ruler. Such solidarity has been successfully squashed by its enemies and replaced by a consumerist void, but it keeps arising in new forms.
We need a new morality that condemns any system of values that does not protect the earth; this includes the market and the rule of money. The sanctity of human life must include the sanctity of the planet that makes this life possible. Overpopulation may require abortion.
39
Mr. Douthat,
Are you talking about the plutocracy of the 1% in this country, the antithesis of liberalism represented by the greedy Koch brothers, the greedy Mercers and the rest?
Liberal thought made this country great, from the 40 hour work week, to regulating the cleanliness of our water and air, to the idea of public education for all, to freeways (emphasis on free), to our magnificent national parks, to unions and the idea that one should be able to support a family on union wages. And yes. to Social Security and Medicare and the idea that people later in life should live out their lives in dignity, that older people should be able to get medical care, especially since insurance companies have no desire to insure older people. The idea that money isn't the only important thing in society, but that we have an obligation to one another.
The idea of carried interest, offshore accounts, shell corporations, tax inversion, or corporate inversion, i.e. the practice of relocating a corporation's legal domicile to a lower-tax nation, usually while retaining its material operations in its higher-tax country of origin, all these are business ideas, ideas thought up in business schools in our country to game the system. They have nothing to do with liberalism and are bringing us to ruin.
You and Mr. Brooks seem to be on a strange path to who knows where. It's as if the madness of king Trump is slowly wearing you down.
Capitalism run amuck is the problem, not liberalism.
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@A
The rise of Atheism, coupled with Democrats' obsession with voter labels, has ushered in Atomized America. It all works great if the Democratic leadership can point to Whites and promise new stuff for the 99% they claim to cherish.
In our post-Modern world, run by Atheistic inclinations, it IS survival of the fittest, mob rule (in a world with no shared understanding of justice), and belittlement of your opponents (because human dignity is only a construct held up to garner more voters).
Take some responsibility for your own errors.
Or as Oprah said: just wait for them to die.
1
That is not the liberalism being discussed here-in.
It is not capitalism that is working against us, it is socialism. The socialism of Obamacare that demanded the young subsidize their wealthy elders and prodded the non-profit health sector to increase charges, increase the income of the administrators, all in the false name of providing affordable financing of health care. There was no increase in the number of providers, but rather a shell game of coercing the young to pay inflated premiums in order to guarantee the profitable hospitals would get paid.
The socialism of imposing high energy costs of the CLean Power Plan, which does not even reduce pollution or greenhouse gases
1
The trouble is perhaps not so much a lack of ideas, but the present rate of progress, which outpaces any attempts of the institutions to adapt. We're constantly overwhelmed buy yet another wave of change, like somebody trying to swim in heavy surf.
16
Bannon's vision did return to the 1930s--and the 1830s--but it was never popularism; it was always a dark dream of racism and nationalism, sprinkled heavily with white supremacy, a kitchen stew that attacked government rather than groups as the enemy, a ploy from Reagan's playbook. So its political economy focused on wealth, privilege, and whiteness and had a fake comfort zone with familiar and for some, sensible, scapegoats.
Ross gets the scapegoats. He has favorites of his own. Liberals, Democrats; a ideology of straw he builds and calls liberalism. Straw because he moves, restacks, and rearranges its shape to fit his own ideological need for blame, and recently, his need to avoid the major truth of politics: that wealth transcends both left and right, that white seeks power over black, that dignity and manners are voided on a long continuum of behaviors, from insults to terrorism, yet weekly Ross searches for dial tone when the world is using cell phones.
Sad. But intentional. Old fight, old conclusions. New disguises. A familiar failure. A failure seen with Erza Pound and Joe McCarthy, now with Ted Cruz and Trump and Bannon. When an act or idea is indefensible, blame something or somebody, but never take responsibility. And so the weekly flogging of liberalism avoids responsibility. It is nice work; and conservatives always seem to get it.
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I appreciate that you parsed out Douthat's need to blame. It is a thread that runs through his columns. This is what concretized religion (and Catholicism excels at this) can do to a person. Rather than adhere to Christ's openness, forgiveness and compassion, God becomes a fierce father, and we owe Christ everything for saving us from our inherently sinful nature. In short, God becomes superego, and we are perpetually guilty. From a neuroscience perspective, it's a terrible way to teach. To assuage our own guilt and shame, we resort to blame as a defense. I don't think making us feel shameful and blaming others was Christ's aim.
4
"Government" was a "group" in 1830s-speak--a mob. A mob that threatened sacrosanct individual liberty.
2
Most of us do not earn our bread
through our own sweat and toil anymore.
Not living on farms, we rely upon complete strangers
and paychecks generated on the purchasing of some
product that we may have contributed to in a most oblique manner.
A world, then of not our own making.
So the Government seeks to fill in any gaps that we cannot provide
for and we lose our true independence via more and more bureaucratic
intrusion into even the most private aspects of our lives.
We know best -
please follow the rules
trust us
we know best -
this way to the comfort zone.
5
Many of the commentors here do appear to understand the term "liberalism" as Douthat is using the term. He is not talking about "liberal" as in "liberal versus conservative". He is talking about the political philosophy called liberalism, which is a philosophy that puts individual freedom above other values. It is about liberty, equality and freedoms like the press and of speech. Our country was founded on a premise of liberalism. He is not using liberalism to mean political views such as the one Bernie Sanders holds. Or Sweden.
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Thanks for clarification, Sylvia. Ross gets to invent a new definition, somehow more ethereal than the word "liberalism" as commonly used?
I don't buy it. All Republicans are groping at this moment, and particularly decent ones. Both Douthat and Brooks are children in the wilderness clawing for any ethical defense they can claim. Which is growing more scarce as the days wear on and their acceptance of Trump gains inertia.
6
But he writes this::
"Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity."
He is not describing the political philosophy; it has not changed. The "once/now" construction shows that he is describing the results of applying it in the US, and he makes it clear that it is the liberals who did it, not conservatives.
9
Agreed; Ross and Denen mean the liberalism of Joh Stuart Mill which as you state posits liberty as the ultimate value. we also call it libertarianism and watch as Rand Paul seeks to give it a policy meaning.. Since he criticized even FEMA as a government function we don't need, many have asked him how we would deal with a major hurricane like the one that hit Galveston back in 1900. Talking proudly of voluntary efforts at that time; he forgets that on the total bill for that disaster were 6,000 to 12,000 dead.
if that liberalism required voluntarism and community spirit, it was so as to soften the wild, and often cruel gyrations of capitalism, but it failed time and again and is failing now in a more spectacular way. Values like civility, tolerance and charity are immolated daily by he chief of state. if this liberalism is dying it is because it was always attached to an unbridled capitalism of raw selfishness that Adam Smith never foresaw but Marx did and sought to warn us about. Today through Citizens United and a large number of so called reforms, capitalism is given a new lease to destroy and it is succeeding eminently. Globalization and the fall of Communism have cut all restraint toward savage exploitation and inequalities. Marx was right after all. Trump and his troops (Steve Mnuchin) are unaware how ugly they are and are parading that ugliness.It will be up to us to revolt and reset the standards of the old and more modern liberalism.
