Has Liberalism Changed?

[LinusK]

The Bernie/Hillary split as a convenient example, though not perfect.
Bernie seemed to be a thouroughgoing old school liberal. Hillary was sort of a half-assed new liberal.

What I’ll call “old school” liberalism had several core principles.
One was support for the working class, combined with opposition to what I’ll call the ownership class - rent seekers, and others who are rich, but don’t work.
Another was support for freedom of speech, combined with the rejection of dogma.
A third was opposition to classification, or different treatment of people, on the basis of race or gender, or religion. MLK’s “I Have A Dream,” is an example.

There are others, but I’ll leave it there for now.

New school liberalism, on the other hand, embraces identity politics. To be non-white, non-Christian, or non-male is something to be celebrated. New school liberalism separates people into two groups: the privileged, and under-privileged. They’re identified, not by wealth; but by race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. To celebrate African American heritage is admirable. Celebrating white heritage is racist. Similarly, “A Day Without Women” is encouraged. “A Day Without Men” is sexist.

It’s an explicit rejection of MLK’s idea. It creates concepts like “micro-aggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and violent protests against the possibility of someone speaking who is antithetical to new liberalism’s agenda. It is, in other words, not at all friendly toward free speech.

The dichotomy is not new, exactly. It’s been around at least 30 years. But new liberalism seems to be on the ascendency, and old liberalism seems to be waning.

So my question is, is this something only I have noticed, or have others noted the same thing?

[Procrustus]

I don’t see it. Nor do I agree with your analysis. Sounds like something a conservative might say about liberals.

[Velocity]

I think one way in which liberalism has changed is that it has become more sexually restrictive; no longer a “free love” movement, and in fact, in some ways, wants to regulate what people do in the bedroom just as much as conservatives do.
For instance:

1. If I understand correctly, there is a law in Canada that bans a lot of consensual BDSM activities. The law says that people cannot consent to an assault that causes physical harm, which therefore bans a lot of consensual flogging, caning, etc.

2. Today, many liberals attack Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity almost as much as, or as much as, moral conservatives in the 1990s.

3. Liberals are criticizing pornography more and more, although this isn’t new; I understand that the feminist movement in the 1970s was already quite anti-porn.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Velocity

1. If I understand correctly, there is a law in Canada that bans a lot of consensual BDSM activities. The law says that people cannot consent to an assault that causes physical harm, which therefore bans a lot of consensual flogging, caning, etc.

2. Today, many liberals attack Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity almost as much as, or as much as, moral conservatives in the 1990s.

3. Liberals are criticizing pornography more and more, although this isn’t new; I understand that the feminist movement in the 1970s was already quite anti-porn.

Can you cite any of these claims? Because:

1. A quick reading of the law is that serious harm is what’s banned by Canada’s law–harm equivalent to getting banged up in a rugby match is okay. The law doesn’t address sex specifically, from my (again very quick) reading: you can no more agree to punch it out in the bar’s parking lot than you can agree to choke your sex partner into unconsciousness.

2. I’ve heard very few serious attacks on Clinton for infidelity, but plenty of attacks on him, from the left and the right, for possible sexual assault.

3. There are no signs at all that criticism of porn is on the increase on the left.

[LinusK]

@Velocity

I think one way in which liberalism has changed is that it has become more sexually restrictive; no longer a “free love” movement, and in fact, in some ways, wants to regulate what people do in the bedroom just as much as conservatives do.
For instance:

1. If I understand correctly, there is a law in Canada that bans a lot of consensual BDSM activities. The law says that people cannot consent to an assault that causes physical harm, which therefore bans a lot of consensual flogging, caning, etc.

2. Today, many liberals attack Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity almost as much as, or as much as, moral conservatives in the 1990s.

3. Liberals are criticizing pornography more and more, although this isn’t new; I understand that the feminist movement in the 1970s was already quite anti-porn.

The split between old-school liberals and feminists was still sensitive all the way through the 80’s. It wasn’t until the internet made porn ubiquitous and uncensorable that feminists gave up on it. Now they mostly focus on making women in the sex industry into victims.

