Written by: Beck

That's the question John Leo is asking. I disagree that things are as dire as Leo portrays them; however, he makes some excellent arguments. The entire article is a must read. Some highlights:

[T]he cultural liberalism that emerged from the convulsions of the 1960s drove the liberal faith out of the mainstream. Its fundamental value is that society should have no fundamental values, except for a pervasive relativism that sees all values as equal. Part of the package was a militant secularism, pitched against religion, the chief source of fundamental values. Complaints about "imposing" values were also popular then, aimed at teachers and parents who worked to socialize children.

Modern liberalism, says Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, has emptied the national narrative of its civic resources, putting religion outside the public square and creating a value-neutral "procedural republic." [...] The failure to perceive the importance of community has seriously wounded liberalism and undermined its core principles. So has the strong tendency to convert moral and social questions into issues of individual rights, usually constructed and then massaged by judges to place them beyond the reach of majorities and the normal democratic process.

Liberals have been slow to grasp the mainstream reaction to the no-values culture, chalking it up to Karl Rove, sinister fundamentalists, racism, or the stupidity of the American voter. Since November 2, the withering contempt of liberals for ordinary Americans has been astonishing. Voting for Bush gave "quite average Americans a chance to feel superior," said Andrew Hacker, a prominent liberal professor at Queens College. We are seeing the bitterness of elites who wish to lead, confronted by multitudes who do not wish to follow. Liberals might one day conclude that while most Americans value autonomy, they do not want a procedural republic in which patriotism, religion, socialization, and traditional values are politically declared out of bounds. Many Americans notice that liberalism nowadays lacks a vocabulary of right and wrong, declines to discuss virtue except in snickering terms, and seems increasingly hostile to prevailing moral sentiments.

[...] In their bafflement over rejection of their product, liberals have been lacing speeches with religious phrases and asking mainstream Americans to vote their economic interests by rejecting Republican fat cats. It will take a bit more than that.

The penultimate sentence reminds me of something I've been meaning to hammer on: Democrats were baffled that poor people in red states consistently fail to vote for what's in their economic interest. Essentially, it is a bald statement that the Democrats intend to engage in economic redistribution, and they don't understand why any likely recipient of such largesse would ever be opposed to it.

They chalk it up to a number of explanations. "They don't realize that the Democrats have their economic interests in mind & at heart." "Karl Rove has mislead them." "All they care about are 'values'." The one thing that never occurs to them (or at least the one thing they never speak aloud) is perhaps the poorer Republicans have too much pride to accept money taken forcibly from others. Perhaps these benighted Republican voters actually understand that taxing the rich to death is - gasp! - bad for the economy and as such, high taxation and income redistribution are not in their long term interests.

(Hat tip: Cheese & Crackers)