4
If we had kept our wealth in the hands of the people rather than sell them out to corporations and supply side nonsenses (basically, employers and for fee financial service workers over real employees), we'd still have the flow of trade benefits that naturally accrue for having vastly the greatest aggregate demand in the world like we used to. P.s. thanks for the review, but won't be reading that one, sounds too cute by half.
10
No, your enemy is a federal government bloated FAR beyond the limits put on it in the 18th century. The national role they forecast would never have required even a ten percent income tax because states wee given every role that they SHOULD have handled.
You are far behind in your reading of basic economics, but this happens when we go to colleges run by progressives still mad about Vietnam.
1
Mr. Douthat hasn't lived in Scandinavia. I have, and it is "truly different". Their hearts seem to be more capacious, and their tolerance of violence, less so. Medical care is a human right. Those with small infants in tow do not need to work. Any amount of drinking and driving is unacceptable. Prisons do not allow prisoners to maim or rape each other. Their purpose is rehabilitation not torture. The distinction between liberalism and Bannonism is trivial compared to such a change in the human heart.
All in all, Ross would benefit from a nordic sabbatical.
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Agreed. i have spent time with families of my grandmother - who left as a peasant in the 1890's. The families are now very middle class or more, own their own businesses, have graduate degrees and fuss about taxes, but enjoy good health care, maternity leaves for the mother, good pensions. and long vacations.
Neither the Swedes nor the Norwegians are interested in living here.
64
The experience you write about in Scandinavia reminded me of a great history of the US about the revolution in the USA during the 1930s wrought by the New Deal entitled Freedom from Fear (author, David Kennedy). In this history the point is the attempt of the liberals to institute social programs which gave people a feeling of more security, like unemployment insurance and pensions in old age. These programs were extended primarily by the Democrats to programs like Medicare which essentially has eliminated the fear of insolvency from medical debt for older people. In my view this social revolution has not gone far enough yet. More fear could be eliminated in our people with early childhood education, maternal leave for the first year of life of the child, free or mostly free education including trade schools and apprenticeships, improvement in wages. In other words we could become more like Scandinavia and other progressive European countries. The thesis is that more freedom from fear and want would produce a more tolerant, mutually supportive people as the evidence from Scandinavia shows. Our liberalism has not gone far enough.
41
Richard Swanson isn't the only commenter here to note the quality of life in many European countries, not just Scandinavia, compared to the current U.S. I've lived in Europe too and have many colleagues there. I would point to one of the huge differences that really enable all the others: it is the smaller and more homogenous populations, often fairly stable over generations, that allows a consistent philosophy of life and appreciation of culture to arise. The U.S. has no such thing; it is a massive country with very different values in rural, southern, western, and northern or coastal cities. Europe has its forays into the far left or far right but typically they are self-corrective and don't destroy the culture. In the U.S. the current political culture is able to exploit the core population differences to the hilt, blowing up culture, science, and humanitarian programs in favor of a winner-take-all economy if we don't do something about it. And our political system unfortunately doesn't allow much correction except for voting change once every four years. It doesn't bode well for long term progress.
17
Great essay. A few ideas for the future, some of which are certainly not new: more sustained and equitable investment in human capital; on-line voting and non-binding voluntary opinion sharing on major topics of public interest (this comment section is a good example, but blown up to include proposed legislation); economic policy designed to acknowledge that full domestic employment is as important a goal as stable prices and corporate profits and various foreign policy goals; a more robust way of teaching values, a virtue ethic if you will, with a view to mitigating against the hedonistic excesses of our age; require collage to be 5 years with ample humanities, science, computer sci and engineering, with a required transmission of the course of Western and world civilization, including its political, military, artistic, philosophic, scientific and religious history and a course or two on ethics and values and/or "mind training"; an attempt to reconstruct a history that is inclusive of all but not hateful to the leaders of the past (how to admire the dead for their virtues while acknowledging their sins . . . ); a more public advocacy of national leaders of civic virtue . . . Unfortunately, I doubt these would seriously mitigate the risks posed by genetic manipulation and artificial intelligence that are on the horizon . . . Such risks may well undo liberalism and much else.
13
A voice in the wilderness...well thought and well said
Thank you for posting this; it seems to be the answer.
In case you missed it Mr. Douthat, the liberal got 3 million more votes than the conservative in the last election. The only reason that the conservatives are in power is that our system is based on what the majority of states want, determining the Electoral College and the Senate, and not the majority of voters. These majority rural states, with a low quality of health, education, and standard of living, love their conservative representatives. It is the prosperous liberal areas of the country that has to prop them up.
146
Mr. Douthat is not referring to liberalism in the sense of our modern dichotomy between liberal vs. conservative politicians, but liberalism in the 19th century sense of the term. Were he referring to liberals, his concerns would be transient. His concern is for the very order of a free state and self government that permits both free expression and economic freedom. If the liberal order fails, God help us because we will not be returning to the 1930s but the 1390s.
14
I take your point (pointing our Douthat's absurd generalization), but there was really NO "liberal" in the election -- rather, a mainstream, probably right-of-party center Democratic candidate.
And, similarly, there was NO real "conservative" -- instead, a self-serving demagogue, stoking fears and resentments, who wasn't' even a Republican in any real sense of the term. And besides, "conservatives" are traditionally for economic caution and respect for the environment and wilderness spaces, neither of which Trump has ever manifested.
2
US "states" were granted partial autonomy to make slavery optional.
We've been trying conservatism (not liberalism) since Reagan, and it failed most noticeably during the 2008 crisis, so badly that even one of its greatest proponents, Alan Greenspan, admitted it was mistaken. Deregulation of banking and free trade with low wage countries (which generated a giant inflow of money from Asian savings that inflated the housing bubble) was our undoing. That was free market fundamentalism, a.k.a. conservatism.
If we want to try liberalism instead like we did under Roosevelt, let's start with raising taxes on the rich to help fund universal healthcare (private insurance or Medicare for All) and college educations or trade school for everyone. We'll see how that goes.
279
I agree with you that the 1980s were less "Reagan Revolution" than the "Reagan Revanch" and we would do well to reconsider the economic structure that was born of the New Deal and extended into the 1970s. However, what Mr. Douthat is talking about is not that notion of liberalism, but liberalism in the 19th Century notion of the term: an order characterized by freedom of religion and expression, free markets, in other words liberty and equality and especially economic liberty. If what he is calling liberalism fails, we will return not to the 1930s but the 1390s.
4
The post WW2 GI Bill was a resounding success and repaid its costs seven fold. We can afford universal healthcare if we did away with “for profit” healthcare insurance.
2
Thank you. It must be hard work to blame liberals for the mess republicans have consistently gotten us into for the last 30+ years.
1
Liberalism is not failing. It's not the problem Douthat or Brooks would have us believe it to be. The problem is that one party, the GOP, wants to be in power no matter what the cost.
It was the GOP that used outright racism to defeat Michael Dukakis when he ran against Bush Sr. in 1988. It was the GOP that decided not to work with Obama the day he was elected to the presidency. It was the GOP senate that denied Obama the right to have his nominee for the Supreme Court have a even a meeting with them or a confirmation hearing. It was this same senate that sent a treasonous and traitorous letter to Iran when the duly elected president was negotiating with Iran about their attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
Liberalism isn't dead in America. What's dead or so decayed that it can't be brought back is GOP sanity and decency towards Americans who aren't rich, white, and male. In America the GOP seems to have forgotten who they are supposed to work for: we, the people, not we the rich, famous, and spoiled or Fortune 100 companies.