[Kimstu]

@Velocity

I think one way in which liberalism has changed is that it has become more sexually restrictive; no longer a “free love” movement, and in fact, in some ways, wants to regulate what people do in the bedroom just as much as conservatives do. […]

2. Today, many liberals attack Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity almost as much as, or as much as, moral conservatives in the 1990s.

This makes no sense. In the first place, as LHoD pointed out, you need to show a cite for the claim that liberals are increasingly “attacking” Clinton’s marital infidelity.

In the second place, objections to adultery are not about sexual restrictiveness but about relationship ethics. Most liberals don’t give a hoot if you have consensual sex outside marriage as long as your spouse is fine with it. It’s the cheating and lying aspects of adultery that liberals condemn, not the sexual-permissiveness aspects.

Likewise, liberals object to rape, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, etc., because they’re coercive and unethical, not because they’re some kind of “unregulated” “free love”. Liberals in general don’t have any problem with actual “free love”.

[Ambivalid]

@Velocity

I think one way in which liberalism has changed is that it has become more sexually restrictive; no longer a “free love” movement, and in fact, in some ways, wants to regulate what people do in the bedroom just as much as conservatives do.
For instance:

1. If I understand correctly, there is a law in Canada that bans a lot of consensual BDSM activities. The law says that people cannot consent to an assault that causes physical harm, which therefore bans a lot of consensual flogging, caning, etc.

2. Today, many liberals attack Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity almost as much as, or as much as, moral conservatives in the 1990s.

3. Liberals are criticizing pornography more and more, although this isn’t new; I understand that the feminist movement in the 1970s was already quite anti-porn.

Wut.

[Pleonast]

I’d rather look at a longer time frame. Compare Classical liberalism - Wikipedia to Social liberalism - Wikipedia.

In my opinion, the essence of the change is a shift of priority from limitations on the government to guarantees to the governed. That is, a change from “the state cannot do this” (for example, not restrict speech) to “the state must do this” (for example, provide for the indigent). Of course, there’s a fuzzy boundary and a lot of overlap between the two types of liberalism–it’s the priority that makes the difference.

Also, it’s best to keep in mind that the opposite of “liberal” is “authoritarian”. The axis is more freedom of the governed versus more control by the government. And the opposite of “conservative” is “progressive”. The axis is more versus less caution about change.

[Ambivalid]

@Ambivalid

Wut.

Just to clarify, I’m not familiar with any of those things supposedly happening to liberalism.

[marshmallow]

Liberal can mean whatever you like. When socialists complain about liberals they mean capitalists. When white nationalists complain about liberals they mean non-racists. Right libertarians like to call themselves classical liberals.

The Democratic Party was taken over by neo-liberals and third way corporatists during the Clinton era. New Deal thinking has been moribund for decades, with its last gasp represented by marginal Sanders and Warren types. It’s been the subject of much commentary and angst on the left for years. Chris Hedges wrote a lot about it, charting the death of liberal pillars like unions, the church, the arts, and the press. This was him back in 2012, basically predicting Trump and blaming it on corporate liberals:

The ineffectiveness of the liberal class, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia and as was true in Weimar Germany, perpetuates a dangerous political paralysis. The longer the paralysis continues, the longer systems of power are unable to address the suffering and grievances of the masses, the more the formal mechanisms of power are reviled. The liberal establishment’s inability to defy corporate power, to stand up for its supposed liberal beliefs, means its inevitable disappearance, along with the disappearance of traditional liberal values. This, as history has amply pointed out, is the road to despotism. And we are further down that road than many care to admit.

