Revenge of the ‘Sensible Liberal’!
Sorry this is late, but…
I told you so that the anti-war Left would say, ‘I told you so’.
Or, alternately:
LIBERAL HAWKS ARE SO NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS!111!!1
He seems to want to confirm my characterization of bullshit centrism as a mendacious strategy:
Anyway, so far as I can tell, we’re basically fighting a two-front domestic battle: on one side we have to battle against Bush’s attempt to destroy much of what we’ve spent the last 225 years building in this country. On the other side, we have to battle against the frothy-mouthed nutcases who dream about making the American left as crazy and dogmatic as the American right has become.
Know what I don’t understand? Idiots who think that extremism is only bad when it’s the OTHER guy’s extremism.
But to equal the wingnuts’ extremism, the anti-war Left (which was right about Iraq) would have to be flaming Stalinists. Also, we’d have to be as near to power as the wingnuts. The former is a fantasy, the latter an imposibility. This is the essence of bullshit centrism. Though he says the Left is only 1/20th as crazy and 1/200th as powerful as wingnuts, his gist is still that one is just as bad as the other. David Broder would be proud.
If Philosoraptor’s reasoning rings a bell it should: it’s the same reasoning that led many non-wingnuts to look at the anti-war crowd and say ‘Hippies, Chomskyites, Free Mumia wackos, Paleocons — given a choice between being seen with such people (and a great many ‘normal’ people whose existence I will ignore for convenience) and signing up with batshit wingnuts for mass murder in Mesopotamia, I’ll take war thank you very much.’
Lunar Freakonaut Retardo Montalban contemplates freeing Mumia, loading bong
And so they did. Now that that war has gone the way not only hippies and Chomskyites but people like Daniel Davies and Atrios thought it would, Liberal Hawks don’t much like it when such people point to the blood on their hands:
We certainly didn’t achieve what we should have, and those “far-left types” who worried that we were going to kill a bunch of people then screw the pooch certainly had a point.
This is tactful. Moreover, this is sensible (not ‘Sensible‘). Needless to say, by Philosoraptor’s calculus, it’s evidence of that insane Leftism which is the mirror image of Bush’s wingnuttery:
1. Um, liberal hawks were, to say the very least, split over Iraq.
2. Kosovo already filled the bill re: “a Grand Military Humanitarian Intervention.” Too bad we don’t do such things more often.
3. Iraq wasn’t a humanitarian intervention.
3. This blog is such a piece of crap now that I’m not even sure why I bother to stop by every month or so.
Winston Smith | Homepage | 09.11.06 – 2:49 pm | #
1. No, though they are now. There are keepers of the flame like Jonathan Chait, the Euston crowd, Hitchens and, implicitly, Philosoraptor. On the other hand, former Liberal Hawks like Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum have seen the error of their ways.
2. Only an abject moron — which is to say, a Liberal Hawk — would assume that Kosovo is a model rather than an exception. Moreover, only an abject moron/Liberal Hawk would assume that a flaming batshit wingnut, who stole an election here and represents the most anti-human and kleptocratic forces in the West, would be able or truly willing to adopt the high-mindedness and competence that drove the Kosovo operation. Kosovo is a duckbilled platypus, a which-what-who of wars. How clever the neoconservatives were to assume that their Liberal allies on the Kosovo matter would have such short memories. Thus when the crusade on Iraq was put into action, all the neocons who created it had to say to the clueless fucktard-stupid Liberal Hawks was, “remember Kosovo”, rightly counting on the Liberal Hawks to forget that before Kosovo, the neocons had cheerfully endorsed not only every tinpot dictator who was an American client, but also every awful and immoral, overt or covert intervention America had undertaken since the 1950s and indeed, had it been up to the neocons, we’d have never left Vietnam. Actually, it is probably right to say that neoconservatives only endorsed Kosovo not because of humanitarian reasons, but because they saw it as an exercise of American power — which can never not be a good thing, in their eyes.
3. No shit. But it was marketed as one. Who were the main purveyors of this sales pitch? Gee..
3. (sic) Ahhhh, there it is. Atrios — Duncan Black, mild-mannered economist — is a hippie! Scratch your screen as your browser loads atrios.blogspot.com and you will catch a whiff of the finest patchouli. Yes, Atrios is among that crazy Left which is just as bad as the Bush crew.
Phunky Philadelphian Duncan Black, the Wavy Gravy of the internets, encouraging phellow phreakazoids to attune their consciousness to atrios.blogspot.com
Remember, Liberal Hawks are only morally responsible for what they *wanted* to happen in Iraq, not what *actually* happened.
And, given this fantasy level of responsibility, they are much, much more moral than actual liberals, because liberals were not loudly screaming their fantasies of peace, freedom, and justice in Iraq against Saddam Hussein. Therefore liberals love tyranny.
Far out, man! Why won’t they listen to what the flower people say?
Christalmighty, Retardo, you do go on.
I can’t be bothered to read a whole damned post of yours anymore, honestly. You’re just winding yourself up after the first couple of paragraphs, so far as I can tell.
Anyhoo, you seem to be utterly oblivious to the fact that there are some people left of Rumsfeld who were, e.g. in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan, but opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Or in favor of the intervention in Kosovo, but opposed to intervention in Iran. Or in favor of intervention in East Timor, and also in favor of military intervention in East Sudan. And Southern Sudan, too, though that probably predates your awareness of conflict in Sudan.
Have fun, Retardo, with your opposition to military action against the Taliban. Or against the janjaweed. Or against Milosovic. I’m sure your Not-Marxist Yet Socialist principles will be thoroughly vindicated once the imaginary anti-violence parties you favor are spirited into power by the redeeming army of Socialist Rapture Angels.
Shorter Grampaw:
Wasn’t ever thus for Sensible Liberals? ‘I don’t have time for your arguments; there’s a war to join!’ or, ‘ I don’t have time for your arguments, there’s “shock therapy” to apply to some poor country!’
