Liberalism -- the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

For several decades up to now, American Society has been moving in the direction of Liberalization. In this nanoessay I would like to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of Modern Liberalism.

The Good.​

Some aspects of Liberalism increase Equality and Universal Welfare. The Civil Rights movement, end of overt racial discrimination, and intolerance of Racism are great achievements. Acceptance of the LBGT community is another important achievement of Liberals. In 2010s, even Conservatives accept LGBT community. Milo Yiannapolous and Blaire White are strong Conservative voices. In this respect, Conservatism today is the Liberalism of 1990s.

Now Liberals support positive causes like Universal Healthcare, Universal Welfare, and housing for all people. Many Conservatives have been angry at me for advocating these issues. By arguing against Welfare State, Conservatives are advocating intolerance toward disabled and "non-productive" people. Hopefully, in 20 years most Conservatives will understand that intolerance toward disabled and "non-productive" people is no better then intolerance toward the LGBT community.

Lack of support for people who can not provide for themselves has tremendous costs in human suffering. In USA there are 44 million people with Mental Disability, many of whom do not get the help they need. According to Wikipedia, 27 million people in USA have no health insurance, 43 million people in USA live in poverty, and 1.6 million people are homeless. Many people who have mental illness and no help become prisoners. In 2012, US prisons and jails housed 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness. Liberals are fighting for rights and well-being of these people.

Most Liberals oppose guns. In USA 1999-2015, there have been 198,760 gun homicides and 313,600 gun suicides. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of lives is the price some Americans are willing to pay for the Second Amendment ``rights".

The Bad.​

Legalization of drugs is supported by some Liberals and some Conservatives. Unfortunately drugs are deadlier then guns. In 2016 in USA alone, 64,000 people died from drug overdose. In 2017, the number of overdose deaths in USA has been 72,000. Fentanyl and it's derivatives are the deadliest drugs.

Legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco cause enormous harm. About 264 billion cigarettes and 12.4 billion large cigars are consumed yearly in USA. Tobacco products shorten the lives of 480,000 people a year in USA alone. On average a smoker loses 10 -- 15 years of life. In Russia, sale of tobacco was punished severely during the years 1550 -- 1700.

Marijuana is currently legalized with bipartisan support, but open questions remain. Does Marijuana increase the likelihood of lung cancer? Will Marijuana serve as a gateway drug toward opiates like Fentanyl? Will Marijuana serve as a gateway drug to alcohol and nicotine addiction?

The Ugly.​

Liberalism which moves away from Freedom and Equality toward Censorship, Repression, and Inequality (Positive Discrimination) is ugly. Historical examples Liberalism transforming into Tyranny are the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution began with great achievements including universal education, universal housing, and free medical care for everyone. Except for the times of existential crisis, all people were guaranteed food. All people had a right to a job. Unfortunately, in 1930s, Communism turned to severe Censorship of Press and Speech, along with massive incarceration. A gradual Liberal Revolution which took place in USA between 1960s and now. Unfortunately the excesses of modern American Left are an order of magnitude worse then Soviet excesses of 1930s.

Some critics of modern Liberals compare them to Communists. This comparison is a vast understatement. This comparison is also insulting to Russia, since excesses and abuses practiced in modern USA had no parallel even in Soviet history.

Most Liberals of 1968 advocated Equality between men and women. Over the years the move toward Equality turned into severe and escalating discrimination against men. Men are discriminated in Divorce courts. Male offenders get 62\% longer sentences for the same crimes. Male DV victims are more likely to be arrested then helped.

Many modern Liberals and Feminists are particularly active in pushing Misandry in two areas in particular. First, they advocate Presumption of Guilt for men accused of sexual misconduct. Between 2011 and 2018, about 10,000 male students have been expelled from US universities without any semblance of Due Process. During 2017 and 2018, Mainstream Media considers an accusation of Sexual Misconduct equivalent to guilt. Tens of thousands of men have been fired and some blacklisted on unsubstantiated accusations of Sexual Misconduct. If Presumption of Guilt in Sexual Misconduct cases becomes the standard in the Criminal Justice System, USA may suffer a wave of incarceration worse than anything in the past including the War on Drugs.

