Don't fear the Liberal Label

Email Print posted by happyhominid 05/12/2008 12:34:26 AM EST

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Did Obama start a new movement or cult of personality or is he simply the present voice of a long-standing movement with a rich history?

I will contend that Obama most certainly does represent such a movement. It is called Liberalism. Some of our fellow Obama supporters will cringe at bringing up this particular "L" word but we might as well embrace it.


The Conservative movement is an abysmal failure. Very few want a continuation of the Bush Presidency, yet this is EXACTLY what McCain promises. There is no reason to fear the "tax and spend liberal" label when the so-called conservatives have spent us down the drain while relieving corporate giants and the super-rich of their legitimate duty to support that spending. In 8 years our country has gone from a vibrant economy with a budget surplus to an economy in free-fall with the biggest deficit in the history of our nation.  Wars for oil (McCain admits it) are a terrible misuse of American power. The hatred of science and the attendant reduction in our prowess in this arena is devastating to our future.  Failure to address climate change, environmental collapse, denial of evolution and failure to take advantage of stem cell research can all be laid directly on the conservatives.

Now, some Liberal notions have been shown not to work and we have to recognize this and distance the movement from the bad ideas of Liberalism. We have to include the welfare state and insisting on cultural relativism among these failures. 

But Liberalism is a great notion, with many winning ideas and Obama leads that movement.  Unless you believe that Obama has hypnotized those of us who support him and that we really are "Obamabots" then you have to admit that the reason so many Democrats found him preferable to the other alternatives is that he is more liberal.  Certainly much of HRC's downfall centers in the fact that she ran away from her liberal base - in the DEMOCRATIC primaries!  She completely misjudged how enraged liberals are with the conservative movement.

All Obama needs to do is highlight the many failures of the Conservative movement and people will flock back to Liberalism. To paraphrase the conservative icon Reagan - are you better off than you were 8 years ago? I would wager that at least 60% will say "not at all". And some will cry out that we don't really KNOW what Obama will do with Iran, for instance, but we can say - "we have a good idea and we DO KNOW what McCain would continue doing and we don't want to go there".

There is no more egalitarian political concept than that of Liberalism.  If we are to be the America of the Constitution (that the Conservatives have worked at destroying) then Liberalism is the best way to get there.  So stop telling people you are a "progressive" and proudly admit to being a Liberal. 
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Don't fear the Liberal Label | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
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I have been saying some of this in many of my recent comments, and I really hope we all pick up on this. To rebut the inevitable "but Joe sixpack thinks..." comments that are sure to come, I just have to say let the boogeyman of "Joe Sixpack" (weird, most of my friends and I would probably qualify for this label if we didn't live near a city, Chicago, and all support Obama) vote for whomever he wishes to. The corporate-friendly tax system promoters, the religious right, the war-mongers... none of these groups are shamed into voting for candidates who may be more palatable to "regular folks." (What are we, irregular? We're not rich or especially poor, but apparently in order to be called regular you also have to be a moron)

The crazy people all vote for the candidate who seems to be as crazy as they are, and then worry about convincing Joe Sixpack that they are not actually that crazy later. So frankly, I don't give a damn what other groups will call our candidate, I'm just glad he will support most of our ideas. There is, of course, the added bonus this year of being able to point out how wrong every other political group has been. Every. Single. One.

To slightly modify a quote by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated all other paths as wrong, the one that remains, however improbable, must be correct."

(I'm sure my modification leaves much to be desired and you could probably poke holes into that statement... but it's one a.m. and I couldn't think of anything else, so, fuck off) 

by Weapon X on 05/12/2008 02:03:49 AM EST

Words are funny things. (none / 0)

In Australia, what they call the Liberal Party is populated by a gang we'd recognize as neo-cons. Go to Iran, and you have on one hand the Mullahs and theocrats who rule the place, and on the other the moderate reformers - or what the papers call "the conservatives" and "the liberals" - and even Bushies agree we must encourage the latter group, though their stance on God, guns and gays is unknown.