Any mass movement that arises—and I believe one is coming—will be fueled, like the Occupy movement, by radicals who have as deep a revulsion for Democrats as they do for Republicans. The radicals who triumph, however, may not be progressive. Populist movements, from labor unions to an independent press to socialist third parties, have been destroyed in the United States. A protofascist movement that coalesces around a mystical nationalism, that fuses the symbols of the country with those of Christianity, that denigrates reason and elevates mass emotions will have broad appeal. It will offer to followers a leap from the deep pit of despair and frustration to the heights of utopia. It will speak in the language of violence and demonize the vulnerable, from undocumented workers to homosexuals to people of color to liberals to the poor. And this force, financed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, could usher in a species of corporate fascism in a period of economic or environmental instability.

The OP mostly aimed his ire at identity politics and campus progressivism, but those have been subsumed into the party politics in my estimation because that’s a less threatening moral crusade than going after their own donor class. During the Dem primary you did see some mildly interesting grass roots debates between socialists and liberals. Liberals think socialists focus too much on class and don’t think racism or sexism would go away just because of wealth sharing, socialists think liberals are in thrall to the capitalist divide and conquer strategy. Nothing too new there, though.

As for Bill Clinton and Lewinsky, I’d think most people would be against bosses having sex with their interns, and other relationships with such unbalanced power dynamics.

Pleonast: On most political charts I’ve seen the axes are authoritarian/libertarian, left/right. Yours works too, though.

[LinusK]

While I think Trump is merely a narcissitic con-man - not a fascist - I agree with Chris Hedges.

It’s sad we can spend billions on invading Iraq, but can’t build high-speed trains, or a nation-wide wireless platform, or even fund basic infrastructure. Not to mention expanding Medicare to cover everyone. These are things that would create real jobs while creating long-term investments right here at home.Creating a better country - and one with higher wages for workers - should be the liberal platform.

Instead it seems they’re mostly concerned with bathrooms and Caitlyn Jenner, and how many black people have won Oscars.

[igor_frankensteen]

The biggest challenge I can see with TRYING to discuss this, is that there has never been any real authority to go to, to figure out what either “liberalism” or “conservatism” is.

Especially here in the US, they are name/labels which have been around for a very long time, but the people who adopt them or have them slapped over them, rarely seem to match up together all that much.

I think it would be more accurate, or perhaps more readily possible to talk instead, about what goals or national policies or areas of focus, have changed over the years.

Lots of issues have changed, but not really because “liberalism” changed, so much as because the world overall changed, and the issue lost it’s political significance.

And there have been a lot of issues that came to be symbolic of “liberalism,” but which really shouldn’t have. A lot of them were what I think of as “the stuff the acolytes, wannabees and other people who are only in it for the excitement do or say.” Pretty much all of the things that the Anti-Liberals of the world like to point to, are the things that the “wannabees” thought they should get self-righteous about, rather than what the genuine thoughtful “true liberals” stood for.

Conservatism has the same problem. There’s nothing truly “conservative” about wanting to ignore the environment, or to absolve rich people from being held responsible for their actions, but there are a lot of ostentatious wannabees who pretend that that’s what “conservatism” really means.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@LinusK

Instead it seems they’re mostly concerned with bathrooms and Caitlyn Jenner, and how many black people have won Oscars.

It’s not liberals who are obsessed with these issues. Look at the liberal focus through any reasonable lens–the Democratic 2016 platform, bills introduced in Congress, column inches in the NYT or Washington Post, you name it–and you’ll see far more time spent by liberals on issues like environmental concerns, economic issues, and international issues.

Yes, issues of gender and sexual preference are important to liberals, despite what you’d prefer. But suggesting that liberals are “mostly concerned” with these issues is divorced from reality.

[Buck_Godot]

The main thing that i see that has changed between the modern liberal movement and the tradtional liberals of the majority 20th century is the death of unions. Back in the day, Liberals were pro labor and so could count on working class votes, but these days labor is effectively dead and the Republicans have used trickle down economic theory to convince low income workers that expanding corporate profits will bring jobs, even as the main way they achieve these high profits is by cutting labor costs.

[Kimstu]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It’s not liberals who are obsessed with these issues. Look at the liberal focus through any reasonable lens–the Democratic 2016 platform, bills introduced in Congress, column inches in the NYT or Washington Post, you name it–and you’ll see far more time spent by liberals on issues like environmental concerns, economic issues, and international issues.