520
Today's Republicans are simply incapable of negotiating equitably. Their faith is as rotten as the hearts of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, their legislative leaders and chosen spokespeople.
9
Amen. The Republican party under the vile and odious Trump is the greatest danger this country has faced in some time. There are no good Republicans, since they all now work fot Trump.
7
I think liberalism was supposed to be the vaccination against oligarchy, plutocracy and dictatorship. It is failing. Pointing to the agents that caused its failure (the GOP) IS an indictment of the system that should have prevented it.
45
A “right-wing worker’s party” is a contradiction in terms.
Of course, Douthat doesn’t look beyond our shores to see if liberalism thrives elsewhere. And he has spent his life trashing his own personal vision of liberalism. It is really difficult to understand whether he means liberalism with a small “L” or a big “L”.
Since Douthat doesn’t bother to define the term, “liberalism”, we should help him.
How about: the belief in the dignity or all work, in the worth of all individuals, in the rule of law, and equal justice under the rule of law, the rights of all to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the right to elect representatives to a government that will be of the people, by the people and for the people.”?
Bannon’s right wing Populist Party is just a convenient way to excuse the excesses of Oligarchs. The idea that people will thrive if the “Deep State”, which is short-hand for equal justice under law, steps out of the way is a fiction that gives Oligarchs like the Koch Family, the Adelsons, anfpd the Mercer’s philosophical cover to loot the country. The great debate should be between “liberalism” and capitalism. They can co-exist as long as some equilibrium is maintained.
157
Liberalism hasn't the non-emotivist, transcendent ground to protect "How about:...," eloquently put, apart, alas, from Nietzsche's will-to-power. And yet, and yet... I reckon liberalism and conservativism, and the people who see the differential, need to meet on the way to each other. Otherwise the proliferation of bad political philosophy.
I'll take JFK's definition of liberal as described at the 1960 NY Liberal Party Convention upon its endorsement of him for president.
“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”
2
"Bannon’s right wing Populist Party is just a convenient way to excuse the excesses of Oligarchs."
People are complex, multifaceted: You may be creating a straw man of El Steve-o. He is an isolationist, a nationalist. He may be other, worse things, too; I'm not an expert on Bannonism; but he doesn't seem to be evil personified, although that is an enjoyable and popular go-to for us Democrats.
Involvement in global affairs has brought us Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Cuba, and too many others to mention. Our international efforts, excluding WWII, seem to be of the bull-in-a-china-shop variety. Who made us the world's policeman? Not Steve Bannon, the isolationist.
I'm unsure as to his oligarchical bona fides, too. A chronically unshaven guy that dresses like a homeless person can't be that elitist, can he? Sloppy Steve, a Rockefeller wannabe? But I'm still learning about this political mover-and-shaker: Although not the Prince of Darkness, he may indeed be a fan. I just wanna find out more about him before I return in full force to my public crucifixions of him. You'll have to carry on without me till then.
Johnson beat Goldwater
Nixon beat McGovern
Reagan beat Carter
Obama beat McCain
Trump beat Clinton
After all these, the pundits assured us one type of -ism was dead and another ascending. But there is another explanation. American elections aren’t about ideology but about the practical task of choosing leaders.
In the last election you had two candidates who were widely despised. It’s not surprising that the insurgent narrowly won; yet we still have to be beaten over the head by punditry because the wise men don’t know anyone who voted for him.
14
Not according to the Gallop poll for most admired PeterC. I have no idea why this wasn't translated to becoming our first woman elected President but her large winning margin in the popular vote and the latest Gallup poll contradicts your 'widely despised' description.
"Hillary Clinton was named the most admired woman for the 16th consecutive year and has held the spot 22 times total, more than Eleanor Roosevelt who held the Gallup title 13 times."
44
Look at the Pew Poll below . Just 35% say she would be a great or good President; 45% say she would have been a poor or terrible President. 60% say she is hard to like; 56% say she has poor judgment; 33% describe her as honest. Of course Trump’s numbers are equally or more horrible but this was a race to vote against, not for someone.
http://www.people-press.org/2016/10/27/1-views-of-the-candidates/
8
Speaking for myself and I'm sure I am not alone, I voted FOR Hillary Clinton!! I am proud of my vote for her.
There is no question whatsoever in my mind that she would have been a good President, maybe a great one.
She definitely would not have demeaned the office as djt has done. Like her or not, she conducts herself with the dignity befitting our highest office. djt lacks her dignity, her intellect, her knowledge of world affairs and her excellent vocabulary.
22
Forget about the 1930s: in the 1830s New York City saw an unlikely alliance of the nabobs and the workies far more astonishing than anything under FDR. It can happen with the right demagogues – at least those who don’t cut off the hand that fed them, like Bannon, and bleed-out within seconds.
With conservative friends like Ross and David, Republicans don’t need to go out of their ways searching for enemies. Our intellectuals on the right can be as theoretical and as insistent as Democrats that arcane, highly experimental triggers can nudge a society into the “right” social directions while utterly ignoring that they never sustainably have except during those periods when we’ve been fat, dumb and happy.
Some of us are just relieved to see less excessive regulation that inhibits our economic growth, ISIS about to be buried, a tax framework that will force states to recognize that residents aren’t merely bottomless wells whose sole purpose is to be pumped dry to develop constituencies that elect Democrats, a more robust national security, some balance in immigration policy, attention paid to American economic interests instead of the willingness to trade them away for foreign policy dreams, and some spine (finally) in dealing with North Korea and Iran. And we haven’t had to pay for it (yet) with a Christian Sharia – something that may or may not be immensely frustrating to Ross.
8
Among other things, Alexis de Tocqueville ruminated over the march of democracy to its ultimate conclusion, which is the enslavement of those who produce to those who don’t. As Ross asserts, Deneen now claims that de Tocqueville’s nervous Nostradamics have proven true in the death of the relevance of Western liberalism.
Deneen is quite wrong is his basic thesis: Western liberalism continues to blunt our basest instincts, which remain there as they’ve always been there, covered by a very thin patina of civilization. That’s about as much as anyone should expect Kumbaya to accomplish.
7
Lastly Ross and you don't have a clue about liberalism. He is so far off the mark.
And the problem with Alexis is that it is they that don't produce who reign over the rest of us, the real workers. The real workers have always been enslaved by capitalism. If the workers got their real share, were paid for what they produced, our economy would be far better. But because the rich control what wages are paid, workers are way underpaid and have to live in poverty.
3
"a tax framework that will force states to recognize that residents aren’t merely bottomless wells whose sole purpose is to be pumped dry to develop constituencies that elect Democrats" ...
So why are we Blue States sending loser Red States our money as it currently is? More than we get back? Can't they pull themselves up by their own glorified bootstraps?
8
I would have thought that Mr. Douthat, as a conservative, would be wary of instituting a new political order. Conservatives normally prefer gradualism. At any rate, I don't see why he seems dismissive of Scandinavian democracy; that is social democracy.
