The Decline of Liberalism

Moreover, we assume that the ascendance of Donald Trump indicated the start of the decline of liberalism in America. Yet, we find that liberalism was in decline in America and in other parts of the Western world for a number of decades, only to be covered up by the media and political parties as well as by certain segments of academia and bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, before its decline, liberalism was assumed to have been “uniquely fit” for American life given the fact that America was expanding both in a geographical sense and an economic sense for almost two centuries before liberalism’s decline. C. Wright Mills wrote:

“The unique situation of a geographical area which allowed continental expansion until the turn of the twentieth century, and the growth of a nation of 5 million into one of 150 million in the short span of 150 years – this made liberalism uniquely fit the reality of American society. For liberalism is ‘generous’: it requires and assumes a friendly universe of equal and open opportunities, and it assumes that men are born ‘free and equal.’ Here, the coming of the immigrant coincided with ‘unlimited opportunities’ and a ‘conscience of abundance.’ Liberalism thus found its affirmation in the daily experience of millions of people living in an expanding society.”

Thus, if the capitalistic expansion of both economic opportunity and territory had a downside, it could only be attributed to “peculiarities” of certain immigrant groups and not to the capitalist essence of liberalism. To borrow from Mills yet again:

“The widening of economic opportunities and the extension of the territorial setting of United States society went hand in hand and reinforced each other, as did technical progress and the rising levels of skill and education. Entrepreneurial, propertied groups, in urban as well as rural sectors of the society, pulled in the same direction: both have been money-minded groups which took the competitive market for granted. In this setting, the social costs and liabilities of capitalism could be overlooked, in fact, many of them could be socially defined as ethnic peculiarities of immigrant minorities, and hence not truly American. The anticapitalist sentiments of protesting intellectuals such as John Ruskin or Thomas Carlyle could not perturb the onrushing multitude in its ‘pursuit of happiness.’”

And if the going was always good per se, what went wrong? In a word, civilizational decline in the West, and in turn, liberalism was no longer connected to reality. Liberalism no longer resembled reality. Soon after the two World Wars which brought Europe to the ground, the fact of the matter was that “the incongruity of liberal ideologies with modern social facts are glaringly evident.”

As we said before, liberalism in theory and thought differed greatly from liberalism in application and practice. The supposed freedom and universalism and friendliness and generosity of liberalism simply did not match social reality. Plain and simple. Moreover, decline meant drastic economic, political, and social change and transformation, and liberalism was simply out of touch with such changes and transformations. Freedom and openness gave way to protectionism and xenophobia. To borrow from Mills yet again: “In the face of all these changes, Liberalism as an ideology becomes ‘formalized’: it becomes a political rhetoric which is increasingly meaningless and banal to large masses.”

Simply put, there is no “freedom” for one, and two, the manner in which classical liberalism is supposed to be conceived is then “perverted” by the American liberal. And in some cases, liberalism ends in Nazism or fascism or totalitarianism.  Mills defined ‘totalitarianism’ as “an imperialist response to the impasse of corporate capitalism.” As a result, and to conclude: “Only the complacent and the uninformed can feel assured of liberal and democratic developments in the world today.”