Second, many Progressives Media Outlets spread the idea that all men are Oppressors. When men are viewed as oppressors, Hate Speech including eliminationist rhetoric against men becomes acceptable. Washington Post recently (Oct 201 published an article "Thanks for not raping us you 'good men'" in which the author brags about verbally abusing her husband, blames men for all social evils and writes "I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead." Earlier, Washington Post wrote an article on why men should be hated. The most respectable and popular Progressive newspaper The New York Times published "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido" by Stephen Marche which makes a point that men are innately monstrous. A senior Social Media manager of Allure magazine has tweeted that she would be "fine if we get to the point where there are no men in the world". One difference between Communists in USSR and Modern American Left is that Communists never accused any birth group of being irredeemable oppressors. Communists never used eliminationist rhetoric against any birth group. Even during WWII, when Soviet people suffered tremendous losses and hardships from Nazi aggression, no newspaper published eliminationist rhetoric against Germans as people. Many Liberals argue that Hate Speech against men is not a big deal, since most of those among the top 0.1\% of Social Hierarchy are men. Nevertheless, the acceptance of hate speech does harm most ordinary men. First, verbal abuse exacerbates Depression and may cause severe damage to victim's health. Second, the acceptance of hate speech makes other forms of discrimination such as Presumption of Guilt more acceptable.

Another ugly side of Modern Liberalism is the attack on Free Speech. Many Modern Liberals are working hard to deplatform, blacklist, and harass anyone whose speech they find offensive. Generally their efforts are limited to "speech offenders" with wide audience. In 1966, Liberals at Berkeley launched the Free Speech Movement. In 2017, Berkeley Liberals and Antifa staged a violent riot disrupting the speech of Milo Yiannapolous. Since 2012, Liberals have put a great effort into censoring Politically Incorrect Internet. Their efforts have been successful since Spring 2016. By the end of 2018, Strong Conservative presence on Social Media is about 40% of what it was during the peak in 2016. Google has the ability to ban sites from the Internet. Given current trends, in a few years, Liberals will have hegemonic control of Social Media and Internet.

Some Conservatives are unduly optimistic about the effect of Liberal Hegemony and Censorship. They think that Liberal Censorship will drive most Americans away from the Left. Facts and History tell a different story. Surveys indicate that at least 40% of students support censorship. In 2016, when Strong Conservatives were strong on Social Media, Donald Trump won Presidency. In 2018, Democrats won the Congress mainly due to their control of Social Media.

 

The litmus test differentiating between good and bad/ugly is how much a given agenda supports

-- liberty
-- equality
-- fraternity

These were the ideas of the original Liberalism.

The ideas were corrupted during
-- French Revolution
-- USSR 1937
-- China during Cultural Revolution
-- Modern USA

 

America is not moving towards liberalism. It has embraced an extreme form of neo-Liberal economic thinking and has rigidly moved towards neo-conservative social values

Here is an article discussing the meaning of Liberalism:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-liberalism/283780/

 

Communism and Liberalism are very different political ideologies, with very different roots and beliefs. They aren't compatible at all. Marx was not a Liberal, and the Bolshevik revolution was not rooted in Liberalism at all. The French Revolution arguably started out with at least a partial root in Liberalism (which quickly got swept away by authoritarianism, which is fundamentally at odds with Liberalism), but that wasn't the case in Russia (or China, as was subsequently mentioned).

While Communists in Russia and China were doing what they were doing in the middle part of the last century, this is what Liberals were saying:
https://liberal-international.org/w...s/political-manifestos/oxford-manifesto-1947/
Very different from what Communists, or indeed Socialists, were and are saying. Those ideologies really shouldn't be confused, but unfortunately they all too often are, especially where there are established 'binary' political structures of 'us versus them' and a simplistic 'left versus right' scale. 'They are not us, therefore they must be them' is sadly a common assumption, but it's entirely wrong.

The Founding Fathers of the USA did base things on Liberalism, of course. What's gone so badly wrong in the USA (in the opinion of this Liberal, at least!) is that a strand of religious Conservatism bizarrely dedicated itself to 'conserving' the 'purity' of their original statements (via often illiberal, Conservative interpretations anyway) rather than allowing the country to develop its laws alongside the development of Liberalism, as Liberals grasped what they had got wrong in their early formative thinking (mainly that people aren't actually 'born equal' at all, because some are born with vastly superior opportunity and some with virtually none as a result of the circumstances of their birth - their wealth (and the consequences for their likely education and health levels, and so on), their skin colour, their gender, etc., etc. - and that in order for Liberalism to work properly as a system it needs to begin to address those pre-existing inequalities within society). The term 'Progressive' as a vague one, but it does apply in the sense that Liberals are generally pragmatists, willing to accept the evidence about what hasn't worked and to develop their ideas and policies accordingly (while not abandoning their core principles). The particular political circumstances in the USA have prevented that from happening as effectively as it could and should have done - the Conservatives have tried to 'conserve' something that the people who invented it would have undoubtedly long since modified and moved away from in many ways (while still maintaining their core underlying principles, obviously). The rise of Socialism and Communism both in the USA and in other countries, and the confusion between those ideologies and Liberalism in the minds of the generally politically binary of thought, have helped to fuel that issue over the years.