The biggest threat to our system is the contradiction between democracy--equal rights and equal voice--and neo-liberal capitalism, which creates vast differences between winners and losers and therefore vastly unequal voice. It seem strange that Rupert Murdoch, a recently naturalized citizen of the United States, controls Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the Boston Herald. He and other billionaires like the Koch brothers, the Mercers, and a few others have had a big effect on who is nominated to the Supreme Court and then confirmed; on the huge tax cuts that favor billionaires; on deregulating big business and other measures, all of which increase inequality, divisiveness, and anger among less fortunate citizens.
61
Capitalism destabilizes community.
1
Or, perhaps, conservatism re-asserted itself. As a social, economic and political philosophy, it is conservatism that drags liberalism back down into "selfish individualism and soft bureaucratic despotism..." Distinguishing between the conservative narrative and conservative actions clarifies this.
And, why do I let myself get trolled into responding to Mr Douthat?
21
State of the liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix we inhabit in the U.S.?
Officially the U.S. is a nurture over nature society, that religion can uplift people, that education does the same, that everybody is equal and that we should even increase socialism. The reality is that the U.S. is more along lines of a Pavlov/Skinner creation, that nature is decisive over nurture and people must be trained to be consumers, encouraged into a narrow and specialized field, that they must be tested, documented, registered, have a rather circumscribed choice of vacation when not at work.
The heroes of American society are invariably wealthy, and they more often than not are movie stars, athletes (public entertainment) or people invested in the whole Pavlov/Skinner consumer society, indeed show to the average consumer what can be aspired to--billions of dollars and control over the whole political/economic process.
The future of this society can be predicted: If a higher culture exists it is increasingly secretive, controlling, using advanced technology, not to mention computation and surveillance, to oversee the whole of society. The less a person's intelligence I suppose the happier they are (if poverty is finally eradicated), consuming and working and vacationing like an animal. The greater a person's intelligence, the more oppressive the whole thing becomes, but I suppose they can find release if they keep their mouth shut, work hard, and are initiated into the elite.
10
There is a path. All the elements are present. What's holding us back are social conservatism and greed of those gaming the system. It will move forward if we can free the wheel from the hands that are holding it stuck in the rut.
21
So, when it all comes down to it, Douthat parrots the Catholic communitarian approach. The pull of family, tradition, custom, the Church, and the state have been shown to be throttling in respect of individual choice and human values. It is time to be honest and admit that Douthat wants to return to the world of Innocent III, the Albigensian Crusade and of societal based restrictions. Somehow, moral and ethical concepts don't serve as guides anymore as the local communal world view is allowed to dominate human behaviour.
10
What Douthat forgets is that Catholic communitarianism thrives in liberal blue states and fails miserably in conservative red states.
An irony of biblical proportions.
3
The problem is inequality. Capitalism functions to shovel the wealth to the already wealthy: it is fundamentally unstable.
We need something to counteract this: the best way is with a steeply graduated income tax, with the income from capital taxed more heavily than the income from labor. In some sense, this existed in the US 1950-1980, and was destroyed by Reagan when the wealthy lost their terror that socialism would win.
If we went back to the tax structure of that time, many of the problems of liberalism would disappear.
40
Without the rich having more money, they would be unable to buy off the politicians who appeal to the masses who are begging for the scraps “provided” by a compliant electorate. This electorate then pads it’s own wallet while doing the providing. Let’s face it, the rich are going to get richer whether it’s capitalism or socialism driving the economy. It’s simply the state of human nature. There aren’t many Gandhi’s out there among the political class.
1
The yearning for liberalism in many, probably the majority, of people in this country has not gone away. The concept of liberalism embraced by our government such that it truly does protect individual liberties and equal opportunities for all also has not gone away, but it has been eroded by the forces who oppose those ideas: our own plutocrats and the representatives that they have bought. To a large extent, those forces include corporations, which are not inherently evil, but in a capitalist economy, fairness doesn't hold much water.
In short, I think most people in the US strongly believe in the ideas of individual freedoms and equal opportunity. The "failure" is not the fault of the people, except for those who hold authoritarian views. The failure of liberalism as a form a democratic government has not yet occurred completely, but we are well on our way, and the fault lies with those who buy off government representatives, stack the odds in primaries, gerrymander districts and stack the judiciary with bias when in power, and disregard the needs and wishes of the common people in favor of the rich. This is clearly what has happened throughout history, and it is clear that it is occurring in the US form of democracy.
Until we correct our electoral system, figure out how to get most of the big money concentrated in the hands of a few out of the process, and elect true representatives of a variety of people, ones who are moderates, we will continue on this path.
26
Yet another of our conservative brothers delivering another book report, on a VERY familiar book. Is this a strategy or happenstance? Sir, you can run, but you can't hide. The lumbering Elephant running amok cannot be brushed aside, or blamed on anyone ELSE forever. Claim the blame and the shame. I would personally have much more respect for those that do so. Just saying.
25
Most things can be fixed...and I think we can recover. The major problem is the "lifetime" appointment construct. A critical institution such as the judiciary should not be polarized by mortality, scandal or fiat. The rest can and should be addressed. Hopefully starting in November 2018/January 2019.
7
Decline and fall is an old story. It has nothing to do with liberalism or some other ideology -- everything to do with a tendency for societies to become top heavy absent external shocks which smash and rejevenate the existing order. The changes of mid-20th century had far more to do with the Depression and War than this or that ideology. See Picketty, Gordon (Rise and Fall of American Growth) and Mancur Olsen (who explains it all better than Piketty or Gordon
5
What ails us most is an addiction to political tribalism that provides a convenient excuse to reject policies that we should embrace in our age of information and opportunity. There has never been a better time to be a human, but our political divides convince us that denial or destruction of the opposition's narrative is essential, demanding we declare it the worst of times instead.
Each side reflexively determines that the 'others' are bringing destruction and that their imperfect opposition prevents our side from achieving political policies we know will deliver us from the current evils, and of course the other party's shortcomings.
This is not an exercise in both side do it excuses; we are beyond worrying about the current political parties. The GOP exploded in the past 18 months. The Democratic Party now faces an unmoored electorate that neither supports the old Republican party nor is satisfied with the current Democratic Party offering.
This, of course, is the story of Trumpian politics where seven out of ten eligible voters did not support the current President. How it happened is simple, more people voted against Trump, and 40% just don't find their voice in either the two major parties, giving Trump the minority win.
It is time to restart the process of building political parties. The GOP is beyond repair, that the Democrats don't understand their side having failed in 2016 remains the cork that is stopping up what happens next. It's time to start anew.
6
Sane people see only insanity in US politics.
3
The basic problem is not with isms, liberal or otherwise. The problem is that too many government officials, both elected and appointed, don't see themselves as public servants. They do what benefits themselves and their egos, and don't bother to determine what might be best for the country, because they don't really care. Self-serving politicians receive support from people like Ross Douthat.
14
Not so sure the premise that liberalism has failed is valid. Liberalism has been under attack by conservatives for a long time now, and basically only succumbs to the bad ideas foisted upon it.
10
Communities need shared values and shared communication. America's self-appointed ruling class has used wedge politics to divide the nation by emphasizing differences rather than commonalities; electronic and social media have made their project much easier by isolating people and separating them into factions intolerant and suspicious of one another. There could be no stronger evidence of our retrograde motion than the outbreak of racism, xenophobia, and jingoism that infect the presidency and Republican Party.
