America is More Liberal?

It's time to rebrand the `L-word' - 06/24/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

What's interesting, says Waldman, is that whether or not they accept the L-word, Americans are clearly moving further left all the time. For example, 30 years ago, conservatives and liberals sparred over whether women could do ''man's'' work and black people could marry white ones. To both questions, the country said yes. ''What had been the radical position is now the consensus opinion.'' These days, we still argue race and gender, but the battle lines have moved -- left. Which is, Waldman says, what they historically do.

He sees the same dynamic at work in gay rights. ``Five years ago, we weren't even talking about gay marriage. The argument was whether it was OK to discriminate against gays in housing and employment. We're not even talking about that anymore.''

I have another theory, as long as we're waxing wishful. People's moral consciences are moving them toward the political center, not to the left, as they realize that neither liberalism nor conservativism satisfies the longing for true justice. My hope is that such a movement goes beyond centrism and empowers people to live and vote according to the higher course of the natural moral law. The natural moral law tells us that men and women are different but equal in dignity and that racial differences do not mean differences in dignity. Erasing the differences between genders would be going too far. Discrimination against persons with same-sex attraction opposes the moral law. However, so does acceptance of homosexual sex and so-called homosexual marriage.

If I am right, then we have reached the limit of our movement to the left. Certainly, the fact that many former liberals (including yours truly) have abandoned the democratic party, the feminist movement, and the "civil rights" movement is an indication that I may have something here. The fact that states are independently electing to ban gay marriages and to put limits on abortion may be another indication.

The Republican Party is struggling to wraps itself around this phenomenon. The Democratic Party completely missed it. Are we going to see the end of partisan politics as we have come to know it? One can only hope.

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