Reply #55: Other than the Period Surrounding the Revolution, When Has

[Demeter]

this people ever followed or pursued the utopia of liberalism and progressive politics, the perfectability of Man (forget it girls, it's not possible), and the achievement of justice and equality?

My god, America was dragged kicking and screaming into existence in the first place. A lot of people left, so they could stay British. And it took a bloody civil war to free the slaves, however planned or inadvertent that may have been, a near-civil-war to get women the vote, and civil rights to get other races and the opposite sex nearly the same rights as white males.

The only thing that looked like liberal excess was the Temperance movement, and that was more a combination of religious fundies and desperate women than anything else, a combination that will never happen again, and which didn't really work anyway.