I just finished reading a great diary titled The Failure of Liberalism. I disagree vehemently with the notion that liberalism is a failure. Liberalism has not yet succeeded, but neither has it failed.
I always start with a dictionary definition of a term, usually Merriam-Webster's. The first sense of the word is the quality or state of being liberal. Look up liberal in Merriam-Webster's one sees as the first sense one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways. Can being open minded be a failure. The answer is simple, it cannot be.
We can look at other senses and meanings for the word liberalism. In Wikipedia we see that liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Can this fail or succeed. No way. Note a similar sense in given in Wikipedia.
What has happened is that liberalism has become mired in a collection of government policies including social security, Medicare, regulation, equal rights for minority groups, equal protection for minority groups, ending poverty, . . . All of the policies are then tarred with the stamp of big government where big government harkens back to the days of monarchies with the King controlling everything. The reason why liberals are associated with these ideas is that at the time these ideas came to the good ole USA liberals were open minded enough to consider them and consider them. The ideas were good and have proven themselves over time. I now consider social security and Medicare to be conservative. The changes proposed by "conservatives" are actually reactionary and not conservative in the least.
And that is the problem. I put term conservative in quotes, because conservatives are not interested in preserving the status quo or "stare decisis." They are interested in returning to an earlier time when life was good. This return to the past is reactionary not conservative and to call it such is just nonsense. The new ideas of today's conservatism are the ideas of days long past. While a liberal is open minded to consider them, once considered a liberal will also see the fallacy embedded in the ideas.
I consider myself to be a liberal. As such I am open minded in a search for everyone to be able to reach the peak of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self actualize. At the base this means satisfying everyone's physiological needs and then working our way up the ladder. To accept that this cannot be accomplished to me means a poverty of human spirit. This is beyond populism. This to me is what liberalism is all about.
Can this fail, not really. Can this succeed, well maybe. But it is my mission and I believe every liberals mission in life.