The American Left: From Liberalism to Despotism

Progressive ideas rejected the Founding belief that the purpose of government was to protect natural rights. This has opened the way for a new understanding of politics that seeks power to redefine nature itself.

The election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 marked the rise of liberalism. By the 1950s, a bipartisan consensus had emerged as both parties agreed to fight poverty at home and communism abroad. 

Many radical movements began to form in the 1960s because they believed the liberals had entrenched the status quo and oppressed minority groups. 

The Civil Rights movement was animated by three separate approaches to bring blacks more fully into the affluence of society. As the movement became more radical, it ultimately left many blacks in worse conditions than they had been in previously. 

Angered by the liberals’ views towards marginalized groups, the Student New Left advocated the overthrow of “the system” on college campuses in the 1960s. Universities became a central place where radical ideas were formed and spread. 

The Feminist Movement is often depicted as the fight of the sisterhood against the patriarchy, but in reality, it was largely a movement of the elites, both men and women, against the traditional middle-class mores regarding the family. 

While the liberals held permissive views regarding sex in society, the sexual revolution sought to liberate repressed sexual drives, not merely through a “talking cure,” but through the expression of and action upon sexual desires. This led to a breakdown of the traditional family. 

The radical thought leaders in each of these movements entrenched themselves in positions in academia, the bureaucracy, and the media so that, without having to win elections, they became influential in shaping the direction of American politics and culture. 

In response to the stagflation of the 1970s, Democratic and Republican leaders began to form a “neoliberal consensus” and advocated policies that led to outsourcing, the rise of monopolies, and a decline in living standards for most Americans. 

The neoliberal elites adopted the radical ideologies and the identity politics priesthood in the Great Awokening. Populist movements from the Left and the Right threatened the neoliberal order, so they adopted radical Left ideologies to co-opt the political influence of the Left. 

Identity politics as presented by the modern Left rests on fundamental logical fallacies and has only been implemented through political force. The modern bureaucratic state that has emerged to do this has fundamentally destroyed equal citizenship.