2018-05-09
This chapter examines how the meaning of “liberal” in the United States has moved away from freedom and tolerance and, in the author’s view, contributed to an increasingly intolerant and suffocating society.
Through the major media’s support for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, anti-Trump coverage, and the controversy surrounding Clinton’s private email server, it asks what Japan must learn from America’s failures.

The following chapter was originally published as a continuation of the preceding chapter.
I have corrected errors in the text and am republishing it because its warning remains critically important to Japan today.
An ideology that claims to defend freedom and tolerance can gradually become a force that suppresses dissent and makes society increasingly oppressive.
The Japanese must not regard what has already happened in America as a distant foreign problem.
They must ask whether the same phenomenon is beginning to take place in their own society.

Do Not Follow the Same Path as America

Originally, in the United States, a way of life that placed importance on religious commandments was described as “conservative,” while the words and actions of people who wished to assert their personal desires were, in one sense, regarded as “liberal.”
Today, however, the term often refers to a position that loudly advocates the rights of minorities and gives particular importance to welfare policies for them.
The activities of such people have gone too far.
Where “liberal” once meant freedom-oriented, it has now created such an oppressive atmosphere that one cannot help associating liberalism with totalitarianism.
As the title of the previously cited book, The Gloom of Japan and America Poisoned by Liberalism, suggests, the Japanese should understand that the word “liberal” in America has moved far away from its original meanings of “free,” “generous,” “open,” “broad-minded,” and “unprejudiced.”
It has instead come to be regarded as something that spreads poison throughout society.
Regrettably, America has moved much further than Japan in allowing liberalism to create a totalitarian and suffocating society—the precise opposite of freedom.
The Japanese must think carefully, with their own minds, about both the merits and the harmful consequences of liberalism.
They should study the present condition created by America’s failures, the causes of those failures, and the measures needed to address them.
Japan must never follow the same path as America.
To put it directly, I want to ask: “Do the Japanese truly want to turn Japan into the kind of suffocating society that America has become?” and “Are they aware of the dangers of liberalism?”

Hillary’s “Dark Shadow”

When Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many Japanese people apparently wondered how Clinton—a highly intellectual former secretary of state with extensive political experience and the enthusiastic support of liberals—could have lost to Trump, who had no political experience whatsoever.
In the United States, meanwhile, the election caused many people to lose confidence in the reporting of the major media.
That was hardly surprising.
With the exception of a small number of outlets, including Fox News, most major media organisations were liberal and supported the Clinton campaign to an excessive degree from the beginning of the election campaign to the end.
They reported that Hillary’s victory was virtually certain and repeatedly gave the impression, through opinion polls, that she remained continuously ahead.
On November 9, 2016—the day of the vote count in Japan time—I appeared in four live programmes on the internet, terrestrial television, radio, and satellite television, from eight in the morning until eleven at night.
Yet in the advance meetings held up to the day before the election, not one of those programmes had prepared for a Trump victory.
NHK Radio, which places particular importance on prepared scripts, was thrown into confusion by the unexpected result.
I had cast an absentee ballot for Trump myself, and my wife and sons living in the United States had been telling me for some time, “Trump is definitely going to win.”
Nevertheless, it was not until the day before the election that I began to feel he might truly win.
Looking back, I believe Japanese media coverage was overwhelmingly biased against Trump.
It may be easy to say this in hindsight, but why did Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 presidential election despite the enormous support she received from the overwhelming majority of the major media—support that included what many regarded as “fake news” and psychological manipulation?
The answer also reveals something about the character of modern American liberalism.
One example is Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and server for official business while serving as secretary of state.
This was a far more serious issue than much of the Japanese reporting suggested.
It did not merely create a risk that classified information could be exposed.
Because she used a private server for communications in her role as secretary of state—the equivalent of Japan’s foreign minister—many communications could not be preserved and examined in the ordinary manner expected of important government records.
Documents created by cabinet officials and government employees, including emails, should naturally be preserved as public records.
Clinton understood that obligation.
Why, then, did she choose not to use an official email system?
Tens of thousands of emails described by Clinton and her staff as personal were deleted, while reports concerning the secure erasure of data and the destruction of devices created further suspicion.
What was she attempting to keep from public scrutiny?
This kind of “dark shadow” has continually followed her.

What the Japanese Must Learn

The issue raised by this chapter is not limited to the evaluation of one politician.
We must examine who uses such admirable words as freedom, tolerance, human rights, and diversity, and for what purpose.
Protecting minorities is important.
However, the protection of minority rights must never become a justification for silencing the majority or suppressing dissent.
An attempt to eliminate prejudice must not create new prejudice or ideological control.
When news organisations support a particular candidate or ideology too aggressively and minimise inconvenient facts, citizens lose the information required to make sound decisions.
The Japanese must consider not only what is being reported, but also what is being omitted.
Rather than seeking only opinions with which they already agree, they must expose themselves to opposing views and think independently.
Japan must not simply import the division and oppressive social climate that America has experienced.
The Japanese must think for themselves about the merits and dangers of liberalism and learn from America’s failures, their causes, and the measures required to address them.
Japan must never follow the same path as America.

I hereby republish this chapter to the world on July 24, 2026.