There are no liberals in the Democrat Party
Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 02:03PM I can't find any, anyway. In the Democratic Party you'll find social democrats, but no liberals. Glenn Greenwald is close to being a liberal, but when push comes to shove he's led to social democracy. Social democracy was developed as a reaction to liberalism, so I don't know why anyone considered the Democratic Party as a liberal political party with liberal values. I will be glad to drop the libertarian label and take the liberal label, because that's what I am -- a liberal. There's no need for classical liberal, or libertarian -- I'm a liberal, plain and simple. Members of the Democratic Party are progressive/social democrats. Those in the GOP who support limited government, a free market and non-interventionism are liberals, whether they know it or not.
The Republican Party is filled with conservatives. The GOP is also home to rightwing progressives. Some people in each party call themselves moderates, but that doesn't mean much -- they either support the political ideas of social democracy or they support the ideas of conservatism or rightwing progressivism. The GOP is split right now, but the Democratic Party maintains solidarity around social democracy. The GOP is split between social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, Progressive Big Government Republicans and neocons. There's some overlap, so I'd say the GOP has to solve the division between statism and anti-statism. Democrats embrace statism lock, stock and barrell. Their differences within the statist framework are simply policy and priority differences. For the longest, the statists in each party formed a comfortable political club in DC and the parties only feigned differences, but now that a legitimate, although small, anti-statist movement has risen on the Right, there's something to fight about, and, thus, labels are important to identify the sides. The social democrats in the Democratic Party are showing true colors now that a real anti-statist movement has begun to develope.
This is why I say that there are no liberals in the Democratic Party. True liberals are anti-statists, and they are the ones fighting against statists from both parties. It remains to be seen if liberals now fighting against statism will be welcomed long-term in the Republican Party -- the Democratic Party has shown they have no use for real liberals. It's my greatest hope that the anti-statist movement grows and becomes a driving force for change -- otherwise, America is headed for financial collapse. Our nation needs a long, extended conversation/debate regarding the role of government in our lives, then when enough people wake up, we need a non-violent revolution in order to do for real what some of the Founders intended in the beginning. If the nation doesn't wake up, and when we collapse, let's just hope that fear doesn't drive Americans into the strong arms of a ruthless dictator, and that we can then realize how important limits are to liberty, and how important liberty is to the word liberal. I'm a liberal.
M. Farmer | Comments Off |
anti-statist,
free market,
liberals,
libertarians,
social democracy,
statism 
