Liberalism fallen on hard times

Why does it seem that liberalism has become a personality cult around Barack Obama?

I am going to say something here that will be shocking.  Conservativism is the worship of dead liberals.  We like them because they are dead, and because their ideas have stood the test of time--but we wouldn't have liked them at the time.

Liberalism is an important tradition in our country's history.  Now, that kind of is an oxymoron (a liberal tradition), but liberalism in the late 1700s and early 1800s was important and we wouldn't be here without it.  Progressivism, on the other hand, is a different matter for a different post.  See Jonah Goldberg's book on that subject. 

But the liberalism of the early 1960s has fallen on hard times.  It is knee-jerk; it is both about more rights and fewer rights; it's about more government intrusion into our all parts of our lives except our genitals; it is fixated with defending Obama, no matter what he does; it lacks any kind of moral compass. 

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