Modern Art and Liberalism

Recently a bureau chief at a very prestigious Boston newspaper was trying to explain to me what liberalism was. He said, as if to administer the coup de grace, "liberals may not always get it right (probably referring to the near genocide against blacks started in the 60's) but they kept trying (probably referring to Social Security which they are trying to save even though it has impoverished us with a tiny yield in the past and threatens to impoverish us further with a negative yield or no yield at all in the future)." It is astonishing to conservatives that liberalism does not even pretend anymore to be a developed rational theory of govt, but rather appears to be a manifestation of a stupid persons sensitivity to the plight of others.

For a long time liberals had Marx to systematize and intellectualize a new idea about gov't but that quickly ran its course as 100 million or so died needlessly. They had FDR for a while but 10 years of depression and 5 years of would war put an end to that. They had another incarnation through LBJ but Vietnam and the near genocide against blacks brought that to a rapid end. For a time they captured economics with Keynes and Samuelson but Milton Freidman's theories ended that for the most part. When Samuelson taught all American college kids that the USSR could achieve higher growth rates than mean crude capitalist American, just before the USSR collapsed in desperate poverty, it was finished there too.

But still the modern world is plagued by sensitive liberals when conservative culture and capitalism has brought us unimagined wealth and prosperity that most of the world would literally die to share, not to mention Ti Vo, space travel, jazz, and now the 64 station NMR scanner which promises to make most doctors obsolete. So why do we still have liberals?
I think the best among them are stupid but sensitive people who perhaps can be forgiven, the way a cute puppy dog is forgiven for not being able to do mathematics. The rest are not so likable, they are like modern artists who throw paint on a canvas in great liberal existential frustration. They killed God only to be reborn as neurotically befuddled and overwhelmed by the complexity and ambiguity of modern life. They don't know what life means or how to deal with it, but they are nevertheless egomaniacally certain that they should be the ones to define the brave new world for the rest us. Sadly though the "all new all the time" incoherent mayhem that modern art and liberalism creates for the world is not so different from what a baby creates in his diaper and then proudly and oh so earnestly offers to the world.