The current system under which the United States operates is liberalism although, it was damaged before, and the Trump administration has caused even greater damage. Some Americans have wanted to revolt since Trump was put into office against the will of the majority of Americans. Liberalism has failed. Socialism is the talk of many Democratic candidates for president, but Americans are afraid of socialism. They are even more afraid of anarchy—what they fear could occur though. Americans may have to decide between liberalism and anarchism in the near future.
The concept of liberalism came from the Enlightenment thought, which was about human reason, religious tolerance, and political and economic freedom. The Founders of the United States claimed liberalism and independence from King George III. They said that inalienable rights should apply to all men, but what they really meant was that they should apply to themselves and men like them: white property owners. The ideas of democracy and individual rights were included later, but still do not apply to every American and the inequalities have become obvious.
Liberalism became the politics of the United States because of liberal economics based mainly on Adam Smith and capitalism. Individual freedom meant the liberty to own a business without the state interfering. The individual rights of the Bill of Rights do not address the way one earns an income so much as they list the rights that others cannot violate. Although, some who champion liberalism question the right to an absolutely free market. Hayek says, “The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition” (Thaler, Liberalism: Politics, Economics, Identities, and Global Orders 12). The liberalism that the United States often does not like these interferences. For example, conservatives always complain when workers want a raise the minimum wage because liberalism says employers should be able to pay their employees whatever the market supports.
Countries who practice liberalism do not go to war with each other, although they may defend another country that they feel is being unfairly attacked by someone wishing to end their liberal political system. Often, the United States and their allies have gone to war on the grounds of correcting a violation of human rights. They have caused people to hate them doing, bringing about terrorist attacks. Another liberal trait is globalization. Then liberalism sets up businesses in poor countries so that the wealthy American investor and the people of the country are both benefited. Of course, one receives more benefits than the other. David Bell of the New York Review of Books says liberal policies “try to make free-market policies more humane, but it does little to challenge the enormous inequalities they produce, and in fact diverts political energies from such challenges” (Bell 2). The leaders of these nations may see the benefit of tax revenue that globalization brings, but workers may not make enough to survive. At any moment, the wealthy Western investor could decide to invest in another country where the labor comes even cheaper.
Bell reviews and analyzes three books on liberalism whose authors trace its origins not to the American Revolutionary War, but to the French Revolution. Bell says, all three authors—Helena Rosenblatt, Dan Edelstein and James Miller—feel that liberalism may have “concerned itself too heavily with individual rights—above all, economic rights—as opposed to the common good. It has not paid enough attention to moral values and moral education, and it has not done enough to encourage broad democratic participation” (Bell 3). Every election people remark at how few young people vote, but it is not just young people. People of all ages do not vote because they feel they are not a part of the liberalism that the United States supports. In the last presidential election, liberalism gave the citizens of the United States Donald Trump as president even though he lost the popular vote by three million votes. The idea of democracy died with that incident not that the Founders ever believed in it anyway. They wanted democracy, but they wanted it to extend only to white property-owning males. Trump administration had brought back that idea.
It is clear to most Americans that liberalism does not work. There is increasing inequality among races, gender, socioeconomic classes—and the government either cannot or will not do anything to correct it. In fact, it seems as if congress has not agreed in years. No “liberal” legislation has been passed except for
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