Category Archives: Liberal

The review of Canadas defence policy took more than a year to assess the potential threats in the world and came back with one real priority: wed better figure out a way to pay for a military.

There are some new things in the Liberal governments blueprint: more drones, surveillance, cyberdefence and special forces.

But the big thing is an admission a rare one that Canada must spend more to have an army, a navy and an air force.

Read more: Ottawa lays out $62-billion in new military spending over 20 years

Its going to be a lot more, $7-billion a year more a decade from now, in 2027, on an accrual-accounting basis. And it wont really buy a bigger or flashier fighting force. Mostly, the extra money is needed because there wasnt enough set aside for the long-planned buys of essential equipment, such as fighter jets and warships.

The policy issued Wednesday was supposed to take stock of the challenges the military will face in the coming world, but the assessment was groundbreaking: The job is still to protect Canadian territory, work with the United States in North America and NORAD and join with allies in global security, either in NATO missions or UN peacekeeping. Theres terrorism and theres cyberthreats. Thats not news.

The real issue was cost. And on that score, the Liberals were refreshingly realistic. They dispensed with some of the perennial flim-flam of Canadian defence policy, which involves underestimating what the military needs and low-balling costs, then shifting budgets around to make do.

This was a Liberal defence policy for the harder realism of 2017, when the Liberals have been forced to face the fact that there isnt enough money set aside for the planes that make the air force an air force and the ships that make the navy a navy. Theres a new U.S. President, Donald Trump, who demands allies bear a greater share of the defence-spending burden. Plus, theres concern, outlined in a speech by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday, that the United States might shrug off the burden of world leadership, requiring other countries to do more.

But it was a long way from the way Justin Trudeaus Liberals talked about defence when they ran for office in 2015, or even last year. This was a good defence policy, but for the Liberals, the snag is that it clashed with so many of the things they said about military matters in the past.

Remember how Mr. Trudeau talked about pulling CF-18s from air strikes in Iraq and Syria, as he suggested a Liberal government would be less combat-minded? He emphasized a return to Pearsonian peacekeeping. Last year, he tasked Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan with preparing a deployment to a UN peacekeeping mission; thats still on hold.

Instead, Mr. Trudeau is proposing to devote the kind of money to defence that his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, was unwilling to spend.

Even if the biggest bumps in spending are slated to come five years from now, the increases start this year and will see the defence budget rise from $17.1-billion to $24.6-billion in the 2026-27 fiscal year, in accrual accounting terms.

Is that what Liberal voters expected? A Justin Trudeau government spending billions more on the military? No.

Mr. Sajjan said Canadians want the government to equip the military properly. But the price tag alone means increased defence spending is a new Liberal priority and that will be a surprise to many of those Liberal voters.

In 2015, he promised to save by ordering cheaper fighter jets than the F-35s that Mr. Harpers Conservatives planned to buy. Now, his Liberal government says the military needs 88 fighter jets, not the 65 Mr. Harpers government planned to buy at roughly double the cost estimated by the Tories. Similarly, the Tories promised to buy 12 to 15 warships and now, the Liberals say it will be 15, period but theyll cost $30-billion more.

Give Mr. Sajjan credit for that. It was always widely believed that 65 fighter jets would be too few the last time Canada bought fighters, it ordered 138 CF-18s. The cost estimates for planes and ships were low-balled. Thank goodness Mr. Sajjan did away with that guff.

The Liberals say they were surprised at the extent of the budget shortfall for big equipment buys. In the harder world of 2017, they chose to look past their campaign rhetoric and face the real cost of a military. The political question is still whether Liberal voters of 2015 want to pay it.

Follow Campbell Clark on Twitter: @camrclark

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A Liberal defence policy could cost you - The Globe and Mail

A member of the NSW Liberals is facing up to five years' suspension for publicly criticising an MP who was caught falsely swearing to have lived in her electorate for a decade.

Liberal headquarters is moving to suspend barrister Juris Laucis for up to five years for criticising Felicity Wilson, the party's candidate for North Shore.

During a close preselection battle, Ms Wilson was revealed to have falsely sworn to have lived in the electorate for a decade.

