Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to believe liberals believe in liberalism anymore.
With the obvious global meltdown of Keynesian economics, how could anyone remotely intelligent support the continued deficit spending that is driving the Western World into bankruptcy?
And yet a large proportion of our population still backs Barack Obama for a second term. Yes, some of this is due to the reactionary identity politics the Democratic Party has practiced for so many years and some to the large number of people working for the government and therefore voting their self-interest. Even so, it's difficult to avoid this conclusion:
Liberalism as an ideology is in its death throes. Only the power trip remains.
An indication of this ideological flimflam is the recent braggadocio from various MSNBC hosts that Obama is really the King of Austerity and has spent less than other presidents. Apparently, this assertion was based on the misleading figures of an economist who lumped nearly a year of Obama's expenditures under Bush, including at least half the stimulus, but never mind. What you have is MSNBC, of all paleo-liberal outlets, bragging about their man's lower government spending. Whatever happened to liberalism?
Similarly, and for some time, the Democratic Party is running as far as possible from the Occupy crowd and the relentless demands. Most Democratic leaders know what the majority of the public knows. The Occupiers are retreads from the Summer of Love more likely to be freeloaders or con artists, even rapists, than people with something positive to contribute to society.
Democrats — more of them, I imagine, than will public admit it — are recoiling from Obama's attack on Bain Capital, as well.
Anyone with an IQ in triple-digits knows private equity firms have more potential to revive our economy than recycled government programs out of some five-year plan.
Democrats and liberals are confused. They have to be.
You see this ideological confusion filtering into the arts, as well. Sasha Baron Cohen's latest offering, "The Dictator," with its clever parody of Islamic strongmen, not to mention dimwitted tree-huggers, could have come from a neocon playbook until Gen. Aladeen, played by Cohen, makes a final speech, referencing the "one percent" in a manner that sounded like Obama campaign boilerplate.
It felt so tacked on you knew Cohen didn't really believe it. Two minutes later, he's back to "normal," with Aladeen ordering the murder of his new wife when he discovers she's Jewish.
Given that their ideology is dying, no wonder liberals no longer want to debate the issues. They avoid serious discussion at every possible juncture, changing the conversation to putative racism, sexism, classism — anything but the proverbial elephant in the room, economic demise.
And yet — as I mentioned — the polls still show Obama even with Mitt Romney. How can we explain this?
Liberalism may not exist, but the lust for power does. And their need to cling to this power is so great they are willing to ignore reality and to forget their children, the ones who will suffer most from the economic cataclysm of their own ideology. They will literally do anything or say anything to maintain control. They will even contradict everything they stand for to survive.
But secretly — I am more than ever convinced — many of them know they are wrong. Our job is to bring them over. And bring them over soon before it is too late for all of us.
To find out more about Roger L. Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
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Sir;... With allowing for every bit of respect you may have coming in this life and the next, you are still and idiot... Liberalism and liberty are synonymous in the respect that one can only enjoy what one allows...To say it is an ideology in its death throes shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept, which is not in any sense a true concept, or one that an ideology can be built around...
For example: We know slaves are not free as we consider freedom...Those who consider the master may conclude he is free, but only relatively more able, and less restrained... It is because his notion of freedom does not allow for liberality, because his choice is to take his welfare out of the mouths of others, out of their sweat and labor, that he can never rest easy, or be truly free... He must be constantly on guard to protect what he has himself taken from others...He must consider that any mercy he shows might be thought weakness, and he must know that he is possessed by the very people he seeks to possess, that they could live as well without a master, but he would not live so well without they...
Liberty as a form of relationship is one that is shared by all, enjoyed by each, and defended collectively... It is primarily the churches in the name of theocracy and antagonistic to democracy who have become the first enemy of liberty...They take advantage of the privilage granted by the constitution to attack the liberty under which that constitution became law...They have formed a new alliance with the wealth and power as in the old days to make common cause against liberty which they take quite correctly to be their implacable foe... Liberty does not exist beside privilage...Privilage demands more and more of the body politic until it has destroyed the whole society... Democracy demands political equality, and economic inequality results in political inequality, and who can prove otherwise??? It is becoming clearer by the day, that in politics, money talks, and the people cannot be heard... What is their right???
The rights of the people, which is their power and their freedom is invested in each generation by the last generation, to protect and to defend, and if we find we must fight and perhaps die for the freedom past generations fought for and thought secure then better fight, or die...We may enjoy our rights or suffer their loss, but it is the whole society that has them, that must defend them, and that must allow them... To follow the churches into the belief that it takes an act of God to give rights, and only a majority vote to take rights is to follow them into slavery...
The privilage of the churches to abuse the people of their rights is one that comes out of the rights of the people... People pay for their rights as the churches do not...They must often die in defense of their rights as churches cannot... To say the constitution allows the churches to exist as the sworn enemy of rights is to conclude that the constitution provided for its own destruction, and in a sense it has, because in providing for privilages not enjoyed by all, it gave unequal power to some, and in time those with more power have become all powerful, more powerful than the people or their government...
Liberalism is opposed to conservatism, not in reality, but in the minds of reactionaries... All people are conservative... Conservatism is the most observable quality of human nature... If people are free, they are liberal, which does not mean they are not conservative...In a revolutionary society as ours is, formed out of revolution, it is to revolutionary principals that we should most cling, and try to preserve...The try to twist the hands of time behind its back and force humanity into servitude and Feudal debt is no part of conservatism...We see in the forms of relationship we create, social forms like Marriage, or Government, or law, that people act with the purpose of conserving the good they have attained, and preserving it for all time...But forms do not last for ever... A form of dwelling may last for a generation or two, but in time it must be replaced, or rebuilt... Our constitution as a form must be replaced because the privilages it allowed have become the enemy of the liberty under which it was fashioned...
For you to celebrate the death of liberalism means you think liberty is doomed; and you may be correct... If the people do not act, and better, act with an understanding of what they are about, and how their world is changed, and how the world is always changed: Through a change of Forms, which requires a change of mind, then certainly their liberty is dead; but if our liberty is dead then with it goes every defense of the privilages we have grown accustomed to...Your attack on liberalism is an attack on your right to be heard on the subject...How does it feel??? Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat May 26, 2012 5:17 AM
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