Post-Liberalism: The Death of a Dream

Ted Kennedy is gone now. Many fondly remember him, yet his passing marked an historic inflexion point. With him, vanished many of the furthermost hopes of American liberals.
Kennedy is remembered, for among other things, insisting that “the dream will never die.” The dream, of course, was The Liberal Dream. It is what animated his political career and what still serves as a cynosure for many on the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Nevertheless, that dream is dying. It is failing right before our eyes. Despite the efforts of legions of brave liberal warriors, the next election is liable to prove that its attraction has declined. Thanks to the over-reaching of the Obama administration, the electorate has discovered a renewed affection for smaller government.
The Liberal Dream is, in fact, a complex of ideas. Two of its most important tenets are first, that we as a nation must become one, huge loving family and second, that we must do so under the leadership of the “best and brightest.”
As for the notion that we must unite as if we were members of a single family, this is fatuous. There are too many of us for this to happen. The president periodically insists that we must be each other’s keepers, but how can we be when most of us do not know each other?
A nation of over three hundred million is of necessity a nation of strangers. We may be mutually interdependent, but cannot be personally acquainted with each other. As a result, we cannot literally love one another. We may be respectful and even helpful, yet we cannot experience a genuine affection for others we never encounter.
This is one of the challenges of our modern society. How do we work effectively with so many strangers? Obviously we do, and can probably learn to do so more successfully, but not because we are individually devoted to each other.
Nor can we expect our political leaders always to be among the “best and brightest.” Certainly Obama and his crowd have demonstrated that they are the gang that cannot shoot straight. They were able to win a remarkable political victory, but since then have exhibited a tin ear. Once sensitive to what the public wanted, they subsequently disrespected the complaints of ordinary voters.
Liberals, such as Obama, believe they must protect people from themselves. Presumably only they, the liberals, understand the sort of health care people need. Only they are sufficiently motivated to protect the planet from environmental disaster. Left to their own devices, ordinary citizens would evidently smoke themselves to death, even as they drowned in rising oceanic floods.
Liberals believe they are smarter, better informed, and nicer than the mass of humankind. If some, such as Obama, are indeed very smart, they are certainly not better informed or more moral. Obama himself, for instance, is an economic illiterate. He genuinely seems unaware of the damage chronic deficits can inflict.
Worse than this are our president’s moral lapses. Beyond his arrogant Keynesianism lies a willingness to deceive whomever might interfere with his plans. Rod Blagojevich complained that Obama is “all take and no give,” but he is also all false promises and no delivery. He invariably says what he must in order to manipulate susceptible listeners—the truth be darned.
This is not what liberalism was supposed to be. It was expected to make our lives more satisfying. Unfortunately, it has not—and will not—because it is based on fallacious premises. Liberals are not smarter, or more moral, or more family-oriented. They are merely self-important politicians in search of power.
Liberals have deluded themselves into believing they are whom they claim to be, but their recent failures have sown doubts. And it is these that will be their undoing.
Liberalism is dying because it is faltering. It is dying because more people have noticed it is on life support. The faith that kept it alive is becoming a thing of the past; hence it must rely on ever more grandiose fictions.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University