On the eve of the April byelection, Ms Wilson said she should have been more careful with her wordsamid a burgeoning media scandal about inconsistencies in her claimed connection to the electorate.

Writing for The Spectator, Mr Laucis described the affair as a "running sore" for the party.

"The honourable thing to do, even at the 11th hour, would have been for the Liberal Party to withdraw from the race, and thereby demonstrate that it is a Party that commands the moral high ground," he wrote.

"The election of Felicity Wilson is a running sore that will plague the Berejiklian government all the way to the next election."

Liberal party state director Chris Stone commenced suspension proceedings against Mr Laucis for those comments this week.

"Mr Laucis did not obtain authority from the State Director prior to publishing the article and has therefore breached [regulations]," a motion from the Department of Party Affairs and passed by the Liberals' ruling state executive read.

But Mr Laucis was unrepentant.

"They're trying to set up a Stalinist regime," he told Fairfax Media. "The reason I speak out is the only way that culture is going to change is if it comes out in the public domain.

"Within the Liberal Party there's no mechanism we can [use to] stop whatever the executive is doing."

Mr Laucis' fate will be determined by a meeting of the party's all-powerful state executive on July 28.

In her first tilt at Parliament, Ms Wilson retained the seat of North Shore for the Liberals, notwithstanding a swing of more than 15 per cent.

Last week she was revealed to have presented her third different account of her ties to the electorate in a speech to party members that significantly watered down her initial apology.

A spokesman for the NSW Liberal party declined to comment.

The Liberal Party maintains famously strict rules that prohibit members from discussing "internal party matters" in the media.

Ex-federal MP Ross Cameron recently fell foul of the rule and was recently suspended for four-and-a-half years for critical comments he made about now-Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

Mr Laucis was also previously suspended last year, along with former MP Charlie Lynn and Mr Cameron, for a period of six months, for comments critical of party preselection processes made to the ABC's 7.30 program.

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Liberal faces five-year suspension for criticising MP Felicity Wilson - The Sydney Morning Herald

NORTHFIELD, Minn. (AP) Hundreds of students boycotted classes at St. Olaf College in southern Minnesota on Monday and instead packed an administration building to protest a rash of racist and threatening messages left around campus at the liberal arts college.

The protests erupted over the weekend after one black student, Samantha Wells, found an anonymous note on her car windshield Saturday calling her a racial slur.

"I am so glad you are leaving soon," the note read. "You have spoken up too much. You will change nothing. Shut up or I will shut you up."

After the boycott was announced, the St. Olaf administration cancelled classes for the day so students, faculty and staff could discuss racism and diversity on the private Lutheran school's campus. St. Olaf President David Anderson met with protesters in the afternoon and signed a framework agreement on how to proceed with addressing those issues.

The school released a statement saying other reported racist acts included written racial epithets, and that officials considered it "deeply troubling" that the latest messages were directed at specific individuals.

There have been no reports of physical attacks at the college in Northfield, which is about 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of Minneapolis.

St. Olaf has about 3,000 students, and its student body is 74 percent white, 6 percent Asian, 6 percent Hispanic and 2 percent black, according to the school's website.

Speakers at a rally in the atrium at Tomson Hall on Monday morning demanded that St. Olaf adopt a policy of zero tolerance for racism. Some protest leaders interrupted a meeting led by Anderson, reading aloud an 11-page list of demands.

"Our mission is to hold the administration and students of St. Olaf College accountable for the institutionalized racism that is embedded within the structures of this campus", the document said. "We aim that St. Olaf College will recognize that these racially charged reported and unreported hate crimes are not driven by individual incidents or students, but an ideology that is continuously supported by the administration's lack of action and the student body's harmful attitudes."

The school said it was working with police to determine who was behind the racist messages. Northfield Police Chief Monte Nelson said his department's role was primarily advisory and that it had not opened a formal investigation.

"Someone, somewhere knows who is perpetrating these acts of racism," the statement said, urging anyone with information to come forward.

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Students protest racism at liberal arts college in Minnesota

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Posted: Jun 07, 2017 3:00 PM

What should we call the disturbing trend on American college campuses with students of the hard left angrily devouring their terrified and older liberal professors?

