Change in the liberal mantra over past 30 years.

The Liberal mantra used to be: 'Capitalism created too much change, inequality and poverty; that we need bigger government to redistribute wealth and control the 'means of production'.

I call it the Liberal Mantra and Lefty Fundamentalism others call it the Liberal Catechism and the Torah of Liberalism.  Whatever it is called its basic tenant is being replaced. The change has come over the past 30 years.

I owe my recognition of this change in Liberal Dogma to a letter in the Claremont Review from Donald T. Critchlow at St. Louis Univ.

New Liberalism is concerned with controlling our consumer behavior.  In San Francisco we call it Nanny government but it is a direct attack on the Declaration of Independence.  It is an attack on our right to the pursuit of happiness.

The New liberalism tells us what kind of light bulbs we have to use, when we have to use helmets, what weight and size our children must be before they can stop using 5-point auto harnesses, when and where we can smoke, what we can smoke, how we can talk on the phone in a car, what kinds of foods we can't eat at all (horse, whale, dolphin etc), what labels must tell us about the food that we buy and on and on.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the pioneer region in New Liberalism, these days we are told when we can have a warm household fireplace going, how we must pre-sort our compost properly or be punished, we must bring our own bags to grocery stores or be restricted to paper bags, we can not smoke in apartment houses or inside a wide range of businesses (bars; even outside coffee houses) and no smoking in public parks or beaches.  Hundreds of stores are banned from selling cigarettes.  In my neighborhood one chain restaurant is prohibited from serving coffee (Fuzio).  We are not even allowed to build garages in our own private new homes for more than one car per house.  Much of our food consumption is in the process of being regulated from trans fats to movie popcorn.

The New Liberalism focuses on controlling our behavior.