Are liberals on the wrong side of history

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/are-liberals-on-the-wrong-side-of-history

by npalli • 9 years ago

26 23 9 years ago

Someone needs to let the author in on the minor fact that classical liberalism and "liberalism" in America today have little to do with each other, and that the "rise of Trump" really has very little bearing on classical liberalism, as devastating as it might seen to American "liberals".

sidlls• 9 years ago

They also should let him know that a series of rambling interludes about various "think pieces" does not a quality narrative make.

I found this to be a terrible read, from start to finish. Perhaps I missed something.

mercer• 9 years ago

I sort of liked the content of the piece even it if does feel a bit rambling.

What bothers me is that I had (slight) difficulty getting through it, but the difficulty wasn't because of the rambling nature but more on sentence-by-sentence level. It seems needlessly convoluted and reminds me of the reams of academic pages I had to read in college.

And it's not like I usually only read 'simple' stuff.

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

Someone needs to tell all American political pundits that the election of a single person, even a party, in a single election means little in terms of history. The US presidential election is no bellwether of world opinion. Liberalism is alive and well amongst the people.

Turing_Machine3• 9 years ago

The Republicans now control the Presidency and both houses of Congress. They will almost certainly wind up controlling the Supreme Court for at least a generation, maybe two. They control 33 state governorships compared to 16 Dems and one Independent. They control 32 state legislatures, 17 with a veto-proof majority. The Dems control 13, 5 of which are veto-proof.

It's not just Trump, and it's not just a single election.

dankohn13• 9 years ago

Gopnik is one of the top intellectuals writing today, and these three books are a great jumping off point for his views on Trump and other illiberalism:

"Perhaps Tocqueville’s most brilliant insight (and Mishra, to his credit, cites it) was that revolutions are produced by improved conditions and rising expectations, not by mass immiseration. As Louis C.K. says, right now everything is amazing and nobody is happy. Each citizen carries on her person a computer more powerful than any available to a billionaire two decades ago, and many are using their devices to express their unbridled rage at the society that put them in our pockets."

theparanoid• 9 years ago

Real income hasn't risen for the median worker in over a decade. Nobody knows how to fix this.

Paying rent without stress is better than any smartphone.

dankohn13• 9 years ago

Real income hasn't risen for the median worker in over a decade. Nobody knows how to fix this.

The fix is as simple as sufficiently progressive taxation to make the median worker's income track the productivity growth of the economy. The fact that we have made the political choices not to follow that path (as opposed to the Scandinavian countries) is a different matter, but there is no doubt as to the ability for the government to fix the problem you laid out.

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

Real income hasn't risen for the median worker in over a decade.

Pretty sure it's closer to four decades.

Nobody knows how to fix this.

Everyone who knows even a little about fiscal policy and it's effect on distribution of gains in the economy knows how to fix it, which is the mirror image of how it was achieved (reduce the degree of additional taxation imposed specifically on both paying and recieving wages, which discourages employment and reduces the returns that are retained by those who are employed.)

That an insufficient number of people choose to act on that knowledge is not because the knowledge is missing, it's because people in power want to preserve the result you seem to view as problematic.

rdtsc2• 9 years ago

The liberal millennium was upon us as the year 2000 dawned; fifteen years later, the autocratic apocalypse is at hand.

Oh please. We lived in a golden age of enlightenment, peace (our past president, did after all get the Nobel Peace prize), and prosperity and now the dark ages have come. Probably brought about completely unexpectedly "by the Russians".

the failure of liberal élites around the world to address the perpetual problem of identity,

Maybe one of the reasons for its failure is precisely because they addressed identity, but in the wrong way -- creating "Identity Politics". Everyone gets to get called by the label they pick for themselves and it seems everything is good. Except it is good only on the surface. Ultimately this is just impotent outrage. Those who have power still do, those that don't still don't, even if they get called however they wanted in the public sphere.

It is interesting that this also gets shuffled over to the "left". That is liberals call themselves "leftists". Except, Marx would have probably laughed at that, and would have said "Why don't you destroy those who have power, instead of just forcing them to call you by a different label".

American atavism has to take into account that the same system that produced Trump had immediately before given us the eight forward-looking years of Obama, who remains a far more popular figure than his successor.

Right. If the years would have been really forward looking and wonderful, we would not have ended up with a TV personality as the president. Trump is just a symptom. People expend tremendous amount of energy trying to get rid of Trump somehow. Marching, talking of impeaching, veiled and misguided hints at assassinations and so on without understanding he is a symptom of something deeper. If he is gone, there would be Trump 2.0 replacing him. And I am sure, just like I've heard people praising G.W. Bush compared to Trump, they'd be praising Trump compared to Trump 2.0.

Toboe• 9 years ago

That is liberals call themselves "leftists"

Liberals call themselves "leftists"? Only ever saw it as a derogatory from the (US) right.

(Edit: fixed formatting screw up)

rdtsc2• 9 years ago

Derogatory to "leftists" or to "liberals"?

cholantesh• 9 years ago

Everyone gets to get called by the label they pick for themselves and it seems everything is good. Except it is good only on the surface. Ultimately this is just impotent outrage. Those who have power still do, those that don't still don't, even if they get called however they wanted in the public sphere.

I don't think this is an accurate reflection of identity politics. Names are only the beginning. They indicate that the group being identified is a legitimate one; once this is established, particular concerns the group has are raised. If you think this is meaningless, consider that transpeople continue to face an uphill battle in being recognized as a substratum of society.

It is interesting that this also gets shuffled over to the "left". That is liberals call themselves "leftists". Except, Marx would have probably laughed at that, and would have said "Why don't you destroy those who have power, instead of just forcing them to call you by a different label".

Identity politics has been practiced by the Left for a long time. The originators of the term were black feminists[1]. As to Marx, his thoughts may be important but they are not the be-all and end-all of leftism. There has been 150 years of evolution under the umbrella, and lots of disagreement, just as there has been on the right.

[1] http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html

mcguire• 9 years ago

One thing you have to say about the criticisms of liberalism and its structural failures that led to WWI: at least communism, national socialism, and various totalitarianisms had some meat to them. These attacks on Enlightenment liberalism are just whining.

kapauldo• 9 years ago

Most of modern history is liberals slowly winning. Gender equality, slavery, gay marriage, Obama care, EPA, you name it. Progress is unstoppable.

Are liberals on the wrong side of history

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