No, they don't eat human flesh, but students of the hard left are devouring just the same, shutting down free speech and free inquiry, and targeting liberal professors for silencing and revenge for offering up liberal notions of equality.

We've seen it at Yale with two liberal professors denounced as racists, shamed and driven off for daring to tell students there may be more important things to worry about than vetting Halloween costumes through the lens of racial identity politics.

And we see it now at Evergreen State College, a left-leaning school where Bret Weinstein, a professor of biology, is under siege for daring to suggest that racism, even when practiced by minorities, is no virtue.

You can't truly study a thing until you call it what it is. So what to call it? Many haven't had the time, preoccupied instead with the low-hanging fruit of President Donald Trump's ridiculous Twitter account.

I get it. Headline: Trump Tweets Stupid Things. His foolish social media tantrums reinforce his narcissism. They undercut his administration's policies.

The man is in the White House as a consequence of Republican establishment collapse and betrayal of its base years ago.

But with all those ripe, idiotic presidential figs falling into pundits' hands, journalism has been somewhat distracted from the Democratic tension on college campuses.

What happened to the Republicans years ago -- a collapse of the middle ground -- is now happening to the Democrats, and it bears watching too.

So what shall we call it?

We might find the answer in the remarks of Robespierre, a student of the use of fear and the mob. But who reads European history anymore?

As the academy moves inexorably leftward, few conservatives remain on college campuses. Conservative professors may be such an endangered species that there's probably no sport in chasing them across the quad.

But it has become clear even to a few prominent liberal writers that liberal professors have become the targets of the hard left.

It looks like meat's back on the menu, boys and girls.

So again, what do we call this phenomenon?

Professor Weinstein is a biologist. His politics are liberal. And biology offers us an answer:

Matriphagy, the devouring of the mother by their young.

I suppose I could call it patriphagy, the devouring of the father, but I don't want to be denounced as some kind of science denier. Biology is clear in stubbornly insisting that despite our modern politics, the mother gives birth.

Matriphagy is a rare occurrence found among certain spiders and the caecilian, a blind, legless amphibian that lives underground.

Some spiders, for example, give birth, and later deposit food sacks around the web for their young to eat. But when these sacks are gone, something else must be done. The young must eat, and develop necessary predatory behavior in order to survive. And nature provides an answer.

The mother spider stimulates the young by thrumming on her web. She triggers them. And once triggered, they sink their fangs into her and begin to feed.

Even as I type this I can hear it now, the cries of anger about my sins of micro or macro aggression, perhaps yelled through those black masks worn by the young fascists of the left, for daring to compare them to ravenous spider babies.

Professor Weinstein is a self-described liberal who held close to a liberal idea, best expressed by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He had a dream, remember? He dreamed that one day, people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. These days, it's the conservatives who support this idea as the left moves further into race- and gender-based identity politics.

But Professor Weinstein incurred the wrath of the leftist mob by opposing a new take on the so-called Day of Absence at Evergreen State.

In the past, minorities made themselves absent from campus to highlight racial discrimination, hence the Day of Absence. Weinstein supported this.

What he would not support was a new demand of the angry left, to compel white students to leave campus grounds.

"On a college campus, one's right to speak -- or to be -- must never be based on skin color," he wrote in a private email to a colleague that was made public and incited hatred against him.

In it, he highlighted the differences between the original Day of Absence and the new racial component.

"The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself."

That makes great sense. But he's now been denounced by some faculty members scrambling to get ahead of the young mob on the left. And campus police suggested he leave school grounds, at least for a day or two, because they could not protect him from his students.

The liberal as heretic, pursued and denounced by the angry children of the liberal ideal.

It may not be as thrilling as those cringeworthy presidential tweets. But it's out there.

It is not the first such episode. And it won't be the last.

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Political Biology on American Campuses: The Left's Angry Young Devour the Liberal Old - Townhall

LOS ANGELES With ObamaCare broken and the GOP effort to replace it uncertain, California and a handful of other liberal states are proposing to adopt a European-style, single-payer health care system where residents pay the state and the state provides care regardless of income, occupation, or health status.

"If you look at the financing of a single-payer system, what you'll find is it saves money if it's done right," says supporter Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog. "That's why every other country in the world pays two-thirds less. It gets rid of the insurance companies.

