re: Why write a fictional history in which liberal ideas are ascendent?
It's already there in real life.
The Reagan and both Bush administrations have been about undoing liberal domestic policies in place stretching back to the 1930s. Of course, undoing means that things were done in the first place. Our reality will always be influenced by people's knowledge of what those policies have accomplished, for good and ill.
The historical fiction would allow you to erase all that and speculate what a world cleansed of liberalism would look like.
So is the current system your utopia? Or is it only a partial utopia based on having compromised with Conservatives for so many years?
My guess is you will go with number 2, however I'm not always good at guessing. If you choose number 2, then certainly you have a grand idea of Utopia you wouldn't mind sharing with us conservatives. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The reality is Tom's utopia is not my utopia and neither of our utopias are the same as yours. That is the crux of the problem with Robert's experiment. I don't think anybody but me would want to live in my utopia, nor would I want to live in theirs. The next best thing is to try and get along in an imperfect system and push our own beliefs/agendas/visions whenever we can. That's what we've got in the USA and I certainly wouldn't trade it for the world.
-Steve G.