13
I think that innovation in the U.S. is just beginning. We need to direct the released energy away from things like 'militias' and towards community solutions (like co-housing for instance). Recognizing what was good, about the transcended 'unchosen obligations' will be necessary.
6
The core of liberalism may be timeless. The challenge is refining the implementation for the the realities of this century. In the midst of the angst regarding: the loss of control; fear of change; concern about the integrity of political, economic, and social leadership; the acceptance of the need to build trust in government at all levels; and the sensing of a diminishing connection to a caring humanity, it is not surprising that the enterprises of liberalism might be in doubt. The place to start addressing this doubt is in a dialogue about the 21st century commons. What are the requirements in this commons for addressing the equality of economic, political and social opportunities for all in a world that is more connected, more global, and more diverse? This is a different world. The founders of this country anticipated we would need to adapt, to experiment, and to change. Being glued to the past is not the answer to the challenges of experimenting, adapting, and making changes to the liberalism that we need now.
8
Right now liberals are too much enjoying calling Trump a racist. They want to use Trump's transgression to turn attention away from Americans who lack education, jobs, and health care.
8
Sure, because Trump is doing a whole lot to help these people. If the most urgent form of damage and destruction to the good of the general public is Trump (and the GOP in general), opposing him is the first order of business.
24
It is the very nature of Democrats and liberals to pay attention to education, jobs, and health care.
20
I think you are a bit backwards in your thinking. It is liberals in my experience who express the true Christian attitude of how to treat others, not conservatives who are much more into Old Testament thinking, an eye for an eye and Leviticus punishments. But then I am only 78 years old and have travelled quite a bit of the world and received four college degrees with honors, and run several small businesses over the years while raising a family, so what do I know. But I do know that Trump is not the least bit interested in Americans who lack education, jobs and health care. That might interfere with his travels where he gets all those fabulous receptions and his golf games.
6
Ross Douthat, as he often does, offers us a contraction in terms:
The selfish "Christian" rejects social justice in favor of politically correct greed and acquisition.
We humans are capable of great things when we work together to solve problems. Otherwise, not so much.
And my friends on the left, please stop blaming victims and condemning hardworking public servants in favor of your unicorns. We are real, and we are in crisis. Blaming Democrats enables Republicans, and there is no comparison. Not all Republicans used to be greedy, but the ones who aren't have been condemned these days in favor of their imaginary utopia where all poor people are criminals and kleptocrats are the saints in charge.
19
Life after which liberalism?
"Liberalism" has come to mean many things, some of the opposites. It is applied as an insult to leftists, and is used as a cloak by right winger, as with "neo-liberal" meaning the very opposite of what most of the left support.
Douthat here freely mixes various sources of the various liberalisms. That part actually makes little sense. But then, he really does not care, because his point is in his conclusion.
His conclusion is what it always is, traditional Catholic ideas, by which he means the Pope is not Catholic enough. "you can’t renew an order, as ours clearly needs renewal, until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different."
Well, we are capable of imagining and desiring something different, and even the Pope desires and imagines differently than Douthat.
114
Thanks Mark T, I couldn't have said it better myself! Ross Douthat doesn't seem to like Pope Francis, who truly tries, in his limited context (the rigid catholic hierarchy) to embody the teachings of Jesus which remain a touchstone to so many of us, including atheists, because they embody the best of which humanity is capable.
We will hope for a renaissance of truly spiritual values in the face of classic evil as embodied by the many flavors of kleptocracy now in charge. They are disguised by what they claim is religion, but is only the self-affirming gods they hear when they identify with the voices in their heads.
44
Susan -- Thanks. I am not remotely Catholic myself. I respect the man who is now Pope because he has earned it, and has earned a lot of respect.
I also respect in the same way as one of my heroes Pope Leo XIII, who in the late 19th Century wrote many years ahead of Douthat's thinking today. I mean the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, 15 May 1891, on the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor. If Leo did not get it perfectly correct, he still has much to teach us today.
7
It is odd that Times readers are liberal, yet I suspect many of them see that its most interesting columnists aren't. Odd too that the Left vilifies money, yet its complaints often center around the urgent need to redistribute it. Even if you're poor, if you live in a harmonious, interactive community and have a spiritual domain, you can find fulfillment.
Why does the Left focus on doing things for others, rather than on creating environments in which others don't need external upkeep? There is no way to substitute for local flourishing. They never notice that dependence on outside agency easily discourages local unity and shared concern.
Leo Strauss's essay on Carl Schmidt is important. Schmidt talks a lot about the endless search for a neutral domain (without the friend/enemy distinction), only for that domain to immediately revert to friend/enemy-ism; at which point the search for a new neutral domain begins. Strauss says that the reason Schmidt was worried about threats to the political (which IS the friend/enemy contrast) was because he was worried about human life being trivialized: There must be something worth dying for.
Liberalism today tends toward soul-deadening trivialness and atomism. Schumpeter's gale often blows away communities, yes. Permissiveness can create social pathologies. We have always to tend our gardens. But until I see an alternative, I'm with Brooks. These problems can be dealt with without systemic change. But will they? And if they aren't ...?
2
What is wrong with our system is that not everyone begins at the same starting line. Many come from the best public schools while others come from schools that can not afford computers. Give everyone a chance to start together and those that fail will have at least had a fair chance. Other countries have one school district, not 13,506. as we do.
97
If the left vilifies money then was was Hillary painted as being in Wall Street's pocket?
Trump wants to rip the tops off mountains and throw the waste in rivers and streams so coal miners can have jobs they can't get any other way.
Hillary wanted educational programs to teach them new skills, as Clinton did in the information superhighway 90s and Cuomo did in the "Japan, Inc." 80s.
Why do we borrow $1.5 trillion from our children to give to already wealthy corporations and hedge fund managers in the way of permanent tax cuts while same will give the bottom quintile only a .4% increase in after tax income?
No person in America is forced by liberals to take any government assistance they don't want. Not ranchers, not farmers, not big oil or big pharma, not too-big-to-fail banks. Yet for some reason, they do.
I get the concept of neutral domain is tough for a group that has benefited from the original privilege written into the nation's founding document and they don't want to share that in any way.
If you need something worth dying for, then send your kids to Iraq or the Korean DMZ and leave the rest of us to enjoy our lives with out all of the conservative politics of grievance and victimization.
8
Accepting your false dualism for the sake of discussion, why does the "right" pursue policies to benefit the wealthy and corporations and cover it with a false narrative of liberals giving things away. Cutting taxes on corporations to 22% is corporate welfare, and the working poor will pay for this down the road when benefits THEY PAID FOR UPFRONT with their tax dollars are cut by the likes of Paul Ryan.
9
Is there life after conservatism and neoliberalism?
Only if we vote for the right people.
72
"Which would be good news for the West in a way … but maybe only in a way, because sometimes you can’t renew an order, as ours clearly needs renewal, until the political imagination becomes capable of imagining and desiring something different."
Oh, Ross, I think the public is pretty capable of imagining and desiring "something different" from what we're currently enduring.
How about going back to a liberalism that should have worked if liberals hadn't gotten as greedy as conservatives?
For much of our history, I'd argue that political alignments pretty much swapped hands every 4-12 years, because the party in power pretty much maxed out its welcome.