Lawmakers in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts proposed single-payer bills this year. Last week, a bill passed the California Senate that would make every resident, legal or not, eligible for coverage no premium, no copayment, no deductible.

IS HEALTH CARE A RIGHT OR A GOOD?

"The idea, the lure of that simplicity, of the government running everything is going to be there," said health care expert Avik Roy. "And I think a lot of conservatives are worried if Republicans fail to replace ObamaCare the calls for single payer are going to grow."

That's already happening.

According to a January poll by Pew Research, 40 percent of Democratic voters favor a single-payer system. And a majority, about 60 percent of Americans, said the government has a responsibility to ensure every resident has healthcare.

In Congress, 112 of 193 House Democrats have co-sponsored a single-payer bill paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy.

"A number of states have tried to set up single payer and they all abandon the effort because the taxes are too high and California is going to find out the same thing," said Roy.

The California bill still has no financial mechanism to pay for it. But the estimated price tag is $400 billion, more than the $290 billion state budget and considerably more than the $367 billion in state, federal and private money currently used to pay for healthcare in the Golden State.

NEWT GINGRICH: HEALTH CARE IS PERSONAL. THAT'S WHY CONGRESS HAS TO GET IT RIGHT

"So this is really a laboratory vote no question," Court said. "But it is also an important discussion to have and it's an important chemistry to work out because health insurance companies are ripping us off they're denying us coverage they're denying our claims. And the drug companies are doing the same."

Under single-payer, insurance companies like Kaiser, Aetna, Blue Cross and UnitedHealth Group will all be out of business. The state would instead contract directly with providers for services.

While cutting out the middle man may sound good, critics say to control costs the government simply denies care, meaning consumers will not get all the drugs or care they need or want, and doctors and hospitals will have no choice but to accept whatever reimbursement rate the government mandates.

Medical salaries would inevitably go down, as illustrated in other countries embracing nationalized medicine.

KRAUTHAMMER: 'WE WILL BE IN A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM' WITHIN 7 YEARS

"So the quality and competition goes away in single payer in a way the private system has in a robust way," says Roy.

The California bill must still pass the Assembly and needs a signature from Gov. Jerry Brown, who reportedly supports single payer in concept, but is skeptical since the bill is silent on how its paid for. Pete Peterson, dean of the Pepperdine School of Public Policy in Malibu, says for the plan to get even this far illustrates how far left the state Democratic Party has swung.

"I think this recent vote in the Legislature around single payer is bowing towards the Bernie Sanders wing of the party," says Peterson. "The challenge for someone like Gov. Brown is how he holds his party together, one that is really being pulled in two different directions one being the moderate, Clinton or Obama wing vs. the Bernie wing, which is increasing in power."

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Single-payer health care gains momentum in liberal states -- but can they afford it? - Fox News

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Liberal hysteria over President Donald Trumps legally impeccable international disengagements has surpassed the hysteria that fueled the Salem Witch Trials. But there is no Arthur Miller among the contemporary glitterati to dramatize the frenzy.

Consider the hyperbolic thunderbolts of the owlish Lawrence Summers, professor and past president of Harvard University, former Secretary of Treasury under President Bill Clinton, and economic adviser to President Barack Obama. Writing in the op-ed pages of The Washington Post (Are we at a historical turning point? June 5, 2017), Professor Summers sirens, It is possible that last week will be remembered as a hinge in historya moment when the United States and the world started moving away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75 years.

But the economics wizard economized on the truth. After 9/11, the United States entered a state of perpetual, global warfare. President Obama inherited three unconstitutional presidential wars from his predecessor, and left nine unconstitutional presidential wars to his successor. Current wars have given birth to a staggering 65 million refugees. The Middle East and South Asia are convulsed from Libya and Egypt to Yemen, Syria, and Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The international terrorist threat is greater today than it was on 9/11 despite the United States expenditure of $10 trillion, killing 3 million to 4 million Muslims and pointlessly sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of Americans in the armed forces.