Exactly. In fact, it was the Republican Congress that consistently killed infrastructure-building efforts by the Obama administration, both because they wanted to prevent Obama from gaining a popular successful achievement and because they wouldn’t stand for the small tax increase on the very wealthy that would have been instituted to pay for it.

@Buck Godot

Back in the day, Liberals were pro labor and so could count on working class votes, but these days labor is effectively dead

Liberals are still pro labor. To the extent that unions still survive in the US workforce, it’s because liberals have been fighting for workers’ rights to organize.

The chief reason that workers’ power is nonetheless so diminished nowadays is because, as you noted, conservatives have exploited antigovernment rhetoric and “social conservative” issues such as gay and trans rights, abortion, etc., to distract low-income white workers from their own economic interests.

[Johnny_Ace]

The ineffectiveness of the liberal class, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia and as was true in Weimar Germany, perpetuates a dangerous political paralysis. The longer the paralysis continues, the longer systems of power are unable to address the suffering and grievances of the masses, the more the formal mechanisms of power are reviled. The liberal establishment’s inability to defy corporate power, to stand up for its supposed liberal beliefs, means its inevitable disappearance, along with the disappearance of traditional liberal values. This, as history has amply pointed out, is the road to despotism. And we are further down that road than many care to admit.

Any mass movement that arises—and I believe one is coming—will be fueled, like the Occupy movement, by radicals who have as deep a revulsion for Democrats as they do for Republicans. The radicals who triumph, however, may not be progressive. Populist movements, from labor unions to an independent press to socialist third parties, have been destroyed in the United States. A protofascist movement that coalesces around a mystical nationalism, that fuses the symbols of the country with those of Christianity, that denigrates reason and elevates mass emotions will have broad appeal. It will offer to followers a leap from the deep pit of despair and frustration to the heights of utopia. It will speak in the language of violence and demonize the vulnerable, from undocumented workers to homosexuals to people of color to liberals to the poor. And this force, financed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, could usher in a species of corporate fascism in a period of economic or environmental instability.
The ineffectiveness of the liberal class, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia and as was true in Weimar Germany, perpetuates a dangerous political paralysis. The longer the paralysis continues, the longer systems of power are unable to address the suffering and grievances of the masses, the more the formal mechanisms of power are reviled. The liberal establishment’s inability to defy corporate power, to stand up for its supposed liberal beliefs, means its inevitable disappearance, along with the disappearance of traditional liberal values. This, as history has amply pointed out, is the road to despotism. And we are further down that road than many care to admit.

Any mass movement that arises—and I believe one is coming—will be fueled, like the Occupy movement, by radicals who have as deep a revulsion for Democrats as they do for Republicans. The radicals who triumph, however, may not be progressive. Populist movements, from labor unions to an independent press to socialist third parties, have been destroyed in the United States. A protofascist movement that coalesces around a mystical nationalism, that fuses the symbols of the country with those of Christianity, that denigrates reason and elevates mass emotions will have broad appeal. It will offer to followers a leap from the deep pit of despair and frustration to the heights of utopia. It will speak in the language of violence and demonize the vulnerable, from undocumented workers to homosexuals to people of color to liberals to the poor. And this force, financed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, could usher in a species of corporate fascism in a period of economic or environmental instability.

I’m not particularly impressed with a commentary on Nazism lifted straight from any serious history book that includes the subject. Apparently the only thing Hedges has done that’s noteworthy at all is to apply it to the modern day. Duh.

(And no, I don’t care that it was done four or five years ago, when there had already been a full term’s worth of racist agitation by the right against Obama.)

[septimus]

@LinusK

While I think Trump is merely a narcissitic con-man - not a fascist - I agree with Chris Hedges.

It’s sad we can spend billions on invading Iraq, but can’t build high-speed trains, or a nation-wide wireless platform, or even fund basic infrastructure. Not to mention expanding Medicare to cover everyone. These are things that would create real jobs while creating long-term investments right here at home.Creating a better country - and one with higher wages for workers - should be the liberal platform.

