Читать книгу Livin' la Vida Barroca. American Culture in an Age of Imperial Orthodoxies онлайн

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Because they have lived so long and so comfortably within the metaphor of American liberalism—and the moral superiority they believe it bestows upon them—they are unable, or unwilling to admit, just how far today’s packaged representation of liberal values has strayed from liberalism itself.

This erosion of liberal values has many sources. But the most important of these was the decision of the Democratic Party, and with it, the then powerful labor unions of the country, to sign up as dutiful supporters of the idea of a “benevolent” American Empire at the end of World War II.

No one who truly understands the original promise and appeal of liberalism could ever assent to such a thing in good conscience. And yet this was precisely what the hegemonic party of the American “Left” under the guidance of Harry Truman did in those years.

It was this wholly unsustainable contradiction that led to the fratricidal battles within the party during the 60s and 70s. And it was the decision of the party elites to cynically “resolve” those battles in the 80s and 90s by purging the remaining consequentially liberal (i.e. anti-militarist and anti-imperialist) voices from its upper ranks that delivered the party to its current condition as a parody on parade.