A Washington Post op-ed:

Why are liberals the way liberals are? What is it about the L-word that has become so offensive to so many? It has become such a turnoff that countless liberals dare not admit to their own label.

Because many 'liberal' ideas -- including economic socialism, large-scale welfare programs, affirmative action, and the most of the policies of the sixities -- have been roundly discredited by the passage of years and ever-increasing empirical evidence of failure.

And the average person has noticed.

At its best, liberalism is about the defense of the underdog, of minority rights, of social justice, of active but restrained government, of civil liberties, of openness and tolerance.

Liberalism, in my experience, is simply the claim to these positions.

Defending the underdog? Israel is a lone democracy, surrounded by a vast sea of people who want to destroy her. Where is the defense of that 'underdog' now? For thirty or more years, the black community has embraced 'liberal' ideas and faithfully elected Democratic leaders. How have they been helped? (The black family continues to dissolve.) And what about women in Islamic countries? Or Christians in China? Or Bahaiis in Iran? Or democratic activists in Cuba? Where is the concern?

Attempts at an in-depth examination of whether 'liberal' policies help or hurt underdogs, in my experience, generally provoke at best indifference, and at worst, anger.

In their own defense, those who still admit to being liberals would argue that the very fact that they have stood up for minority rights -- including, heroically, for civil rights in the 1960s -- made them unpopular, sometimes with a majority of the country.

Fact check, Dionne: About three times as many Democratic Congressmen voted against the 1964 civil rights act as did Republicans. Republicans were far more in favor of the bill (about 80% in favor) than Democrats (about 62%).

For over a century, Republicans had fought for civil rights legislation, but were incessantly blocked (filibustered) by Democrats. In was only when Lyndon Johnson got the bug that he finally convinced the bigots in his party to let the legislation through.

It's a bit like giving French primary credit for winning WWII. Only worse, since they actually didn't fight on the Nazi side until the allied victory was in sight -- as the Democratic Party clearly did with civil rights.

They also argue, correctly, that the demonization of their creed goes all the way back to those who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of reform at home and internationalism abroad. The reaction to FDR bred McCarthyism and the libelous charge that liberals were, at best, "squishy soft" on communism.

McCarthyism was a reaction to Communism, not FDR.

Liberal presidents did a good job of fighting Communist dictatorships, with Kennedy, Truman, and Johnson prosecuting anti-Communist wars abroad. Of course, the Republicans were there too, so it's hardly a distinguishing mark of Democratic policy. But credit should be given where due.

But since the Carter administration, most 'liberals' now oppose such a stance.

And Dionne thinks this is a credit to modern liberals... how, exactly?

But liberalism has also become associated with elitism, arrogance and disdain for the values of average Americans.

I think that happened in the late 1960s, Dionne. Did you just notice now? That's what, a forty year delay? (And this guy gets to write editorials?)

Think of the consumer preferences tossed at liberals from the right as epithets: brie, chablis (now updated to merlot), Volvos, lattes, vacations on Martha's Vineyard. Never mind that it's conservatives who want to eliminate inheritance taxes on those Vineyard mansions.

Oh, yes, well that part's new. The "can't trust anyone over 30" radicals of the sixties are now (heh) well over 50 years old, and have objectively betrayed most their original anti-family, anti-business values (thank heavens), while still giving them lip service (sadly).

Teddy Kennedy: Defender of the little guy. From Martha's Vineyard, indeed.

The rest of Dionne's editorial is a consideration of a new biography, by David Brown, of Richard Hofstadter -- the man who wrote "The Paranoid Style in American Policies" which profiled a number of fringe right wing elements active during the 50s and 60s.

At this point, Dionne promotes the following explanation for liberalism's demotion:

[T]here was something dismissive about Hofstadter's analysis that blinded liberals to the legitimate grievances of the populists, the progressives and, yes, the right wing.

The late Christopher Lasch, one of Hofstadter's students and an admiring critic, noted that by conducting "political criticism in psychiatric categories," Hofstadter and his intellectual allies excused themselves "from the difficult work of judgment and argumentation."

Lasch added archly: "Instead of arguing with opponents, they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds."

This was, I believe, a wrong turn for liberalism...

So that's it. Liberalism hasn't been discredited by facts, or the Jimmy Carter and Clinton presidencies, by the massive failure welfare was, or by the continuing dissolution of the African American community.

Instead, liberalism has been discredited because Hofstadter's book encouraged liberals to dismiss opposing stances using psychological allegations, not intellect or evidence.

Instead, I think Dionne has it backward: he has reversed cause and effect.

Dionne alleges it was Hofstadter's analysis which caused liberals to easily dismiss dissenting ideas. Instead, I suspect Hofstadter's analysis was widely embraced precisely because there was already considerable liberal disinterest in engaging opposing points of view intellectually. "Paranoid Style" was just one excuse among many, not the cause.

And today, Dionne himself -- who, by writing this piece, implies he's not currently part of this trend -- proves my point exactly.

Here I am, saying liberalism died because it's policies were failures. I'm not alone in saying so: countless public conservatives say the same thing. And does he, for a moment, consider that perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that 'liberal' is now almost a public insult?

No. It was this one book, you see, that caused it.

Yet another easy dismissal.