The Failure of Liberalism

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future. – Oliver Stone

One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century has been the decline of liberalism and the ascendancy of conservatism. While there are many opinions for the cause of this phenomenon the one that is the most fraudulent is that America is a conservative nation. This false premise has been propagated by those who want to maintain some fictitious sense of America’s past and a desire to reverse the progress we have achieved. Over the course of the last 50 years they have steadily and persistently chipped away at those ideas which defined liberalism (shared sacrifice, equality, and shared responsibility) and replaced them with greed, selfishness, and special interests while simultaneously demonizing liberalism as socialism.

Unfortunately, those of us who call ourselves liberals and subscribe to those principles that not only provided freedom, equality, and dignity to blacks and women, but also created the largest middle-class the world has ever known have allowed what we have accomplished to be tarnished and vilified. Unions which offered working-class Americans with livable wages, benefits, and organization became excessive and corrupt allowing themselves to be marginalized and thus laying the foundation for the corporate takeover of our political process. Without ongoing political organizations like unions to balance the scale the American worker has seen their share of the American Dream shrink while at the same time the wealthy class has seen their share increase to historic levels. While this is not a new phenomenon without the counterbalance of unions and organized political dissent the wealthy have been able to transform the political landscape in such a way that while the American worker is one of, if not the most productive worker in the world and yet they have seen their industries shipped overseas and their wages reduced or become stagnant.

The failure of liberalism is that while we focused on the physical aspects of inequality and poverty we did little to focus on the psychological effects of these issues. To use the analogy of “cream” rising to the top as that happens what is left at the bottom is more concentrated and more difficult to rise. You get less cream rising to the top and more sediment at the bottom. That sediment becomes more intransigent and begins to develop a mindset of poverty. Unfortunately today America is suffering from a large segment of our population with both situational poverty and generational poverty. Many of the people who are now dealing with situational poverty (poverty caused by a situation such as unemployment, medical reasons, etc.) will find it more difficult to overcome these circumstances as we face large unemployment as the new normal. Those suffering from generational poverty (poverty that has lasted over multiple generations) will find it next to impossible to overcome their external as well internal obstacles.

A couple of generations ago we had a strong manufacturing base that could absorb many of these low-skilled workers and offer them a pathway out of poverty. Today there are fewer opportunities for these workers to make a livable wage and move out of poverty. Because there is no longer a connection between effort and benefits or success we now have an intransigent underclass which is mostly urban and mostly black that lacks the opportunities to become middle-class and also lacks the desire to put in the work. Overcoming poverty requires hard work on the part of the individual to overcome the many obstacles designed to prevent their success and there appears to be an attitude among many of our young people that success no longer requires hard work. They instead seem to believe that there are short-cuts and easy money. It is important to be prepared for the opportunities but opportunity must also exist.

What we failed to realize is that while the fight to reduce poverty and inequality to us are self-evident concepts worthy of support there are many people who view them as collateral damage of capitalism. We falsely assumed that most caring people agreed with our position and supported the fight that has been waged yet there has been a slow erosion through materialism and greed undermining our social safety net and demonizing those who rely on it. We have not done a good enough job of combating the immorality of their argument and have allowed them to couch it in economics. Instead of it being our moral obligation to help those less fortunate, the weak, and the aged it has now come down to we can’t afford them. We can afford to give tax-cuts to the wealthy and corporations but we can’t afford to help the poor and less fortunate.

If we are to overcome the propaganda of the wealthy to demean and undermine the needy then we have to once again regain our moral footing and call out these tactics and their proponents for who and what they are. We must also be willing to address the excesses of our programs and be willing to innovate to overcome the intransigence of poverty. It is difficult to make the case for “food instability” while at the same time we have high rates of juvenile and adult obesity in these same communities. There is and has been a concerted effort on the part of the wealthy to undermine our social safety net. It has become fashionable to label the poor as lazy and morally bankrupt, but it wasn’t the poor who extorted billions of dollars from our economy, it wasn’t the poor who nearly brought our economic system to the brink of collapse, and it certainly wasn’t the poor who requested and received billions of dollars in wealth transfer.

