The Problems with American Liberalism

My thesis today: liberty is dying in America not because so many Americans are Right-wing fascists, but because those who support liberty tend to be wishy-washy about it to the point of aiding the enemy.

A leader in The Economist a few weeks back noted that the word "liberal" has lost much of its meaning today. It is hurled as an insult from the right toward those who would desire anything from freedom of choice to increased social welfare policy. Most American leftists accept it as a negative association, and thus tend to build their reputation not on being "liberal" but being "moderate" or "compassionate".

Fat lot of good it does us. In its classic and rational sense, liberal should mean what its etymology implies: one who desires and promites the concept of liberty. On the one hand, the "Libertarian" quadrant is the most real to this original definition: the promotion of personal, economic and political freedom is seen by many Libertarians as the most important ideal for which they should aspire.

However, far too often, the libertarian right voluntarily drowns itself in the muck of the authoritarian right in its pursuit of one goal over all others: economic liberalism. Whilst maintaining individual economic freedom is an important check on the emergence of other forms of paternalism, aligning with the right based on only one part of the liberal equasion is dangerous and has placed our society on the verge of fascism. Assuming that a political movement based on corporate power and anti-welfare-statism is the proper vehicle for promoting economic liberty does not guarantee economic or personal freedom for anyone: it merely lends support to a political demographic which may or may not still want you dead.

The "authoritarian right" is just that - authoritarian. If you have an authoritarian government in power, their economic policy can be of only one type: control. They will invoke the principles of "free trade" when it suits them, but only when it suits them. They will place industry and economic power into the hands not of entrepeneurs, financiers and intellectuals (as would occur in a truly free economy), but in the hands of their most loyal backers and apologists. Men with grand innovations and an eye for opportunity will be brushed aside by men with connections. Corporations will be rewarded and subsidized when they stay in line and support the men in power, and independent apolitical businessmen will find themselves unable to compete with the pork-laden backers of the current despot.

This is the America that the free trade liberals are handing to you. Even if I often disagree with much of what the libertarian left preaches, I know that my freedom and economic future is safer if I team up with the granola Michael Moores and Dhali Lamas of the world, who ultimately respect individual freedom enough to respect my eternal vigilance in defense of my individual economic freedom.

To leftists who think free trade and economic freedom got us to the America you see today, please reconsider: this is not the America we wanted - this is the America that Hitler, Bush and Pinochet wanted. This is not an America that defends economic freedom - this is an America that promotes economic nepoism and financial despotism. The strength of today's pork-laden corporations will not prove a triumph for capitalism, but the death of the dollar and an end to American economic supremacy.