More liberal USA with fascist-American Cold War

[eurofed]

As part of my ongoing work on a Successful Axis TL, I am planning to make the USA more liberal than OTL. This is going to occur for two reasons: first, ideological backlash from fighting the Cold War against a fascist Afro-Eurasian bloc drives America to turn more left-wing. Of course, utter failure of Communism and destruction of the USSR in WWII radically discredits Marxism-Leninism to almost-complete marginalization, so in this context a left-wing swing basically means more liberalism, social democracy, left-wing libertarianism, and anarchism. Second, the decisive defeat and collapse of the British Empire drives the former Dominions (minus apartheid South Africa, which finds Nazi Europe's plans for Africa an irresistible lure and switches sides) to merge with the USA, which also absorbs the Caribbean and Central America for strategic reasons, forms an EU/NATO equivalent with Latin America, and the Western bloc with India. The new sections help the enlarged Union turn more liberal by dampening the influence of the conservative South. What I'd like to analyze here is what this political shift may mean in terms of policies. There are a few ideas I've conceived:

- Universal health care since the mid 20th century.
- Desegregation happens more or less on schedule, since the accelerating effect of the divergence balances the delaying one of America staying neutral and directly transitioning from isolationism to a Cold War stance. 
- More extensive, successful, and enduring Great Society-style anti-poverty programs.
- No significant swing to Reaganite/Thatcherite neo-liberalism.
- Abolition of gerrymandering, felony disenfranchisement, and the Electoral College.
- An expanded version of the Equal Rights Amendment to forbid government discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, creed, and sex.
- Court interpretation of the ERA ensures full reproductive rights for women, including unrestricted access to contraception and abortion.
- The District of Columbia gets the same voting rights as a state.
- Personally I frown on affirmative-action quota systems as anti-meritocratic and tribalist, and prefer to let circumstances favor class-based, color- and gender-blind welfare solutions for economically-disadvantaged minorities. Moreover, the ERA should favor this kind of outcome by making affirmative action unconstitutional. 
- US party system restructures into a four-party system, with center-left Democrats, center-right Republicans, left-wing Progressives, and right-wing Conservatives. 
- Abolition of corporate personhood, except as granted by statute, and consequently strict regulations of campaign contributions and expenses. Also limitation of eminent domain to public interest uses.
- Robust public investment in education.
- The Western bloc makes a mighty and largely successful effort to wean itself from dependency on fossil fuels due to fascist Europe's control of the Middle East. Combined with Europe's ideological sympathy for environmentalism and eventual imitation of the same path, this leads to less environmental trouble than OTL, even if more global industrialization counters it to a degree.
- Civilian ownership ban of semi-automatic weapons and stringent background checks for sale of firearms.
- A Constitutional Amendment to ban government discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. LGBT people are able to serve openly in the military and marry earlier than OTL.
- A Personal Rights Amendment to protect the right to privacy, consensual sexual behavior, and lifestyle choices of adults that do not cause clear and imminent danger to others. 
- Court interpretation of the PRA ensures liberalization of coercion-free prostitution, gambling, no-child pornography, and drug (esp. marijuana) use for adults. Things are probably more controversial for 'hard' drugs, but decriminalization of their use is in all likelihood inevitable. OTOH, there is ample ground to let DUI stay a crime (since it easily clears the 'imminent danger' test). 

Personally I loathe woke ideology, cancel culture, and radical feminism as the second coming of Stalinism. Therefore, even if North America goes more left-wing in a different sense, I'd much prefer the Western world not to develop this issue. This in order to let it be more utopian by my standards and help balance the dystopic aspects of decisive and enduring Axis success (to put it mildly, TTL Africa won't have an overpopulation problem any time soon).

I tentatively assume TTL can avoid the rise of woke culture thanks to a few elements: first, post-WWII collapse of Marxism poisons the roots of critical theory. If necessary, I can have butterflies remove a few OTL philosophers that fuelled it, or even do the same to postmodernism as a whole. Second, I expect that early and relatively effective classic liberalism, social democratic, and moderate feminism solutions to many of the socio-economic grievances of disadvantaged minorities and avoidance of neoliberalism should take a lot of wind out of the sails of PC culture. In this regard, I also assume an injection of a robust dose of left-wing libertarianism should help balance and prevent the possible slide into nanny-state and illiberal solutions of a more successful left. 

I'd also like to prevent the rise of pedophile moral panic that caused demonization of adolescent sexuality and helicopter parenting, but I'm not sure which butterflies might help it. I suppose a more left-wing libertarian America should naturally lean into that to some degree. 

Comments ? Ideas? Suggestions? 

[gillan1220]

So far so good. I need to research more about internal American politics to know more about this timeline.

[eurofed]

Nov 22, 2020 11:09:10 GMT gillan1220 said:

So far so good. I need to research more about internal American politics to know more about this timeline.

Yeah. Most of the points I made are going to have some explicit if summary coverage in the TL, although not necessarily all of them for reasons of brevity. The TL has global scope and needs to cover almost a century after all. Ofc, looking at the other side of the picture, I also gave a lot of thought to the long-term evolution of the Axis bloc. I think I found an appropriate answer that fits the themes of the story.

