The Liberal State On Trial

What was left, in both senses of the word, of liberalism after the death of Franklin Roosevelt? Using case studies from Senate and House races from 1946 to 1952, this book explores the role of the Cold War in shifting the center of gravity in American politics sharply to the right in the years immediately following World War II. Bell demonstrates that there was far more active and vibrant debate about the potential for liberal ideas before they become submerged in Cold War anti-state rhetoric than has generally been recognized.

What was left, in both senses of the word, of liberalism after the death of Franklin Roosevelt? Using case studies from Senate and House races from 1946 to 1952, this book explores the role of the Cold War in shifting the center of gravity in American politics sharply to the right in the years immediately following World War II. Bell demonstrates that there was far more active and vibrant debate about the potential for liberal ideas before they become submerged in Cold War anti-state rhetoric than has generally been recognized.

What was left, in both senses of the word, of liberalism after the death of Franklin Roosevelt? This question has aroused considerable historical debate because it raises the question of why the United States, during the Truman years, developed a much less state-centered orthodoxy than other comparable, powerful liberal states. What were the consequences of this fundamental choice that would shape the character and direction of American society during the second half of the twentieth century? This book explores the role of the Cold War in shifting the center of gravity in American politics sharply to the right in the years immediately following World War II. Jonathan Bell demonstrates that there was far more active and vibrant debate about the potential for liberal ideas before they become submerged in Cold War anti-state rhetoric than has generally been recognized. Using case studies from Senate and House races from 1946 to 1952, Bell shows how the anti-statist imagery that defined the Cold War in political debate became the key weapon among right-wing and business interest groups and their political representatives with which to discredit political figures who wanted to expand political liberalism beyond existing New Deal measures. He depicts how this process implicitly endorsed socioeconomic inequality.

In this new interpretation of the making of modern America, Dawley traces the group struggles involved in the nation's rise to power. Probing the dynamics of social change, he explores tensions between industrial workers and corporate capitalists, Victorian moralists and New Women, native Protestants and Catholic immigrants.

Refugees from high-tax Massachusetts turned New Hampshire blue. Democratic voters from Yankee states are swamping Tennessee and Georgia. Government employees and refugees from Maryland have turned Virginia from a conservative Southern state into left-leaning Democrat territory. Escapees from California have transformed Colorado, and they’re aiming for Texas next. One state after another is turning from red to purple to blue. America is being radically changes by people leaving blue states for better living conditions and opportunities in red states—only to import to their new homes the very policies that created the misery they fled from in the first place. The direction of the change is undeniable: • A 2019 poll found that 53 percent of residents are considering leaving California on account of the exorbitant cost of living • From 2008-2018, Houston's population surged more than 15 percent, and the top metro areas of origin for those new Texas residents were Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago • Migration from blue states is changing the Texas electorate: between 2010 and 2018, votes for Democrats went up 50 percent, while Republican votes increased by just 10 percent • Boom is turning to bust in cities like Denver, as hip blue state refugees to red states raise the cost of living by voting in liberal policies The liberal invasion of the conservative states is having major impacts on our elections, our economy, and our standard of living. And yet few Americans are even aware of the trend, and fewer still have any idea of the significant implications for the future of the United States. Now, in The Liberal Invasion of Red State America, indefatigable reporter Kristin Tate delves into the data, lays out the astonishing statistics, and explores the likely consequences of this under-the-radar trend. If you want to understand the movement that is reshaping our country, read this groundbreaking book.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER In the past few decades, legislatures throughout the world have suffered from gridlock. In democracies, laws and policies are just as soon unpicked as made. It seems that Congress and Parliaments cannot forge progress or consensus. Moreover, courts often overturn decisions made by elected representatives. In the absence of effective politicians, many turn to the courts to solve political and moral questions. Rulings from the Supreme Courts in the United States and United Kingdom, or the European court in Strasbourg may seem to end the debate but the division and debate does not subside. In fact, the absence of democratic accountability leads to radicalisation. Judicial overreach cannot make up for the shortcomings of politicians. This is especially acute in the field of human rights. For instance, who should decide on abortion or prisoners' rights to vote, elected politicians or appointed judges? Expanding on arguments first laid out in the 2019 Reith Lectures, Jonathan Sumption argues that the time has come to return some problems to the politicians.

