The demonization of liberalism, for whatever reason, means that the values of compassion, egalitarianism, respect for education and experience that characterize liberalism are being lost. With that loss comes a desire to experiment with ideas that have been tried before, which have failed before, and which will inevitably cause America to stumble and lose the essential values that made it the successful nation that it is. And make no mistake -- when compassion is derided as "bleeding-heart liberalism" and egalitarianism is mistaken for an argument for economic, racial and ethnic quotas, and institutions of higher learning are dismissed as "bastions of liberalism," and respect for the differences of others is derided as "political correctness," America is in trouble. It is headed for the same conditions that exist in the nations where such selfishness and ignorance predominate and have for centuries -- the third world nations. Every day, as I look out on the America of my nativity, I can't but help be struck how it is increasingly coming to resemble the third world nations I have visited and in which I have lived.

Freedom or Orderliness, You Choose
Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest theoreticians of liberal democracy of all time, understood the dilemma well. He clearly saw what finally became obvious to me when I moved away from America and all its rhetoric about freedom and liberty, and experienced first hand a culture that at one and the same time, had both freedom and tyrany.

Jefferson clearly understood that you can have a nice, neat, tidy, orderly society, or you can have a free society. But it is very difficult to have a society that is both orderly and free. In a letter to James Madison, he wrote, "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserves neither."

Jefferson had clearly made his choice. It is the only choice a lover of freedom and liberty can make. But what choice is made by the theoreticians of the "new" conservatism?

"Law and order," cry the conservative theorists.

Indeed, we have a serious problem with law and order in the United States with the widespread use of narcotics, cocaine and its derivatives, methamphetamines and "designer" drugs, and Cannabis sativa and its extracts. The cost to American society is enormous. Just fighting the "drug war" costs us tens of billions of dollars each year. The crime that addicts commit costs conservatively more than a hundred billion. Each year, the toll gets worse, each year the enforcement measures become more and more stringent. The fastest growing industry in America is prison construction. Already, we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other nation in the world, one person in thirty. Yet has that made us feel more secure?

Yet with each passing year, we surrender more of our freedom of movement, our right to be secure in our possessions, and more and more of our personal privacy. Has this led us to a more secure society? A lower crime rate? No.

The problem, as Jefferson so accurately predicted, doesn't get better, it gets worse......

.......European societies have little use for the right-wing ideologies that are so popular in the United States. They have had plenty of experience with unrestrained right-wing governments and have become innoculated against the fundamental errors in reasoning that drive right-wing ideologies. Similarly, after centuries of religious oppression by Roman Catholicism and other institutionalized religions, Europeans have generally become deeply skeptical of religious ideology and conservative politics.

The result is that in almost every measure, most Western Europeans enjoy a higher standard of living, more personal freedom, less repression and a higher quality of life than do Americans. Their economies enjoy a higher growth in productivity, and that fruits of those gains in productivity are more equitably distributed. This is why 200,000 Americans every year choose to move to Europe, while traffic in the opposite direction is only a tiny fraction of that level. American English is now commonly heard on the streets of most large European cities. When was the last time you heard Swedish or Polish being spoken by recent immigrants here? It is a fact that now Europe, no longer America, is the first destination of choice for Africans and Asians fleeing poverty and repression and seeking to better their lives.

Yet when a nation doesn't know it has a problem, it is hard to build consensus for a change.

That fact is probably the most grave problem America faces. Americans believe all the propaganda they've heard since World War II that America is by far the best place in the world in which to live. Most Americans still believe it. In their provincial ignorance, they haven't a clue at how far and how completely they've been left behind. As a place to live, the United Nations doesn't even rank the U.S. in the top ten anymore.

http://www.bidstrup.com/america.htm

The Gathering Darkness
America In The 21st. Century
An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup