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• Friday, November 21, 2008 01:50 PM

  I'm a liberal, too

  As a civil-libertarian, self-styled JFK-liberal, I've tended to think current progressives are well defined by the term's founder, President Wilson. Though they may not say it, and the radical conservatives may have made it unavoidable for the time being, anyway, I perceive these progressives to admire and favor a brand of state-sponsored capitalism managed by the bureaucracy more than well regulated free enterprise, "well" being a term of quality, not quantity.

  I am opposed to American Empire, but not American power as a force both for our own security and for good in the world. I was opposed to both Viet Nam and, for basically the same reasons as President-elect Obama, the Iraq war, though I did not hear his speech on the issue until recently, and pretty much held my views in a vacuum for some time. I'm sure a great many of us held such views in isolation. A great many of today's progressives, I fear, are simply opposed to military power, and have no appreciation for it's unfortunate but inescapable need. They risk re-branding us as the party of weakness, and show little respect for the exercise of power by liberals which, in my view, played the leading roll in defeating totalitarianism in the world, of both left and right-wing stripes, in the last century. My own, though not-proveable view, is that Hillary probably felt the same about iraw, but that she beleived the Republicans could not be stopped, and that the Democratic party could not afford, in a losing effort, to be labeled again as the party of weakness.

  I admire President Clinton as a similar liberal to myself. He is disdained by today's progressives because he was too centrist, and they give him no credit for restoring the Democratic party to power, for re-establishing Democrats as the party of fiscal responsibility, creating an economy that was raising all ships, especially as juxtaposed now against Bush, and for conducting a sensible foreign policy. They do not credit that he undertook to improve the status of gays in the military, or that he and Hillary attempted an overall reformation of our health care system, and that the then clearly center-right country responded by throwing Democrats out of Congress. They cannot see that he accomplished more in the political environment of his day than anyone else could have, and that he was an extremely competent president. President-elect Obama sees it. President-elect Obama sees it so vividly that he is largely staffing his government with people President Clinton brought into government in the first place. President Clinton is a liberal who has a lot more in common with FDR and Truman and Kennedy and Johnson than do today's progressives, and President-elect Obama seems headed down a similar liberal path. I'm proud to be a liberal in our liberal democracy, and I'm proud to be in coalition with these progressives that are so passionate in their beliefs, and share my love for civil liberties, but I believe it is appropriate that they call themselves progressive. The liberals among us, however, do need to rise up and reclaim the badge of honor which the more "progressive" wing of our party enabled Reagan and Limbaugh to besmirch. In my view, it is the finest political badge both in the world and in history, and President Clinton and President-elect Obama have proved and will prove it is as honorable as ever it has been.

  —Staggslaw Read Staggslaw's other letters
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