What remains anti-democratic in our criminal justice systems, and where does it come from? Geoffroy de Lagasnerie spent years sitting in on trials, watching as individuals were judged and sentenced for armed robbery, assault, rape, and murder. His experience led to this original reflection on the penal state, power, and violence that identifies a paradox in the way justice is exercised in liberal democracies. In order to pronounce a judgment, a trial must construct an individualizing story of actors and their acts; but in order to punish, each act between individuals must be transformed into an aggression against society as a whole, against the state itself. The law is often presented as the reign of reason over passion. Instead, it leads to trauma, dispossession, and violence. Only by overturning our inherited legal fictions can we envision forms of truer justice. Combining narratives of real trials with theoretical analysis, Judge and Punish shows that juridical institutions are not merely a response to crime. The state claims to guarantee our security, yet from our birth, we also belong to it. The criminal trial, a magnifying mirror, reveals our true condition as political subjects.

This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics and Society focuses on law and the liberal state; presenting an interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to analysis of law and liberty. The first chapters focus on law's relationship with the American liberal state, while the remaining papers consider specific applications of the law within society

The demon is a mob, and the mob is demonic. The Democratic Party activates mobs, depends on mobs, coddles mobs, publicizes and celebrates mobs—it is the mob. Sweeping in its scope and relentless in its argument, Demonic explains the peculiarities of liberals as standard groupthink behavior. To understand mobs is to understand liberals. In her most provocative book to date, Ann Coulter argues that liberals exhibit all the psychological characteristics of a mob, for instance: Liberal Groupthink: “The same mob mentality that leads otherwise law-abiding people to hurl rocks at cops also leads otherwise intelligent people to refuse to believe anything they haven’t heard on NPR.” Liberal Schemes: “No matter how mad the plan is—Fraternité, the ‘New Soviet Man,’ the Master Race, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Building a New Society, ObamaCare—a mob will believe it.” Liberal Enemies: “Instead of ‘counterrevolutionaries,’ liberals’ opponents are called ‘haters,’ ‘those who seek to divide us,’ ‘tea baggers,’ and ‘right-wing hate groups.’ Meanwhile, conservatives call liberals ‘liberals’—and that makes them testy.” Liberal Justice: “In the world of the liberal, as in the world of Robespierre, there are no crimes, only criminals.” Liberal Violence: “If Charles Manson’s followers hadn’t killed Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, Clinton would have pardoned him, too, and he’d probably be teaching at Northwestern University.” Citing the father of mob psychology, Gustave Le Bon, Coulter catalogs the Left’s mob behaviors: the creation of messiahs, the fear of scientific innovation, the mythmaking, the preference for images over words, the lack of morals, and the casual embrace of contradictory ideas. Coulter traces the history of the liberal mob to the French Revolution and Robespierre’s revolutionaries (delineating a clear distinction from America’s founding fathers), who simply proclaimed that they were exercising the “general will” before slaughtering their fellow citizens “for the good of mankind.” Similarly, as Coulter demonstrates, liberal mobs, from student radicals to white-trash racists to anti-war and pro-ObamaCare fanatics today, have consistently used violence to implement their idea of the “general will.” This is not the American tradition; it is the tradition of Stalin, of Hitler, of the guillotine—and the tradition of the American Left. As the heirs of the French Revolution, Democrats have a history that consists of pandering to mobs, time and again, while Republicans, heirs to the American Revolution, have regularly stood for peaceable order. Hoping to muddy this horrifying truth, liberals slanderously accuse conservatives of their own crimes—assassination plots, conspiracy theorizing, political violence, embrace of the Ku Klux Klan. Coulter shows that the truth is the opposite: Political violence—mob violence—is always a Democratic affair. Surveying two centuries of mob movements, Coulter demonstrates that the mob is always destructive. And yet, she argues, beginning with the civil rights movement in the sixties, Americans have lost their natural, inherited aversion to mobs. Indeed, most Americans have no idea what they are even dealing with. Only by recognizing the mobs and their demonic nature can America begin to defend itself.