What's Wrong With Liberalism?

An interesting discussion occurred in my office the other day. What made it so interesting was the fact that this is a U.S. Government Office whose opinions of politics and society tend to lean towards bigger government and more utopian ideals. Most conservatives would consider these people to be liberals. So, the hotbed discussion of abortion came up. Now as a man I can always be trumped in any abortion conversation with women by the phrase "You're not a woman you wouldn't know." And they're right I'm not a woman I wouldn't know. However, the legality of abortion does bring me back into the discussion whether I understand what a woman goes through or not. Why? Because I'm a voter and as Justice is blind so is the voting booth.
During Former Senator and now former Attorney General John Ashcroft's Senate confirmation hearing Mr. Ashcroft's stance on abortion was brought up. He referred to the current abortion laws as the "settled law of the land". Mr. Ashcroft has been the darling of conservatives for many years now because of his influence, his character, and his legal brilliance. Well, though I am no political conservative his answer concerned me. It concerned me and it should concern all conservatives if any of their ilk answer that question like that again.
How can abortion be the settled law of the land without the finality of the vote? The legality of abortion is tied up in Roe v. Wade. Many of my conservative friends and associates pontificate ceaselessly about how it was wrong, immoral, and unethical for the Supreme Court to rule in that fashion and how it is impossible to find the justification anywhere in the constitution for abortion. Like it or dislike it abortion should not have been legalized when it was and the way it was because neither the people nor it's representatives voted on this most controversial of issues. Our culture and system suffer today for it. The debates should be about whether abortion is right or wrong and people should feel passionately about it. So passionately that they shake the very foundations of our government to be heard. And the people are heard when they execute their vote in the booth.
It is obvious that most politicians today are not going to commit political suicide and vote one way or the other on any political issue. One only has to see the debates on the war on terror since 9/11 of our elected representatives to come to that conclusion. So, why not let the people decide. If the elected representatives are too shaken in their confidence to be re-elected to decide then by all means let the voters do it. Not the pollsters and their minute sampling of the pedestrians of New York City because there is only one poll in November that truly counts. It's no the Liberals who don't want the people to vote it's the Oligarchs who don't want it.
Myself being a member of the "ME Generation" I've found the evidence hard to remove that label from my generation. American culture has lost it's identity because of many things that are sometimes hard for me to see evidence of, but not this. I see evidence of a "Me-First" lifestyle everywhere I go. All of us are selfish but when we get to the point where we can't countenance not having our way to the level that we'd rather not submit to the authority of the majority of the vote (whether in general elections or representative elections) because the populace is not smart enough to know what it "should" do and misuse the legal system to bypass the way of liberal western democracies then those people are no longer liberals but nefarious tyrannical oligarchs.
There's nothing wrong with anyone having liberal ideals that's how America came to be. However, there is something very wrong with circumventing the system which subverts it and cracks the door to tyranny just so a few oligarchs "who know better because their just better educated and smarter" have their way. Then we are no longer a liberal western government but hyper conservative oligarchy that has no moral high ground to challenge anyone else, the Communist USSR, Nazi-Germany, Ba'athist Iraq, or militant jihadism. Nothing wrong with our liberal friends just something moral about oligarchs in liberal clothing.