Prof. James F. Tracy: The Tender Tyranny of American Liberalism!

Liberalism itself is a synthetic creation of the power structure, a humanitarian facade behind which the dirty work of policing the world can go on uninterrupted by idealistic spasms in the body politic. Journalist Eric Norden's perceptive critique, The Tender Tyranny of American Liberalism,appeared in the early years of the Vietnam era, accurately identifying how a predominantly liberal worldview projected by the ruling technocracy and its intellectual adherents acted to subordinate genuinely Left-progressive ideas and social movements at home, while ensuring the furtherance of US imperial designs abroad. Today Norden's insights are worthy of reconsideration in light of how the Left remains largely devoid of its own voice or vision, and more than ever liberalism provides ideological cover for aggressive Anglo American militarism, the prerogatives of transnational corporations, and an ever-expanding police state. Since the 1800's liberalism and its utilitarian philosophical bearings have been a central intellectual and popular means by which gunboat and free trade diplomacies alike are justified to the public at large. It is also a foremost rationale through which aggressive social control is exerted on the population at home, more recently by political leaders who symbolize and embody real social struggles in American history, and thereby may exercise a more valid claim to feeling their constituents pain. The modern day liberal handily anticipates and deflects criticism of her policies through a trumpeted alarm for a variety of social and political issues: Student performance, public health, environmental degradation and the alleged atrocities of foreign enemies, waving about an array of solutions, from educational initiatives and carbon credits, to "humanitarian" military actions.