American liberalism

Franklin D. Roosevelt

American liberalism is a political ideology that dominates the Democratic Party. Its heroes include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King. See also: Liberal and Liberalism

Historian Arnold Toynbee notes of the three dozen or so human civilizations which have appeared in recorded history, only a half dozen remain. His A Study of History traces the birth, growth, breakdown and disintegration common to all defunct civilizations,[1] and speculates as to what phase living civilizations that remain are passing through.[2] Modern American liberalism exhibits much of the characteristics of a civilization in its final phase,[3] unable to perform the creative acts which gave rise to it, and seeking to normalize deviance in its final breakdown stages before it disappears into extinction or merges with and is swallowed whole by competing civilizations.

The Cloward-Pivan strategy, for example, is a policy devoid of any creative impulses or processes and intended to breakdown and destroy existing societial norms and institutions.

## Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 Current status of American liberalism
* 2.1 American liberalism, recent political losses and the aftermath
* 3 American liberalism and liberal elitism
* 4 Liberal Rankings of Congress Members
* 5 American liberalism, demographics and expected tipping point in the decline of American liberalism
* 6 References

## Background[edit]

American liberalism became separated from the benevolence of classical liberalism in the late 19th and early 20th century with the immigration of many European communists and socialists.[4] Gradually, American liberalism adopted the harsh tone and rhetoric of class division, class hate, and class warfare. Since the 1960s, this philosophy of divisiveness and hatred of one's opponents has been transformed into identity politics \- the hardened belief that one's political views and alliances ought to be formed along racial, economic class, and gender lines, with a totalitarian mindset among believers to enforce compliance.

American perennial presidential candidate of the Socialist party. Norman Thomas said, "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."[5]

## Current status of American liberalism[edit]

According to the Gallup Organization, in the United States, 25% of the population were liberals and 36% were conservatives in 2016.[6]

Elizabeth Warren was involved in a identity politics related controversy regarding her claim about having an Native American heritage.[7]

Because she lacked support for her claim and was a vocal critic of Donald Trump, Trump mocked her during the 2016 presidential election and gave her the moniker "Pocahontas".[8]

In 2017, the Financial Times declared about American liberalism:

“  |  ...as Democrats struggle to reinvent themselves in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, their party remains captured by a toxic mix of identity politics and corporate interests. The establishment wing is still convinced that racism and misogyny, not economic populism, sank Mrs Clinton, and that wooing big corporate donors is still the way to victory in the next election.

While money matters, and there may have been some voters who turned away from Mrs Clinton because of gender, the key reason that the Democrats lost in 2016 and are struggling to rebrand themselves is that they have failed to grasp two things.

Firstly, most Americans today care more about jobs than identity, and secondly, the same downward mobility that pushed the white working class towards Mr Trump is moving up the socio-economic food chain, and fast. As research by groups from the International Monetary Fund to the OECD to McKinsey has shown, the technology-related job disruption that resulted in rust belt job losses and wage stagnation since 2000 is beginning to affect white-collar workers across nearly every sector....

But Democrats over-estimated the power and relevance of identity politics (there are still more whites without a college degree than minorities), and underestimated the breadth and depth of labour disruption. In any case, says Robert Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, “it was always a mistake to separate out issues of race and class, because they go hand in hand. In economically insecure times, fear of the ‘other’ increases.” It is a phenomenon exploited by Mr Trump.[9]

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### American liberalism, recent political losses and the aftermath[edit]

See also: American liberalism and 21st century political losses and Opposition to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton email scandal

Hillary Clinton's email controversies hurt her presidential campaign. See: Hillary Clinton email scandal

In 2017, Amie Harris reported at The Hill concerning Hillary Clinton and her reaction to losing the 2016 presidential election:

“  |  They say her string of remarks explaining her stunning loss in November coupled with the public remarks blaming the Democratic National Committee for the defeat — which many took as also critical of Obama — are hurting the party and making the 2016 candidate look bitter.