Go fuck yourself, grampaw.
Shorter Retardo:
“No, now that you mention it, I’m not at all comfortable talking about all those conflicts you mention.”
Just back from a Hippie “pot party,” Atrios has the “munchies” for a California cheeseburger…
I wouldn’t be holding up Kosovo as the shining example of humanitarian intervention. Wesley Clark openly admitted to war crimes during the initial phases of that war. Civilians were intentionally targeted to “soften up” the resistance. This was, of course dutifully ignored by our somnambulant media. Of course those initial bombing raids on Yugoslavia were not authorized by the security council. In addition inspectors were giving the wrong story to those in power (essentially the Albanians were initiating most of the military conflicts) so they were withdrawn (sounds familiar). I am not saying that it shouldn’t have been done because the situation was very complicated (although from what I have read, I lean in that direction), but it certainly isn’t an exception to the inhumanities that war creates. Civilians always take it in the face, and in “modernâ€?, “civilizedâ€? warfare, it is usually primarily the civilians.
The fact that Afghanistan is turning out to be a re-Taliban stronghold post-invasion and returning to a pre-Taliban warlord status (you know, like how the Afghans glumly welcomed in the Taliban originally so that the Taliban would at least stop the continual death dealing chaos of the warlords, those erstwhile US buddies and freedum fighters) in no way allows anyone to think any thoughts other than that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was pre-ordained, unquestionable, sinless, and required no thought or argument whatsoever, it just was, it is, it ever shall be. Like other presumed humanitarian interventions it is the Alpha and Omega, and to even think that rational arguments must be martialed to outline how things will actually turn out to be better rather than our good intentions is a sin against the God of all Humanity.
The difference between our crazies and theirs is that we keep ours minimalized. Yeah,they’re a little loopy,but there aren’t very many of them and we treat them pretty much like crazy relatives you only see a few times a year,if that. I ran in lefty anarchy-ish circles for awhile,trust me,worry about any some sort of dark far left/commie/pinko//hippie movement to take over the world is a HUGE waste. If anything,those folks get in their own way so much any actual “accomplishment”by those groups is an accident.
The wingnuts have moved the center so far right that anything left of the Taliban is “radical leftism”,which means we’re all liberals now. Heh.
I guess everyone’s forgotten that Afghanistan provided a military model for Iraq, that at one point we had people in the field saying we would be bogged down at least through the winter, and that we scored our big breakthrough only after dealing with the old Northern Alliance so they’d do the work on the ground. Afghanistan was the Anti-Vietnam! Our cause was Righteous! This time, we’d be allowed to win! Yet when it came down to it we wouldn’t do the dirty work ourselves.
There was plenty of evidence by the time the big push to war in Iraq came that our leadership was militarily incompetent, conceptually blind, and lying through its teeth, and that we were about to get ourselves stuck in the middle of the Middle East for perhaps as long as a generation. There was no excuse at the time for anyone with a lick of sense to get caught up in On To Damascus fever, and even those who repented quickly should still be looking to their own ablutions.
I am sick and tired of this moral relativism being practiced by the sensible centrist community where they say things like “both sides have their extremists”
Wrong.
There is a world of difference between the left and the right in this country and it is the willful blindness on the part of centrist’s that has enabled the right to wreck the nation.
Unfortunately it is a good meme and it serves many usuful purposes for the centrist to talk this way. Just last night I caught the ex-governor (R) of Missouri on Charlie Rose. Now he has written a book that blasts the rise of fanatical Christians in the GOP. But on the interview he was doing moral equivalency. He was saying both sides have extremists and then he trotted out Ned Lamont as an example of “left” extremism and Lieberman as “center” sensibility. And I thought to myself, this guy is part of the problem. How can a political system function when the useful lie always wins over the truth, the plain truth that Ned is the centrist and the Lieberman is a right wing enabler pretending to be a centrist. It’s this inability to see things as they are that freaks me out. The top minds of America don’t get it. In the most generous of interpretation I could say is that the former governor was using the idea of an equivalent left to placate republicans and get them to take him seriously even after he slagged the direction that party is going in, but then I realised that if he feels he has to lie about this, how is he going to convince people of his ideas?
At least John Dean did not engage in moral equivalency when he wrote his book. I swear every god damn thing the right has ever accused the left of being is exactly, e.x.a.c.t.l.y. what the right IS and DOES.
Wake up America! See the lies right in front of you.
Have fun, Retardo, with your opposition to military action against the Taliban. Or against the janjaweed. Or against Milosovic. I’m sure your Not-Marxist Yet Socialist principles will be thoroughly vindicated once the imaginary anti-violence parties you favor are spirited into power by the redeeming army of Socialist Rapture Angels
So, if someone opposed the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, that makes them naive, in your view? Don’t you think it is significant that, as part of the strategy against the Taliban, just before the invasion, the US had Pakistan cut off food supplies to Afghanistan- food supplies that were keeping a large number of Afghanis just this side of starvation? Do you believe that the civillians that we killed in the invasion were a necessary price?
Furthermore, what about the simple principle of respect toward another country’s leadership, even one like the Taliban that was reactionary, and furthermore was actually aiding Al-Queda? What about the simple principle that other countrys have a right to their own leaders, shitty and guilty as they may be? Do you think that principle is naive?
So.
Liberals opposed to the Iraq war were right but for all the wrong reasons, whereas liberal hawks were wrong for but all the right reasons. Moreover, being wrong was the right thing to be at the time, so anyone who wasn’t wrong was simply refusing to be properly misled. Finally, while the right people may have been wrong about the war, those who were right were most decidedly the wrong kind of people, so the right people can ignore them now, just like they did then.
Makes so much sense it’s sensible.
