– Punitive liberalism was a reaction to the perceived excesses of the post-World War II era and sought to restore social order through strict regulations and curtailment of individual freedoms.
– Liberal thought of the past few decades has been largely synonymous with upholding government programs and expanding freedom and equality, leading to a stagnant sense of happiness.
– The resurgence of happiness in contemporary culture is linked to shifting societal values, “prioritizing personal fulfillment over material success.”.. and a desire for something more and an antidote to the anxieties surrounding the post-Vietnam War era.
Reference: See here
In The News:
It’s a simple five-word comment that I recently came across on YouTube about a video of young people club dancing in the 1980s .
The dancers do, indeed, look happy, with colorful clothes, fun haircuts, and self-confident smiles.
That doesn’t mean we have to ignore any bad news about the economy or illnesses or wars. We just do what we did in the 1980s — realize there is only so much you can do to save the world, and after taking in a small amount of news, make it a habit of escaping into long hours of happiness. And most importantly, ignore leftists demanding that you be unhappy.
Since the end of Soviet communism around 1990, the Left has unexpectedly won the younger generations to unhappiness. But this trend began decades earlier.
Happiness in America fell out of fashion when punitive liberalism, the philosophy of the Left, took over the national psyche in the 1960s. The phrase “punitive liberalism” was coined by James Piereson in his groundbreaking book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism . The book argues that in the 20th century up until the 1960s, liberalism was largely a doctrine of maintaining government programs and slowly expanding freedom and equal justice for all people. Up until the 1960s, liberalism was not radical. It was competent, patriotic, often anti-communist, and did good things.