Peace and stability have not defined the past 75 years. Among other things, that interval has witnessed the Korean War; the United States overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in Iran and President Arbenz in Guatemala; the Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Cubas Fidel Castro; assassination plots against Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Castro in Cuba and Salvador Allende in Chile; the Vietnam War, including napalm and the My Lai Massacre; the secret war in Laos (1964-1973) featuring 2.5 million tons of cluster bombs which continue to kill and maim Laotians to this very day; the Chinese Cultural Revolution; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the blood-stained disintegration of Yugoslavia; the 1956 British-French-Israel invasion of Egypt, the 1967 Six Days War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War; and protracted civil wars in South Africa and Rhodesia against apartheid.

Professor Summers accuses President Trump of losing an imaginary paradise on earth by withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, by seeking to revise NAFTA, by declining to deliver moral encyclicals to the world and by failing unilaterally to commit the United States militarily to defend the borders of all NATO members from external aggression, for instance, a Russian attack on Turkey or Estonia.

Each accusation betrays a delirious mind. The 2015 Paris climate accord was never ratified by the Senate as required by the U.S. Constitutions Treaty Clause. As an executive agreement approved by the president alone, the climate accord never commanded constitutional validity. President Trump simply wrote an official epitaph to a legal corpse. Moreover, everything in the agreement was hortatory. Nothing was binding. Signatory nations simply agreed to do what they would do out of self-interest without the Treaty, a political-environmental dynamic that remains undisturbed.

President Trump has not repudiated one word of NAFTA, a 1700 page agreement signed into law in 1993. He has not withdrawn from NAFTA by giving 6-months notice as was his right under Article 2205. Instead, the President has notified Canada, Mexico and the United States Congress 90 days in advance of contemplated negotiations of his intent to update the 23-year-old agreement in response to seismic changes in our economic landscape. The notification letter signed by United States Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer could not be more measured or reasonable. Among other things, it elaborates:

[W]e note that NAFTA was negotiated 25 years ago, and while our economy and businesses have changed considerably over that period, NAFTA has not. Many chapters are outdated and do not reflect modern standards. For example, digital trade was in its infancy when NAFTA was enacted Our aim is that NAFTA be modernized to include new provisions to address intellectual property rights, regulatory policies, state-owned enterprises, customs procedures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, labor, environment, and small and medium enterprises.

Professor Summers fury at President Trumps refusal to deliver moral sermons to the world is particularly fatuous. (Mr. Summers served without protest under a president who played prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner to kill Americans suspected of endangering national security on his say-so alone, based on secret, unsubstantiated information.) Nothing in constitutional law or international relations commends schoolmarm-like preaching from the White House. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston taught, nations have no permanent friends or enemies, but only permanent interests. President Woodrow Wilsons moral lectures during World War I facilitated the wretched Treaty of Versaillesthe fuse of World War II. French President Georges Clemenceau acerbically remarked about Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference that while he talked like Jesus Christ he acted like [British Prime Minister] Lloyd George. Has Mr. Summers forgotten that those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make morally arrogant?

Finally, Article 5 of NATO does not and constitutionally could not commit the United States to war to defend the borders of member nations. Article 11 provides: [The provisions of] this Treaty shall becarried out by the Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. The Declare War Clause of the U.S. Constitution exclusively empowers Congress to take the nation from a state of peace to war. It cannot be done by the president alone or by the president and Senate in making treaties. The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in Reid v. Covert (1957) that treaties are subservient to constitutional limitations.

Now you know why William F. Buckley Jr. declared he should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

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Liberal Trump hysteria surpasses Salem witch trials - Washington Times

Liberal Democracy is a system of governance conditioned not only by political liberties such as free and fair elections, universal suffrage, and rights to run for office, but also by constitutional liberties such as the rule of law, respect for minorities, freedom of speech, religion and assembly, private property rights, and most importantly, a wide separation of powers. The founding pillar of liberal democracy, therefore, is its citizens ability to influence the governments policy formulation through the exercise of the aforementioned political and constitutional liberties. In other words, while a flawless correspondence between government policy formulation and majority preferences is idealistic, government responsiveness to citizens interests and concerns, in the process of policy formulation, is of central importance when evaluating democratic governance.