Too bad about Philosoraptor. He had the best takedown of Kim DuToit I ever read, but it’s simply absurd to say that the left’s crazies are equally weighted with the right’s. It’s not as if Atrios is linking approvingly (or at all, ever) to infoshop.org.
Anyhoo, you seem to be utterly oblivious to the fact that there are some people left of Rumsfeld who were, e.g. in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan, but opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Or in favor of the intervention in Kosovo, but opposed to intervention in Iran.
Christalmighty, grampaw, you do go off-topic.
Anyhoo, you seem to be utterly oblivious to the fact that Retardo does not mention Afghanistan or the Sudan in this post. Or that he’s talked several times about the “Sensible Liberals” who beat the drums for war in Iraq for no really sensible reason, but that probably predates your awareness of this blog.
Have fun, grampaw, with your opposition to critical thinking skils, reading comprehension, and logical argument. I’m sure your principles of arrogant ignorance will be thouroughly vindicated when the most un-curious man on the planet nukes Iran to initiate the rapture before he’s spirited out of office by the Glorious Army of Impeachment Angels.
Weren’t the neocons opposed to the action in Kosovo? I do know that many congressional republicans were, as were their concomitant propagandist/pundits.
The Kosovo campaign let the Muslims cleanse the Serbs (and the Roma, cause they happened to be in the neighborhood) instead of the other way around. I fail to see how that qualifies as a successful humanitarian intervention.
Anyhoo, you seem to be utterly oblivious to the fact that there are some people left of Rumsfeld who were, e.g. in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan, but opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Or in favor of the intervention in Kosovo, but opposed to intervention in Iran. Or in favor of intervention in East Timor, and also in favor of military intervention in East Sudan. And Southern Sudan, too, though that probably predates your awareness of conflict in Sudan.
Darfur (and the largest concentration of Janjaweed, one would imagine) is in western Sudan. Maybe Grampaw is thinking of East Chad, though that probably is outside his awareness of recent events. Or geography.
There’s an additional dynamic at work here re: “sensible” liberal/left attitudes toward the left “extreme”:
On many domestic issues the mainstream “left” (by which I mean most leading national Democrats) would actually prefer the policies put forward by the far right to those put forward by the (actual and tiny) far left (e.g. socialism).
Ok, see, here’s the problem with “War as a Solution”. You have to deal with the Law of Unintended Consequences, a point that is always ignored by people who are “Pro War”. (By the way, I fail to understand how anyone would ever accept that label – it’s like being “Pro Disease” or “Pro Disaster”). Kosovo resulted in many civilian deaths and ethnic cleansing. Afghanistan merely allowed the nation’s leadership to be replaced by the most ruthless, kleptocratic of factions. Without even coming close to eliminating the islamic populists who will continue to fight against that kind of government. Iraq – well, don’t even get me started. Basically, any American who supported the invasion and occupation of the sovereign nation of iraq, regardless of the nature of it’s leadership, was willing to do so in direct violation of Nurmemburg, and it’s only that fucker Goddard who won’t let me draw the logical conclusion.
Hell, there’s a big part of me that would like to see an american alpha strike package against the Sudanese air force. It would serve the purpose of making it that much more dificult for them to murder their citizens, and it would also make them examine their actions in light of very real costs. But I can’t really, in good conscience, support even that. (Although to this day I would have supported American military intervention in Rwanda. I believe that may be the one situation where a little judiciously applied violence may have been able to stop the killing). The ramifications of using military force to acieve political ends are not controllable, and cannot even be accurately predicted. Therefore, any attempt to “Kill your way out of a problem” is not only likely to fail, it’s very likely to blow back all over you…
mikey
thank you mikey – you are spot on (as usual)
when i read this article i wondered immediately who are these fucks who are “pro-war” – I mean what the fuck?
pro-war, huh? well then I hope a 500lb bomb lands (well not on but real near) your house – is that what it takes for an American to understand why war is unequivocally bad?
military “options” arent meant to be swung around like some play sword because the costs are huge – i dont understand why people dont get this and this is why I am an angry librul
I don’t recall Ezra Klein or Kevin Drum as ever supporting the war.
They support the war with their taxes.
Sometimes events conspire to expose those who’d rather be cool than right.
I don’t recall Ezra Klein or Kevin Drum as ever supporting the war.
You may think that Retardo is stereotyping when he speaks of sensible liberals who supported the war because of a knee-jerk opposition to hippies and Chomskyites, but that, in all seriousness, is what Ezra admitted to doing way back when he was teaming with Jesse Tyalor at Pandagon. To his credit, he at least admitted it and moved on (though I still don’t enjoy his writing nor trust his political sensibilities), but yes, he and Yglesias both decided that maybe there was something to the administration’s war fever because they looked down their noses at the typical anti-war types, and Ezra actually mentioned the popularity of Chomsky on his campus at UC Santa Cruz as being one of the things that convinced him that those people weren’t nuanced enough to be taken seriously (as opposed to deep thinkers like Kenneth Pollack). I believe those Pandagon archives were wiped out a while back, though, which is a shame, because Ezra could drop your jaw with an incredibly tone-deaf, boneheaded statement like no one else back then.
As for Drum, I don’t know what he thought then and don’t care what he thinks now. I do recall that the very first post I ever read of his was one where he compared early estimates of the amount of looting done in Iraq’s museums immediately following the invasion from the right and the left and concluded, “Turns out there were exaggerations on both sides. Who knew?” Little did I know that my first reading of him would so perfectly encapsulate his milquetoast moderation.
The Euston Manifesto assholes are the biggest bunch of assholes since the first bunch of assholes assholed into Assholetown.
My problem with people saying that extremism is bad no matter which side it comes from is this:
Right wing extremism: Let’s kill all the brown people, heathens, and gays. And just keep the white poor around to do our dirty work for us.
Left wing extremism: Let’s have equal rights for all human beings and have no more war. Everyone has the right to be happy by virtue of being born.
