Liberalism in Decline

A Gallup poll released this week shows Americans are firmly on the Right side of the ideological spectrum. By a margin of two to one, Americans identify themselves now as conservative over liberal. 36 percent are self-described moderates, 40 percent are conservative, and only 20 percent claim to be liberal. This is a 10 percent shift to the Right over last year’s poll. It’s the best rating for conservatism since 2004. So what’s the reason for the change? Obviously, having an extreme liberal agenda emanating from the White House and Congress has not set well with most Americans. The Tea Party and Town Hall protests have demonstrated the serious depth of this realignment.

The liberal label continues to lose its appeal even among traditional liberals like Hillary Clinton who chooses now to describe herself as a progressive. Anytime a brand gets a makeover like this, it usually means there’s something desperately wrong with the current one. So what’s so bad about liberalism and being liberal?

The liberalism of the 19th century, known as “classical liberalism,” is a reflection of the original meaning of the term. It described a person favoring a more laissez faire system of free markets and private enterprise. This older form of liberalism was more authentically libertarian espousing the individual’s liberty above the interests and designs of the Leviathan state. Most Americans recognize this as Reagan’s conservatism. In a 1975 Reason magazine interview, Ronald Reagan explained it this way:

“If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer of liberals- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is…again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.”

It’s interesting that Reagan chose the example of the Tories, or Royalists, to represent today’s liberals. The ideology of the Left is one drawn from Thomas Hobbes and his 17th century treatise: “The Leviathan.” Hobbes sought to establish the absolute power of an imperialistic government invested with a civic and spiritual authority over the people. This is the starting point or premise of today’s liberal elites. They consider themselves infallible and a hundred percent benevolent. Their ill consequences have absolutely zero effect upon their nanny-state, good intentions. Being liberal means never having to say you’re sorry for a government program gone bad.

It was the progressive politics of Woodrow Wilson that began transforming the term “liberal” into this current perversion. The power of liberation was shifted from the perspective of the individual to the perspective of the state. This convenient political maneuver meant that an ever-enlarging government would operate for the benefit of the individual. This was turning the politics of our Founding Fathers upside down. Now, for the first time in human history, the expansion of government power was incredibly being sold to the public as a simultaneous expansion of individual empowerment. This is nonsense. These powers are inherently in conflict and can’t possibly coexist on a scale that proposes to increase both! Of course, there is an ideology that came to prominence during this same time that sought to maximize this exact philosophy of government. It’s called Socialism where the state determines the means of production in a planned, or command, economy with a re-distributive tax system: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Karl Marx 1875. This top-down imposition of absolute authority is justified, as liberalism is, on the basis of “doing good” for the individual.

Norman Thomas was a six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. He acknowledged this co-opting terminology as a method of purposeful deception:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Earlier this year, Newsweek magazine published a cover story entitled, “We Are All Socialists Now.” The current shift in the polls proves that Americans don’t like this kind of big government, no matter what you call it! (send comments to: WFC83197@aol.com, or mail to POB 114, Jacksboro, TN 37757).

Like a Thief in the Night

Our Republic is being stolen. It is being done systematically in the cover of darkness – bills that give more power to Washington and special interests and less to “we the people.”

It is being done with radicals in Congress and the White House setting up a shadow government using czars to usurp the authority of Cabinet members and Congress. Even Hillary has complained.

It is being done with the state-run media, which ignores over a million tea party protestors in Washington, ignores the corruption of radical groups like ACORN, ignores the czars with extremist ties and ignores the corruption and out-of-control spending in Congress.

It is being done by taking our tax dollars and giving them to others through bailouts, special favors and entitlements. Thomas Jefferson said, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Would you mind if someone robbed you, spent your money and took the credit for everything they did with it? Politicians call it “investments.” The Bible calls it stealing.As the New Hampshire flag states, “Live Free or Die.” We have to stand up and say, “too much is too much.”

Our federal deficit grows at rate of $20 billion per week! Politicians love to talk about “doing it for the children.” Leaving them riddled with our debt is “doing it to the children.”

Jefferson also said, “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.” We’re passing ours on to future generations.

We can’t sustain this type of spending. One has to wonder if that is the plan. “You never want a good crisis to go to waste” is part of the Cloward-Piven strategy as is “making a weak economy even worse.”

The Cloward-Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Piven. Their goal was to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis would provide the impetus to bring about radical political change. Ring a bell?

Is this the change that 53% of the people voted for? Do we actually want Socialism? Is this the change that Obama was talking about when he said he was going to “fundamentally transform America?”

By definition, Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned and regulated by the community as a whole. Think “collective.”

In Marxist theory, Socialism is a transitional social state between the overthrow of Capitalism and the realization of Communism. Remember the Cloward-Piven strategy?

Liberals and big government proponents want the same government that has bankrupted Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to spend over a trillion dollars on a government healthcare takeover that may bankrupt our country.

Conservatives know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.

We have to be Constitutionalists and stand up for the principles and beliefs upon which this country was founded. Our founders were willing to put their lives on the line for our country – are we?

In 1943, four chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester representing four religions were seen holding hands, praying and singing as their ship sank in the Northern Atlantic. They had just assisted in evacuating the ship, calming down the soldiers and loading them on the lifeboats after giving away their life jackets. These were men of the “greatest generation.” Now, it’s our turn.

Are we willing to get off the couch and call or write our Congressmen? Are we willing to get on our knees and pray for our country? Are we willing as the Revolutionary Flag stated, “Appeal to Heaven?”

If not, we are going to lose our Liberty. We are going to lose our country. This is a time in history that we will look back on one day and wish that we had done more. We will wish that we had made that call to our Congressman, went to that town hall meeting or contacted the White House.

The Tea Party March on Washington was a wake-up call. Stop the out-of-control spending of our money. Stop the corruption. Stop the madness.

Our democratic republic may be in its final hour. I our voices are not heard now, they may be silenced forever.

Send Comments to DennisHPowers@Comcast.net.