Ergo, by embracing the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theorys perspective, this paper will illustrate how the U.S. system of governance, while providing constitutional, that is, civil liberties to its citizens, espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. This inevitably results in the U.S. political system being a liberal oligarchy rather than liberal democracy as it is presumed by many (see Dahl, 1971, 1985, 2006; Tocqueville, 2000; Monroe, 1979; Key, 1961 and famously Lincoln, 1989).

First, the paper will review the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory while highlighting some of their most prominent advocates. Next, by briefly reflecting upon the definition of the oligarchs and the elites, the paper will place the concept of political influence that corporate power exerts in context. Subsequently, the paper will survey an eminent empirical study that found a vast discrepancy in the U.S. governments responsiveness to the majority preferences as opposed to the preferences of the elites. Last, the essay will illustrate how studies confirming an ostensibly desirable degree of governments responsiveness to the preferences of average citizens neglect the reflection of those preferences to those of wealthy citizens.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory

Political theory, The Iron Law of Oligarchy, was first proposed by Robert Michels in his book Political Parties(1999) and laterdeveloped into The Elite Theory by scholars such as C. Wright Mills, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, G. William Domhoff, etc. Opposing pluralism, the theory focuses on the disparity between the political influence exerted by the oligarchs or the elites, actors that control considerable concentrations of wealth, as opposed to that of the average citizen. This school of political thought argues that the U.S. system of governance espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. That is, the advocates of the Elite Theory stress that, in the case of the United States government policy formulation, influence is conditioned by affluence. Mills (1959), in his magnum opus, The Power Elite, offered a comprehensive description of how U.S. political, economic, military and social elites have dominated key issues in public policy formulation. Similarly, inThe Semisovereign People, Schattschneider asserted that the realm of the pressure system is actually fairly small:

the range of organized, identifiable, known groups is amazingly narrow; there is nothing remotely universal about it (1960: 30).

Schattschneider continues by arguing that

business or upper-class bias of the pressure system shows up everywhere (ibid: 30), therefore, the notion that the pressure system is automatically representative of the whole community is a myth (ibid: 36).

Instead, Schattschneider posits,

the system is skewed, loaded and unbalanced in favor of a fraction of a minority (ibid: 36).

G. William Domhoff made a significant contributed to the elite theory with his book, Who Rules America: The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. Domhoff (2013) presented a detailed depiction of how operating through various organizations such as think-tanks, opinion shaping apparatus and lobby groups enable elites to control key issues within policy formulation.

Oligarchs and The Elites

credits to the owner of the photo

According to Aristotle (1996), oligarchs are citizens who control and command an extensive concentration of wealth who always happen to be the few. Similarly, people who, due to their strategic positions in powerful organizations, have the ability to influence political outcomes, are classified by most scholars as economic and political elites (Higley, 2006). Therefore, the terms oligarchs and elites are often used interchangeably. These individuals can affect the basic stability of political regimes, the overall arrangements and workings of political institutions, and the key policies of the government (Higley and Burton, 2006: 7). Typically, elites and oligarchs consist of the top directors and executives of the major corporations. Nonetheless, they can belong to other essential sectors of the society such as political, military and administrative (Keller, 1963). By owning a wealth-producing property, these individuals make large-scale investment and, therefore, employment decisions, which ultimately regulates the United States economy (Higley and Pakulski, 2012). Therefore, a large percentage of American economic assets are disproportionally controlled by a rather small number of corporations.

The degree to which such private and totally unaccountable concentration of wealth has the potential to translate into political power is aptly synopsized by a closer look at Fortune 500 companies. For instance, in 2015, the top 500 corporations had a total revenue of $12 trillion, which represented two-thirds of the United States GDP (Fortune 5000, 2015). Therefore, a fairly small number of individuals disproportionally control the economic might of the United States. By obtaining access to influential policy makers, these individuals exercise power through congressional campaigns contributions. Consequently, according to Centre for Responsive Politics (2016), campaign donors spent nearly $3.1 billion in 2016s elections alone. In their study titled Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access to Congressional Officials, Kalla and Broockman (2015) concluded that superior access to policy makers are indeed obtained through political campaign donations.