Democrats say they’d like Hillary Clinton to take a cue from former President Obama and step out of the spotlight.[10]

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In recent years, American liberals have experienced a number of political losses and many liberals in the United States have become embittered (see: American liberalism and 21st century political losses),

In his American Thinker article Mainstream Media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome Epidemic Steve McCann wrote:

“  |  Donald Trump concluded his second week as President of the United States last Friday. Prompted by virtually every utterance and action of the current President, the never-ending demonstrations and delirium of the professional activist Left as well as the Democratic Party hierarchy and much of the mainstream media and entertainment cabal has produced perhaps the most memorable and entertaining fortnight in recent American political history. Judging by their permanent state of hysteria it appears that this assemblage of left-wing factions is unaware that there are, at a minimum, 206 weeks remaining in the Trump presidency. Maintaining the current level of frenzy will be a formidable task.[11] |  ”

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The website Marketwatch reported concerning the aftermath of the 2016 presidential race: Trump’s win is causing a surge in demand for mental health services[12]

Fox News reported in December of 2016:

“  |  The Democratic Party suffered huge losses at every level during Obama’s West Wing tenure.

The grand total: a net loss of 1,042 state and federal Democratic posts, including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships and the presidency.[13]

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FivethirtyEight indicated in their 2017 article Barack Obama Won The White House, But Democrats Lost The Country:

“  |  In his eight years in office, Obama oversaw the rapid erosion of the Democratic Party’s political power in state legislatures, congressional districts and governor’s mansions. At the beginning of Obama’s term, Democrats controlled 59 percent of state legislatures, while now they control only 31 percent, the lowest percentage for the party since the turn of the 20th century. They held 29 governor’s offices and now have only 16, the party’s lowest number since 1920.[14] |  ”

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## American liberalism and liberal elitism[edit]

See also: Liberal elite and Mainstream media and Liberal bias

Emmett Rensen wrote at Vox about American liberalism and liberal elitism:

“  |  There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.

Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, the working class, once the core of the coalition, began abandoning the Democratic Party. In 1948, in the immediate wake of Franklin Roosevelt, 66 percent of manual laborers voted for Democrats, along with 60 percent of farmers. In 1964, it was 55 percent of working-class voters. By 1980, it was 35 percent.

The white working class in particular saw even sharper declines. Despite historic advantages with both poor and middle-class white voters, by 2012 Democrats possessed only a 2-point advantage among poor white voters. Among white voters making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, the GOP has taken a 17-point lead.

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt The consequence was a shift in liberalism's intellectual center of gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.

It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.[15]

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Commenting on Rensen's article, Conor Lynch wrote at Salon:

“  |  “If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence,” Rensin worte, “it’s, Why are they voting against their own self-interest?”

This question was bound to become even more prevalent with the election of Trump, who essentially won by flipping several Rust Belt states that Barack Obama had handily won in 2008 and 2012. Sure enough, many liberals have seemingly doubled down on this smug style...

But this attitude has also been challenged by those on the left who argue that the Democratic Party has to offer a more populist vision and break out of its technocratic bubble in order to start winning elections again.[16]

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Democrats and most media outlets in the U.S. are blatantly liberal.[17] Liberalism in North America today practices three primary tactics to attack the Republican Party, and sometimes to attack American values in general. These three liberal tactics can be pronounced using the following acronym: SIN. Liberals (1) shift the subject, they (2) ignore the facts, and they (3) name call.[18][19]

* Liberals typically support a "mixed" economy, a policy similar to that of fascism.[20]

* Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics. [3]