Which overlords would YOU rather serve?
unrelatedwaffle-
You have just illustrated how the left side of the spectrum has been clipped off in the USA.
Your example of left wing extremism is considered left-center in most modern countries.
Real left-wing extremism would be something like Maoism, or like the Shining Path in Peru.
It seems that the left has been pretty good at getting rid of it’s harmful extremist elements, while the right has been embracing them.
Hell, we’re at the point in this country where frickin’ McGovern and Nixon would be denounced as liberal extremists today.
grampaw to Retardo:
You’re just winding yourself up after the first couple of paragraphs, so far as I can tell.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
Dude, you’re at Sadly, No! not fucking TAP fer chrissakes.
Also, what Thers said. When I read that moronic manifesto I wanted to smack one or all of those assholes with Teh Green Paisley Walking Stick of Liberal Justice. That sort of deliberate stupidity makes my teeth hurt. Maha calls it ‘elective ignorance.’ Works for me.
Gentlewoman, I hadn’t read the Euston screed before today. Just finished it and couldn’t agree more with Thers and yourself, with the modification that I don’t see their problem as ignorance — it seems an overtly self-interested philosophy that’s really quite ugly. It has the added creep-factor of being weaselishly written so that the perhaps good-hearted but sadly ignorant (elective or otherwise) who stumble across it might well buy into it without realizing what they’ve just signed up for (damn! ending with a preposition again).
You have just illustrated how the left side of the spectrum has been clipped off in the USA.
Your example of left wing extremism is considered left-center in most modern countries.
Real left-wing extremism would be something like Maoism, or like the Shining Path in Peru.
Right, or the craziest sort of Stalinists, which is why I said what I said. The rightwing in this country is extreme by world standards while the Center here is rightwing, while the neoliberal/sensible “Left” here is actually center-right in most places in the world.
Also notice how grampaw — who called everyone not drinking the neoliberal kool-aid before “command economy commes” — sneers to the effect that you can;t be socialist without being some sort of Maoist or Stalinist or Castroite. In other words, there’s no such thing as a social democrat which would be news to most countries in Europe. But then I have no doubt that the Swedes are, for grampaw, no different than bolsheviks. Moron.
well done for going for the image of Atrios; as you no doubt saw, the only image of me extant on the internet is in my Guardian blog profile, which was taken after three months of unemployment, on the beach in Crete, and looks pretty damn hippie
Can we all, at least, agree that Dennis Miller is an asshole? Let’s find some common ground and start from there.
Also, Philosoraptor seems to be making one big ole equivocation here between the Afghani and Iraqi Wars. I, and many a lefty I know, were in favor of taking out the Taliban. That doesn’t mean that warning flags about things like them pipelines didn’t give us pause, but it does seem as if Al Qaeda attacked us and were being hosted by the Taliban.
And, in fact, support of the Afghani effort was a big, and valid, reason to be against going into Iraq, regardless of the also valid reasoning that they hadn’t attacked us and presented absolutely no threat to us. I’m not saying we would have won otherwise, but it’s relatively clear, at this point, that going into Iraq doomed our efforts in Afghanistan, for want of focus and resources.
I was against going into Iraq for the, for lack of a better word, moral reason that they hadn’t done anything to us, and for the practical reason that we still had a job to finish elsewhere.
Presuming that being right about Iraq for the wrong reasons means being so “unamerican” as to be anti-war in general, what about those of us who were right about Iraq for the right reasons?
clueless fucktard-stupid Liberal Hawks
Sweet!
PS Fuck grampaw, with the Barbed Wire Dildo of Enlightenment
You know, I betcha a lot of this would make more sense if more people were aware of the fact that the *actual* Left (i.e., Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and all their fellow-travellers) have, historically speaking, despised liberals.
The Liberal willingness to make aggressive wars of imperialism has always had a lot to do with it, as well.
This American tendency to conflate Liberals with the Left just confuses the hell out of everyone, and furthers the agenda of no one but the right wing political movements.
This idea that liberals are on the left is really just perplexing to me. Thinking of either Clinton on the left is kind of like thinking of William Gladstone at the International Workingman’s Association or something.
Despite what William Harcourt may have said….no; we are NOT all socialists now.
Please, Jillian, no! ..lest Grampaw come here to tell us that Kier Hardie indeed sent millions to die in the gulag.
You know, I betcha a lot of this would make more sense if more people were aware of the fact that the *actual* Left (i.e., Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and all their fellow-travellers) have, historically speaking, despised liberals.
Aha! An excuse!
Love Me, I’m a Liberal
By Phil Ochs
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I’d lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I’m glad the commies were thrown out
Of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don’t move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can’t understand how their minds work
What’s the matter don’t they watch Les Crane?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I read New Republic and Nation
I’ve learned to take every view
You know, I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I’m almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like korea
There’s no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I vote for the democtratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I’ll send all the money you ask for
But don’t ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I’ve grown older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
You would say that, you – you LIBERAL, you!
[ducks]
Oh, yes, Bubba…..and Jello Biafra’s redone it to make it a bit more current, even….
I cried when they shot John Lennon
Tears ran down my spine
And I cried when I saw “JFK”
As if I’d lost a father of mine
But Malcom-X and Ice-T had it coming
They got what they asked for this time
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
I go to pro-choice rallies
Recycle my cans and jars
I’ll honk if you love the Dead
Hope those funny Grunge bands become stars
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit to far
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
I cheered when Clinton was chosen
My faith in the system reborn
I’ll do anything to save our schools
If my taxes aint too much more
And I love Blacks and Gays and Latinos
As long as they don’t move next door
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
Rush Limbaugh and the L.A.P.D.
