This patter has been going on for so long now - Limbaugh celebrated his twentieth anniversary on the air just last week - that many Americans now believe that anyone who calls himself a liberal is either deranged or akin somehow to a mass murderer or a pedophile. (Savage, if memory serves, even wrote a book whose title asserted that liberalism was a species of mental illness.)
The ritual castigation of liberalism obviously is good business for people like Hannity, Savage and Limbaugh. In some peculiar alchemy of hatred, they've transformed their venom into fortunes. That's their business - literally! But what's even more distressing is that liberals themselves now run from the term and take refuge in synonyms like "progressive" or "moderate."
"Moderate" is a comforting word, I suppose, and surely, by the standards of Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, liberals are indeed "moderate." But the word always reminds me of Jim Hightower's famous maxim that the only things you'll find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos.
Similarly, "progressive" is pretty inoffensive. But it really refers to a particular movement in American history that was allied with the Social Gospel against the ravages of unbridled capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century.
It's time to reclaim the terms "liberal" and "liberalism" from the distortions of the right. Liberalism is responsible for some pretty noble achievements in American life - and, arguably, for the very existence of the nation itself. Most Americans think that slavery was a pretty bad system and that equality for women is a reasonably good idea. Both the antislavery movement and the women's movement were animated by liberalism. In addition, liberals pushed for the formation of common schools in the nineteenth century, and public education (for all of its current faults and inadequacies) remains one of the bedrock institutions in our democratic society. Social Security was a liberal idea, as was Medicare. All but a tiny slice of Americans believe that a society has an obligation to help provide for its elderly. The G.I. Bill of Rights, pushed through Congress by liberals in 1944, allowed veterans, including the sons of immigrants, the opportunity to attend college and thereby to toe the bottom rung on the ladder of upward mobility. The civil rights movement, populated overwhelmingly by liberals, called on Americans to live up to the liberal ideals of our charter documents.
Have there been excesses associated with liberalism? Of course. That's part of the nature of political life and discourse, the back and forth of debate leading to synthesis. But to assert that liberalism is bad or somehow shameful belies any responsible reading of American history. Besides, are the denizens of the hard right really prepared to extol the salutary effects of conservatism over the past eight years?
Mark me down as a liberal, and proudly so.
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Uh...Randall? You do know that this sentiment has been expressed off and on for the last few years, right?
http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2006/04/reclaiming-liberalism_11.html
But, it probably bears repeating.
I join you as another "proud liberal".
I will add to your writing that noting that Jesus Christ was very much a liberal. If he were on earth today I am sure that his teachings would not be accepted by today's conservatives. He certainly would not be invited to speak at the Republican convention.
I've always proudly worn the label "liberal." One of the definitions of liberal is 'generous' - and I was taught as a child that generosity is something to aspire to.
Finally, the fact that Rush and Hannity and Savage sneer at the term 'liberal' that only reinforces my identity with it. There is very little in these gentlemen that I would ever want to emulate.
Cheers,
James
Liberal
Loud
& Proud
Sya it again!
Moderate, meaning I try and take the best liberal ideas and the best conservative ideas and mash them together - bwaaahhaaahhhaahaa!
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