1. If liberalism today was the Classical Liberalism of our Founders, all of us would be liberals. In fact, from the New Deal through the 50's Americans pretty much were liberals....
Another day, another inaccurate thread pointing fingers at the other to avoid a honest assessment of American history.
Point by point rebuttal of PC usual corporate apology for the world we find today, blaming others, rather than thinking on their own.
(1) Liberalism today is hopefully (tries) a pragmatic recognition of the real world. "How we go on in the here and now," as Bernard Williams calls it. All these labels shift, classical liberalism never existed in any pure form, it could actually be said and argued that most of the founders were elitist statesmen, on the order of Plato's philosopher kings. Slavery fits nowhere in liberal thought. Even among the founders there were broad ideological differences.
(2) By the time Hobhouse came along populism and progressivism had already had a long history. They began in the 1890's as a reaction to the changing society much like today, with massive immigration, corporate power, and the growing separation of haves and have nots. "We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized... The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, [small] business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty." Written in 1892, it was part of the Populist platform.
(a) This link contradicts that premise.
Leonard Hobhouse - Liberal Thinkers - Liberalism
(b) "Conservative, a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]" And Liberal "in U.S. politics tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform),
which dates from 1823." From liberal in dictionary.com. The more powerful debasement of liberalism came from corporate propaganda, see below (4).
(3) If viewing defines an ideology, one would need to examine the viewer's motives and whether they made sense. Just saying something means little without proof. Today's liberalism grew out of FDR's enormous accomplishments during the Great Depression. Consider that we had economic sanity till Reagan began the destruction of regulatory enforcement. For those interested in liberal political philosophy check out John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, Bernard Williams, Ronald Dworkin, Paul Starr, and Jeremy Waldron. This piece details liberalism's story marvelously.
This is Your Story - The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On.
(4) 'Liberal' became pejorative through almost fifty years of corporate support of think tanks that provided the environment in which they could manipulate law, regulation and information in their favor. It started back in the 1890 and earlier, grew strong under FDR and LBJ and became truth through the constant bombardment of exaggeration and lies, such as Reagan's Cadillac mom. "Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalismfunding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hands-Making-Conservative-movement/dp/0393059308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247845984&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (9780393059304): Kim Phillips-Fein: Books[/ame] See also: [ame=http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.html]The Conservative Nanny State[/ame] and [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-American/dp/0767905342/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (9780767905343): Kevin Phillips: Books[/ame]
(5) America is now and has always been liberal, admittedly most will not use the label liberal because of the information noted above. Iran is a conservative nation, America is not. No nation has ever been founded on conservatism, as the first conservative would still be in the cave had a liberal not coaxed them out. See:
The Rhetoric of Reaction - Albert O. Hirschman - Harvard University Press
(a) Courts (litigation) are part of American culture and since K street and many politicians are lawyers on both sides, this point has no validity today. In truth, individuals create much of America's useless and frivolous law through our courts as each person thinks themselves in possession of the final truth. And since mucho greenbacks are a big goal for all. Think about that for a bit. See this piece.
Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system | Video on TED.com
(b) Libertarians are conservatives who think pot and greed are national values. Socialism already exists in America through market sharing, corporate sharing and ownership, Social Security and a host of other social goods. "The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly."(*) No one is really an anarchist who is mentally older than five. The tea party is a contemporary populist movement, but as I have written often it lacks real American values. Communists are non-existent today, actually they may have always been nonexistent as Communism like Christianity is just too darn hard. Christians are mostly non-existent too.
(c) I sorta agree, but it is not a good thing for democracy as it concentrates power (ideas) in the hands of the already powerful. It is ideas, right or wrong, that dominate thought. "The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." Alex Carey
(*) Norman Thomas
PC, you need a bit of education on the reality out there, stay away from corporate mediated and revised thought for a few months is my suggestion as a great seer of human nature.
Anyone interested in real history check out Richard Hofstadter's, 'The Age Of Reform,' and William Manchester's 'Glory and the Dream,' for fair assessments of the times covered in this debate. Both excellent balanced history.
"I would say quite seriously, that I am a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture." Daniel Bell