Should all hang thier heads in shame
I can’t understand where they’re at
Arsenio should set them straight
But if neighborhood watch doesn’t know you
I hope the cops take your name
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
Yeah, I read the New Republican
Rolling Stone and Mother Jones too
If I vote it’s a democrat
With a sensible economy view
But when it comes to terrorist Arabs
There is no one more red, white, and blue
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
Once I was young and had an attitude
Stickers covered the car I drove in
Even went on some direct actions
When there weren’t rent-a-cops to be seen
Ah, but now I’ve grown older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in
Chorus:
So love me, love me, love me,
I’m a liberal
“..that it was the Sensible Liberals who were the first against the wall when martial law was declared by President For Life(tm) Jenna Bush.”
Ah, anyone for a martini?
well done for going for the image of Atrios
Thanks B^3, you scuzzy hippie you, but the credit goes to Prof. Gavin M. of Sadly No Research Labs.
This American tendency to conflate Liberals with the Left just confuses the hell out of everyone, and furthers the agenda of no one but the right wing political movements.
I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t bring back the heriditary British monarchy. At this point, why the fuck not? Just apologize for that whole Revolution thing, make the UK a present of the Constitution, since we’re not using it anyway?
Presuming that being right about Iraq for the wrong reasons means being so “unamerican� as to be anti-war in general, what about those of us who were right about Iraq for the right reasons?
So, you are saying that being anti-war in general is ‘wrong’? Oh great, that’s just wonderful. You get to automatically decide that I’m ‘wrong’ and you are ‘right’ without having to do any thinking or soul-searching at all.
This, to me, is exactly why pro-war “liberals” are full of shit, and totally useless.
Calm the eff down, atheist. I’m not saying that at all. I’m assuming that’s the mindset behind what the liberal hawks are saying. The word “presuming” was your first hint of that. Jebus.
Oh, I see. Sorry.
And, to be clearer, I have no problem with anyone who calls themselves antiwar. It’s a far nobler position than its opposite, and most of the time I am with you. But I’m not an absolutist, and I recognize sometimes a bad choice is still the best choice.
Interesting comment about Chomsky and his influence on Ezra.
I dont’ trust Chomsky to be fair, but he sure is a hell of a lot more nuanced and deep that any right winger I can think of. You have to take his arguments seriously, most of the time, whether or not you agree.
I dont’ trust Chomsky to be fair, but he sure is a hell of a lot more nuanced and deep that any right winger I can think of.
Chomsky at least advises you not to trust Chomsky.
This American tendency to conflate Liberals with the Left just confuses the hell out of everyone, and furthers the agenda of no one but the right wing political movements.
Um, actually, liberals kind of are part of the left. They (mostly) are a bunch of moderate leftists.
They don’t necessarily want a true ‘Social Democracy’ but are for a government protections on the rights of workers, the right to a union, social security, etc.
I don’t think it makes sense to consider liberals/progressives as not being related to ‘The Left’. Which if I understand you, means Socialists, Greens, etc.
If I am using ‘The Left’ in a way that you don’t mean, let me know.
Wait, maybe when you use the word ‘liberal’, you mean Neo-Liberal aka Libertarian? Is that why this statement:
This American tendency to conflate Liberals with the Left just confuses the hell out of everyone, and furthers the agenda of no one but the right wing political movements.
sounds wierd to me?
Liberals are OPPOSED to what the Left stands for.
It’s apparently only in America that this is a confusing concept.
While both liberals and lefties have similar stances on “social liberalism”, they have completely antagonistic economic views. There’s simply no reconciliation possible between the two.
Even ignoring the (now somewhat anachronistic) liberal views on the state (here’s a hint – the left is no fan of the nation-state, while liberals are), the gulf between the two on economic perspectives is pretty huge. A true liberal position on markets is a laissez-faire position. There’s a reason every living Democratic America president endorsed NAFTA, you know…they’re liberals.
I don’t want to spend too much time getting into classical liberal economics, because I’ve obviously got my own perspectives and don’t really want to get into a flamewar on whether or not imperialism really is the highest stage of capitalism or not. I work sixty five hour weeks and wouldn’t be able to do an online argument like that the justice it deserves, so I’m gonna preemptively bow out. But if you want a quick, painless introduction to the differences between liberals and the left, the Communist Manifesto is an easy place to start. It also helps to explain why so many people think there is some sort of symbiotic connection between the two groups, when there isn’t and there oughtn’t be.
Unions, in case you haven’t noticed, are pretty much useless anymore, especially in light of the latest NLRB ruling to come down.
Protection of worker’s rights from a state whose keepers profit off the companies that grow rich by denying workers rights? Talk about foxes and henhouses….
Social Security was deliberately set up by FDR to be paid for with one of the most regressive tax structures possible – he never would have gotten it through Congress otherwise.
All of the things you mention are sweet and lovely, but if you’re on the left, you tend to see them as bandaids covering the syphillitic sores of a rotten system.
I’m not saying you should endorse one side or the other – I’m just saying don’t confuse them. If you are a liberal, then lefties are really NOT your friends – they may be occasional tactical allies, but ya’ll are aiming at very different end states.
Dammit, I didn’t know ANY of that. I always thought I was both a leftist and a liberal. When I identify myself as such, people seem to know what I am saying I believe. I think that’s a little, er, pedantic? I mean most of us don’t know all the details, so what we THINK is how we should identify is probably right. Y’know?
mikey
yep i suppose im a librul (a truly sensible one) but I get called a naive commie looney left socialist all the time by old fart republican and likudnik co-workers
and Chomsky scares me (depressing as shit) – and I think nation-states are an ok idea – so that makes me sensible or Sensible?
Well, America hasn’t had a left since the days of our own Uncle Joe (McCarthy), so it’s not surprising we’ve got such native confusion on the issue.
The left is dead in America, anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter that everyone desecrates her corpse. But just as a note of historical interest, if nothing else, you really can’t be both a liberal and a leftist.
People call me a liberal all the time, too. Mostly, I just ignore it.
They don’t have to be “Stalinists”, just holier-than-thou people who won’t flinch from forcing their values on others as soon as they have the chance.