There is this talk about class-warfare and I find it amazing that the only time we have this conversation is when the wealthy are being asked to contribute. I didn’t hear the term class-warfare when the rich were asking for TARP, bail-outs, and tax cuts. Hmmm, I wonder why? I guess it isn’t a transfer of wealth if it is going up only when it is comes trickling down.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses. - Camille Paglia

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Let’s Make A Deal

“I agree, Lord of Darkness, if you grant me the following wishes: First, I would like the nation to be hurled into an economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and recklessness. This will discredit free-market fundamentalism once and for all.” – David Brooks

I just read the David Brooks ode to liberalism article and I must say he makes a compelling case not for the decline of liberalism but for the decline of our shared consciousness. The problem with pundits is that everything happens in a vacuum in their world. According to him there are no connections between any of the events that he described except that they occurred while Mr. Obama was President. So the link is not the failed policies of the Right, but that liberals could not clean them up fast enough. So the future of our governance is not based on those who caused the disasters but on how quickly those elected to repair them can get them repaired.

Using that logic then if I start a fire in a building and then when the fire department gets there I cut the water pressure to the hoses and someone dies in the building then it is the firefighters fault for not putting out the blaze quicker. What Mr. Brooks and many of his talking head friends fail to realize is that very few of the upcoming midterm elections will be decided by national issues. So while they will be trumpeted as the beginning of the end for Obama what they fail to realize is that following the midterms in 1994 Bill Clinton won reelection handily. I suspect the same will be true for President Obama. It is one thing to win an election in South Carolina running on corporate largess and apologies it is a far different thing to win nationally running on those issues. It is amazing to me how quickly these clowns forget that when we had a national referendum of policies the country overwhelmingly chose the policies of the Dems. Are we to believe that after four years of Republican prostrations in front of the corporate gods that the majority of Americans will turn away from those who are at least trying to solve the gigantic problems facing this nation?

Are we also to believe that the majority of Americans will agree with the likes of Glenn Beck that this President is a racist? If I have any complaint towards Mr. Obama it is that he has been too cautious towards the issue of race in America. The reason we are not moving forward as a nation is precisely because we are so divided. As a nation we are not using all of our resources we continue to choose tribalism over nationalism. We will not be able to compete against the likes of China and India if we continue to be willing to marginalize large segments of our population. We are going to need every able body and mind if we are to overcome the problems of energy, climate change, and retooling America. I read that some black leaders are offended by Mr. Beck holding a rally at the Washington Mall on the day that Dr. King gave his dream speech. Their fear is that Mr. Back will somehow diminish the stature of Dr. King and what he accomplished. To me this is akin to worrying about Joseph McCarthy diminishing the legacy of FDR because he accused him of having Communist sympathies. The biggest challenge to blacks in America is not Glenn Beck it is our refusal to deal with the problem that we are allowing women to train up our boys and the outcomes are abysmal. Instead of holding a rally to combat Glenn Beck we need to be holding a rally to recommit to our children.

Another missing component from Mr. Brook’s fairytale is that the Dems are not a monolithic party like the Republicans. An example would be what is currently taking place within the Republican Party with the teabag crowd if this were a Democratic group the Dems would allow them to caucus but that would be the extent of it. No one would suggest and rightly so that the Dems should adopt the lunacy of the fringe but with the Republicans that is exactly what they are doing. I guess when you are void of ideas and critical thought then any ideas seems plausible. The election of 2008 demonstrated that the Republicans were bankrupt of ideas and I have seen nothing since then to make me think they have found any now. With the political landscape of today you will never be a majority party if you are appealing to a shrinking base of gun-toting, history revisionist, pseudo patriots. I don’t know many Americans who want to see America returned to the “good ole” days of intolerance, bigotry, and robber barons. But I could be wrong and if I am then were all in trouble anyway.