Empirical Study

Over time, a variety of diverse actors that seem to have influence on U.S. policy formulation have been identified. Coincidentally, normative concerns that the U.S. political system is vastly influenced by capital driven individuals and groups have been growing. Until recently, however, providing empirical evidence that supported these concerns proved to be very difficult, almost impossible. Nonetheless, several, fairly recent empirical studies have demonstrated that, in the case of the United States, the policy making process is influenced, to a great degree, by more focused and more powerful interests compared to more diffused, less powerful interests (see Gilens and Page, 2014; Winters and Page, 2009; Page, Kalla and Broockman, 2015; Jacobs and Page, 2005; Bartels and Seawright, 2013; etc). However, due to its limited scope, this paper will survey only one of these studies.

By employing an imposing data set drawn from a heterogeneous set of policy initiatives, 1,923 in total, Gilens and Page demonstrated that

economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence (2014: pp. 565).

By comparing policy preferences of American citizens at the 50th income percentile to that of American citizens at the 90th income percentile, Gilens and Page (2014) found that the United States policy formulation is conditioned by the preferences of the latter group far more than it is conditioned by the preferences of the former group. In fact, the influence that the medium voter exerts on the U.S. policy formulation is near zero (Gilens and Page, 2014: pp. 576). By including the data that dates all the way back to 1980 the authors illustrated that such state of affairs has been a long-term trend, making it harder for ordinary citizens to comprehend, let alone reverse. However, ordinary citizens, might often be observed to win, that is, to get their preferred policy outcomes, even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites, with whom they often agree with, actually prevail as policy formulation is not a zero-sum game (Gilens and Page, 2014: pp. 570). Nevertheless, it is crucial to point out that this correlation is erroneous in terms of causal impact and, consequently, provides a false sense of political equality. In other words, the results obtained by the authorsdemonstrate how the relatively high level of governments responsiveness to the preferences ofaverage and low income citizens is nothing more than a reflection of the preferences shared by wealthy citizens. However, by incorporation a multivariate analysis of different test groups, Gilens and Page (2014), illustrated how the influence of average citizens preferences drops rapidly once their preferences differ to that of wealthy citizens.

The ideal of political equality that average American citizens, as well as many scholars, hold dear, stands in stark contrast to the immense representational biases demonstrated by Gilens and Page. While acknowledging that a perfect political equality has a particularly idealistic character, the enormous dichotomy in the systems responsiveness to citizens at different income levels reinforces doubt associated with the presumed liberal democratic character of American society and leads this paper to conclude that the U.S. is, contrary to popular belief, a liberal oligarchy as opposed to liberal democracy.

Conclusion

By embracing the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theorys perspective, this paper illustrated how the U.S. system of governance, while providing constitutional, that is, civil liberties to its citizens, espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. This inevitably results in the U.S. political system being a liberal oligarchy rather than liberal democracy as it is presumed by many. First, the paper reviewed the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory and highlighted some of their most prominent advocates. Next, by briefly reflecting upon the definition of the oligarchs and the elites, the paper placed the concept of corporate power and political influence it exerts in context. Subsequently, the paper surveyed an eminent empirical study that found a vast discrepancy in the U.S. governments responsiveness to the majority preferences as opposed to the preferences of the elites. Last, the paper illustrated how studies confirming ostensibly desirable levels of governments responsiveness to the preferences of the average citizen neglect the reflection of those preferences to those of wealthy citizens.

Sources

Aristotle, (1996). The Politics and The Constitution of Athens. Ed. Stephen Everson, Trans. Benjamin Jowett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Center for Responsive Politics. 2013. The Money Behind the Elections. http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/ [Accessed 13 April 2017].

Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dahl, R. A. (1985), A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Dahl, R. A. (2006), On Political Equality. New Haven: CT: Yale University Press, p. 4.

Domhoff, G. W. (2013), Who Rules America: The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Fortune. 2015. Fortune 500. http://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/. [Accessed 19 April 2017].

Higley, J. (2006), Elite Theory in Political Sociology. University of Texas Austin. Retrieved from http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_4036.pdf on 11/04/2017.

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Petar Djolic is currently in his final year of Masters of International Relations at University of Sydney, Australia.

