Liberals

Writing in the New York Times today, Maureen Dowd recalled an interview with Paul Newman in which he proudly referred to himself as a 'liberal'.

How few of us there are left.

Many have hidden behind the new moniker, 'progressive', which has yet to be successfully eviscerated by the right.

Now, before moving on with 'liberal', it's necessary to talk for a minute about 'conservative'. At one time, there was a viable academic following for certain tenets that formed a 'conservative' school of thought and political movement in America. But history indicates that almost without exception, such belief systems are subsumed by a larger movement ironically fueled by both fear and hate. In modern American politics, it is the 'conservative' mindset exemplified by the Karl Roves, Tom DeLays and Sarah Palins. Meanwhile, people who think themselves 'original' conservatives--like John McCain--are delusional about what their cohorts really believe and want.

And the sharpest scalpel in their operating room is 'otherness'. If you can create a compelling devil, bias can prosper and power is yours. That's why a litany of lessers promoted by the right is so consistent. In America, we've been told we have to protect ourselves against 'women voters... blacks... unions... Commies... terrorists', and now, of course, liberals.

This is topical because declining McCain polls are making the right nuts, and they are reflexively resorting to liberal-hate at a new level. A columnist today at the right-wing National Review Online made a reasoned argument that the bailout is both ineffectual and un-American--a position I don't necessarily disagree with. But facing the problem of assessing its cause, he immediately went to a familiar source:

The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution's limits on governmental power. If conservatives don't stand up to this, who will?

Where to start? Maybe with a few questions. Was it the liberals who ran the mortgage companies who made the bad loans? Liberals who made the decisions at the Wall Street investment banks to package them into phony derivatives? Liberals in the Bush Administration who failed to regulate them? Liberals at Treasury and the Fed who came up with the plan?

And in a larger context, did liberals steal Bush's soul and force him to invent the 'signing statement' that obscured or even reversed the intent of bills that Congress sent him? Did liberals start the tortures at Guantanamo...the illegal spying on U.S. citizens...the killing of 100,000 citizens in Iraq for no reason? Those damn liberals who 'expanded the power of government' to lead us to this dilemma? Right.

Republicans have controlled the House for 148 of the last 168 months. They have packed the Supreme Court with exactly the kind of ideologues they claim to despise. They have run the White House like a whore house for the last eight years.

So, let's get this straight. Liberals are the good guys. They always have been. Jesus was a liberal. The Founding Fathers were probably beyond liberal...in the eyes of King George, no doubt terrorists.

Paul Newman was right.