But this period, right now, is unlike anything I've ever read about or studied in a history course. Forget crazy Bannon and consider crazy Trump: crazy like a fox, that is.
He's not a true conservative, and very definitely not a liberal. But despite his lack of political philosophy, he's pretty much an army of one, a vision if you will of what happens when a bunch of people fed up with the rot of two parties, elect a third without thinking through the consequences or the candidate's personal history of fulfilling promises.
I wouldn't count liberalism as dead--I'd say it's very much alive and raring to go.
83
I can be that person. I am actually Dr. Juana Simpson who has written a dissertation entitled "The Theoretical Foundations for an Environmental Ethic", 1997.U/Az. In it I refer, in the final Chapter, to the 6 Principles of the NEPA LAW from the 1960s, that which we voted into Law. The Trump Administration (via the EPA) is violating the 6 Principles of that Law. Look into to it. We the People need to mount a Lawsuit to defend that Law and those principles. Juana Simpson Ph.D.
45
Whose "liberalism" is failing? The classical liberalism of Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, the belief of "natural law"? Classical liberalism is a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics, and unalienable individual rights.
Classical liberalism, the foundation of today's conservative and libertarian thought, has been trying to kill modern liberalism since the early 20th century.
FDR wrote: "liberalism believes that, as new conditions and problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of Government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them. The liberal party insists that the Government has the definite duty to use all its power and resources to meet new social problems with new social controls—to ensure to the average person the right to his own economic and political life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
JFK wrote: "A liberal is someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal'."
861
To HapinOregon ~ Thank you for reminding us of the ideals held by FDR and JFK. They wanted to make our country better for everyone; their focus was not on big campaign donors. Idealism is to strive for perfection, and even if that is elusive, a country will be better for the effort. Both FDR and JFK were wealthy but felt/acted in the spirit of noblesse oblige, the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.
Liberalism is closer to that ideal than the so called populism touted by Bannon and djt.
21
You nailed it! and thanks.
I humbly add - and you may not agree - these two observations:
A liberal is not so interested in an ideology or tribalism as in what works to enhance the overall survival fitness, freedom, serenity, and prosperity of our specie. Conservatives on the other hand sort of religiously follow a playbook.
Liberalism has mot failed in the main - the honestly reported trends in human wellness show otherwise.
Liberalism has not advanced as it should because (1) we stupidly allow RWAs to own elections (we don't vote often as we shouuld!) and (2) the forces against our aims are small in number but massive in power.
1
And the more "good" that government does the more tyrannical it becomes as an administrative state. The examples are manifest today, the latest being the unwarranted and illegal prosecution of Cliven Bundy.
I will concede that 80% of the population would prefer a benign dictator to the messy system we have now.
Douthat's sense of timing is off. The entire US and the World have just seen how quickly entire countries can quickly personal liberties are curtailed, the strangling of the liberal arts and science that made this country great, and the insane foreign policy errors that have crippled our standing and power among the nations--once a conservative senate, house, presidency, and scotus fall into the maladroit rough hands of conservatives. Before advancing and intensifying liberalism in the US we must first return to the liberal principles as exhibited during the Obama administration.
39
You're not going to get New Deal-style transformation, because FDR and his democratic super majority were only made possible by the hopelessness of the Great Depression. 30% unemployment. GDP down by half. Soup kitchens.
We are not in those straits, thank God, because the New Deal succeeded.
Social Security for the old. FDIC for the depositor. the Wagner Act for unionization.
Yes, the 1% get more than the rest, and always will. But the rest are invested in the system. "Socialized medicine" happened long ago; between Medicare, Medicaid, VA and tax exempt employer funded health insurance, 80% of the public get health care through some form of government program.
Retirees receive 100 cents in pension and Medicare benefits for every 33 cents they contributed through payroll taxes.
The welfare state, like opiods, creates its own supporters.
"Vice is a monster of so horrible a mein;
that, to be hated, it needs but be seen.
But when we encounter, and meet it face to face,
We first pity, then endure, then embrace."
- Wordsworth, I think, but I could be wrong.
2
I must take issue, ed conner, with several of your remarks.
"Retirees receive 100 cents in pension and Medicare benefits for every 33 cents they contributed through payroll taxes."
Those numbers are meaningless unless every retiree lived the same number of years.
"The welfare state, like opiods [sic], creates its own supporters."
Retirement benefits are not drugs. They're food and housing and other forms of sustenance. People well past 60 do not have their incentive to work robbed from them by receiving Social Security and Medicare. Many continue to work. Many must. Most have lost the ability to be gainfully employed due to the pace of chance and age discrimination. Others have reduced capacity due to age. This is not a worthy target for a sensible attack much less a critique of government in my view.
No one supports opioids.
As for your quote at the end to deliver some feigned weight to your bias against what you perceive as government created social ills, it's not Woodsworth. It's Alexander Pope's Essay on Man and quoting that portion out of context wholly distorts its meaning.
39
Great response, Ed. The lines you quote are by Alexander Pope, from "An Essay on Man." A poet whose lines, just behind Shakespeare and the Bible, have become proverbial.
Jonathan:
Do you deny that entitlement recipients, as a whole, receive far more in benefits than they paid into the system?
If so, will you please explain that to your grandchildren, who will have to pay in future dollars for current deficit expenditures?
2
I would say that the only life worth living is a liberal life. Liberals brought you freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, the notion that government should be of, by and for the people, (near) universal education, civil rights for all (even if we still have a ways to go in practice, rather than in theory), the end of child labor, the 40 hour work week, health care benefits, a living wage, a more secure economy (*because* it's regulated, Ross, not despite), and a cleaner environment (and may yet save us from the environmental catastrophe we are busily creating).
The only reason liberalism might possibly "fail" is because there are too many people in our government willing, ready, and able to pander to the worst of us, instead of helping lift us to be the best we can be. For a bunch of alleged Christians, they and you are awfully afraid of far too many things, and far too mad at the rest of the world because we won't be forced to live the way you feel is affirms your beliefs.
If you want a bunch of plutocrats and ideologues telling you what to do and deciding how you ill live your life, you've just described the outcome of current "conservative" policy here in the U.S. If you'd rather have a better world, history shows that liberalism is the way forward.
375
Lark
'I would say that the only life worth living is a liberal life.'
Well said.
I commented to my wife the other night about the joy we derive watching the seemingly endless bounty available on public television, reading a good book, whether it's fiction or non, hearing uplifting stories about people improving the lives of those less fortunate, having friends and acquaintances with diverse backgrounds, etc., etc., etc.
Especially when the alternative is the folks in the other silo: always angry, mindlessly blaming someone else for problems they brought upon themselves, and deriving their daily pleasures from watching a deranged con man poke a stick in the eye of all of those who voted against him.
What a horrible way to live.
5
I think there are more meaningful questions than whether the last 300 years have been a mistake. It might be worth asking, for example, whether the things we all acknowledge as good about our recent evolution--the abolition of slavery, advances in medicine, acknowledgment of rights for women and gay people, etc--are separable from the things that are bad, such as environmental destruction, materialism, self-destructive weapons, & Facebook. If individual freedom & fulfillment are supposedly the only shared values we have, why are we increasingly conformist? Why do we accept that consumerism is a form of individualism, instead of the form of social control that its marketers design it to be? Are we capable of facing the fact that science can be either wonderful or self-destructive? That society must make choices about technologies, instead of submitting blindly to them? Can markets create wealth without destroying culture & environment, without creating oligarchy?
