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).