[eterm]

We live in a time when people who are to the right of Reagan are at times described un-ironically as "liberal".

It concerns me that people can consider the economist "left-leaning", it shows how far to the right the U.S. (and with it much of the world) has shifted.

The U.S. was way ahead of the rest of the world on this, and has always been a lot more conservative than Europe, but it's cultural influence has had the effect of moving Europe to the right by painting the middle ground as "left wing" so Europe makes concessions on things like privatisation of infrastructure (e.g. for better or worse privatisation of telecommunications in Europe in the 80s was pushed by the US).

It hasn't been all bad of course, part of the reason the recent election result is so painful is because progressive poltics has made a huge amount of progress.

In 25 years the US has gone from racist, homophobic and dealing with the effects of prohibition (the "war on drugs") to the society we have now which is dealing with it's issue of race far better than Europe (which continues to bury it's head in the sand over the issue), allowing gay marriage, serving in the military regardless of (open) sexual preference, and de-criminalising or legalising cannabis.

The US has faced up and is dealing with it's racism problem. Europe always saw itself as "nowhere near as bad as the US", which was true when the US had lynchings. And there is still plenty of work to the done in the US particularly around the justice system and other institutional effects which lead back to social injustice. But the trajectory is there for the US, while in Europe it feels like racism is a growing problem which isn't being tackled at all.

So it's understandable that people who were already set in their ways 25 years ago (indeed many current voters were approaching retirement 25 years ago) see the modern world and react with horror at all the progress.

Trump said he's going to "win so much we'll be sick and tired of winning", well Trump isn't a winner, progressives should be shouting that Trump is weak if he's tired of winning because he's won an election or two, because progressives have been winning for 25 years and we're not going to get tired of winning any time soon.

So the dramatic shift to the right has to been in context. The sky isn't going to fall but while huge progress has been made on social issues; on issues such as economic policy, policing and commercial rights there has been a slow constant erosion and shift to the right.

So the shift to the right socially is dangerous because reversing canoe from paddling upstream against a right-wing under-current will act as an enabler where you can quickly find yourself in shit creek without a paddle.

[davidw]

"Liberal" means different things in Europe and the US. In Europe, it's more along the lines of "classic liberal", which is not left-leaning, particularly, although The Economist does espouse some things that some elements of the left in the US do, such as legalization of drugs and gun control. They have also endorsed Democrats in the presidential elections, such as Hillary, as well as Republicans, in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

It's perfectly possible to disagree with them on a variety of issues, but pigeonholing them as 'left' or 'right' is inaccurate.

[makomk]

Of course, progressive politics of the kind you talk about is entirely compatible with neoliberalism. So to the extent that the Left is primarily focused on those things and demands that people subsume other concerns to them, it ceases to provide any opposition to neoliberalism. Which is why the Economist can be described as left-leaning - the world hasn't shifted to the right, though that's a convenient way for the people on the left who've abandoned these causes to shift blame elsewhere, instead the axis along which the two are divided is twisting sideways.