If the USA wants to really stay true to the Founding Fathers, it should probably do better in recognising both their progressive Liberalism in its context of their time, and the way in which their ideological belief has developed and progressed since to compensate for its own past mistakes and inadequacies.

 

I think USA has moved significantly toward Liberalism since 1970.

 

I apologize if I do not have enough Political Science education. In my understanding, The Left, and Liberals are the same. Communism did have a lot of positive ideas and achievements, which were part of Liberalism. People were given a right to

-- Employment
-- Housing
-- Food
-- Medical Care

Sadly during the time of World War and crises years preceding the War there were times of hunger.

 

Of course Founding Fathers established Democracy. But Democracy may lead to the Tyranny of the Majority. In 1776-1861, African Americans suffered terribly. Had Britain won, Freedom of Slaves may have come in 1780s.

 

The "good" describes Fabian socialism and is not a liberal tenet of philosophy.

 

No they did not establish a democracy...The president was elected by Congress...You are confusing the slave trade which is a capitalistic endeavour with people voting for a candidate.

 

Man you just received and "F" in political science.....
Logically the left can't be the liberals because all liberal are not leftist...Are all Republicans conservatives, hell no...Communism is a far left philosophy that has never existed in the world...There were a few attempts but the article of true communism was perverted by dictatorships of authoritarianism.

 

In what way? Have you ever hear of the Powell Memorandum? It is a recipe for what has happened to the US since the late 70's

 

Its hard to know exactly what you're talking about, Conservatives have a tendancy to label anything they don't like as "liberal" and anything that equates to changing something or more government as "liberal." Liberalism is an entire Anglo-American branch of political philosophy, which has been prominent in both Left and Right wing American politics, because the American Left, is actually quite far to the Right. Neoliberalism and Monetarism became near universal ideologies in the era of the Third Way Politics, where you were getting the same policies whether you put in a Democrat or Republican largely, which were pro big business and pro deregulation of financial markets and privatization along with austerity. Equality has been increasing and Universal Welfare has been decreasing, I would hardly say that this means Liberalism is on the rise or we are moving in that direction.

I will in my remarks separate the broader Liberal tradition, from things that are merely labeled "liberal," in modern political parlance.

Acceptance of LGBTQ community is very recent among the Democrat establishment, both Clinton and Obama opposed same sex marriage until recently. And the CRA and VRA were not necessarily achievements of what people refer to as liberals today, who are perhaps more accurately called Progressives or Social Demcrats, the New Dealers are something different and actually quite conservative compared to political movements happening today on the left of the spectrum.

There have been Conservative voices in the Libertarian community who have been accepting of the LGBT community long before Milo and the Alt-Right Brietbart movement interjected themselves into American politics. Conservatism is hardly the Liberalism of the 1990s, "Liberals" in the way you are using it first of all didn't even accept the LGBTQ community, and Conservatism is dominated by the Evangelicals and Catholics more than it is people like Milo, and these groups are ardently opposed to LGBTQ community.

Good, you realize that the kind of self-consuming Capitalism Social Darwin system we are developing is going to produce a traumatized society full of unproductive people.

And Conservatives want zero safety nets for Capitalism, except a six month unemployment and a disability program which hardly keeps you out of extreme poverty. We have a veneer of a safety net right now, and Republicans want to cut taxes even more for the wealthiest and cut and just imagine that all these health problems will go away and these people will magically become very productive if you put enough fire under their rear.

Those on the Left or labeled "liberals" hold different positions on drugs, the most common one is that marijuana should be legalized. Some on the Libertarian Left, and Libertarian Right think the government should get completely out of the business of regulating what people consume and legalize all drugs. I think severe drug abuse should be treated as a health crisis and not a criminal crisis, there is a criminal element to it, but we should not be criminalizing the every day users who are victims of these epidemics, we should be looking to strengthen the rule of law in our neighboring countries and providing better economic opportunities for them so that local farmers aren't forced into drug trade in order to survive, there are many complex problems that have to be worked on in tandem and I don't full legalization is a silver bullet.

