The Death Of Liberal America Essay -- essays research papers

Americans seem to have lost any sense whatsoever of what liberalism meat and what it strives to get over. Liberals have insisted that tyranny can only be combated by the coevals and fragmentation of power. A free society is star in which in that respect are various centers of power, various positions from which plurality have the ability to wreak stopping points. Thats the whole point behind creating three branches of government, the vaunted separation of powers. Liberalism aims to insure peace and prevent tyranny in pluralistic societies. Liberalism strives to place dozens of individual actions outside the pale of politics and beyond interference from the call forth or other powers. And, culturally, it strives to promote tolerance, where tolerance is, at a minimum, unconcern to the choices and actions of others and, at best, a recognition that diversity yields some social benefits. Liberalism guarantees through freedoms of speech, the press, and association, and through the institutional mechanisms of election, jury trials, and legislative deliberations, the active engagement of citizens with one another. Liberals should promote in every way possible the existence of a vibrant, accessible, and uncensored civil society. In short, liberalism proliferates the occasions where citizens of different opinions, backgrounds, creeds etc. immix with one another, express their views, and argue about specific issues. And in some, provided not all cases, these striationtings have to move to a decision that is wherefore accepted, even when not very satisfying, by all the parties involved. Democratic procedures of decision making which guarantee to all interested parties their chance to say their speckle (their chance to sway others by argument), and use the vote and majority command to adjudicate differences, are a vital liberal expedient for retentivity the peace. Thats because democracy, amazingly enough, has proven an astoundingly effective way to get people to accept - peacefully - the fact that they have ended up on the losing side of a political debate that was resolved by a vote. Liberalism, we might say, relies to some extent on the desire of all the participants to go for the social peace. But even more fundamentally, it expects that the process of deliberation provide move participants to an appreciation of the others involved, and the desire to come to an eventual decision that satisfies as m... ... strife. There are few things worse in this world than sectarian violence. Do the Republicans genuinely know what fire they are playing with when they get on sectarian divisiveness? And just look at the electoral map of the ult two presidential elections. The South and the West are lined up against the Pacific Coast States and the North. We havent had such a regional divide since 1860. How long can California and the Northeast be leave out out from national power? A population hardened into set divisions, a population wi thout a big percentage of swing voters is in bad shape a population where those divisions correspond to geographic boundaries is really courting disaster. If the South and West maintain their current coalition, we have a reversion to the regionalism that culminated in the Civil War. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to conjure that the South continues to be the fly in the ointment of American democracy. It has neer been as fluid in its awarding of votes in national elections as the other regions, and that has been a constant problem. The fact remains If you arent outraged, you arent compensable attention. Seems like a lot of people arent paying attention.