I’ve been on this board now for nearly a third of my life, and have seen national governments come and go, and the gloating and hand-wringing that accompanies it.
And over those years, I’ve witnessed a growing discontent with ‘liberals’ and the attitudes and policies they espouse.
But no-one has ever actually elucidated what the hell is wrong with liberalism. What are the bad things that liberals have done or have advocated?
Why are libs the boogey-man under the conservative’s beds?
“You can’t make me care about other human beings! NYAH!”
That, basically.
Short answer: Religion.
If you’re not aware of conservative arguments against liberalism you may want to broaden your reading. I think one mark of being politically informed is knowing the arguments for many different positions, whether it’s anarchists, communists, demsocs, liberals, right-libertarians, ancaps, neo-reaction, or white nationalists. Seems hard to know where you are if you don’t know the territory.
I’m Australian, and our conservative government would measure up as despicably liberal in the US.
I don’t have time for reading boring and long-winded political tomes, so that’s why I came here to ask for more succinct reasons.
So, would you like to precis for me, what is so bad about liberalism?
It’s not a bad thing, per se, but I can see where it would be really annoying. You have the ultra-PC wing setting up safe spaces for people that have be triggered into having microaggressions, you have affirmative action supporters using discrimination to fight discrimination, you have SOME liberals accepting cultural norms that are horrible for women (islam), you have ones with gall to tell someone that they can’t own a gun even though we should all have the fundamental right to protect our own lives, and those are just off the top of my head. I say this as a liberal.
BUT, you can’t deny liberals are always trying, sometimes naively, to improve the lives of the less fortunate. In contrast with conservatives that seem to always fight for things to benefit the well off and to fuck the poor and middle class.
Liberalism, in many American forms of it, is seen as a bad thing because on many issues, liberals make an automatic assumption that the underdog in a struggle is right and the powerful must be fought. This frequently puts them on the side of criminals against police, on the side of labor unions against corporate owners, and on the side of the less powerful party in a war (e.g., Palestinians vs Israelis) when most people do not share such sympathies.
Automatic or otherwise, those prepared to defend the ‘underdog’ should be admired, not disparaged.
Are you talking about how white police are seemingly disposed to shooting black people who may or may not have committed a criminal offence…?
Are you talking about unions demanding a work environment that won’t result in employee’s death or long-term disability, and/or a decent wage for a week’s work…?
Are you talking about Israeli settlers creating havoc with their enthusiastic building and opening fire on Palestinian protesters…?
I just don’t see how any of these examples are BAD things, surely they are to be applauded??
Liberalism usually means change, and some folk see change as threatening.
Someone who opposes same-sex marriage, for example, might not be able to give even one single reason it’s bad, other than, “That isn’t how things used to be.” When gays have been getting married for a while, the opposition melts away: no actual harm is seen.
But the instinct is there. “Don’t change things; I like them as they’ve always been.”
Liberals want to improve the world.
(Sometimes, the results aren’t good. Prohibition of alcohol was a liberal idea…and it didn’t work out well at all.)
kambuckta:
If done without concern for whether or not the underdog is in the right or in the wrong, it is not admirable.
No, I’m talking about how white police get protested against, and it is later discovered that the black suspect was genuinely acting in a violent and/or threatening manner.
No, I’m talking about unions who would demand job security for the incompetent and raises or promotions based on longevity rather than merit, in companies that already give the above things to their workers.
No, I’m talking about how when Hamas puts their rocket launchers in hospitals and schools, and Israel destroys them and in the process kills children, the world decries Israel’s “lack of restraint” rather than the fact that Hamas uses Palestinian children as human shields. Or, for that matter, ignore the entire history of Arab aggression that led to the Palestinians being under Israeli occupation in the first place.
And you’re sure a conservative govt is going to make things (in your mind) right??
Note that all those issues involve a systemic power imbalance that conservatives in general are uneasy about addressing.
Poor minority communities are much more helpless against violence and intimidation by police than vice versa. Workers are much more likely to be exploited and abused by employers than vice versa. Palestinians are much more drastically deprived of rights and safety by Israelis than vice versa.
But conservatives tend to be very protective of the rights of the overdog. It is more important to make sure that no underdog is treated too leniently than it is to address the injustices of the entire setup in which underdogs on average are treated too harshly.
You don’t have to read long-winded tomes. You said you came to this forum for such a long time, yet you never saw conservative arguments? Starving Artist posts long diatribes against liberals and he’s fairly representative of American conservatives. He thinks, IIRC, that welfare, big government, and feminism destroyed the family, and that liberal permissiveness in the '60s led to a coarsening of the culture, increased drug use, and a decline in everything from manners to sexual morality.
One reason leftish, collectivist, and “big government” politics is seen as such a threat in America is due to a long history of anti-socialist agitation and propaganda, starting all the way back in the first red scare during WWI, plus the 50 years of Cold War mentality, McCarthyism, and blaming leftist protestors for losing Vietnam. American culture is also, compared to other first world nations, extremely militaristic and religious (in the Old Testament sense). Gun rights are a big deal, with conservatives worried that liberals will confiscate them like the government in your country did. A significant portion of the populace thinks abortion is equivalent to murder and views liberals as baby killers.
If American conservatism seems nutty from a distance, one reason is that during the '90s and early 2000s a confluence of right-wing media sources dominated the narrative, from Fox News to various popular radio shows, which continually pushed the Overton window into unexplored territory of innuendo and conspiracy theories. A big inflection point was 9/11, which caused an uptick in militarism and authoritarian thought, e.g. anyone against the wars hates America; our enemies hate us for our freedoms; torture, spying, and giving up certain rights is necessary; international cooperation is a sign of weakness; and for fun, politicians started calling America “The Homeland.”
