"The old ideas that shaped liberalism-- the social safety net, a strong government role in health care and economic security, regulatory protection of the environment-- have been discredited by the right and progressives defend them too half-heartedly to form an agenda. The next generation framework for progress is not yet born."

In the brand development processes that I've worked through, there is a simple yet surprisingly effective way to understand one's brand in such a way that the requirements for future success become much clearer. Three simple questions are the key:

1. Where does this brand come from?
2. Where is it now in it's growth trajectory?
3. Where do we want it to go?

What most organizations get wrong is #1. Read that again, because it is important. And I think that Dems are getting that wrong now too, present company included. As Mark says, Dems policy wonks and leaders see liberalism as "the social safety net, a strong government role in health care and economic security, regulatory protection of the environment." But is that what liberalism really is, or is that more accurately a set of policies supported by liberals? It's a key question, and IMHO eliding that difference is part of what creates the disconnect that underlies the recent failure of liberals to succeed at electoral politics.

Anyway, as I've already done a few times on other sites, if I go to the wikipedia I read that liberalism is:

Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. It typically favors the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. In this respect, it is sometimes held in contrast to conservatism. Since liberalism also focuses on the ability of individuals to structure their own society, it is almost always opposed to totalitarianism, and often to collectivist ideologies, particularly communism.

The word "liberal" derives from the Latin "liber" ("free") and liberals of all stripes tend to view themselves as friends of freedom, particularly freedom from the shackles of tradition. The origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment era contrasted this philosophy to feudalism and mercantilism. Later, as more radical philosophies articulated their thoughts in the course of the French Revolution and through the nineteenth century, liberalism equally defined itself in contrast to socialism and communism, although some adherents of liberalism sympathize with some of the aims and methods of social democracy.

There's lots to unpack there, but I'll just emphasize a couple of key points. First of all, liberalism predates liberals. That seems obvious, but it leads me to my second point. Mark's quick list of liberalism's highlights are really liberals' greatest hits. But liberalism is more fundamental--it is the foundation of modern democracy. What Mark and most establishment Dems refer to when they say liberalism seems to actually mean the landmark policies implemented by liberals beginning in the FDR era. But what if getting question #1 right means that liberals retrace their steps back even farther? Back, say, to the founding of this nation? In that definition of liberalism, can't liberals claim the Founding Fathers as the first American liberals? I think they can and should.

And that leads to question #2, where we are today. Mark is right when he says that the right has discredited much of the old liberal agenda. But they also have an underlying weakness built into that attack; namely that they have come to where they are now, where the ongoing demonization of liberals has taken a stark turn and become an attack on liberalism itself. Because, to reiterate, liberalism isn't just for liberals. Liberalism is the organizing principle of western democracy. As such liberalism is even the underlying premise of modern day conservatism, or at least it's libertarian aspects.

But that has changed with the merging of the Republican Party with Christian fundamentalism. The Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party want the same thing that Islamic fundamentalists want-- for everyone else to abide by thier belief system, whether everyone else wants to or not. In effect this is the attempted overthrow of the Enlightenment, the dismantling of modernity, and with it the eradication of individual freedom that is the foundation of liberalism.

All of the other things that flow from individual liberty--equality, rights, fairness, the free association of communities, control of your own body and property--are under threat as well. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but with the fundamental principles of our democracy under attack by religious fundamentalists, I think this is a very dangerous time.

But it is also a time of opportunity. While we skirmish over abortion and gay marriage and even the War on Terror, most recent polls that I've read indicate that Americans don't want to reverse course on rights that relate to personal freedom. By reconnecting with old school notions of liberalism, today's liberals actually have the means to open a more effective front against the growing threat from our own fundamentalists. Not to be trite, but what I would tell all Dems is that it's about the liberty, stupid. Put another way, liberty leads to liberalism leads to liberals. Abortion, gay rights, financial freedom (my term for economic security), why we fight the fundamentalists-- these are incidental to liberty itself, which is the foundation for liberal ideas. And that starts to answer #3.

It also explains how George Bush has put liberals in such a pickle over the Iraq War. Once the WMD thing went bust, Bush cunningly usurped liberal ideas as the new basis for the war All of this freedom and liberty stuff he spouts would not suit a true conservative but it is the mother's milk of liberalism, the mythos behind our national origin and a truly liberal raison d'etre. But since the Democratic leaders only connect back as far as FDR, they predictably retreat to the 1950s version of liberal groupthink, a sort of bland precursor to realpolitik. As you can see, that's working for us real well. The right comes across as chickenhawk, we come across as chickenshit. If we went back to liberalism as our foundation, then it tells us that the way for a liberal to really attack Bush on Iraq is to make him mean it, to out "freedom is on the march" him, to sound less like Dean Acheson and more like Patrick Henry.

Part and parcel of reconnecting to a more historic sense of liberalism will be to resurrect the word liberal, dust it off, burnish it again. The title of this diary is the thread of the argument I'd make, and I'd bet that the zeitgeist is ready for it. But another reason we have to is because we will always be called liberal, and running away from it makes us look weak. Like any brand that has fallen into disrepair (think Gucci in the 80s, before Tom Ford), we have to turn that weakness back into a strength. And we also have to quit refusing to look even further back than the 30s for ideas--they are all there, we just have to look back far enough to where we liberals really come from, back to the ideals that formed this nation.

By doing so I think we change the nature of the debate. Instead of making this the same old clash between the right and the left we do indeed make it a clash of civilizations. Only this fight will be on our shores between those who believe in liberty and the freedom endowed upon us by our Creator, versus the fundamentalists who ironically set themselves up as God as they dictate to us what to believe and how to live.

This approach also enables us to wrest the words liberty and freedom from the right and back it up with an honest philosophical underpinning that is the key to any brand's authenticity. Along the way, the GOP's usurpation of those words can be made to seem like the cheap street vendor knockoffs that they are.

Cross-posted with some editing at dailykos