Why the Liberal Dream is Dying

This electoral season does not look good for liberal Democrats. By all current measures, ordinary voters are disillusioned with left-wing policies. They are looking for smaller government, while Obama and his supporters keep promising additional programs.
As a result, the Liberal Dream is dying. Almost everyone, except those on the extreme left, has noticed the trend. But why is this so? Why has a perennially popular set of ideas gone into so drastic a decline?
The answer is found in the contents of the Dream. Its attractions fade as it becomes evident that it cannot make good on its promises. These in brief are:
· Universal Love
That is Government Mediated, and
Led by the Best and Brightest,
So as to banish War, Discrimination, Pollution, Disease, Ignorance, and Poverty.
This will ultimately achieve complete Equality,
By protecting the Underdog, and
Encouraging Self-actualization,
And Total Niceness.
In an earlier column I argued that we cannot become a big happy family because there are too many of us. I also maintained that liberals, far from being the best and brightest, have revealed feet of clay. Here I want to focus on the goal of complete equality—for it too is bogus.
When you ask a young child if everyone is equal, he or she may answer: yes. But ask a college student the same question and the response is a categorical: no. By the late teens, almost everyone learns that life is not evenhanded—that some people make out far better than others.
On the other hand, many of my students at Kennesaw State answer in the affirmative when I inquire into whether they would like me to give everyone an A. As might be expected, the least able students are particularly emphatic in their assent.
The better students, of course, are less energetic. They realize that this would do away with their grade advantage. Nevertheless, not quite sure they want to antagonize their less academically successful peers, they go along with the crowd—but just barely.
When, however, asked about the consequences of eliminating grade disparities, the majority in favor of equality goes weak in the knees. Happy to have their own status upgraded, they are less sure this is a good idea if made universal.
Would they want to be treated by a physician who made straight A’s despite never having attended a class? Or would they appoint a general to lead the army if he never demonstrated superior strategic or tactical skills? In these cases, they are less sure.
Absolute equality sounds good in the abstract, but failing to distinguish between the competent and incompetent would place us at the mercy of inept individuals more frequently than we might prefer. Ranking may not be fair, but it, at least, increases the prospect of expert leadership.
Contrary to what first graders think, the Untied States was not founded on the principle of complete equality, but of legal equality. From the beginning, its laws were supposed to apply impartially to everyone. Even though this is largely unobtainable, it can, in fact, be approached. Total equality cannot—and should not.
Barack Obama and company have demonstrated that they were serious when they argued it was a good idea to transfer resources from the rich to the poor. If anything, they have exhibited a seething hostility to the more prosperous.
But maybe voters are catching on that taking this philosophy to the extreme would be disastrous. If we truly treated everyone as equal, it would not be long before we were all equally poor and oppressed. Total equality would not translate into total democracy, but into an unmitigated thugocracy.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University