As a Canadian, I'd be inclined to call it the "every other industrialized liberal democracy on earth is better" mantra. Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works.
The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance actually is inferior to a number of other approaches that have been more inclined to take evidence-based best practices into account.
> Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works.
That's just utter nonsense. What measurement are you optimizing for?
What makes you think that moving the US to the left moves it closer to, say, Germany, instead of closer to, say, Brazil, India, and Mexico (which is what I think will happen)?
And even if it did move it closer to Germany, I wouldn't want that, which speaks to the fact that your "measurably works" claim probably refers to some non-objective sense of optimality.
> the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance
That's a straw man. Predominating sentiments in the GOP are strongly contra the Founding Fathers. I mean, George W. Bush greatly expanded the welfare state.
Take your pick. The US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility.
Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate Europe.
For example, high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor immigrants from Latin America.
For another example, high rate of incarceration is largely to be blamed on the "War on Drugs," which has the same effect as the prohibition on alcohol did.
For another example, low rate of doctors is largely to be blamed on the fact that medicine is a guild (as in, midieval guild) where med school is super tough to get into, doesn't select for competency as a medical practitioner, and creates a "class hierarchy" within medicine where a highly-trained nurse can perform as well or better than a doctor in many common situations, but is not legally allowed to practice in that capacity.
This could go on and on.
Overall, American liberals want a society where everybody gets whatever they demand, to the degree that there is enough to go around, except the actual producers. That society already exists, and it's called India.
> Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate Europe.
You mean the rest of the industrialized world, not just Europe.
> high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor immigrants from Latin America.
You mean unlike a country that harbours many poor immigrants from Northern Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe?
> high rate of incarceration is largely to be blamed on the "War on Drugs"
Yes, and it is the conservative right that most strongly favours continuing the War on Drugs. Those left of centre liberals you don't like generally favour ending the war on drugs and following a more - dare I say - European approach to legalization. (Sadly, Canada's Republican-lite Conservative government has taken a more American approach to the War on Drugs, establishing mandatory minimum sentences and other punitive measures that have already failed in the US.)
> low rate of doctors is largely to be blamed on the fact that medicine is a guild
That's true across all the industrialized countries, but the other countries are much better than the US at achieving a higher rate of doctors and much better overall health outcomes, despite spending only 40-70% of what the USA spends on health care - and running various incarnations of universal health coverage.
> American liberals want a society where everybody gets whatever they demand
That's a lazy straw man attack. American liberals, like liberals in other industrialized countries, want their country to value human rights, pay attention to evidence-based public policy and invest enough in public social and physical infrastructure to ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living and the opportunity to work hard and prosper.
Ironically, the USA has among the worst levels of socioeconomic mobility in the OECD. Poor Americans are more trapped in their poverty than poor people in countries that do more to level the playing field so everyone has a fair chance of escaping poverty.
> despite spending only 40-70% of what the USA spends on health care
Right. And if the USA tries to emulate Europe in healthcare more than we alreay do, we will end up wasting even more money. There is no solution to be had here through more regulation.
> value human rights
> ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living
Contradiction. But providing a moral basis for individual rights requires understanding a complete philosophical system, which is out of the scope of an HN comment.
> ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living and the opportunity to work hard and prosper
You're asking something that may be outside the scope of reality.
> Poor Americans are more trapped in their poverty
As someone from a poor part of rural eastern North Carolina, all I can do is LOL at this, because it's utterly, utterly false. That is a complete myth. I mean, we already have free universal education, de jure through high school and de facto through college.
> if the USA tries to emulate Europe in healthcare more than we alreay do, we will end up wasting even more money.
The evidence is that American health care costs would go down significantly, given the clear correlation across industrialized countries between the extent to which health care spending is private and the overall cost (either per capita or as a share of GDP).
> Contradiction.
It's not a contradition, the latter follows necessarily from the former. It's why nearly every industrialized country has converged on public health, public education, public health care, affordable housing, and so on.
> But providing a moral basis for individual rights requires understanding a complete philosophical system, which is out of the scope of an HN comment.
Or we can dispense with the 18th century a priori legerdemain and just recognize human rights as a self-evident basis for a fair, just and humane society.
> You're asking something that may be outside the scope of reality.
And yet the rest of the industrialized world does a much better job of it than the United States.
> As someone from a poor part of rural eastern North Carolina, all I can do is LOL at this
Society should optimize for happiness. It's not measurable, but you can estimate it (for example you can estimate that average German is happier than average citizen of North Korea). My vague definition happiness is this: Let's say you must choose between 2 states of mind and you'll spend the next hour in the selected one. Before your choice, you can try each of them by clicking some button. The one that you choose has higher "happiness quotient".
So let's draft 1% of the population and place them in a large underground bunker at birth. They will never be allowed to know anything about the "real world," and they will provide all the labor, engineering, and scientific research for the other 99%, who get to everything for free. Does that sound like a good society to you?
No, because this very probably wouldn't increase average happiness:
1. The 1% would be less happy.
2. Lot of the 99% would feel guilty (which lowers happiness).
3. The 1% would probably be less productive than if they were free. So the only benefit for the 99% would be that they consume less.
By the way, this system to a certain extent exist in our society (cheap labour in China for example).
The working of any given balance of liberties and social protections is a phenomenon observable only in time increments over centuries, or possibly millenia.
There are many examples of "liberal" and even "democratic" or "republican" governments / societies that lasted for centuries before failing into tyranny and / or to foreign domination. The US Constitution attempts to correct the failings of each of those examples. Saying it has worked so far is declaring the weather today, all day long, was great -- at 9:30am.
Saying the French or Germans have demonstrated their solutions, at that time scale, is just nuts.
The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance actually is inferior to a number of other approaches that have been more inclined to take evidence-based best practices into account.