A great question that Ben Shapiro addresses here: Ben Shapiro : What Happened to Liberalism? – Townhall.com.
In particular, I like his discussion of how John Steinbeck, once considered a serious voice for liberalism, has been marginalized because he refused to go along with the dismantling of all moral barriers and disparaging of patriotism so popular amongst 60s liberals and their intellectual progeny:
Whereas today’s liberal spokespeople have been infected by a virulent anti-Americanism that sees all businessmen as profiteers and all public workers as saints, Steinbeck was a patriot. He worried about the lack of kindness he saw in his fellow men, particularly the willingness to cut corners to make a buck — but at the same time, he saw the virtue of freedom.
In 1960, Steinbeck wrote a piece in Newsday magazine in which he explained his view of morality. “[It's] very clear that peoples are strong when they are moral in the sense that the good of the group or the nation takes precedence over the selfish good of the individual. And we know from many examples of the past that when this is reversed and the individual raids the public good for his own purposes, the laws of decay have set in.” In short, a nation comprised of a group of individuals governed by a common morality is stronger than an agglomeration of atomistic individuals acting solely for their own benefit.
Steinbeck’s brand of liberalism made political debate a real possibility. After all, conservatives agree that men are neither angels nor devils, and that not everyone will behave with the same honor as an Ayn Rand-ian hero. Steinbeck’s solution to the problem of “immorality” was not necessarily more government, but better men in government, and not necessarily more regulation, but more self-regulation. (emph. added) Communal standards were important, but there was no guarantee that government would be the best judge of communal standards. As Steinbeck wrote shortly before his death, “It is our national conviction that politics is a dirty, tricky and dishonest pursuit and that all politicians are crooks. The reason for this attitude is fairly obvious — we have had cynical and dishonest officials on all levels of our government.”
Yet now we are continually bombarded with the idea that government is the answer to everything! People who maintain this have obviously not paid much attention to…oh…4500 years of recorded history. The main thing that more government brings is more oppressive government!
To quote Ben Franklin: “Those who would trade liberty for security will have neither”
Declaration of Independence revisited
In rereading the text of the Declaration of Independence, I am struck by how much of it reads like it could have been written yesterday. I know that some (probably my son included) will object that I am being overly dramatic. However, over and over again the political class in Washington has shown that they are turning a completely deaf ear to the genuine concerns of everyday people outside the Beltway:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. (emph. added)
While this paragraph was specifically addressed to “the present King of Great Britain”, the track record of “a long train of abuses and usurpations” is just as easily demonstrated on the part of the Beltway elites of both parties– members of all three branches of government. When was the last time that the question of whether or not the Constitution actually gave the government authority to “do something” in a particular case was even given serious consideration? No, instead the term “unconstitutional” has become only a convenient term clever lawyers use to manipulate the system to their own advantage. The term has been so abused over the last 50 years that it has totally lost its meaning!
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
When people have tried to petition their “representatives”, they have been rebuffed at every turn. This first became apparent to me during the immigrant amnesty controversy 2 years ago. Letters and e-mails to elected representatives received responses which were patronizing beyond belief, amounting to little more than a pat on the head and a “there, there, we know better than you do”. When I and many other strongly objected to President Bush’s dismissive tone of those who objected to the amnesty bill, those whom we had voted for publicly vilified us as being “ignorant” and “hateful”, and then such people as John McCain and Lindsay Graham turn around and expect us to vote for them again.
More recently, objectors to the pork-laden “stimulus” bill or the MASSIVE deficits being created are derided as “astroturf” protestors, called “nazis” or mocked with a vile sexual variant on “teabags”. We expect this from the sycophants in the MSM…where it gets a little harder to stomach is when this comes from our “elected representatives” who don’t represent anyone but themselves and their own radical agenda.
The anger that boiled over during the townhall meetings this summer is born of the very real frustration that average people outside the Beltway are feeling more and more that “our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” As Congress and the President seem hellbent on ramming this excreble “health care reform” down the throat of a people who more and more are saying we don’t want it, they should know our patience is not unlimited.
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Posted in General, Social Commentary