You’re right on #2 though. Of course, that may/will eventually change, but we’ll just have to fight that battle when the time comes. The enemy at the gates is the rightwingnuts.
I’ve got to say though, that there is a fundamental contradiction when you say “I’m not a threat to you because I have no power” and then ask for more power.
They don’t have to be “Stalinists�, just holier-than-thou people who won’t flinch from forcing their values on others as soon as they have the chance.
No, they have to be crazy, not holier-than-thou. They have to be unable to face reality and construct it from some crazy pet theory.
9/11 conspiracies anyone?
Jillian, I started to draft a hefty argument here but then remembered your 65-hour work week (and my own). So I’ll abbreviate:
To a certain extent, it seems you’re conflating what the liberal wants with what the liberal gets. Saying liberals are content with the “bandaids” is rather like saying the left is content with what Mao accomplished . . . It’s rather easy to prove that theory is better than practice.
I also think mikey makes a valid point — if people know that they stand for social justice and civil liberties and equal access to economic opportunities, and that they stand against militarism and corporatism and imperialism (etc.), must we insist that they parse each other’s sentences in order to determine at what point they must declare themselves to be in different camps?
It’s like that Emo Phillips bit with the two Southern Baptists who find comradeship down to the tenth subdenominational category and on the eleventh one of them cries, “Die, heretic!”
I dunno. It just seems there are much more important battles these days.
Man, I wish I could preview this comment before it goes. Oh, well.
Ice T is dead??????
Shorter This Thread: So-called Sensible Liberals showed their true nature by believing in Bush’s plan to go to war with Iraq.
Sensible Liberals (who I have earlier defended as being actually sensible, but wrong) aren’t remotely concerned with being tagged as “leftists.” The realpolitik that resulted in true liberals in Congress voting to give Bush the authority to go to war was the fear that 1.) it was inevitable and b.) it was almost certain to succeed and 3.) they didn’t want to be on the losing side, certain to be turned out of office at the next possible moment.
Somewhere between the myths of the painless-to-Americans success of Kosovo, the indefatigable superiority of the American military, the evil of Saddam Hussein and what he must be up to if we could only prove it and the Iraqis waiting to greet us as liberators, John Kerry must not have been able to imagine he would have to live to regret that vote.
John Kerry is the prototypical liberal in that basically he believes in the military option with the distinctions of politics being the how, where, why and when it’s used. I’m not sure I could name one “anti-war” member of congress. I’m sure someone here can name one, two tops.
I’m not a real liberal; much less a leftist, but the idea of Bush given the authority to go to war scared me shitless back then. But I have to confess that there were moments when I though maybe I was wrong. Remember when the first statue of Saddam came down in Baghdad and the kids were running along throwing shoes? Maybe the Sensible Liberals were done in by their craven political ambition or maybe naiveté. One area where they were sadly correct is that it would have happened with or without them.
Have they found the mass graves in Kosovo yet? Worst. Genocide. Ever.
I ran in lefty anarchy-ish circles for awhile,trust me,worry about any some sort of dark far left/commie/pinko//hippie movement to take over the world is a HUGE waste. If anything,those folks get in their own way so much any actual “accomplishment�by those groups is an accident.
Well, to be fair, a lot of the Visibly Nutty Leftists are government plants. At the furthest extreme, the PD/FBI/CIA members could probably put together a working majority at the next “Free Mumia” conclave, if only they didn’t distrust each other more than they hate the dirty, nasty librul-lefty-comsymps. So they probably use the way ANSWER keeps biting itself in the ass, always where they can do the most damage to the rest of the anti-war movement, as the reason we should use our tax dollars to pay them for dressing up and screaming dirty words at the teevee cameras. At least they provide a perverse early warning system… we’ll know the DHS has finished its “security consolidation” when the protest puppeteers start showing up in short-sleeved blue oxford shirts and clip-on ties.
If we actually wanted to track the interlopers, we could set up a booth at the next rally selling tshirts with the legend “PRO WAR — Because Retail Murder Is For Pussies!”. ‘Cuz you know those guys would never be able to resist.
Jeepers! Propeciaâ„¢ really, really works!
Er, that was about teh Atrios portrait, not Retardo’s lovely golden tresses. *ahem*
I am fucking ripped!! This shit is starting to make sense.
Going back to the start of the thread, the interesting thing is that grandpaw immediately brings up Afghanistan as a good war: the fact is, without the War on Afghanistan, no War on Iraq. There were alternatives back in october 2001, the US didn’t need to go to war, but could’ve treated the attacks as a creiminal matter, in the same way the US had up to that point always treated terrorism.
Hey, Mort….
One of the fundamental breaking points between liberals and “the left” is over the efficacy and/or purposes of reform.
Conservative lefties think that reform can be used to break down the structures in our current system that are oppressive – essentially, that we can “vote socialism into existence”. Less conservative leftiess think such ideas are pie in the sky, and that nothing short of total social upheaval will ever get rid of such things.
Liberals, from a left perspective, ARE content with “bandaids”, because the things they seek to preserve are nothing more than sweet tidbits tendered by the hand of a cruel master. Social Security? it’s crap. Medicaid? Crap. The EPA? Crap. The entire giant edifice of liberal democracy? Yeah…pretty much crap. It’s a structure with property rights at its center instead of human rights….read the Constitution, read its intellectual predecessors like John Locke. People are secondary to property here, and such a system is a system of oppression in leftie eyes, no matter how sweet the candy it’s coated in.
Please note I’m not saying you should agree or disagree with this analysis – just pointing out why lefties disagree so fundamentally with liberals.
I agree that people who are committed to social justice shouldn’t get caught up in semantic games of precisely which shade of pink one is on the Red Spectrum….but I would also say that liberals who think they are working for social justice within the confines of the current propertarian system are deluding themselves. They’re like alcholic enablers, who think that by covering up for the drunken lapses of their spouse (the state) they’re doing that spouse some sort of kindness.
