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Is liberalism dying?
I see frequently brought up on this forum that Mitt Romney was a perfectly respectable Mormon conservative that was unjustly torn apart by the Left. In response to this, the Right elected a political outsider that is frequently brazenly offensive and antagonistic to the Left, as well as many (most?) establishment institutions. I am seeing the idea "this is a good thing, because if the Left are our enemies and won't budge from their positions that are explicitly against us, we need to treat them as such", probably expressed in other words.
This frightens me, as it seems to be a failure of liberalism, in this country and potentially other Western liberal democratic countries. Similar to the fate of this forum, where civil discussion was tried and then found to be mostly useless, leading to the expulsion of the forum to an offsite and the quitting of center left moderates like TracingWoodgrains and Yassine Meskhout, the political discourse has devolved into radicals that bitterly resist the other side. Moderates like Trace seem to be rare among the politically engaged, leaving types like Trump and AOC. They fight over a huge pool of people who don't really care much about politics and vote based on the vibe at the moment, who are fed rhetoric that is created by increasingly frustrated think-tanks and other political thinkers. Compromise seems to not be something talked about anymore, and instead, liberalism has been relegated to simply voting for your side and against the other side. To me, this is pretty clearly unsustainable, since the two sides seem to have a coin flip of winning each election and then upon winning, proceed to dismantle everything the previous side did.
We see this in a number of other Western liberal democratic countries. Germany and France both had a collapse of their governments recently due to an unwillingness between the parties to work together and make compromises. Similar states that seem to be on the brink of exhaustion include South Korea and Canada, though I'm told things are not nearly as divisive in Japan. China, though having its own set of problems, seems to not have issues with political division stemming from liberalism, since it's not liberal at all.
I am seeing these happenings and becoming increasingly convinced that liberalism is on its way out. Progressivism and the dissident right both seem to be totally opposed to the principles. This is a bad thing to me and a cause of some hopelessness, since America produced a great deal of good things during its heyday, and even still is doing awesome things. It is predominantly America's technology companies settling the frontier, and recently they've struck gold with AI, proper chatbots, unlike the Cleverbots of old.
Is liberalism dying? If it is, is that a good thing or a bad thing to you? If it's a bad thing, what do you propose should be done to stop the bleeding?
(I'm taking liberalism to mean to mean pragmatic pro-institution free market globalists. Macron would be the closest example of ones still in power)
More like their substacks took off, and it doesn't make sense for them to do it for free anymore. If anything, it is a clear sign that they're ascendent. Once politically homeless, they now have an audience of anti-woke centrists listening to them.
For decades, Liberals were dominant on both the left and the right. With the fall of the Soviet union, the extreme left was left nursing it wounds. On the right, 9/11 response & economic recovery required large institutional efforts, so anti-institutional groups had no uptake.
AOC and Trump use symbiotic antagonism to shore up support within their ranks. Both would rather see the other win than an centrist. They have embraced horseshoe theory. Liberals are yet to get there. Left liberals still treat right liberals with greater disdain than extreme progressives, and vice versa. Liberals need to work across the aisle to get centrists bill through, while collectively keeping extremists at bay. At the national level, it seems impossible. They have terrible optics too. The centrist left has geriatric Biden/Clinton or DEI hires like Kamala. The centrist right is geriatrics and nepo babies. That's a losing proposition if I've ever seen one.
But there are signs of change among the youth and local govts. Major blue cities have swung to the center. The clearest example is Ann Davidson switching from Dem -> Rep and winning Seattle's district attorney seat. Eric Adams ran on a centrist platform for NYC mayor, and has managed to stay in power despite many legitimate scandals. At the national level, Pete Buttigieg seems to have more friends at Fox News that within the Democratic big tent.
Political trends are cyclic. I think populism is peaking in North America. But I expect Western Europe to get worse before it gets better (for liberals).
It's immigration. Liberalism assumes a certain non-zero-sum-ness to the world. Once low-skill immigrants worsen the QOL of your liberal utopia, liberalism's loses its core appeal. Problematic immigrants come illegally or as opportunistic refugees. If liberalism shows a capacity for strong border enforcement & minimal refugees, then it has a chance. South Korea is it's own mess and has been for a while. Won't equate its turmoil with western ideological trends.
Guess how many illegal immigrants and refugees come to these countries.
I don't think employment based immigration is an issue. (Note, I am on H1b, so take my opinion with that caveat). Australia for instance, maintains steady immigration, but has a higher ratio of skilled immigrants vs the others. It hasn't swung populist just yet. For decades before, Canada & the UK sustained a high rate of skills based immigration and it did not doom liberal-centrists. Even after the total shitshow at Canada/UK, their retaliatory leaders of choice still feel like Liberals (Starmer, Pierre).
Yes
No.
How do I get my Substack to take off? Asking for a friend.
I agree though, I think it makes perfect sense for someone to stop hanging on forums if their writing gets big. Trace did have ideological issues with this place though IIRC.
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