Hi, and welcome to Liberalism 101.
I came of age in the Bush years. I was euphoric about Obama’s election last year. Since then, it’s become increasingly obvious that the deep, substantive, fundamental change that I voted for last November has failed to materialize.
I won’t get into the details of how Obama has disappointed thus far; you can read them elsewhere, and if you’re paying attention to national news you know them already. That said, my anger is not directed solely at Obama. He has, of course, been aided and abetted by a Democratic party that seems just as determined to make corporate tools of themselves as the Republicans. And as corporate tools, they are first and foremost non-ideological. In other words, the dominant wing of the Democratic Party is not liberal. And while this may be an obvious truth, the implications of it are quite profound. What millions of Americans voted for last November was not mere symbolic change—important as that was. What we really voted for was systemic change, for an uprooting of the decay in our politics that allowed George Bush and every horrible thing he did to take place.
What we really voted for was liberalism. But right now, we’re not getting it.
I read a lot these days about how the Republican party is suffering an “intellectual crisis." That's a nice way of putting it. But the Democrats have suffered a real intellectual crisis for far longer. Liberalism, as a set of coherent beliefs about the world, translated into a governing philosophy, has been in retreat since the late ‘60s. It is a retreat that has played out in the newspapers, radio stations, and cable t.v. channels by which ordinary people try to make sense of their world. In every visible way, from rhetoric to policy, liberalism and liberals have been on the defensive over the last 40 years.
Why this has happened has been the subject of much armchair analysis, and I won’t go into it here. It's an obvious fact that debates over political strategy, over the horse-race of election campaigns, are now the main topic of commentators who have themselves been responsible for the changing debate, although these commentators never acknowledge their role as participants in these ideological battles. Indeed, a recurring theme in every objective analysis of modern political journalism is the uncanny ability of mainstream political journalists to somehow believe in themselves as great and important pillars of the political establishment, who yet do nothing more than report independent facts to a public that is well-informed by their analysis.
They are so much more than this, of course. They are integral players who frame the political debate for Americans, and the way they frame the debate has real consequences, in terms of winners and losers, and subsequently in terms of policy, and thus for the lives of real people, both in this country and throughout the rest of the world. That, of course, is the truth that is so often lost in abstract discussions about war, or the national debt, or the price of a health care bill. That these things aren’t games; they’re not about winners and losers, or about toughness, or about posturing and all the other bullshit.
Obviously, we have FOX News, and they are what they are. Their whipped-up hysteria plays an obvious role for the Republican party. But who or what is FOX’s opposite number? CNN? The New York Times? Washington Post? MSNBC? Right-wingers say they're all part of the liberal media, but of course this is just a tactic. The truth is that there is no single mainstream source of liberal news, and this is primarily because American liberalism today is a hand-me-down from an earlier age when truth, and facts, and objectivity in reporting were not just important but essential pillars of journalism. Over the last 40 years, these ideals have been steadily eroded, and it is no coincidence that this progression has occurred alongside the liberal decline. They are one and the same.
Today, the world inhabited and explained to us by mainstream, national political reporters is governed by a few basic rules. For example: presidents who go to war are “decisive,” while antiwar protesters/policies etc. are “weak.” Spending on social programs like health care will add dangerously to the national debt, while spending on fighter jets with lasers is necessary and imperative. Democratic presidents need to stand up to the left-wing in their party, while Republican presidents show “resolve” by getting right-wing legislation passed. In each case, these standard assumptions reflect a right-wing viewpoint; and yet, each of these rules has been uttered (or made salient) on countless occasions by journalists, commentators, and even politicians who claim to be not just moderates, but LIBERALS.
This last fact bears repeating. It would be one thing if the debate were tilted so that ostensible “moderates” and “centrists” alone parrot right-wing talking points. But it is the nature of things today that even self-identified liberals say these things. This, of course, is the end result of all the "liberal=dirty word" propaganda that has been beamed out incessantly over the last 40 years. It's not just average Americans who have been trained to hate liberalism: liberals hate liberalism too.
Obviously, I've laid out a lot here, and I'm not going to chase down every last philosophical thread in this blog. My focus here is this: respected, mainstream political reporters, opinion columnists, pundits, et al, who either claim to be liberal, or progressive, or who claim to represent liberal views in their reporting, and who nevertheless, either through ignorance or calculation, display very little understanding of what liberalism actually is. Who are they? What are their reflexive beliefs about the world? How have these beliefs been mis-identified as liberal or left-leaning? And what can be done to stop them?
By way of example, consider Jacob Weisberg. Editor-in-chief of Slate.com and occasional Newsweek contributor. In this week’s issue, he wonders, “Does Obama Need to Speak More Harshly About Islam?” Weisberg begins by noting Obama’s childhood spent partly in Indonesia, and refers to the fact that 11 percent of the public continues to believe that the president is himself a Muslim. While Weisberg is quick to point out that this is untrue, he immediately follows this by saying that the president's heritage feeds a broader suspicion that he is too casual about the threat from America's Islamist enemies.
Before going any further, it should be noted that Weisberg is one of the better-known mainstream liberal writers in America. His column regularly runs in Newsweek; he is the creator of the “Bushisms” calendar, and he wrote a well-received and generally left-leaning book on the Bush Tragedy. He recently blasted FOX News as being not just misleading but "un-American."
And yet this man, this liberal institution who explains liberalism to America in the pages of Newsweek, magazine, basically just wrote: Ten percent of Americans are insane racists. Here’s why they may have a point.
Weisberg goes on to explain how the Fort Hood shooting is bad for Obama because it does serious damage to Obama's premise that greater friendliness toward Islam is a viable strategy for countering the Islamist threat. I’ll leave it to others to counter this absurdity in full, but it seems to bear mentioning that Obama continues to bomb and occupy Afghanistan, and support several secular middle-eastern dictators, and to hold suspected terrorists in legal limbo without trial, and he also continues the Bush-era tactic of extraordinary rendition, whereby the CIA drops suspected terrorists into dungeons belonging to those allied dictators for purposes of torture. In that light, perhaps his occasional speeches praising Islam should be seen as one of several ongoing strategies for countering the Islamist threat.
Finally, Weisberg lays the coup de grace: America does not face a threat from the perversion of faith in general. We face a threat from the perversion of one faith in particular.Without going into either the factual inaccuracy or general offensiveness of this statement, I'll just note how representative this is of modern mainstream “liberal” fear of appearing offensive towards Christians. Indeed, this is the main subtext of Weisberg’s article—that while those 10 percent who think Obama is an evil Muslim may be technically wrong, their more mainstream, God-fearing middle-class American brethren are similarly “suspicious” of Obama’s foreign policy intentions. Of course, Weisberg does not bother to connect this “suspicion” to any actual group, or individual figure, nor does he cite any poll detailing the average American’s “suspicion.” He just states it as an accepted fact that is part of the landscape of Obama’s presidency. Like the cherry trees on Pennsylvania Avenue, Americans are suspicious of Barack Obama.
THIS is the real reason why Obama has failed thus far to accomplish any real change. Because when he deviates THIS MUCH, when he dares to give speeches in which he praises the Muslim religion, he is called an un-American terrorist-lover by a columnist who passes for liberal in this sad day.
To change anything at all, we have to focus first on what liberalism is and what it isn't.
Uncovering, calling out and stopping this bullshit is the starting point.
(I'll have more on Weisberg soon, because he's got so much good material.)
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