Re: liberals

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Sometimes it seems that liberals attract more fire on PEN-L than does 
 the bourgeoisie. I could understand this if we were in a period of
 proto- or quasi-revolutionary ferment, when they'd be the co-opters 
 and/or betrayers. But right now, anyone in public life who stands up 
 for vaguely egalitarian social values and the defense of civil 
 liberties is rare and almost precious. It sounds like people are 
 replaying scripts from 30 or 40 years ago.
 
 Doug

On one hand I can understand what Doug is saying especially in the
context of a need for a broad--but principled--united front against the
prospect of full-blown fascism, more imperialist adventurism etc in the
near future. On the other hand, to take a metaphor, suppose I have a
headache, very painful one, and someone gives me aspirin or perhaps even
vicodin, and the headache disappears. They have done me a favor only if
the cause of the headache is not something serious or lethal like a
brain tumor; if the cause is a brain tumor, all the aspirin or vicodin
does is to delay effective diagonosis and treatment of the whole
syndrome including its real causes--the aspirin or vicodin is actually
worse than no pain relief at all and this is what liberalism is
basically about--superficial short-term pain relief for systemic
pathogens thus delaying effective diagnosis and treatment of the real
and most dangersous causes.

When I think about liberalism and liberals, I am reminded of the old
joke that German socialists used to tell about why revolution in Germany
might be difficult or impossible. The reason, they said, is because the
pathway going up to the Reichstag is very narrow and on each side are
spacious lawns with "keep off the grass" signs everywhere and how are
you going to get all those "revolutionaries" storming the Reichstag up
that narrow pathway?

Jim C.