Reply #7: Hmm... [View All]

... the suggested answers are very national in orientation. I would say that the rise of democratic socialism in post-WWII Europe has been the most positive turn of events for liberalism. More has been done there to ensure an effective social safety net and at the same time to develop economically than perhaps anywhere else in the world, and in a shorter period of time.

By contrast, post-WWII United States has become steadily less liberal and has become an empire-building national security state which has chosen to wage a succession of small wars, both military and economic, against the rest of the world.

Almost from the inception of the New Deal, the right has been trying to destroy it, and, as of now, they're winning that battle. In fact, liberalism in the US in the 20th century has had but fleeting influence as a body of political thought, with most of that influence concentrated in the most economically turbulent times of the past century.

Most of what we consider politically liberal was accomplished in this country between 1922 and and 1938. Even the Great Society programs of the middle-`60s, historically, had to be tempered by the "liberal" party's unfortunate tendency to wage foreign wars to no good purpose.

The right's current hatred of "Old Europe" is not because that continent is outmoded and archaic in its methods. It is precisely because it is a model of liberalism and has prospered because of that model.