A depressing record for liberals

It must be depressing to be a liberal these days. Democrats are losing the presidential election after liberals succeeded in placing the two most liberal members of the Senate on the ticket. Liberals are (finally) losing the culture wars, with public opinion turning slowly but decisively in favor of protecting the lives of the unborn, embracing theistic convictions and the natural law, and defending conjugal marriage. And the United State is winning the War in Iraq, which liberals have tried so hard to forfeit.

Liberals have been trying to encourage each other as the political and cultural landscape has suddenly and unexpectedly grown dark for them. A liberal colleague of mine called my attention to this Bob Herbert op-ed in the (where else?) New York Times. In it, Herbert, trying his best to buck up his leftist cohorts, argues, "Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today."

It's an interesting argument. The problem is that it's manifestly untrue. We certainly have liberals to thank for the civil rights movement. To their shame, conservatives sat that one out. But the rest of the supposed achievements of the Left, which Herbert trumpets, simply aren't that impressive. The verdict is very much still out on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, all of which could be bankrupt within a generation. Unfettered welfare was a disaster, and was reformed (and saved) by a conservative Congress and a moderate President. And it is absurd to credit libs with improving the lot of women in America. The feminist movement since ca. 1945 has had the opposite effect with its emphasis on sexual liberation, which frees men from the obligations of marriage. Furthermore, libs gave us abortion, the great moral evil of our time, and capitulated to Communism and Islamic fascism. Overall, not a very good record.

Indeed, liberals can rightly claim credit for only two major achievements in American history: the Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement. At every other pivotal moment in American history -- Dred Scott; the Civil War; the credit crises of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries; World War II; the Cold War; the culture wars of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first centuries; the fight against Islamic facism -- liberals have been on the wrong side of history.

The Bill of Rights and the civil rights movement are certainly not insignificant achievements. Both were significant and just causes. However, liberals have managed even to botch these attainments. They have placed activist judges and justices on the courts of our land who have read into the Bill of Rights a tyranny of relativism. The Bill of Rights now contains within its penumbral emanations inviolable rights to obtain abortion on demand, engage in homosexual sodomy, and consume sexual obscenity, among other rights.

And liberals have in the last thirty years manages to despoil even the civil rights movement, arguably the high point of American liberalism. They have rejected the natural law principles on which the movement was founded and replaced them with identity politics, grievance-mongering, affirmative action, a commitment to sexual licentiousness, and a program of affirmative action, all of which harm those whom the civil rights movement was designed to assist.

Herbert protests too much. It must truly be depressing to be a liberal these days.