Re: Gary Trudeau, Iraq and Nader

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> Of course liberals are warmongers. The entire liberal establishment is  lockstep behind John Kerry who voted for the war and promises  to win it in  speech after speech. That is what is so disgusting about the David Corns and Gary Trudeaus of the world. They back the same policies as yahoo George W. Bush, but use dovish rhetoric. In the 1960s the entire liberal establishment was for a "negotiated settlement" while B52's were leveling Vietnam.<

A major problem here is that the word "liberal" is extremely ambiguous. Does it include, say, the PROGRESSIVE magazine? all of the folks at the NATION? or what? It's an abstraction, not a real-world phenomenon. Not that I'm against abstraction, but it's too easy to hate people tagged with such labels without being specific. Self-styled "liberals" vary a lot. I think it's better to attack the individual positions that "bad" ones hold rather than getting involved in personal criticisms.

"Cold war liberalism" (of the sort that Phil Ochs lampooned) is a pretty good abstraction to describe the dominant political trend of the U.S. from World War II to 1990 or so.  NB: here "liberal" is used in the old U.S. sense of typically involving support for labor unions and a welfare state of sorts. Hubert Humphrey may have been the exemplar. It was watered-down social democracy, reflecting the weak state of the labor movement.

The current version of liberalism doesn't involve support for a welfare state or labor unions as much as being "social" liberalism, involving support for gay rights, legal abortion, middle-class feminism, etc. It also doesn't involve support of US imperialism vs. the USSR, obviously, but it does involve support for US imperialism, albeit in a "kinder, gentler" and multilateral way. It also isn't the dominant political perspective at present. In fact, many seem afraid to admit to being liberals.

One unifying theme of both kinds of liberalism is support for civil liberties, though of course I'd bet that there are self-styled "liberals" who support the PATRIOT act.

Jim Devine