Early this year, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay entitled The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class? that appeared in Foreign Affairs. In considering the question posed in the title, he discusses a few related subjects. He addresses what he feels is the intellectual failure of the left in the face of the growing economic disparities he sees as undermining liberal democracy. His notions are by no means unique; it is a common criticism of the left.
The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for mobilization. Marxism died many years ago.... The academic left replaced it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory, and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends that are more cultural than economic in focus. Postmodernism begins with a denial of the possibility of any master narrative of history or society , undercutting its own authority as a voice for the majority of citizens who feel betrayed by their elites. Multiculturalism validates the victimhood of virtually every out-group. It is impossible to generate a mass progressive movement on the basis of such a motley coalition....
After reading his essay, I began taking some notes with the vague notion of writing about my own ideas on the subject. A couple of times since joining this site, I've thought about expanding my notes and putting them into a more coherent form. Although liberalism itself is a subject that has long interested me, I never took a political science class in college and I wanted to do a little more reading on the history of liberalism before writing my piece. It takes a rather long essay just to parse and respond to the above paragraph let alone to address the question Fukuyama asks about the future of liberal democracy. It was my intention to perhaps write a series of diaries after the election had passed. Until then, I wanted to concern myself with more topical issues.
The sexist pig eruption plaguing the GOP has suddenly changed the focus of a great many people on this site. Although I had been involved in one faction of the "motley coalition" when I was younger, namely feminism, over the years I'd become less and less active in that arena because many of our fights seemed to have been won. However, and importantly, I did not cease to be a liberal. It was only the coincidence of a severe head cold that caused me to sign up with this site as the Komen situation surfaced, followed by Rush Limbaugh's rant about Sandra Fluke. Since then it has been one pig eruption after another.
Following Mourdock's comments, there were a couple of diaries and comments encouraging us to move onto more "important things." These were not highly recommended, so I think they do not represent a common view. Still, I think it is important to address the question of whether or not the leftward side of the political spectrum is, indeed, nothing more than a motley coalition, a compendium of special interest groups united in only their victimhood. As I said, I remained a liberal even as I felt the situation for women had dramatically improved, not that I ever felt that fight had been entirely won.
The meaning of Liberal and Liberalism has a long intellectual tradition and I know that there are quite a few people on this site who are highly knowledgeable about it. I'm going to have to apologize to them ahead of time for not yet having done those readings I wanted to do and not doing justice to the full depth of the subject. To me, the core belief uniting various interpretations of liberalism is the liberty and autonomy of the individual. Belief systems that undermine the liberty and prevent the autonomy of individuals must be opposed. It is not a fetishization of victimhood that motivates liberals, but a need to fight against the injustice that oppresses and victimizes. Far from loving victimhood, we hate it and seek to see the injustice remedied.
True, there are people who only fight for the rights of their own group and occasionally liberals make allies with them. However, the people who are most admired are those who fight for the rights of all. For this reason, women's rights are not a sideshow to the main attraction, nor are Civil Rights, LGBT rights, economic justice or any of a wide array of these supposedly special interests. They are the main attraction, which is the rights of all human beings.