Finally, the devil in the details that Mr. Brooks has mischaracterized is that leadership is what we elect President’s to have, that and a vision. Sometimes when you are leading a ragtag mob like America you will appear unpopular because you have to make some unpopular decisions, but the alternative which the Republicans are offering is to continue to defer these difficult choices until they are no longer choices but we are left with imperatives. Prior to the spill in the Gulf we had choices about how to conduct deep water drilling, due to our refusal to stand up to corporations we now are left with an imperative. Plug the hole. My fear is that there are many who are willing to shy away from the difficult in search of the easy quick fix. However when it comes to the issues facing America (climate change, clean energy, unemployment, depression, etc.) there are no easy quick fixes. So if the Right wants to govern based on popularity I suggest the majority of us begin to prepare our tin roof shacks because we are not far from a banana republic.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward. - Amelia Earhart

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The Most Liberal Senator Ever?

According to the Republicans, Senator Barack Obama is the most liberal Senator ever. As the Republican shrills made the talk show rounds the common theme was a familiar refrain. Senator_______ (you fill in the blank with any Democratic nominee) is the most liberal Senator ever. I am not a believer in déjà vu, but I can’t help but think I have heard this line before. Oh yeah now I remember; how about the last 20 years! It seems like whenever the Democrats nominate someone that person is immediately labeled the most liberal Governor, Senator, etc. ever.

You would think that the Party that has been in power 12 of the last 14 years would be running on issues and on all of their accomplishments. You would think they would be trumpeting the strong economy, the successful prosecution of the war, and energy legislative successes. Is there any wonder they are recycling the same campaign rhetoric of the last 20 years and ignoring the issues? The economy is in the worse shape in decades, the war is dragging on into its fifth year, and of course their answer to the energy crisis is more drilling and tax cuts for the oil corporations. Who wouldn’t run on those outstanding accomplishments?

Oh maybe those aren’t the best issues to run a campaign on so let’s look at the Republican platform surely that will include plenty of campaign issues to run on. According to their convention the issues the Republicans will be running on are eerily similar to the policies of the last 8 years. On tax policy they want to increase and even make permanent the Bush tax-cuts that the nominee himself has labeled as “tilted” towards the rich. On health care they continue to want to allow the market and insurance companies to drive the debate and craft the legislation, which translates into no universal health coverage. On energy they want to drill more holes and allow the gas companies to transition us into alternative fuels. On the war they want to continue the occupation and ignore Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real centers of the war on terror.

The Republican campaign strategy reminds me of the television ad for Verizon wireless where the neighborhood woman comes over and tells the couple that just moved into a home how the home is a cell phone dead zone. The couple explains that they have Verizon and their network. The Verizon spokesman comes out of the house and says the couple is good, and then the neighbor woman then says, “Well, you have crabgrass!” So I guess the Republicans are saying, “Yeah you may have the right positions on the important issues of this election, but you’re still the most liberal Senator ever!”

Of course another big Republican campaign strategy is their own change theme. John McCain and Governor Palin are agents of change .They are running against the “Washington establishment” and how they are going to shake up Washington. Once again rather than provide us with details of how they will address the important issues of our time, they provide us with these vague campaign slogans that do little in helping us to solve our everyday problems. In place of real debate and discussion of the issues we get the same ole politics of the past with the same ole name calling.

Remember when Fritz Mondale was the most liberal and then there was Governor Dukakis, and then John Kerry, and you get the picture. It amazes me how the media who is suppose to debunk and report on the false campaign narratives have allowed this to go on for 20 years. The next time a Republican talking head throws out this retread line it would be nice to hear a reporter remind them that they have been using this line for the last 20 years. But of course they will continue to explore the claim as if it were an accurate statement. Oh by the way how have the conservative politicians faired in governing our nation? And we’re all familiar with the purveyors of family values who ignore them for themselves. So if the choice is between the most liberal Senator or more of the same politics as usual maybe we could use with a little liberal change.

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The Powerlessness of Power

There is a new victim-mentality sweeping college campuses and I believe America as a whole. It is the belief that whites are now victims. But that’s not the scary part; the scary part is in who they blame as the ones victimizing them. It seems that whites are being victimized by blacks and Latinos, that’s right the white privileged students on many college campuses are feeling victimized. They are not feeling victimized by higher crime rates on campus perpetrated by blacks and Latinos, no the victimization is occurring through college programs and political correctness. In an effort to fight back against these perceived threats to white privilege many conservative white students are hosting racial identity parties.

