Is Liberalism a Flying Saucer Cult?

It was an intriguing question. What would happen to a religious cult that predicted the end of the world when the world was not destroyed on the predicted date? Would the believers go into shock? Would they suddenly realize that they were in error and abandon their faith? Or would they react otherwise?
The answer was the latter. In a classic study conducted over half a century ago, the social psychologists Leon Festinger and Stanley Schachter were in for a surprise. As they reported in When Prophesy Fails, members of these groups find a way to rationalize their mistakes. They decide perhaps that they miscalculated the date, or that the space aliens took pity on the human race, or that their own faith forestalled the catastrophe.
True believers have a way of believing no matter what the facts. When these contradict their predictions, they merely alter the predictions. Paradoxically, rather than be embarrassed, they become more committed. Instead of hiding away in shame, they intensify their proselytizing efforts.
But isn’t this what we have seen with liberals? Haven’t they found a way to rationalize their failures? When they do not deliver on their promises, they merely offer bigger and better ones. Rather than back off, they become more vocal and more certain in what they predict.
Consider the Great Depression. When Franklin Roosevelt’s spending programs did not restore prosperity, his acolytes explained that he had done “too little, too late.” They insisted that bigger government programs would surely do the trick. Indeed, they are still making such claims. Today, of course, they predict that unprecedentedly large “stimulus” packages will bring renewed growth.
Or what about poverty? Didn’t liberals institute a War on Poverty? According to them, providing the underprivileged with larger welfare checks and greater training opportunities would to lift them into the middle class. Only it didn’t. Liberal programs actually increased the number of people on the dole.
And how about Progressive Education? Wasn’t that supposed to improve student’s performances by allowing them to initiate their own projects? Except that this is not what happened. In the real world, math and reading scores went down. Rather than leading the world in educational achievement, the United States fell to the bottom of the pack.
Even in crime, liberal prophesies failed to come true. Liberals told us that poverty was the root cause of crime. They also said that punishing law-breakers labeled them as criminal and therefore encouraged further crime. They answer was to defend the rights of the accused. In this way, we would stop “blaming the victims.” And yet this approach also failed. In fact, under liberal tutelage crime rates skyrocketed.
Still liberals do not give up. Now they want to throw more money at schools and at welfare. They especially want to chuck tons of money at health care. Medicare and Medicaid are going broke (as is Social Security), but they are not alarmed. President Obama, with a straight face, promises that he will find the required funds by reducing waste and inefficiency.
The trouble is that no liberal administration has ever made good on any such promise. They have always managed to spend more than forecast and to spend much of this on political allies—such as labor unions. Why should this time be different?
One of the most amusing spectacles of the Bush administration was when liberal reporters badgered Bush to admit that he had been mistaken about Iraq. The irony was that these same journalists never admit their own errors. Nor do liberal politicians. Obama could not even bring himself to acknowledge that the Iraqi “surge” succeeded.
As true believers, we can expect nothing less from liberals. They are essentially waiting for the flying saucers to land and bring lots of goodies. But fear not, when the date of their predicted arrival comes and goes, they will have a ready explanation. They will tell us that they have not done enough, but next year—or maybe the year after—the millennium will finally arrive.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University