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• Friday, November 21, 2008 03:51 AM

  Thinking Liberally, Acting Liberal

  The only reason "liberal" was permitted to become an epithet is because the Democratic Party abandoned liberalism in practice -- reclaiming the word (or "the brand") as Lind refers to it -- is meaningless in the absence of actual liberal policy and practice.

  The Democrats abandoned liberalism after LBJ, so what was left but for the reactionaries (aka "conservatives") to turn it into a political swear word? The worst thing Democrats could do would be to brand themselves "liberal" without actually BEING liberal.

  Democrats striving for the liberal label should at least be to the left of Richard Nixon. I know that's a lot to ask for, but I'm tired of liberalism being defined in Supreme Court terms -- that is, "relative" liberalism, owing to the dominance of the reactionaries in our political system. That is, politicians being termed liberal by how far they stand from, say, Karl Rove, in their politics, instead of being liberals in their own right.

  It would be amazing progress if we even had a bunch of American politicians actually occupying the center-left, instead of the cluster of Democrats at the center-right calling themselves "liberals" simply because they're at the far left of that the Right considers acceptable and reasonable politics.

  If you can't be at least as liberal or as politically bold as a classic New Dealer, you're not a liberal, no matter what you call yourself.

  —Slackie Onassis Read Slackie Onassis's other letters
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