So you see, context is everything and meaning is flexible. Having said that, I see a basic problem when you use the words "conservative" and "liberal" to set up a dichotomy: a set of mutually exclusive worldviews. "Conservative" comes with this comforting association of preserving the things we hold dear, and heck, everyone wants to conserve something, be it the environment or free speech or Classic Coke. Whereas with "liberal", you can picture a guy flailing his arms and throwing your tax dollars into the air, which is how the right has caricatured the left and turned the label into an all-purpose negative, a cartoon of wild-eyed advocacy of change for its own sake. It has nothing to do with how thoughtful people on the left think government should be run, as fair and responsible and adaptable to changing conditions. So no, I'm not sure cleansing the reputation of one word that got turned against us needs to be a top priority, though I'd be happy to see it happen. What we really need is a better set of code words to define of the split - we evolve, they stagnate. They're the stags, and we poot in their general direction.

by ashbul on 05/12/2008 02:36:11 AM EST

Lol, I do like your new labels and descriptions. (none / 0)
However, I don't think we're really advocating a concerted effort to just "cleanse" the liberal label. I'm not, anyway, not really. I just don't want us or our candidates to run from this label any longer.

It would be nice to educate the general public on what liberals in this country actually believe, but I don't think that's even absolutely necessary at this point. All you really have to do is point out how blatantly wrong the other side has been and still is.

And you're right about how the meanings of conservative and liberal differ from place to place and time to time. But we don't have to connect to whatever liberals supported throughout the entire span of history or even the entire span of the globe. This is about America right now and how we envision it going forward, and we are currently viewed as being "liberal." So let's not run from it, okay? Let's just let the people know what being "liberal" actually means, and how the people who have been right for the past several years, if not decades, have been "liberals."

by Weapon X on 05/12/2008 03:04:06 AM EST

[ Parent ]
words are funny things (none / 0)

but the context for the labels liberal and conservative in happyhominids excellent excellent post were patently unambiguous.

I have only one minor gripe with happyhominid. The conservative movement is not an abject failure. They are, as David Brooks like to say, spending some time in the wilderness. But they continue to enjoy a massive infrastructure, they continue to control every level of the national conversation by permeating the MSM. They continue their stranglehold on the minds of a very large voting block, probably > 30% (judging from Bush's approval rating). Unlike the coalition that is likely (but not certain) to elect a democrat to power this year, they are disciplined, monolithic, and not going anywhere. Its good that the liberal blogosphere has found its voice and has core issues (individual freedom, fiscal discipline, peace, education, conservation) to rally around, but how to pursue these agenda's has not been fleshed out that well beyond the first or second round of policy by the leaders of the democratic party (Clinton or Obama). A real vision for the future has not been laid out. This is why some pundits say that while Obama is "Reagan-esque" in his ability to speak to moderates of the opposition party, he lacks the ideological foundation.

Ideology has gotten a bad rap in the Bush administration. But this is a mistake: its the blind adherence to ideology in the face of contravening facts that's the problem. Still it's a legitimate gripe against Obama that he hasn't spelled out a vision for America's future--even recognizing that we won't be having this conversation about the other two candidates who are basically political windsocks.

by hazmat on 05/12/2008 01:23:59 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Hazmat (none / 0)
I'll happily accept your "minor gripe" and just point out that my use of the word "failure" was strictly in a qualitative sense.  I certainly didn't mean to imply that they are out of the way!

It's another day in paradise...

by happyhominid on 05/12/2008 02:52:46 PM EST

[ Parent ]
Ive always thought there was a difference (none / 0)
between liberal and progressive. That progressive was not just another way of saying liberal. David Sarota hit on this in an article in 2005. It is on Huff Po. But I read it elswhere first.

"I often get asked what the difference between a "liberal" and a "progressive" is. The questions from the media on this subject are always something like, "Isn't 'progressive' just another name for 'liberal' that people want to use because 'liberal' has become a bad word?"

The answer, in my opinion, is no - there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional "liberals" in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A "progressive" are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.
To put it in more concrete terms - a liberal solution to some of our current problems with high energy costs would be to increase funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). A more "progressive" solution would be to increase LIHEAP but also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better-regulating the oil industry's profiteering and market manipulation tactics. A liberal policy towards prescription drugs is one that would throw a lot of taxpayer cash at the pharmaceutical industry to get them to provide medicine to the poor; A progressive prescription drug policy would be one that centered around price regulations and bulk purchasing in order to force down the actual cost of medicine in America (much of which was originally developed with taxpayer R&D money)."

The rest of the article is here

To me conservatism as practiced in America is something that cannot be sustained and is going to die out like Stalinism.

Gingrichs conservative revolution didnt last very long compared to the 40 years previous that the Democrats where in the majority. Neither did Roves permanet conservative majority.

by Chinese Democracy on 05/12/2008 07:59:59 AM EST

Don't fear the Liberal Label | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
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