At the founding of the country, Liberalism was interpreted to mean minimal government intervention, personal liberties for speech, religion, and thought, and reverence and respect for the ownership of private property. Thomas Jefferson directly incorporated these ideas into the Declaration of Independence.
If you think that sounds a lot like what conservatives espouse today, you are right. In fact, the word “liberal” was regularly used by conservatives to describe themselves in the 1800’s and the first part of the 1900’s. However, that version of liberalism has undergone a complete metamorphosis in the last hundred years.
President Franklin Roosevelt was the first to fundamentally change the meaning of liberalism with his “New Deal” initiatives in response to the Great Depression. He made government much larger and gave it a hugely increased role in our personal lives, a far cry from minimal government intervention. He then hijacked the term “liberal” to describe his own transformational policies (Social Security, Welfare, Labor Union rights, etc.), which became inextricably linked to the Democrat party.
This mutated version of liberalism expanded even further in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the immense Medicare and Medicaid programs into law. Along with Social Security, these three programs are now the top three government expenditures and are the main drivers of our annual deficit and national debt.
Slowly, liberalism began to transform itself yet again. In the last fifty years, an expansion of government social programs became a means to and end for creating a dependent class of Democrat voters. Liberal leaders used their handouts to this captive constituency to exert more and more control over their lives. When COVID-19 hit, government intrusion into our personal liberties by “liberal” politicians (federal and state) reached unprecedented levels. It caused immense injury to society, particularly to an entire generation of young people.
With the recent rise of the DSA (Democrat Socialists of America) and their array of candidates in this upcoming election, liberalism has now become indistinguishable from socialism and is edging close to communism (thanks to the “taste” of control-through-fear that liberal leaders experienced during COVID). Both socialism and communism are antithetical to a society where people value their liberty and independence above all else.
Democrat socialists are advocating for limits on free speech (censorship), open borders, wealth taxes, defunding the police, and government confiscation of private property. They want to entirely replace the structure of our government as it was designed in 1787 when the Constitution was written. They directly tell us this in their speeches and writings – abolish the electoral college, eliminate the Senate, pack the Supreme Court – and these just scratch the surface.
Are we really at a political dead end as the liberals are saying, and only a tectonic shift in our beliefs about society and government can propel us forward?
The answer is unequivocally no. It is our firm belief that most people in this country still have traditional American values at their core and live by them every day whether they realize it or not. So why does it appear we are teetering on the edge of a revolution?
In the last couple of decades, our culture has been shocked (for lack of a better word) by both technology and mass immigration. Each of these phenomena have conveniently served the goals of today’s liberals wishing to dismantle American traditions and diminish US dominance in the world.
Technology:
Technology has allowed small groups with radical ideas to appear much larger and influential than they really are. Adversarial foreign governments seeking to sow discord and chaos in American society, especially near elections, help build up the faux stature of these groups. They use technology to distribute digital propaganda via social media robots, stoke racism and antisemitism online, and use AI to generate false news stories. All of this makes a “revolution” appear real (it is not).
Young adults are affected the most by this techno deception. The colleges they attend are particularly susceptible to a fabricated reality. Liberal-minded educators are ubiquitous throughout the university system. Campus lifestyle is poisoned with hyper-concern for pronouns, gender misidentification, antisemitism, racial aggression, DEI, and the outrage du jour.
It is quite easy for socially “traumatized” students in this environment to be seduced. The promise of a safer, and easier way of life courtesy of a socialist government that will provide all their needs and protect their social fetishes is too good to ignore. In reality, most of these students (without their knowledge) serve as nothing more than useful idiots for professional agitators wanting to destabilize the country.
Immigration:
Historically, immigration to America has been advantageous to both the US and the immigrant. That is because traditionally immigrants have been eager to fully assimilate into American society (as immigration laws encourage them to do) while at the same time, sharing aspects of their cultural heritage in productive ways.
Recently however, immigrant assimilation into American society is occurring less and less. An increasing number of immigrants are moving into ethnic “enclaves” in liberal cities and towns throughout the country (nearly a 50% increase since the 1970’s). These enclaves are clones of the society and culture, and even the laws, of their original country of origin. We now have several members of Congress from these enclaves. Ilhan Omar is the most visible current example. Her Minnesota congressional district is home to the largest percentage of Somali immigrants in the US.
The scale of these efforts will continue to make elections close and even elevate a few socialist candidates, but it will not change the core beliefs of what most people in this country associate with being “American”. And if liberals do win in the upcoming election, don’t worry – it won’t last long. History has shown that they will soon morph into something else like they have in the past, as just recounted.