Melvyn L. Fein - Post-Liberalism: The Death of a Dream

POST-LIBERALISM

The Death of a Dream

Melvyn L. Fein

With a new preface by the author

First published 2012 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2011049669

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fein, Melvyn L.

Post-liberalism : the death of a dream / Melvyn L. Fein.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4128-4608-0

1. Liberalism. 2. LiberalismPhilosophy. I. Title.

JC585.F3945 2012

320.51dc23

2011049669

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-6405-3 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-4608-0 (hbk)

It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you cant fool all of the people all the time.

Abraham Lincoln

Liberalism may be dying, but it is obviously taking a very long time to expire. In the meantime, its tentacles have invaded nearly every aspect of our society. So many of its minions are entrenched in our political, educational, and cultural institutions that they are difficult to extirpate. Indeed, the last several years have demonstrated just how intractable their belief system can be. Despite an unprecedented series of failures, liberalism continues to dominate our national agenda. As a result, a continuous barrage of promises and insults assault our ears. These, however, are a sign of desperation, not of confidence.

And yet there is good news. Liberalism is committing suicide. Its most dedicated supporters are in the process of destroying its credibility. In their stout defense of the indefensible, they have highlighted the bankruptcy of their ideology. Over the last several years, they have made so many blunders and told so many lies that it is difficult for any but the most the most hardened fanatics to overlook their incompetence. It is with good reason that most Americans are convinced that our country is moving in the wrong direction.

In Post-Liberalism, I argued that cognitive dissonance has promoted rampant denial among the true believers. As the facts go against them, they more stridently insist that all is well. The Obama administration has thus piled its canards ever more deeply. Did we get hope and change? Has our health system been repaired or our reputation been enhanced in foreign lands? Is this the most transparent government in American history? The realities argue otherwise.

So what has been the response? We are now told that Radical Islamists will lose a recruiting tool if we close the Guantanamo Bay prison, even though they continued to sever heads after the release of top commanders. We are assured that millions of new jobs are being created, despite the fact that job participation is lower than it has been in decades. The way the liberals tell it, they are all that stands between us and raging injustice. They must consequently man the barricades or else oppression will stalk our streets.

But consider some of the things that have happened on their watch. The Internal Revenue Service has targeted taxpayers because of their political affiliations. The Veterans Administration has allowed wounded soldiers to die on faked waiting lists. An American ambassador was not protected when terrorists attacked him in an American compound. The president drew a Red Line in Syria and then, against the recommendations of his advisors, pretended he never had. Likewise millions of illegal immigrants have flooded our borders and been allowed to remain unmolested irrespective of the crimes they committed. Nonetheless, we are told that there is in this not a smidgeon of corruption in any of this.

Barack Obama guaranteed that Americans could keep their doctors and their health plans under the Affordable Care Act. He also certified that the costs would go down. We were similarly informed that the website on which people could enroll would be as easy to navigate as Amazon.com. Although none of this came to pass, we are still being told that Obama Care is a roaring success. Many of its exchanges are going broke, but this is a hiccup in the broader scheme of things.

As for foreign policy, the accomplishments are routinely applauded. Obviously Al-Qaida is on the run and ISIS has not become an existential threat. Although in two years we dropped fewer bombs on these radicals than we did on Saddam Hussein in two days, our policy of containment is working. Nor will Iran violate its agreement on refraining from building an atomic bomb. That the Ayatollahs are testing rockets capable of delivering such a weapon is no problem. That this breaches a United Nations resolution is beside the point. Liberals still believe that if we are nice to our adversaries, they will eventually be nice to us. Russia will step back from the Ukrainian border and China will stop converting artificial islands into airbases. They will, at long last, get on the right side of history.

Although most Americans do not believe that our economy has recovered from the last recession, liberals insist that it has. Likewise although a majority of Americans realize that Obama is a feckless diplomat, his supporters believe that he earned his Nobel Peace Prize. The question is how long can this go on without people recognizing that liberal principles are responsible for a host of failures? Was Lincoln wrong to believe that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time? Will the liberals be able to get away with it?

Out in society at large, children are actually sent home from school for playing with imaginary guns, college students demand safe places where they will never hear an offensive word, and police officers are no longer allowed to defend themselves when they are attacked. Meanwhile protesters demand that Black Lives Matter, but tolerate robbery and homicide as natural accompaniments of being poor. By the same token, most Americans have accepted gay marriage; yet do little to stem the tidal wave of unwed parenthood. As for the government, it offers sympathy, but not much else, to these victims of liberal compassion.

If the Inverse Force Rule is correct, that is, if weak social forces are what hold large societies together, then we can expect the momentum toward a more centralized government to reverse. A hundred years ago Americans were becoming aware of the danger of concentrating too much power in the hands of industrial titans. They began to support a progressive government to serve as a counterweight to unrestrained monopolies. Today it is the government that has become the rapacious behemoth. As its bureaucratic agencies have proliferated, they have become rigid and unresponsive. Empire building administrators care more about their perquisites than protecting the public. All this becomes more evident as we witness organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency regulate mud puddles on family farms. These bureaus have become despotisms responsible only to themselves. Nor is our president retrained by a congress than cannot undo his executive actions. As long as he has a pen and a telephone, he does whatever he wishes.