In many respects, ghetto-fabulous parties are the culmination of conservative politics on college campuses. They reflect the ongoing insecurities of whiteness in the wake of the civil rights movement and the supposed prominence of multiculturalism and political correctness. Indeed, ghetto-fab parties are part of a broader reactionary movement that believes whiteness and the ivory tower are being imperiled by political correctness, radical professors and “minority rights.” Pushing against these perceived evils, conservative students have organized political theatrics on campuses, holding “affirmative action” bake sales and “white-only” scholarships. They have in essence created a culture today in which those with power think of themselves as victims and those without become targets for violence.[1]

These ghetto-fabulous and cholo parties are events where white students depending on the cultural theme of the event dress up as what they consider to be representations of these cultures. For example at a ghetto-fabulous party the students wear black face, fake gold teeth, and drink 40oz bottles of malt liquor. The women sometimes even feign pregnancy and pad their posteriors to imitate the stereotypes of black females. These racial identity parties are growing in popularity across America's campuses. The question becomes why are they gaining in popularity when our universities should be the places where tolerance and diversity are being taught and practiced?

The first reason I think is the perceived loss of power felt by the white students. As college campuses became more liberal and diverse they began to institute political correctness policies, rather than helping to remove the prejudice they in fact caused it to go underground. It was no longer fashionable to use racial epithets in public or to display racially insensitive material. It was naïve to think that by forcing compliance to these policies that change of thought would result, instead what we got was a more deep seated type of intolerance. A type of intolerance that does not come out in public, but lurks under the surface waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate itself in a safe environment. These parties provide that opportunity for them to display their intolerance among like-minded people.

After all, all we are doing is just having a party, having a little fun. We certainly don’t mean any harm by it and it definitely is not racial. They pretend to ignore the harm of their actions, as if demonstrating the worst stereotypes of a racial group is harmless. Sort of like when the future King of England was seen attending a party in a Nazi outfit, just harmless fun. They also ignore the fact of how demeaning it is for members of that racial group to be depicted in these outlandish stereotypical roles and outfits.

The second reason for the increased outbreak I think is the corporate take-over of the university experience. There was a time when the university experience was dictated by experimentation and a desire to improve one’s environment. Students took an active role in leading social change. There was Vietnam, South Africa, poverty, civil rights and a whole host of other movements that were either begun or championed by college students. With corporations taking over more and more of university life there is less of the rebellious spirit and more of the boardroom spirit. The thing about the campus spirit is that it changes from conservative to liberal and vice versa. During the time of Vietnam and civil rights college campuses represented the same conservative values of the country as a whole, until the spirit of change and revolution swept through.

Today more and more universities have opened up the campuses to the influences of corporate America and in the process they have sold their creative and liberal souls to the devil. As the corporations exert more and more influence on not only student life but college curriculums, there are fewer classes and opportunities to study diversity of cultures or cultural studies in general. Social study classes are being cancelled due to the fact they are not generating graduating numbers, they are not adding to the bottom line of the university. They speak as though the goal of the university is to make money, I thought it was to educate, challenge and prepare young adults for adulthood. To develop independent, critical thought processes in preparation for the challenges of life was one worthwhile goal of the university experience I thought.

The final reason I think for the rise in racial identity parties is the lack of diversity on our nation’s campuses. With the challenges to affirmative action and financial aid cutbacks, there are fewer minority students on college campuses. This lack of diversity I think fuels the attitude of exclusiveness for the white students and offers less resistance to their antics. With fewer minority students to interact with, there is a lack of empathy and common sense to restrain their behavior. I think that as fewer minority students are able to attend college there will be an even greater increase in these parties and also in the escalation of similar activities.

Without the influence of cultural study classes and minority students there will be less inhibition on the part of those who truly harbor racists’ feelings to express those feelings in a more demonstrative way. I predict a rise in racial symbolism and more racial attacks. Our campuses are becoming more conservative and this is something that should trouble all of us. If the students are only being given one side of the story their views of the world will be askew. We all need to have beliefs challenged and questioned in order to either embrace them as truth or discard them as false. This gives rise to the false premise that those with power are now powerless victims and as such must lash out against the true powerless that they view as now usurping that power.

[1] http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=248

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