Fast-forwarding to modern times, fascist Europe ultimately became a solid federal union that absorbed all of the continent and the vast majority of Russia (minus the Japanese share of the booty), the Muslim world, and Africa through a mix of extermination, deportation, settler colonization, forced cultural assimilation, and development of a genuine Pan-European identity. The flaws of fascism and the challenges of the Cold War and empire-building eventually drove its evolution into a post-totalitarian authoritarian/democratic hybrid that broadly resembled the PRC or illiberal democracies. Loyal citizens that bought into dominant values and did not belong to 'undesirable' minorities more or less enjoyed the same civil and political rights, living standards, and welfare support of their Western counterparts, and cherished them. This included a sizable amount of conquered Slavs, North Africans, and Middle Easterners and their descendants that were lucky enough to be deemed worthy of, and practical enough to accept, collaborationism and assimilation. In the case of Muslims, this usually involved forsaking pious Islam for secularism or Christianity. Enemies of the state and radical dissidents tended to face a bad end, one way or another. Typical modern Europeans were patriotic, meritocratic, bothered by the ever-persistent corruption problem, proud of the accomplishments and superpower status of their union, and appreciative of increased freedom and representation opportunities brought by liberalization reforms. Much like their Western rivals, they had long since grown to accept the constraints of the Cold War and play within the rules. On the other hand, they often had little patience or respect (besides the necessities of diplomacy and co-existence of course) for Western 'sentimentalism' or a radical critique of their civilization or its misdeeds. Properly applied ruthlessness and brutality were values, and anything that was necessary to establish and defend Greater Europe was justifiable.

Since they had evolved their notion of their in-group to include all kinds of friendly Caucasians and Asians, they sincerely regretted past 'excesses' and 'abuses' that occurred out of outdated prejudice, such as the ones concerning the Slavs and Arabs that might have been candidates for assimilation (at least according to hindsight and wishful thinking) but did not get a chance. On the other hand, their viewpoint and history of violent confrontation with hostile Muslims encouraged them to regard all but the most lukewarm and secular versions of Islam as dangerous fanaticism, and its faithful as rabid and treacherous zealots that deserved whatever happened to them. Much the same way, a century of education and propaganda based on falsified science persuaded them that Blacks were vicious subhumans that belonged in bondage, reservations, or a grave, and ultimately deserved the fate of the Neanderthals. Of course, assimilation never was an option for them. Homosexuality and addiction were dangerous and ever-respawning aberrations that were half vice, half disease, and had to be suppressed by a mix of medical and repressive means. The quest to identify and uproot the biological causes of homosexuality, addiction, and other troublesome conditions such as obesity and chronic diseases was hot science. The Jews you say? Well, modern Europeans tended to regard them as long-gone trouble, a faded and largely irrelevant page of history. Since unlike the other 'undesirables' they only survived as a recognizable group in distant lands, they were usually not regarded as a significant concern anymore.

If you were a 'defective' foetus or a seriously disabled person, overwhelming chances are you were not going to live. The only significant exception involved disabilities incurred by no fault of the individual and for meritorious causes such as work and military service, which got full welfare support. Prenatal testing, eugenic abortion, and euthanasia services were an integral and well-developed part of health care, and their use in appropriate circumstances was all but mandatory patriotic duty behind a facade of voluntary choice. However, much like various other fascist values, support for these policies had became strongly ingrained in European culture, so their enforcement was not seen as especially oppressive. If anything, the persistent love affair of the Axis bloc with biotechnology promised to yield ever more effective and less brutal solutions to these and many other medical problems, not to mention all kinds of eagerly-pursued human enhancements. Europe had long since plainly accepted that women deserved equal status, reproductive rights, sexual freedom, and a place in the workforce for practical reasons. Their mass employment and (straight) sexual liberation appeared necessary and good to ensure prosperity, population growth, and eugenic health, in combination with state-supported welfare and natalist policies. However, if you ever dared propose something like a feminist critique of 'toxic' masculinity or 'the patriarchy', chances are you were going to be regarded as a loony or an enemy of the people and treated accordingly. Practical challenges drove fascist Europe to discard anti-intellectualism early in its trajectory and embrace science and a ideal of harmonious balance of athletic and intellectual excellence for individuals and society. When a compromise between reality and ideology became necessary, the typical solution was to acknowledge all the useful facts with a suitable political spin. E.g. modern physics and biology were valid and very useful, but bogus evidence 'proved' Einstein had plagiarized Aryan scientists and scientific racism was correct about Africans.

Environmentalism, pursuit of healthy lifestyles, and eagerness for space exploration and colonization were other values that had got entrenched in European culture, and something that the Western world could and did cherish as well for a change. This was fortunate, since it supported a global drive to transition away from energy dependence on fossil fuels across the industrialized world. This helped tone down the environmental damage that spread of industrialization and developed living standards to most regions of the world (minus the terrible mess that brutal Axis colonization had left behind in unassimilated areas) might have otherwise caused. Western and Axis great powers being locked into a tight race for space colonization promised humanity an exciting future among the stars.