Commentary: Why social democrats have become irrelevant

In almost every country in Europe, parties of the center-left struggle to remain competitive in the political arena. Yet social democracy - though it can claim success in creating and developing public services which have improved the lives and health of citizens - can now rarely convince its former supporters that it’s still worth their votes.

Since the war (WW II), social democratic parties offered capitalism a deal. The state would be largely responsible for public welfare and education, and organized labor would – in varying degrees – be granted strong bargaining rights, even co-determination in enterprises. Capitalism would be regulated, but could be successful – as it usually was.

As globalization accelerated, social democrats came to believe that they must rival governments of the right in attracting investment and encouraging entrepreneurship. But the decline of national protections helped eviscerate much of organized labor (except in the public services) and rendered the institutions of the welfare state more fragile because more open to domestic and international competition.

As global capitalism comes to be blamed increasingly for austerity, inequality, stagnant incomes and unemployment, and parties of the right fear something like a revolution, parts of electorates, especially the young, turn away from parties which are seen as little different from the center right, powerless in the face of global pressures and less militant and aggressive in pursuing alternatives.

That full-blooded socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and that the parties of the far right lean far towards authoritarian rule and a deliberate cultivation of fear and hatred has not yet severely dented the attraction of the parties of the two extremes. Thus the weakening of social democracy continues. It has lost its foundations and has not yet found its relevance to 21st century politics.

Indeed.

Years ago, at a neighborhood party, one of my neighbors was going on and on about how the government should confiscate the guns, and tax the churches, and seize money from people who were “too rich” and shut down businesses that polluted, etc. etc.

I mentioned that some of these ideas might not be popular with the voters.

“You!” she snarled. “You’re Republican! You’re basically a Nazi! You’re what’s wrong with this country!”

I said: “I’m a Conservative. I just want my government o leave me alone. The people who want a powerful government to force everyone to live according to rules made by bureaucrats are the Nazis.”

She walked away — hasn’t spoken to me since.

I don’t know. don’t buy all this global governance b/s.

Informative about the rest of the world? Yes. Informative about the United States. not really IMO.

The world, which grudgingly and somewhat denyingly follows the U.S. politically and economically, is generally without a road-map or framework within which to work. The world is without a lighthouse or compass as a reference to steer it’s collective ship of state(s). Generally, the U.S. has been those things to the world.

This guy, John Lloyd, as so many, wants to throw the U.S. into the world’s melting pot. But the U.S. stands apart from the rest of the world in many ways and for many reasons not the least of which is the fact the U.S. is a Constitutional Republic founded on the unique presumptions of “the Laws of Nature and of Natures’ God” (Declaration of Independence).

The whole structure and text of the U.S. Constitution in the creation and limitations of the central government is based on “certain unalienable Rights [of] Life liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (id.). The Supreme Law of the land of the United States of America is unique from any other government in the world in that is based on the presumptions stated in the Declaration of Independence that God gives man his rights, freedoms, and power, and man delegates to government certain limited powers. In America, legally, individuals come before government because individuals collectively consent to create and limit government. The Left has taken America far away from those founding presumptions.

Therefore, “social democracy” is unconstitutional because the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to meddle in matters of “social welfare”, “social justice’” or “social democracy.” Unlike the rest of the world which is ruled by the whims of man, America is ruled by the law of the Constitution which basically disallows the so-called “progressive” agenda of the Left’s “social democracy”.

I dislike this article in that it fails to make this critical distinction between the U.S. and the rest of the world and seems, rather, to ignore America’s legal and other “exceptionalism” but seems to rather assume nothing exceptional about America. In that sense, the article advances confusion, not clarity and truth.

Now under way with Trump, it is the job of lovers of America and freedom to recover America’s Free Constitutional Republic essentially ending unconstitutional federal “social democracy” regardless of what the rest of the world is doing. But as has been in the past, the world will follow in some form or fashion.

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