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Liberalism: A Many Splendored Word. This 19th Century Political Ad from Great Britain Shows Some of What it Meant Then.



The American Left May Rise in Katrina's Wake, If ...

EDITORIAL

September 15, 2005

Original Article (French)    

 
Everywhere liberalism is triumphing. But New Orleans just denied its dogmas.

"A ghost haunts the world," as Marx said, but it is no longer the same ghost. This one is the exact opposite of communism. It is liberalism, which, everywhere, dominates the political debate, denies the right the achievement of a social consensus, and troubles the left as well.

Japanese Papers, 'Koizumi Wins Enormous Power.'

[Editor's Note: This may bewilder some Americans, who have a different definition of the word "liberal" than most of the rest of the world. Here it refers to "liberalization, an opening up, even privatization, of the economy, just the opposite of how Americans have come to understand it].

It just stormed Japan, where the voters overwhelmingly elected a Prime Minister [Koizumi] whose own [political] troops, the conservatives of the Liberal-Democrat Party, weeks ago prevented him from privatizing the public empire that is Japan's postal service. His electoral victory means that the wishes of the Financial Times have been fulfilled, and even if next Sunday in Germany the victory of the Christian Democrats risks being much less definite than predicted, it is still liberalism, there, that is shaking things up.

Angela Merkel has converted a right-wing party [the Christian Democratic Union], reconstructed after the war [WWII] on the basis of the social economy of the market. [Which included a much larger government role in the economy than Americans are used to]. It is because he was forced to reduce social protections [the "safety net"] that Gerhard Schroeder had to prepare so carefully for these elections, and it is against "social-liberalism" that the left has aligned itself, those that are even further left than the German left, who will now abandon the incumbent chancellor [because he wants to reduce the safety net].

[Editor's Note: Merkel is the leader of Germany's Christian Democrats [CDU] and the main challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats [SPD] in the German National Election to be held on Sunday. Briefly, the ruling SPD is "left of center" and Merkel's CDU is "right of center." That is, the German center.]

Hated or praised, liberalism is reshuffling the cards in Brazil, where [President] Lula welcomes the IMF, in Poland, where liberals lead the coalition that will likely win in Polish elections on September 25, in China, naturally, and in France, of course, where Nicolas Sarkozy advocates a "break" that Ronald Reagan called the "conservative revolution."

[Editor's Note: Nicolas Sarkozy is Jacques Chirac's chief rival in France's ruling party].

Koizumi; Merkel; Lula; and Bush: Liberalism Makes a Comback.

Thirty years after California's tax revolt forced it to give flight, liberal dogma has undone Keynes, but the paradox is that liberal dogma, too, has been newly challenged.

Because, finally, what was just seen in New Orleans? What happened there if it wasn't: the failure of a State incapable of helping its citizens; the collapse of levees that were not repaired because of budgetary restrictions; and the unleashing of floodwaters on those who didn't have a car to flee on their own? These are the three dogmas of liberalism - taxes are poison, it's every man for himself and "the State is not the solution but the problem" - that were just cruelly disproved.

On every television screen on earth, it is "less government," and not "too much government," that is guilty. Thirty years after California, Louisiana is turning the terms of the debate upside down. The left could rise to power again. It has all the arguments for an ideological reconquest. But to succeed, it needs to first recognize the realities upon which the success of liberalism is based, to say out loud that the prolongation of lifespans authorizes and requires raising of the retirement age, that new international competition requires more work - not less, and that the pace of economic change no longer allows businesses to guarantee certain levels of employment.

It is the left's inability to admit this that has made it unable to defend its own solidarity against the jungle [their opponents].