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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Being liberal has only been bad if you're in politics. Progressives, haven;t been very progressive, and god knows, the conservatives have been anything but conservative, how ever, dont' hold your breath for "Liberalism" from the Obama administration. The picks for cabinet positions are squarely centrist. Liberals will have to bombard representatives with relentless pressure to move the country and the needs of the common man forward.
Twenty years ago I realized that liberals think people with more money than they need should be made to feel guilty about it so they'd give some to people who don't have enough. Even when that works, it creates a lot of resentment; hence the conservative backlash of the late '70's. Liberalism is based on guilt.
I call myself a Pragmatic Progressive. "Change is inevitable; progress is optional." My ideals would be considered very radical by most, but I am willing to work toward what is achievable.
In addition, I reject guilt as leverage. The "shoulds" of the Left are as onerous as the "shouldn'ts" of the Right. While I believe that every American is entitled to quality education and healthcare, I believe it must be marketed as a benefit to all Americans, that that improving the capabilities of the "have nots" greatly benefits the "haves." Social programs are not WELFARE, but investments in a stronger economy, a stronger nation.
Also, I believe that the idea of "corporate America" that Rush claims to defend is a fiction. All large corporations are global, multinational rather than American. Corporations have only one purpose: to benefit the financial interests of the owners. They are not humanitarian, nor patriotic. Never think otherwise.
There are too reasons I don't like "liberal" as a description of pro-new deal, mildly redistributionist, humanist and strongly anti-war politics. But I don't like "progressive" much better.
First ,we Americans (of all political stripes) insist on using "Liberal" to mean almost exactly the OPPOSITE of what it means in the rest of the world: radically pro-market, pro- unregulated trade, supportive of authoritarian regimes if they open themselves to international investment, and indifferent to how those regimes treat their own people.
Second, all of us who came of age in opposition to the Vietnam War are aware that it was started and waged by liberal democratic presidents. Our anger at that, because we expected more from liberals, exacerbated our distrust of America. For some this laid the ground for naive, unquestioning and even harmful support of all of America's enemies. The majority of the anti-war movement never went that far, but for all of us "liberal" was tarnished.
I somewhat agree with Lind that the problem with "progressive" is its acceptance of the Enlightenment idea that history has a direction. (Its the same idea that makes even the most scientific of biologists talk as if Evolution is a conscious agent trying to produce higher, or even just fitter, species.)
This notion of progress underlies both the conservatives worship of economic progressive as well as are view of an increasingly democratic and just society. "History is on our side" may have once been rhetorically powerful, but it fails as an explanation of reality.
So what I think we are is Social Democrats. We want a market economy as an engine of the economy, but not an unregulated one. As a European leader of a Social Democratic party once put it: "Yes to a market economy; no to a market society." Social Democracy is about the government actively promoting fair wages, strong unions, social freedoms, international harmony - along with world-wide trade - but only with strong protection for worker's human rights, indigenous peoples' rights and environmental restoration.
What's wrong with that?
Despite all the simplistic crap put into History Channel documentaries about the 60's, the political landscape of the time is only now being analyzed with any accuracy.
Since I was alive then and old enough to read a newspaper, but not old enough for college, this is what I remember:
1.) Lyndon Johnson succeeded in pushing through many social "liberal" policies - Medicaid, Medicare, the war on poverty, tons of money for HUD, Headstart, culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In this Johnson was a Roosevelt Democrat, who was his hero as a kid.
2.) Johnson was pretty weak on foreign policy and was initially reluctant to get involved in Vietnam. However he had many advisors, graduates of respected Ivy colleges, who convinced him to send more troops. For whatever the reason, insecurity over his own lack of education, or because he was really convinced, Johnson took the plunge, and we all know how that ended up. (By the way, I'm not letting Johnson totally off the hook, it was always his decision to make.)
3.) So enter the young generation of "liberals" many of whom were well-intentioned "social" democrats who wanted to defend civil rights, improve education and child welfare, you name it. Many had been inspired by Kennedy. However, the "liberals" who got the most attention were the campus liberals who opposed the war. A lot of the protest against Johnson had a hypocritical tinge to it. After all, he was just some Texas hick who fell into the limelight because of the murder of Kennedy. Far better to drop all responsiblity in his lap rather than the advisors they might meet up with at a future alumni event.
4.) So did the anti-war protesters deserve the contempt they got at the time? Not in the sense that they were wrong about what they were protesting, but I have always bristled at the suggestion that massive protests led to the end of the Vietnam War. I call hogwash. What turned MOST people against Vietnam was TV coverage that was in their face every evening. The Bush administration understood this very well when they banned pictures of coffins coming off planes at the beginning of the Iraq War. Also, most war protest leaders could never convincingly counter the perception of many people that they were using their student deferments to stay home and be obnoxious, while poorer people of all colors were drafted and sent "over there" post-haste.
So by the end of the 60's, "liberal" was not associated with social reform or ideals, but linked to a bunch of college kids unwilling to "defend" their country. This was the prelude to "liberal" being linked to unpopular cultural issues in the 70's. By then the perception was that EVERY person under 30 had been a war protesting, atheistic, sleep-with-anyone, commie-loving brat.
The South went Republican, even though they were, by far, the biggest recipients of Johnson's social programs. (But then again, black people were recipients too, a point that was driven home over and over and over again, until most forgot that more whites than blacks collected welfare and social security benefits.)
So I think we DO need a new label. As a previous poster suggested, Social Democrat is not bad, except for the fact that the word "social" sounds too much like "socialism" but then most of the people screaming "socialism" are hopeless a**hats anyway, so who cares?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