Instead it seems they’re mostly concerned with bathrooms and Caitlyn Jenner, and how many black people have won Oscars.

+++

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

… Yes, issues of gender and sexual preference are important to liberals, despite what you’d prefer. But suggesting that liberals are “mostly concerned” with these issues is divorced from reality.

LinusK did write “it seems they’re mostly concerned with …”

Can we agree that progressives have a problem with their messaging?

[Velocity]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Can you cite any of these claims? Because:

1. A quick reading of the law is that serious harm is what’s banned by Canada’s law–harm equivalent to getting banged up in a rugby match is okay. The law doesn’t address sex specifically, from my (again very quick) reading: you can no more agree to punch it out in the bar’s parking lot than you can agree to choke your sex partner into unconsciousness.

2. I’ve heard very few serious attacks on Clinton for infidelity, but plenty of attacks on him, from the left and the right, for possible sexual assault.

3. There are no signs at all that criticism of porn is on the increase on the left.

Admittedly I have no cite for the claim that liberals are criticizing porn more and more except for my non-representative sample of media/societal circle/articles and blogs I’ve read/perspective of the world around me, but on Facebook and elsewhere it does seem that there is plenty of criticism of porn from the political left.

And AIUI there was a lot of feminism criticism against Fifty Shades of Grey, not that conservatives were really thrilled about the book either. I think it is Baptists and Bootleggers syndrome; conservatives oppose porn in general whereas liberals may be OK with porn if it is empowering of women, but not if it is patriarchal/degrading to women.

[Velocity]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It’s not liberals who are obsessed with these issues. Look at the liberal focus through any reasonable lens–the Democratic 2016 platform, bills introduced in Congress, column inches in the NYT or Washington Post, you name it–and you’ll see far more time spent by liberals on issues like environmental concerns, economic issues, and international issues.

Yes, issues of gender and sexual preference are important to liberals, despite what you’d prefer. But suggesting that liberals are “mostly concerned” with these issues is divorced from reality.

Those issues - bathroom transgender rules, Caitlyn Jenner, black people getting snubbed by the Oscars - may make up only 1% of the liberal platform, but they get a lot more than just 1% of the media coverage, or of society’s perception of what liberals stand for.

[ITR_champion]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It’s not liberals who are obsessed with these issues. Look at the liberal focus through any reasonable lens–the Democratic 2016 platform, bills introduced in Congress, column inches in the NYT or Washington Post, you name it–and you’ll see far more time spent by liberals on issues like environmental concerns, economic issues, and international issues.

Yes, issues of gender and sexual preference are important to liberals, despite what you’d prefer. But suggesting that liberals are “mostly concerned” with these issues is divorced from reality.

There are two separate issues: what the Democrats actually spend time on policy-wise, and what dominates the media. You point to the 2016 Democratic platform. How many people have actually read it? Bills introduced in Congress–who bothers following all of them? NYT and Washington Post? Well, I don’t count the total number of articles, but they do write quite a bit about race and the Oscars and other celebrity-focused topics, but that misses the more important point. Fewer and fewer people bother with a daily newspaper any more.

People get their news from Facebook, sharing links posted from primarily online sources. And verily among the links that my liberals friends send my way from sources like Slate or The Daily Beast, there’s a lot of showing off how much they care about Muslims and transsexuals and any other group that’s popular this month, and a lot of gasping at the horrible pay gap between multi-millionaire Hollywood actresses and multi-millionaire Hollywood actors, and other stuff of that nature. And by comparison, very little about pocketbook issues that affect working class Americans. Yes, there’s an occasional lecture from Bernie Sanders about minimum wage, but it tends to get buried under the other stuff.

What LinusK is saying is what many people are thinking about the Democrats and liberal institutions. Liberals can retort that that’s not what they should be thinking, but it is what many people are thinking, so if the Democrats want to win elections and liberal institutions want to regain popular trust and support, perhaps some attention should be paid.