Liberalism In The West Under Strain

Interesting article from Dissent magazine about the disaster facing the left in Italy. Sounds like Italy isn't the only place the left struggles. Ask the left here in North America.

LEFT-WING voters in Italy have indeed had ample reason to feel betrayed by their political leaders. Over the last fifteen years alone, the Italian left has been divided into a confusing multiplicity of parties, umbrella organizations, and electoral coalitions that puts to shame the struggle between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front, as portrayed in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. Yet, all these groupings have one thing in common: for reasons of both programmatic lethargy and persistent corruption, no recent left-wing party has managed to convince and mobilize its base.

 Didn't I once compare the Democratic party to Animal House? Yes,I did.

Notwithstanding these moderate achievements, the PD has had its fair share of trouble, too. For a start, center-left politicians, though less corrupt than Berlusconi, have hardly given voters reason to believe that the problem of political corruption and links to organized crime doesn’t apply to them at all.

 Again, similar problem here. Democrats are good at pointing out the corrupt, if not criminal activity in the GOP but fail to address their own inner indiscretions.

In this light, the most frightening thing about Berlusconi’s unopposed success is not that it is owed exclusively to special Italian factors. To be sure, both the degeneration of Italy’s public discourse and the inefficacy of the Italian left are far more extreme than in any other large Western European country. But this, sadly, might be emblematic of the growing crisis on the European left.

 And the North American left?And

 In a similar vein, the PD, mostly to cover up its internal divisions, continues to copy Berlusconi’s pleasant-sounding, content-free generalities. The party program on the PD website is full of well-intentioned wishes for “safer schools” or “to protect and value the Italian cultural and artistic heritage,” but sparse on details and lacking in overall vision. Posters that the PD plastered all over Rome at the time of the conflict in Gaza sum this up perfectly. They lamely read, “War in Palestine: Try for Peace.”

Sounds like the Liberal party of Canada. As for Obama, the problem is that he's plan for change was stalled from the get-go. If your staff contains too many elements from the previous administration and is stacked with patronage appointees, then how can you foster change? That's why it's all talk and no action. Obama can only go so far.

In the end, Berlusconi’s ascendancy is owed not only to the shambolic state of the Italian left; more worryingly, the shambolic state of the Italian left is, in turn, owed partially to the toothless political program of the European left.

Why are conservatives and liberals dominating the debate anyway? That's what classical liberals, libertarians and socialists would like to know!