Another point of acceleration was the rise of the Tea Party and their response to the Obama administration, which led to the current toxic miasma where global warming is a hoax meant to cripple American industry.
There’s a lot of other stuff too, like the decline of industrial jobs and anxiety around immigration and how they end up voting for liberal policy (hence the yearning for a big, beautiful wall), or how big business fans the flames to chase their own agenda (peace and blessings upon the free market, if it ever existed), or the resentment of a traditional white male populace reacting to the social advancement of women and minorities.
Also some college kids somewhere did a silly thing once, which absolutely enrages some people.
Thanks marshmallow, I appreciate your efforts. I’ve gotten all those things you noted above over, but still didn’t connect them to the intense hatred of all things liberal that I’ve encountered over the years. Maybe I was just thick and/or naive!
(My tablet is playing funny-buggers and won’t let me bold your name marshmallow…sorry) 
Often it is about giving groups a voice, despite if they are right or wrong.
But I have a question that is not trolling but an honest question. Often conservatives view themselves as being “more Christian” and while I admittedly don’t consider myself religious I do still try to follow portions like Romans 15:1 Matthew 25:44-45 James 2:14-17 etc…
How does one not stand up for the underdog and yet avoid a crisis of faith surrounding those teachings?
What’s wrong with liberalism is lack of self awareness. They don’t like to set priorities, everything is equally important, and if there are two opposing viewpoints within the coalition, the loudest wins at the base level.
But that’s the base level. The elite level is different, much more responsible and quite intelligent, but seemingly contemptous of the less educated, especially the less educated on their own side. Those people are meant to go along with whatever intelligent policies the elite decide on, and if it’s not in their interests they need to suck it up for the sake of the team. And it would also be nice if the base would shut up long enough to win elections and pretend liberals are for the coal miners, opposed to illegal immigration, mainstream on social issues(gay marriage? we don’t support gay marriage, that’s a dirty lie!), happy with guns, and we love religion very much, we’re all godly people, actually.
Got any quotations to back up your statements?
Liberals are not the problem - if the Democratic Party is ever going to be restored, it will be by putting it in the hands of liberals. The problem is the alliance with the neoliberals and the regressive left, and the regressive left are particularly prone to being mislabeled as liberals.
The regressive left are hated because they are bigots in every form they can imagine. Everything is about what category they decide dominates your character - if you’re a woman of colour you’re a hero even if you’re a convicted murderer, a torturerer and a rapist. If you’re both pro-Trump and a homosexual, they will declare that you are not gay. And if you’re a Muslim, you can do no wrong (although I don’t know whether we’ve ever seen their response to a Muslim Republican). They will literally put an advocate for Sharia law - an immensely misogynistic system of theocratic laws - in charge of a Women’s march, and will whitewash Sharia law when called out on it.
And those are just examples from the “good” post-inauguration protesters.
These are the main points why liberalism is bad. Note that these are often connected to each other, and intermingle.
Liberals have an incredibly strong, sometimes delusional belief in the power of government – a belief that sometimes borders on religious worship. Whenever ANYTHING goes wrong, regardless of what it is (say a financial advisor defrauds people, or a mortuary ships the wrong body, or an industrial accident, etc.) the cry from liberals is virtually always “More regulation!” – i.e., more government power. “There ought to be a law!” – the belief that government can fix anything.
Liberals have a stupendous arrogance in their own belief system, skill, and brains. They believe that they, and by extension the government, know what is best for other people.
They very often have an incredible disdain, disgust, and intolerance, sometimes even hatred, for people whose beliefs do not match their own. It was this that led Hilary Clinton to speak of the “deplorables.” It was this that led Barack Obama, in 2008, to speak of people “clinging to guns or religion.” It is very common for liberals to speak of “fly-over country” – the part of the country that has predominately different views than their own, and therefore is good for nothing, and not worth visiting. In the last few years, this attitude has often manifested itself in thinking that promoting traditional values and morals is “intolerance,” “hatred,” and “bigotry.”
Liberals have an irresistible urge to meddle in the lives of other people. Witness things like seatbelt laws, helmet laws, and child seat laws. Another example is barbers. You wouldn’t think that cutting somebody’s hair would be all that difficult. But in every US state, barbers must be licensed. Now, if a simple license were all that was required, that wouldn’t be so bad. But in many states, it takes over 1,000 hours of training to get that license!
Liberals have a very frightened, paranoid view of the world, and in many cases, a very twisted view of reality. Every single time that gun laws are loosened, liberals scream to high heaven that there will be gun battles in the streets, rivers of blood will be flowing in the gutters, etc. Nothing remotely close to that has ever happened – but it hasn’t stopped a lot of liberals from continuing to predict such things. Talking about guns specifically, liberals often talk like very young children – i.e., if they can’t see physically something, then it doesn’t exist. This is why some are well-nigh paralyzed with fear over somebody openly carrying a gun, but if the gun is concealed, they’re ok, simply because they can’t actually see it.
This general principle of not seeing reality clearly is why liberals can’t understand that expanding welfare programs is a bad idea. Somehow, they just can’t seem to understand that if you subsidize something, you get more of it. If the government subsidizes jobs, by getting rid of unnecessary regulations that stand in the way of creating and growing companies, then you get more jobs. If you subsidize “not working,” by expanding social programs, then naturally you get more “not working.”
As I said, these impulses often work together and reinforce each other.
Humor can be an important tool for getting truths across in a non-threatening way. Here’s a cartoon that illustrates several of these points. We all know the image of a cowboy in the Old West–here’s the “OSHA-approved cowboy.”
These fantasy-world people sound like real assholes. I’m thankful that here in the real world, such people are rather rare and mainly exist in the minds of conservative radio entertainers.