PJM chief Roger L. Simon offers this analysis at least partly tongue in cheek, settling a score with the New York Times over its attention to Sam Tannenhaus’ book proclaiming conservativism dead 14 months ago while ignoring Roger’s memoirs.  He retorts by semi-seriously proclaiming modern liberalism dead after the midterms and the failure of progressive Keynesianism to restart economic growth.  In doing so, though, Roger ignores the fallacy that also drove Tannenhaus’ faulty conclusions:

For the foreseeable future, liberalism is dead.  To go further, as the great Preston Sturges once said of chivalry, liberalism “is not only dead, it’s decomposed.”

Whence comes this decomposition?  Primarily from the fact that society is aging so fast it can no longer afford liberalism’s various Ponzi schemes engendered by Keynesian economics. We can barely pay these entitlements now, which are the principal ornaments of liberalism, let alone in the future.  Then it will be a disaster.  We’re all growing broke.  Some of us are just going broke faster.  And going broke fastest of all may be the United States of America.

And — here’s the scary part — that’s true no matter at what level we tax ourselves.  Tax the rich at ninety-nine percent and the numbers still will not crunch.  There aren’t enough rich people to make up the gap. Not even close. It’s all an illusion — a myth of “fairness,”  which is in reality unfair. In  the world of hard facts, we’re stuck unless we cut government handouts — Social Security and Medicare — almost beyond recognition. …

Now of course I am referring to modern liberalism, not classical liberalism.  And when I say liberalism is dead, it does not mean that everybody knows or acknowledges this rigor mortis — or that it will act dead.  Its adherents, especially the legions with a vested economic (unions, etc.) or social (Hollywood, media) interest, will never admit it. They will change the subject from economics so they don’t have to debate or examine concrete conditions.  They will seekbailouts to push back any day of reckoning. To distract us and themselves, they will continue to insist the Tea Party movement is racist, even though that is a demonstrable lie, a form of nostalgia, and there are already black congressmen elected with the support of the movement.  For those liberals, the truth is not important — preservation of self-image and lifestyle is.

The problem is that liberalism isn’t going to die, no matter how many times it proves a failure for economic policies.  It’s not a pragmatic check list; it’s a philosophy that goes beyond the practical considerations of its policies.   Both conservatism and liberalism speak to values and not necessarily results.  There will always be a tension in a free nation between those who think that the needs of the group outweigh those of the individual and that government exists to impose fairness, and those who believe in a higher priority to limit government to protect the freedom of the individual.  Neither impulse lives or dies on a single election, or even a series of them.

In fact, it may be that isms have taken the biggest hit over the last several cycles.  The wide swings in seat changes have been accompanied by a slow, steady erosion in party affiliation.  More people vote now as independents, and seem less motivated to vote on ideology or philosophy than for what they think will work.  That will force politicians and the two parties to narrow their focus to the priorities that bring the most people together and give a clear explanation of how their policies will deliver results.  In other words, the bigger the tent, the fewer the poles — and the GOP understood that concept in this election, focusing entirely on economics and jobs, where their policies actually work.

In that sense, liberalism may be in retreat, but it’s not dead, and it’s dangerous to think that it won’t return.

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