Conservatives frequently argue that modern liberalism has been a major cause, perhaps the chief cause, of American decline. Indeed, the phrase "modern liberalism and American decline" was popularized as the subtitle of a book by conservative legal scholar Robert Bork. Unsurprisingly, liberals reject any such claim, and dueling reviews of Bork's book provide a convenient entry point to the discussion.
In order to evaluate the assertion, and the arguments made for and against it, it is first necessary to define a couple of terms. Liberalism, in American political usage, has a meaning quite different from its general meanings in political science and economics. In economics, for example, liberalism applies to free-market views that American conservatives generally support. In this discussion, liberalism is used in the American popular political sense. Liberalism thus refers to a set of views associated with the Democratic Party, favoring a more active economic role for government, support for social policies such as affirmative action and multiculturalism, and relaxed sexual mores on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
The idea of American decline must also be specified, since few conservatives today would claim (as they might have in the 1970s) that the American economy or American standing in the world are in decline. The decline conservatives point to today is in the social fabric: a loss of the spirit of self-sufficiency, resulting in excessive readiness to accept government aid and a culture of entitlement; and a weakening of traditional values, especially sexual mores, with consequent weakening of the family as an institution (Porth). These trends, in the conservative view, will over time produce broader social weakness, thus ultimately economic, political, and military weakness as well.
In the conservative view, these negative social trends have their roots in liberal policies: those of the Clinton years...