Liberals don’t do specifics; they deal in large abstractions, which are better suited for class warfare.
In The Danger of Abstract Words, Wilfred M. McClay discusses the use of broad, abstract terms to cloak special-interest aims with the aura of universality.
He writes:
We have a chronic problem in America with abstract words. We cannot do without them, since they are carriers of our highest ideals and aspirations: “justice,” “democracy,” “dignity,” “liberty.” But it is for precisely this reason that we should beware of them, and treat them as precious commodities, not to be wantonly profaned or corrupted. The use of such words—or of words such as “change” or “hope” or “promise”—play an essential role in most acts of cultural sleight of hand.
He points out the parallel between Senator Obama’s hypnotic mantra of “promise” and Herbert Croly’s 1909 The Promise of American Life.
The thesis of Mr. Croly’s book and of Walter Lippmann’s A Preface to Politics (1914) was that America’s competitive position in the world required putting affairs of state into the hands of trained managers and scientists, under a strong leader. Lippmann, then fresh out of Harvard, where he had been president of the student socialist club, joined with Croly in 1914 to found The New Republic, which became the flagship publication of liberal-progressive-socialism in the United States.
They were anxious to have an activist President who could overpower the traditionalist mind-set of Congress and the Federal judiciary of that era. Herbert Croly proclaimed that the nation was mired in mediocrity by its devotion to Jeffersonian individuality. A vigorous leader was needed to break through the social and constitutional barriers that separated us from scientifically-managed greatness. Political power, Croly insisted, must be taken from the states and collectivized at the national level. Moreover, the constitutional powers of Congress must be tightly constrained and taken over by the powerful personality needed for the presidency. The United States required Nietzsche’s iron-willed Super Man, or at least an American version of the German Empire’s Otto von Bismarck.
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