28
Bannon's a bomb-throwing anarchist; Trump's a tweet-bombing, greedy, needy Know-Nothing narcissist who's pure Snake Oil.
Together with Republican pyromaniacs, they created a 20-alarm fire which we have to put out, and we will.
There's nothing wrong with liberalism, except that it fights fairly while the other side fights with matches, gasoline and a giant 50-year-old bonfire of proud white supremacy and cultured stupidity.
The problem with liberalism is that it gets systematically assassinated by the rabid, rancid, regressive, Randians that prefer the joys of feudalism to liberalism.
The murders of JFK, MLK and RFK were the first right-wing assaults on American liberalism. (Oswald was a convenient patsy)
Then the Whites R Us GOP Southern Strategy convinced the lowest white man that he's better than the best black man and gave him somebody to look down on while emptying his pockets for the 0.1%.
Add modern Jim Crow voter suppression laws, 0.1% political bribery, the unconstitutional gerrymander where Russian-Republicans pick their own duped white voters, the Electoral College disgrace, the red-state Senate filibuster, and a well oiled Fake News and hate-radio propaganda-industrial complex. and what you get is a filthy Randian-Republican sh--hole of unfettered parasitic greed and ill-will toward the non-rich.
Forget liberalism; Republicans don't even believe in democracy.
The real question is: is there life after decades of Republican hijacking of American democracy ?
795
Socrates,
Unless we're headed towards mass-extinction, there will be life. The question is how we will get back to any semblance of the path we were on after FDR. Will it be through a peaceful renaissance or will it happen following an uprising against the oppression of the current kleptocracy. Bannon did the bidding of the Mercer family until he forgot his place in the pecking order. Trump and those who were installed underneath him are doing the work of the mafia that is American oligarchy. Nothing that is being done now, in Congress, at the White House, or in the various cabinet posts, runs against the grain of oligarchy.
Every day that passes, something that deeply irked some oligarch is undone. A lot has been undone over the past year. Two weeks ago, they got around to making waiters' tips available for restaurant owners to grab. They also made more changes to the ACA that will further destabilize it.This week, the kleptocrats undid Obama-era unpaid internship rules.
The true heroes of the resistance have been the ACLU and those courageous judges who've ruled against oppression. We need the political resistance to track what is being undone and call out the kleptocracy for what it is doing, and not only focus on the ugly things Trump is saying. Voters need to know there is a plan for after Trump; one that goes beyond putting things back.
--
https://www.rimaregas.com/2018/01/07/politicos-running-list-of-what-trum...
79
As usual, Socrates places a good post. I would disagree that Bannon is an anarchist. Bannon very much wants the state to be even more powerful than it is, but with him and his party running it. He's quite willing to sweep away various institutions of government - the ones he finds inconvenient. But he has pledged to strengthen or invent others. Bannon describes himself as a Leninist, specifying that this meant he wanted to seize power and wasn't particular about the political platform that got him to power. Once he had power he could do whatever he wanted.
18
Bannon as National Socialist dictator is a more apt description of how he envisioned his future and the role and function of government as a police state.
6
The problem is that "liberalism" has a variety of meanings. There's social liberalism, economic liberalism, politcal liberalism, and adherents (people or nations) of one may not necessarily adhere to another. And the same definition may mean different things to different people. In my book, economic liberalism overlaps with social liberalism, and includes programs like universal health care that free people from the threat of medical bankruptcy, and frees businesses from having to involve themselves with it. On the other hand, what's now known as neoliberalism is anathema to me, as it's all about freedom for capital to do its thing without restraint.
Whatever definition Douthat chooses, the societal ills he blames on liberalism could only have been delivered by neoliberal doctrine, which is basically everyone for him/herself. In the old fashioned sense, there's nothing liberal about that.
78
Most people think of liberalism in terms of the left-right debate and not necessarily the umbrella term that is used in political science and philosophy debates. Stanford's encyclopedia of philosophy offers a very comprehensive look at all of the definitions here:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
14
Thank you for the link.
1
Considering where we're at and where the conservatives seem to want to bring us from here, a reset towards "just" a Scandinavian model seems pretty revolutionary to me and far cry from what we have here.
To develop anything new that could possibly influence enough people to implement change requires leaders genuinely interested in the good of the people and the country, an informed populace who take some responsibility for their country beyond their front yard.
24
Most of the criticism of liberalism in this article could be applied just as easily to conservatism: aren't unchosen obligations and allegiances that are clung to without thought a major problem we associate with the far right? Isn't conservatism currently setting us an a straight path to plutocracy? Isn't our current state of surveillance used heavily by the conservatives as well?
Surely, the author needs to realize that these problems aren't strictly on one side of the polarity of liberalism and conservatism.
22
What’s on trial in America is not Liberalism, but liberals.
That liberals continue to blame their failing fortunes on the GOP shows just how out-of-touch they are. It explains why they have been consigned to the political wilderness by the American people.
Liberals have no one to blame but themselves. Not only have they turned their backs on a broad swathe of the American people—working-class or non-college whites—but they have made them the enemy, often dissing them as racist and stupid, or blaming them for the economic woes they face.
Adding insult to injury, liberals presume to tell everyone else what's good for them—how to lead their lives, whom to vote for, what government policies are in their best interest, what immigrants they should accept in their communities, whom they can flirt with and when, right down to what words they can and cannot use.
However much liberals may be convinced of the validity of their values, there's one truth they have not learned: they cannot jam those values down others’ throats without provoking a backlash. It may work in the short term, but in the long-run, there will be a reckoning.
It is liberal hubris we must look at if we want to understand why Liberalism is in tatters today.
20
"Adding insult to injury, liberals presume to tell everyone else what's good for them—how to lead their lives, whom to vote for, what government policies are in their best interest, what immigrants they should accept in their communities, whom they can flirt with and when, right down to what words they can and cannot use."
Conservatives:
Tell us which books, movies, music and TV shows are good for us and bad for us, and vigorously campaign/lobby to ban what they see as bad, thus limiting our choices.
Tell medical professionals what they can and cannot discuss with their patients, and force them to perform unnecessary procedures.
Tell scientists what they can and cannot research, publish or speak about, even what words they cannot use in their reports.
Tell us which religions are acceptable and which are not.
Get the picture, Ron?
Liberals did not turn their backs on "a broad swathe of the American people." Conservatives convinced that swathe that liberals want to take everything away from them, including the value of their whiteness. Conservatives convinced them that liberals want to give all kinds of free stuff to those whom conservatives deem undeserving, instead of to "real Americans. They convinced these people that liberals want to destroy their culture, their religion, etc.
I could go on...
53
Well, Ron, thanks for explaining to this liberal Democrat exactly what I am not.
I'm an old girl who went to engineering school before affirmative action.
I described myself as a Democrat because I'm a believer in strong government that provides, affordable, world-class educations to any American who wants to learn, takes care of its neediest, takes care of its elderly, takes money out of everyone's paycheck because God and Richard Thaler both know we have no ability to save money for ourselves so we need some protection from our own consumerist failings.