I am a survivor of severe PTSD and marijuana saved my life, it never led me to abuse nicotine or alcohol. Yes anything can be addictive including marijuana, but it is mostly the pharmaceutical industry that blocks marijuana because THC and CBD have such broad applications for being alternative treatments to an industry addicted to handing out opioids to people as the only option for pain. I think you should really consider that in your perspective on marijuana.

And I think we have a trauma problem in society, people with horrible pain which produces all kinds of illnesses and bad behaviors for coping with isolation and the degradation of the self and community which spirals into horrific drug abuse. It is as much more a social issue and mental health issue than issue involving criminality.

Liberalism more broadly, has always had problems and tensions and contradictions on this issue. Conservatives talk about censorship when really it is about people being concerned about narratives and ideas being propagated in harmful ways, China is a better example of true illiberalism where you have essentially entire control and regulation of the internet by the central government. Private firms finding that their platform being used to influence and spread hatred turns out ot be bad for business, and that if they don't correct these things, people will merely move to platforms that would. So I don't think the anti-SJW movement is right about the concerns of growing concerns about hate speech in the West, but that they aren't properly seeing this is sometimes perhaps an overreaction to the horribleness emerging from the Right in modern politics and an effort to guard against widespread influence of the young towards these movements. Its a bit paternalistic, but its not like history is not replete with reasons demonstrating why there might be a unified consensus to want to depart from ethnic nationalist politics and that existing institutions in these sphere such as academia, the press and some portions of the government such as the State Department might hold a real interest in keeping this down, because it threatens the rule of law and Constitution. Which I would argue is exactly what we are seeing now from Trump, and why such efforts were made to constrain the conversation in society to be more decent. That certainly backfired with the people who didn't have those same concerns I guess it can be said.

There is some political oppression, but the groups that are legitimately repressed such as the Neo-Nazi National Action group are basically terrorists. And not everyone on the Left is totally on the same page about Affirmative Action, but I don't think that Conservatives have understood why this was pursued and often bring up bad social scientific researchers such as Charles Murray to argue against it. I think we need some kind of Affirmative Action because of the historical issue we have with the African American community, which is a whole debate on its own, and I don't agree that characterizing it as positive discrimination is correct, in that the intent of the policy is not to positively discriminate, but ultimately ends up only passively doing so and actively seeks to increase the proportion of a historically oppressed and impoverished community to have increased social and economic mobility where it otherwise would take longer given no intervention. I don't think it betrays the principle of equality, as it seeks equality on the basis of an unequal starting place for one particular disadvantaged community in a particular context that is based upon meritocratic achievement which is culturally and socially more achievable for much more stable communities, such as white Anglo-Saxons and indeed many Asian communities. Many then say that the Left is babying this community, but I think that just don't understand how generational wealth works, and also how generational trauma can impact people over such a long time to make these problems difficult to fix and doing nothing seems to be a failure to act.

Now you are getting really confused on the usage of the word, French Liberalism is for instance distinct from that of what was expressed in Great Britain. British Liberalism was based a lot on limited government, while in France it was built more on Rousseau's thoughts on the collective public will, and nationalism than what you are referring to as Liberalism in the modern sense. And the Russian Revolution is Leninist-Marxism and an implementation of Socialism into a pre-industrial society, it was not in the least bit Liberal no matter how you define the word.

You're claiming that the excesses of the Left in the 1960s was worse than the excesses of Communism and the Left under Stalin in the 1930s? Wow, that's absolutely nuts. How can some small scale reactionary movements of the young be worse than largescale totalitarian repression and mass employment of slave labor in the gulag camp system?

Okay, you clearly hold some weird views about the Soviet Union as well about the modern Left. Not sure if it is worth my time at this point responding as there seems to be an excessive amount of confusion to clear up. Perhaps I will have the energy and will to do so later.

 

Making drugs illegal has been about as effective as making alcohol illegal. It's enriched the worst offenders both here and abroad. Continuing down the same path of abject failure, including the incarceration of large numbers of our citizens, isn't just "bad" - it's stupid. And, progressives are certainly not the only ones who think so.

And, that goes double for the idiotic approach of making marijuana illegal without any substantiating evidence - something NO libertarian could possibly accept.