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The United States of America: Liberal Democracy or Liberal Oligarchy? - Center for Research on Globalization

New York Post

Senate GOP's ObamaCare replacement bill is 'very liberal' New York Post The moderates are very happy, an aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of the Senate's most conservative members, told The Post. It was a very liberal bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters that the upper chamber is ... Senate GOP aims for June vote on Obamacare repealPolitico all 437 news articles »

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Senate GOP's ObamaCare replacement bill is 'very liberal' - New York Post

ESPN this week downplayed the results of a new study that said most people who think the sports channel is biased believe it leans to the left.

A survey conducted by ESPN and Langer Research Associates found that 30 percent of those asked think ESPN is biased. Within that group, 63 percent think the channel has a liberal bias, and 30 percent think it has a conservative bias.

But in a Monday story on the survey, ESPN only mentioned the 30 percent who think the channel has a conservative bent, and made no mention of the 63 percent who think it's liberal. When asked why the 63 percent figure wasn't included in the ESPN story, a spokesman for ESPN said in an email to the Washington Examiner it was "implied."

The study was released on the heels of a decline in subscribers to ESPN, which many said was due to perceptions of political bias. The network lost more than 10 million subscribers over the last few years, according to the New York Times.

Charges of the network's political bias escalated after ESPN was forced to lay off roughly 100 journalists, on-air talent, analysts and production staffers.

The study, which was conducted from May 3 to May 7, also found that 64 percent of ESPN fans believe the network is "getting it right" with its coverage of sports news and political issues.

In its post online, ESPN said there was "no doubt" that some Americans disagreed with how different issues were discussed on ESPN platforms. However, the network said those opinions didn't affect their viewing behavior "in any material way."

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ESPN downplays study revealing perceptions of liberal bias - Washington Examiner

1 not bound by traditional ways or beliefs parents who take a very liberal attitude toward letting their children stay out late Synonyms broad-minded, nonconventional, nonorthodox, nontraditional, open-minded, progressive, radical, unconventional, unorthodox Related Words advanced, contemporary, modern; forbearing, indulgent, large-minded, lenient, permissive, tolerant; extreme; impartial, objective, unbiased Near Antonyms hard, rigid, strict; doctrinal, dogmatic (also dogmatical); bigoted, blinkered, intolerant, narrow-minded; reactionary, unreconstructed Antonyms conservative, conventional, hidebound, nonprogressive, old-fashioned, orthodox, stodgy, traditional

2 being more than enough without being excessive he always puts liberal amounts of grated cheese on his pizza Synonyms abundant, ample, aplenty, bounteous, bountiful, comfortable, cornucopian, galore, generous, plentiful, plenteous, plentyRelated Words extra, supernumerary, surplus; abounding, blooming, overflowing, plump, replete, rich, rife, teeming, wealthy; adequate, enough, sufficient; fat, fecund, fertile, fruitful, luxuriant, prodigal, prolific; copious, fulsome, lavish, profuseNear Antonyms deficient, inadequate, insufficient, lacking, wanting; meager (or meagre), niggardly, stingy; skimpy; least, minimum; light, slight, small; barren, infertile, sterile, unfruitful, unproductiveAntonyms bare, minimal, scant, spare

3 giving or sharing in abundance and without hesitation a doctor who has been very liberal in dispensing low-cost care to patients who could not otherwise afford it Synonyms bighearted, bounteous, bountiful, charitable, free, freehanded, freehearted, fulsome, generous, munificent, open, openhanded, unselfish, unsparing, unstintingRelated Words extravagant, handsome, lavish, overgenerous, profuse; altruistic, beneficent, benevolent, hospitable, humanitarian, philanthropic (also philanthropical); big, greathearted, largehearted, magnanimous, openhearted; compassionate, good-hearted, kind, kindly, samaritan, sympatheticNear Antonyms mean, petty, small; frugal, spare, sparing, thrifty; chary, stinting; acquisitive, avaricious, avid, coveting, covetous, desirous, grasping, hoggish, itchy, mercenary, rapacious; begrudging, envious, grudging, resentfulAntonyms cheap, close, closefisted, costive, illiberal [archaic], mingy, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, selfish, stingy, stinting, tight, tightfisted, uncharitable, ungenerous

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Liberal Synonyms, Liberal Antonyms | Merriam-Webster Thesaurus