Lefties would say that the state needs to bottom out before it can ever begin the road to recovery. They don’t pretend it’s a pleasant process, but would just say that trying to cover up how bad the drunkenness has actually become, they’re only making it worse.
Ultimately, there isn’t any Left remaining in America, which is why so many of us lefties tend to hang with you liberal types. Personally, I suspect that a lot of people who think they are liberals might, if given a chance, turn out to be on the left, and that’s also part of what motivates me to show my liberal bretheren much love. But I don’t make the mistake of thinking that we’re working for the same things, either. We’re not.
To respond more directly to your comment – liberals may not WANT imperalist wars of aggression…but by supporting free trade agreements and the domestic relief packages that help keep American workers from feeling just how badly those free trade agreements hurt them, they are asking for imperialist wars of aggression.
Just like a wife with an alcoholic husband probably doesn’t want her husband to die of an alcohol related disease, but every time she calls his boss to explain how he’s “too sick” to come to work that day, she makes it ever more likely that she’ll end up burying her spouse.
I know that’s long and rambling and way too jargonistic, and I’m sure I’ll need to clarify parts of it…just let me know which parts, ‘mkay?
“Actually, it is probably right to say that neoconservatives only endorsed Kosovo not because of humanitarian reasons, but because they saw it as an exercise of American power”
That would be right, if neo-cons had endorsed Kosovo. But they didn’t.
I know that’s long and rambling and way too jargonistic, and I’m sure I’ll need to clarify parts of it…just let me know which parts, ‘mkay?
This is the only part I had trouble with, Jillian. What’s to clarify?
I think I need to go bop some of my self-identified liberal friends on the head with your post now.
Hell, there’s a big part of me that would like to see an american alpha strike package against the Sudanese air force. It would serve the purpose of making it that much more dificult for them to murder their citizens, and it would also make them examine their actions in light of very real costs. But I can’t really, in good conscience, support even that. (Although to this day I would have supported American military intervention in Rwanda. I believe that may be the one situation where a little judiciously applied violence may have been able to stop the killing).
Mikey, remember that, in the case of Rwanda, they were begging for intervention by other countries; they needed an international, UN-led policing action, they asked for it, and what they got were a bunch of countries coming in with guns blazing to get their own citizens out and then leaving the brown folk to cut each other up with machetes. Had the US tried to “help” in Rwanda as they “helped” in Iraq, bombing the everliving crap out of the country, killing many of the people we intended to save and leaving the country with very little infrastructure worth rebuilding, we would have ended up with what we’re facing now in Iraq: one group of grateful survivors, another group of seriously ticked-off insurgents, and one really awful reputation in the world.
The challenge with Sudan is that, remembering what happened in Rwanda, the UN wants to intervene, but the Sudanese government says they’d read that as an act of aggression. They also said that smaller peacekeeping missions could be welcomed if negotiated properly, but John Bolton, of course, is suiting up to smack him down some brown folks. Shock, I know. But if we were to go into Sudan the way we’ve gone into Iraq, we’d end up… well, see above re: Rwanda.
Jillian, I don’t know that you need to clarify anything. Just a couple of points. Nah, scratch that. Just one point, really:
which is why so many of us lefties tend to hang with you liberal types.
The assumption that I either am, or call myself, a liberal is based on — what, exactly? My questioning of your methodology and motivation in defining terms does not necessarily equate to my embrace of one or the other of those terms.
And I guess that brings me back to my original point, poorly made though it may have been: I’m much less interested in affixing labels, either to myself or others, than I am in pursuing ideas and actions that hold out hope of ending this godawful mess we’re in. I know, I know, I’m being vague in not defining the “godawful mess,” but see, that’s one of the things I love about hanging out on this site and conversing with people like you: I think that at least on the question of the godawful mess, we’re in agreement where it matters most.
Sorry, Mort – didn’t mean you *personally* were a liberal. That was more of a generic “you” there.
Besides, I’d never call *anyone* a liberal – in my circles, that’s a mortal insult. Pistols at dawn and all that. And I love y’all around here too much to do that. 😀
Yes, but that would have been almost as stupid as the people making such a suggestion.
There is nothing MORE pie-in-the-sky than the “revolution” dreamed up by utopian idiots. People like you sit on your asses dreaming of Revolution and mock anyone who actually DOES anything as “offering bandaids”. Pick up a gun and die pointlessly in some Waco style standoff or shut the fuck up.
If I can make the same point perhaps less antagonistically, the difference between those who believe in revolution and those who don’t seems a poor way to determine lefty from liberal. From my perspective, r4d20 makes a good point. The nation-states have guns and armies, and, to me, the death and destruction involved in trying to undo these systems negates the potential gains. And, jillian, they are only potential gains. Lefties are still people, and still quite fallible. I know more than a few revolutionaries that would seem to qualify as lefties by these definitions who I’d honestly prefer that… well, not Bush, but maybe, hard as it is to say, McCain had political power rather than them. And I’m not buying the maverick crap.
As powerfully flawed as the current system is, the chaos involved in deconstructing it is a real argument against revolution. Nevermind the reality of the situation, that a call for revolution is a cry for suicide. Think about the people who aren’t with the revolution, which is to say everyone. You’re going to have to keep them in line, probably with force. Think about all the people whose opinions you’ll have to criminalize, or at least whose every effort to act on that opinion you’ll have to criminalize.
Look at the european communists. The existentialists murdered, literally, one of their greatest talents for going off script. His name was Paul Nizan, and he wasn’t even off the reservation, he just started questioning the party line.
To me, a political revolution of the more reformatory sort is the goal because it’s the only realistic option. People won’t die or need murdering, which won’t negate any claim to positive benefit. Killing someone is not a legitimate way of freeing them.