I described myself as a Democrat because I believe unions are the only entities that protect us from capitalists paying workers poverty wages.
Finally, I described myself as a liberal because I believe in affirmative action. Why? Because I was told flat out that I wasn't getting my first engineering job because of my sex. I just "didn't fit the image." Fortunately, the chief engineer looked at my resume and decided this short, Italian, Ivy League female engineer would do just fine.
And, most of all, I kept my religious beliefs to myself. Even my grade-school nuns back then appreciated separation of church and state. Not so much now, it seems.
You prefer Republicans' "freedom from government" and having God forced down your throat? Good luck to you in our new Christian sharia state.
13
You are talking about the people who I refer to as the "Know Betters", the vast majority of whom are some sort of liberal. I would rather put a conventional enemy or an openly selfish scoundrel in office than someone who claims to know what is best for me and intends to cram it down my throat. That sort of person is the greatest enemy of my freedom and my dignity.
2
Liberalism didn't fail. It was hijacked by self-aggrandising, selfish neoliberals with very conservative roots. https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2Jr
By the time voters realized it, the swing of the pendulum back to a kinder and gentler conservatism ended with the Great Recession, which produced what many hoped would be the beginning of a journey back to progressivism. That wasn't to be and, over the next six years, the nation got a taste of Republican obstruction and nullification. Begin the 2016 election and the swing back to progressivism was much stronger. It was squashed. Whatever else went on during the general election, liberal voters weren't compelled to fulfill their civic duty, in the numbers and places needed.
What comes after the hypercapitalist oligarchy we are now in isn't yet in full focus. The (neo) Liberal left is still fighting tooth and nail to repel progressive takeover and the same approach as 2016 is being used for now, with pundits and academics extolling the virtues of centrism. Joe Biden used a coarser approach when he told the L.A. Times he has no sympathy for millennials. I guess it's his "basement dweller" moment...
What comes after Trump will be progressivism, and it will be out of the necessity not only to restore our nation's contract with itself, but to put into place long overdue policy for the next economy.
---
https://www.rimaregas.com/2018/01/08/what-bait-and-switch-centrism-masqu...
29
Great Comment! A dagger, like a serpent changes direction with opportunity. "Hijacked" it was "by self-aggrandizing, selfish neoliberals with silver tongues who practice the Dark Art of "Bait and Switch."
1
There’s got to be a better word for our current political insanity than “populism.” Populism sounds nice, as though it’s popular because it’s a good thing, full of high-minded ideals and good times for ordinary folks who enjoy freedoms and bounty and benefits galore. Instead, it means political power driven by the collective ignorance of the resentful and uneducated who can’t understand why they’re being left behind. (Hint: they're resentful and uneducated.)
Liberalism was doing just fine until conservatism decided to destroy it. The problem with liberalism is that conservatives can’t stand the idea of taking care of the poor, the sick and the weak. They’ll just spend all that public money on “booze, women and movies.”
Conservatives think that ol’ time religion is what this country needs. Women folk, foreigners and brown people would know their place, dictated by a Supreme Court that would put an end to all of these lascivious freedoms, perversions and abortion-happy women.
Conservatives abhor the thought that gay people should be allowed to be who they are, preferring instead to beat them with large bibles until they recognize that they’re diseased. “Let them eat cake!” said Marie Antoinette, when the poor complained. Gay people can’t even do that, because the bakers won’t bake ‘em a damned cake.
Here’s how I know liberalism is better: when I saw Mr. Obama on TV the other day, I teared up. When I see the president on TV, I want to throw up.
687
There wouldn't be so many poor, weak and sick if our conservative's policies didn't create them, then blame them. We create underclasses, and then create excuses to avoid responsibility.
Douthat has to define liberal. It means much than 18/19th C--- not being ruled by a King or the Church.
Now in our distorted politics, US liberals would be centrist in other capitalist democracies. And their conservatives aren't as right wing as the US GOP.
Their conservative parties don't have their own media conglomerate like Fox News, molding voter opinion.
LIberalism today adds up to politics more responsive to the citizen majority instead of the elites. Health care affordable for all, no matter job, income, age, or health status---that's the proof.
6
Gemli, you are a classic. You should be a featured writer for the Times.
7
It's Trumpian chaos that reigns
And Republicans pull on his reins,
The Plutarch appetite
Devours all that's in sight
It's workers that suffer the pains.
A more radical turn requires
Action, Liberalism expires,
A Sanderish thrust
Equality or bust,
Getting rid of the alt-rightish liars!
31
Douthat says: "Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity."
Douthat is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts, and the facts are that for 70 years - the entire working lives of almost every living American - 'liberals' have verifiably, factually produced better circumstances across the spectrum in this country:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/12/02/the-u-s-economy-d...
in terms of GDP, stock market gains, whatever.
It's so obvious that even His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness agrees, as he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in 2004, before the bankster bailout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCB6RvRojIQ
The plutocracy Douthat rightly decries arises from the 'conservative' side of the aisle; the dark money enabled by their sitting SCOTUS Justices.
As for 'appetitiveness', seldom has it been more glorified than by the GOP'er nominee who's now POTUS, allowed there by GOP'ers who never should have placed him on a single primary ballot, for failing to produce his tax returns.
But the seditious GOP'ers were holding open a SCOTUS seat, and are blinded to this sedition - only because a Dem is not residing at 1600 Penn Ave.
216
Memo to file: A comment which doesn't register as 'submitted', or appear for 5 minutes, gets re-posted.
10
Douthat says: "Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity."
Douthat is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts, and the facts are that for 70 years - the entire working lives of almost every living American - 'liberals' have verifiably, factually produced better circumstances across the spectrum in this country:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/12/02/the-u-s-economy-d...
in terms of GDP, stock market gains, whatever, as Blinder and Watson show.
It's so obvious that even His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness agrees, as he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in 2004, before the bankster bailout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCB6RvRojIQ
The plutocracy Douthat rightly decries arises from the 'conservative' side of the aisle, and the dark money enabled by their sitting SCOTUS Justices.
As for 'appetitiveness', it has never been more glorified than by the GOP'er nominee who has become POTUS, allowed there by GOP'ers who never should have allowed him on a single primary ballot, for failing to produce his tax returns.
But the seditious GOP'ers were holding open a SCOTUS seat, and are blinded to their sedition - only because a Dem is not residing in 1600 Penn Ave.
37
@R. Law: You do not understand Ross Douthat's use of "liberal." Douthat is using it in its classical sense, which de Tocqueville and James Madison would have understood, wherein it is an ideology rooted in individual rights. He is not using it in its modern adulterated sense, wherein it is associated with distribution of wealth.
3
Charles - Oh, we perfectly well understand what Douthat is attempting; we're just calling him out for pretending the faults he identifies (in the quote) are not stemming from conservatism as practiced since St. Ronnie. Liberalism as practiced for the last 70+ years, and as usually derided by Douthat's crowd, isn't the problem, as the Blinder/Watson data and other studies show - Douthat's lamenting where the 'libertarianism' strain of classic liberalism has brought conservatives.
7
Charles, Douthat failed to explain the relevance of the classical term liberalism to today's american reality, and then tried to make some present day conclusions. It really sound comical.