Take It Easy, But Take It

"There is a first class political mystery here at first sight - in fact, two. In the first place, liberalism is (or at least has been) overwhelmingly the dominant political ideology in the country. If we had Independent Socialists to the number of one half of one percent of those who espouse what they call liberalism, we would have a movement of the Left that could move American politics. Yet organized movements representing American liberalism have usually been little more than letterhead concoctions (like Americans for Democratic Action), the only partial exceptions being regional and temporary. Liberalism simply does not seem capable of existing in organized form. There must be a reason. The second mystery is that hardly any liberal even claims to be able to define what liberalism is. The exceptions try to do so by dint or vacuous generalities, like "Liberalism means Caring For People..." Now when a political tendency cannot explain itself to itself, there ...