“  |  There's another goal, from my point of view, which is to try to lay the groundwork for a radical political force which would conceive of itself as distinctly to the left of moderate, reformist American liberals. And that has two aspects. One is to try to change that liberalism, to transform it by analysis, critique, and activism; the second is to build a radical movement which would be an autonomous force in its own right, which would be distinct from the traditional American liberal consensus. This radical part of the program involves not simply supporting the liberal students against conservative students and conservative professors, but trying to act on them, to push them to the left. It also involves trying to find and support, even trying to help create, networks of radical students in law school and of radical professors around the country — students and teachers who see themselves as wanting to go a lot further than most people want to go.[21] |  ”

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## Liberal Rankings of Congress Members[edit]

The National Journal compiles the votes of each congress member each year and uses the information to create rankings[22] of how liberal each member of the United States Congress is. In addition to showing the voting records of each member and given an overall all ranking of liberalness, the National Journal also ranks congress members by liberalness in the areas of social, economic, and foreign policy.

## American liberalism, demographics and expected tipping point in the decline of American liberalism[edit]

See also: American atheism and Decline of atheism and Global atheism

Due to the explosive growth of global Christianity in traditional cultures and their influence on Western Christianity and the higher birth rate of conservative Christians and religious conservatives, social conservatism is expected to rise.

The Birkbeck College, University of London professor Eric Kaufman wrote in his 2010 book Shall the Righteous Inherit the Earth? concerning America:

“  |  High evangelical fertility rates more than compensated for losses to liberal Protestant sects during the twentieth century. In recent decades, white secularism has surged, but Latino and Asian religious immigration has taken up the slack, keeping secularism at bay. Across denominations, the fertility advantage of religious fundamentalists of all colours is significant and growing. After 2020, their demographic weight will to tip the balance in the culture wars towards the conservative side, ramping up pressure on hot-button issues such as abortion. By the end of the century, three quarters of America may be pro-life. Their activism will leap over the borders of the 'Redeemer Nation' to evangelize the world. Already, the rise of the World Congress of Families has launched a global religious right, its arms stretching across the bloody lines of the War on Terror to embrace the entire Abrahamic family.[23] |  ”

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## References[edit]

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/MurProl.php
3. ↑ http://nypost.com/2013/11/02/when-did-white-trash-become-normal/
4. ↑ [2]
5. ↑ http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Norman.Thomas.Quote.FFB1
6. ↑ [US Conservatives Outnumber Liberals by Narrowing Margin], Gallup, January of 2017
7. ↑ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100165458/elizabeth-warrens-native-american-claims-if-she-was-a-republican-the-media-would-call-her-a-racist/
8. ↑ Why Trump Is Still Calling Sen. Warren 'Pocahontas', Townhall, 2017
9. ↑ Economics, not identity, is key to reviving American liberalism, Financial Times, 2017
10. ↑ Dems want Hillary Clinton to leave spotlight by AMIE PARNES, The Hill, - 06/04/17
11. ↑ Mainstream Media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome Epidemic by Steve McCann, American Thinker
12. ↑ Trump’s win is causing a surge in demand for mental health services, Marketwatch 2016
13. ↑ Democrats lost over 1,000 seats under Obama, Fox News, December 2016
14. ↑ Barack Obama Won The White House, But Democrats Lost The Country, FivethirtyEight, 2017
15. ↑ The smug style in American liberalism by Emmett Rensin at Vox, April 21, 2016
16. ↑ The smug style in American liberalism: It’s not helping, folks — but there’s a better way by Conor Lynch, Salon, March 2017
17. ↑ Media Bias basics. Media Research Center.
18. ↑ Scott Baker. Did Herman Cain Give the ‘Don’t Miss’ Speech at CPAC?, The Blaze, February 12, 2011.
19. ↑ YouTube. Herman Cain: "Stupid People Are Ruining America", February 11, 2011.
20. ↑ Video discussion about how modern liberalism is actually fascist by author Jonah Goldberg..
21. ↑ Liberal Values in Legal Education Duncan Kennedy (professor at Harvard Law School)
22. ↑ How the House voted
23. ↑ Why are 2012 and 2020 key years for Christian creationists and pro-lifers?