I never said that the dividing line between lefty and liberal was a belief in revolution. In fact, I said quite the opposite. Plenty of perfectly respectable people on the left don’t endorse, either in theory or in practice, any sort of violent social upheaval whatsoever. Democratic Socialists are fully socialist. America has fielded at least one fairly serious Socialist candidate for president, helping to throw the 1912 race to Wilson. Hell, even the CPUSA, the “vanguard of revolutionary socialism” (whatever that means), spent the bulk of the fifties building coalitions with labor unions, not plotting to bring class war to the streets of New York or anything.
See, this is why I said I wasn’t even going to go here….all left politics become in-group wankery after a while. I was just pointing out that, while there may be a wide spectrum of positions on issues on the left, none of those positions are liberal positions. I’m not even criticizing liberals here…life’s too short for that. Do your own research, form your own opinions, and don’t let anyone else tell you what to think.
It’s just really tiresome to have to beat down the same boring old strawmen about Teh Scary, Eeeevil Left over and over again. The script hasn’t even changed much since 1950. It would be nice if knee-jerk anti-leftists could at least mix it up once in a while…can’t you guys accuse me of poisoning wells or making bread with the blood of Christian babies or something?
I hope I’m not being included in knee-jerk anti-leftists. In principle I am a lefty, in principle I agree with your critiques of the nation-state. The problem, for me, is that principles have a limited role to play in politics, and that’s an inherent weakness of any politics, including lefty politics. For one, look at, say, Nader. In principle he was mostly right, but his efforts only hurt his principles in reality.
Pragmatically, there won’t be a change without massive, widespread chaos and suffering. Even if you could promise only those we’d probably agree most deserve the consequences of that chaos were going to face them, the corporate heads and republicans and theocrats and so on, it’d be unacceptable, because it’d be hypocritical.
Basically, I have an equal lack of faith in any and every political system, and believe that the people in the system matter more than what it looks like. I don’t want a revolution, I just want good leaders.
And I’m not saying the Left is scary or evil, I’m saying it’s human, and that it can, will, and has made real mistakes, just like everyone else. That’s why I don’t have faith that victory by the left would mean good governance, and don’t want them, or anyone, to have supreme power.
That would be right, if neo-cons had endorsed Kosovo. But they didn’t.
Yes, they did, or dont you remember Kagan and Hitchens and the Euston Fuckos citing Paul Wolfolowitz’s position on Kosovo as more “proof” of his humanitarianism.
Some waffled, but most neocons were for it.
Neocons. Not “conservatives”.
No different than the right and the RINOs, ‘theocons’, ‘Christianists’, etc. thing. Hell, no different than Catholics and Protestants, or even Methodists and S. Baptists.
Anyways, I dont self-identify as left, but I’m fed up with the current brand of Conservatives and their domination of the political scene and I think it would be nice to at least have a vibrant “left” (relative to the current scene) again. Of course, sooner or later they will try to go to far and I’ll side with those trying to moderate them and shift back to the right, but its going to take a while to cover that kind of distance (on the spectrum) and at least we will have a few years without ANY radical agenda completely dominating the scene.
… even the CPUSA, the “vanguard of revolutionary socialismâ€? (whatever that means), spent the bulk of the fifties building coalitions with labor unions, not plotting to bring class war to the streets of New York or anything.
Jillian, if I could just say, maybe the CPUSA did a good thing in spending the fifties building coalitions of labor unions. They probably helped the labor unions organize better, gave them a bit more pep.
I was recently at a meeting of “The Committees for Correspondence Between Democracy and Socialism”, (Yes they totally gotta get a new name) and they talked about this very thing, as an example of the actual power of socialists in the USA.
You know, “The Left” in the USA may not be quite as dead as you consider it to be. I say this as someone who may be more of a ‘Liberal’ than a ‘Leftist’, but the meeting I went to was kinda inspiring.
What I liked best about, “The Committees of Correspondence Between Democracy & Socialism” was that they talked about putting all their, and all of our, energy into forming a wide Left Coalition, as a way of starting a transmission of ‘Leftish” ideas into the mainstream instead of ghettoizing them.
It’s just ironic that the Moscow-aligned CPUSA was working to form coalitions with liberal groups, is all. Were Lenin alive at the time, he would’ve had Earl Browder fly into Moscow for the express purpose of putting him in front of a firing squad for doing what he did. Not an endorsement of such a tactic, mind – merely an observation. Communists strongly oppose any sort of coalition activity. Not all Socialists feel this way, though – the “vanguard” mentality behind the no-coalition stance is one of the things that distinguishes Communists from other Socialists, sort of the way the doctrine of transubstantiation distinguishes Catholics from other Christians.
The coalition-building vs. vanguard movement argument in American left politics is as old as the American left. Neither tactic has ever seemed to have much influence on American politics – after all, who even recognizes names like Daniel DeLeon or Bill Trautman anymore? I just don’t see either tactic – “ghettoizing” or “mainstreaming” as being of much utility at this point in time. The country’s in the midst of a hard core reactionary upswing, and the only thing I can think of to do is take cover.
And, historically speaking, American unions suffered from their flirtation with the Left – it cost them big time in membership when the fact that their boards were full of Commies became more widely known. Compared to the rest of the world, we’re a pretty reactionary country and always have been.
On a completely tangential note, it turns out there are things in the world worse than Communism. Go figure.
>Pragmatically, there won’t be a change without massive, widespread chaos and suffering.
Well, we’ve got that part already. It’s delivered to your door, courtesy of Capital.
So what part of revolution is worse?
Dear Retardonator:
Where did you stand on the war agains the Taliban in Afghanistan? Were you against the Western Imperialists, or were you against the Misogynist Buddha-Destroying Fundamentalists?
Just asking, you know.
Please provide links.
Yes, Retardo….and after that, be sure to let us know when you stopped beating your wife, as well.
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