Let's not be this ridiculous, OK?

This is more absolute and total nonsense. Sexual assault on women ALMOST NEVER gets prosecuted. Reporting of such crimes is such an ordeal that more than half of all rapes don't even get reported.

The idea that MEN are the ones at risk in prosecution of sexual assault cases is LAUGHABLE.

More abject nonsense. If you read the stats, there IS a serious problem with sexual assault, misconduct and discrimination by men against women in today's society. Addressing that directly is just as much a necessity as addressing any other problem of that magnitude if we are to be a society where citizens are treated equally under the law.

There is a problem concerning what to do about hate speech. Today, we're seeing the advent of the white supremacy movement, supported by this president. Nobody who is interested in our fundamentals of equality as humans, of the benefits of a plural society, of civil rights can ignore these groups. Today, white supremacists celebrate this president - a testament to the direction in which our nation is being led.

 

During 1776-1861, Slavery was supported by the majority in USA. Under Democracy, The Will of the Majority is the Law -- even when the Majority is wrong.

 

I lived in USSR up to 1983. Even though there were many problems, Social Welfare was a positive side.

Scandinavia and Canada have a much better Social Welfare system. They are much more humane then USA.

 

I am saying that the excesses of American Left by 2018 -- not in 1960s are an order of magnitude worse then excesses of Communism in 1930s.

Political Correctness in modern Universities and Silicon Valley in 2018 are large scale totalitarian repression. People who disagree with Leftist world view are afraid to tell anyone for fear of being fired/expelled.

 

About 35,000 men per year are convicted of Sexual Assault in USA. Many of them are convicted on the accuser's word alone. American Penal System is one of the harshest in the World. Penalties are much longer then in Canada or West Europe, let alone Scandinavia.

If Presumption of Innocence is repealed in Criminal Courts as it has been in College Tribunals, we will see a wave of Mass Incarceration greater then the one produced by the War on Drugs.

Fortunately, even Mr. President understands that it is a dangerous time to be a man.

 

I have mentioned several examples of real Hate Speech by Liberals.

Unfortunately a lot of speech which is in no way hating but disagrees with Liberals is labelled Hate Speech. People have been de-platformed and fired for ideas which offend Liberals.

 

Out of every 1,000 rapes in the USA, 994 perps walk free.

Studies show that 1 in every 5 women will be raped at some point in their lifetime.

And, you are worried about the MEN???


Nobody has EVER proposed repeal of the law on presumption of innocence as followed throughout our legal system.

Let's stick with what's really going on.

 

I agree that there are issues here, as we do have a first amendment.

But, it's also the case that hate speech in America is a serious problem. Hate crimes are on the rise, and nobody can deny that it is promoted by an acceptance of hate and white supremacy from the very top of our government on down.

Universities and other educational institutions do NOT have to accept the speech of any person who happens to apply. Furthermore, the student bodies of these institutions do have a legitimate part to play in who is invited to speak. When such institutions ignore their student bodies in making such decisions, it's a legitimate political act to object. The STUDENTS are the customers. It is THEIR time and they are paying.

 

You have no issue here.

I'm sure there is speech you think is just fine and I consider hate speech - or vice versa. But, I don't believe that's the issue.

There is far and away enough hate speech we can both look at and agree is hate speech.

 

Hate speech is free speech. Why try and make the distinction?

Somebody says he hates somebody else. Big deal.

 

There are venues where there aren't restrictions of time, space and/or purpose. For example, these white supremacists can stand on the street corner and say what they will - as long as it doesn't exceed the legal restrictions on speech. There are lots of street corners. They can hold tiki torch marches. They can publish pieces of pure hate in Breitbart.

On a university campus, there are serious restrictions of time and space. Also, the speech there is supported by the financial contributions of the students themselves. Also, the purpose of the institution is significant in choosing who may be invited to speak, as there are numerous people who have highly constructive and well thought out opinions and directions on all manner of subjects.

 

There really aren't such serious restrictions on time and space on college campuses. And who determines whose thought is highly constructive and well thought out?

A lot of what you consider hate speech is really highly constructive and well thought out, but the students will never know, will never have their prejudices challenged because the ptb declare uncomfortable ideas hate speech.

 

Classical Liberalism is the word you are looking for - the ideology on which the founding principles are based. Republicanism as well which is very similar to classical liberalism.

We now live in a world where the left hates classical liberalism and the right hates the principles of Republicanism - the principles on which this nation was founded.