What Do Liberalism and Communism Have in Common?

[Ubiquitous]

Don't blame liberalism for the scandals of the Obama administration, USA
Today's Kirsten Powers argues not very convincingly:

There is zero correlation between the political ideology called
liberalism and the cascading scandals of the Obama
administration. If anything, it's the opposite: it's the
undeniably illiberal actions of people within the government
that has created these crises. To suggest that any of this
happened because the government is too big, or even that the
aim of liberalism is to make government bigger, is a gross
distortion. . . .

Liberalism is a noble tradition and worldview that is perennially
in search of a leader--and these days even followers--worthy of
its name. If in any of these situations even one person of
influence had adhered to the basic tenets of liberalism--a
respect for dissent, free speech, government transparency and
liberty--all of these scandals could have been avoided.

It's a little like what communist sympathizers used to say to excuse away
the crimes of Stalin and Mao: That wasn't "real" communism. Real
communism has never been tried.

The analogy, however, is imprecise. Liberalism has been tried, most
notably in the United States, and it's worked considerably better than
any competing political philosophies. But the liberalism of the founders
was quite different from the "liberalism" of Barack Obama and the
21st-century Democratic Party. Powers either is confused herself or is
seeking to take advantage of the confusion between the two senses of the
word.

It's true that "big government," or democratic socialism, doesn't
necessarily produce corruption. Scandinavian countries, for example, are
notably unsoiled by corruption. But our view, articulated Monday, is that
contemporary American left-liberalism makes such scandals inevitable--not
only because of its ideological character but also because it dominates
cultural institutions while regarding much of the country with hostility.
That in turn produces both self-righteousness and an
ends-justify-the-means mentality.

Powers is right that "liberalism is a noble tradition." It's just that
these days it usually goes by different names.



--
Nick Gillispie describes the Obama-era media as "more prone to
being lapdogs than watchdogs." That has a nice ring to it, but it seems
to us the metaphor is a little off. The pro-Obama media are acting like
watchdogs--but watchdogs whose master is Obama rather than the public.