Liberal
When people ask me whether I'm liberal, I don't really know how to respond. Now, I begin by responding, "Well, what do you mean when you say liberal."
Many people I have reasonable political with consider me a moderate Republican, despite the fact that I agree with very few Republican domestic policies and have never voted for a Republican in my life - which is not to say that I wouldn't.
It seems to all stem from my hawkish foreign policy perspective. But hawks and doves aren't liberals and conservatives. Hawks simply believe certain wars should be fought to avoid larger, scarier wars. Doves tend to take the view that most wars don't yield any long-term benefits, hence "war is not the answer" bumper stickers.
I've written about it before, the Euston Manifesto, a statement of liberals in England, now being signed by prominent American thinkers, as a statement of what it means to be liberal.
The statement recalls a tradition in American and European liberalism that fought for progressive, domestic reforms at home and did not shy away of projecting American power abroad for liberal ends. FDR and Harry Truman started this tradition by facing down the threats from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia.
The Euston people admonish Anti-Americanism as a form of racism, and believe the threat of Islamic Fascism to be the great totalitarian struggle of our times (although not all believe it is as large as prior threats from Nazi Germany and Russia). They/we also believe that the United States should not engage in torture or other illiberal behaviours because it ruins our credibility and our moral standing in the world.
To me, these guys get it right. And they are true liberals. I don't believe being anti-Bush and anti-Republican makes anyone a liberal. How can one focus their liberal ire on Bush and America when there is an ideology treating women likes beasts and others with murderous intent? It just doesn't make any sense to anyone with half a brain.
4 comments:
"How can one focus their liberal ire on Bush and America when there is an ideology treating women likes beasts and others with murderous intent? It just doesn't make any sense to anyone with half a brain."
If everyone thought this way, everyone would be above accountability. Police chiefs could say to their constituencies: "How can you direct your ire towards us when there are people out there robbing, raping, and murdering?" Lawmakers could say: "How can you criticize me when people are out there breaking laws?"
Here's the long metaphor I want to make for you, which I could do more briefly but since I'm watching college football right now I'll extend it:
Let's say you and I are both fans of the same college football team, USC football. We are big alumni, big donors, and we have a tiny part to play in who gets hired hired as coach by being part of such an alumni organization, but not really any power as individuals.
USC hires a new coach and decides to make some daring changes in strategy, adopting a new offensive scheme that relies on five wide receivers every down and rarely runs the ball. After a few flashy victories, we start losing games we should win, and have two seasons in which we don't live up to potential.
You see this scheme as the wave of the future, as necessary to compete with teams from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and though it may be tough for a few years as we get used to it, it will pay off in the future. I see the strategy as way too bold, unnecessary, and poorly executed even on its own terms.
I feel like you are saying that I swallow my criticism of this new coach and instead focus on directing my ire towards Oklahoma or Texas, or our countless other rivals. I counter by saying of course I'm against those teams, but me expressing my ire towards them really doesn't do much in the short-term as far as helping our team get back on track. It would be better to voice my criticism in the USC community so that our team improves, and our coach knows he better deliver results or get the boot.
In fact, talking about how much I hate Texas really does nothing to help USC improve, aside from a minute morale boost, just like your complaints about Iran or Saudi Arabia. You contribute nothing to changing that situation. People who criticize Bush for not having a coherent strategy in the Middle East are doing more for those women than you are, in my mind. As are people who defend Bush's Middle East policy. But what we have to say about Iran or Saudi Arabia just isn't that relevant on a daily basis. It's about as effective as a Daily Trojan sportswriter penning columns about how much better he prefers USC to Texas.
gimme a break. you think "liberals" focus on george bush because they think in the long term focusing on bush's policies will have a long term benefit to equal rights in the middle east?
that's a load of bullshit and you know it. it would be more honest to assert that my position of exporting democracy to the middle east has no interest in liberal principals, but is actually "might makes right" hidden in liberal terms. opposing bush's policies in favor of the pre 9/11 status quo isn't liberal in the least bit - it's conservative. and i have no fundamental problem with conservatism as an ideology, but at least call it what it is.
liberals believe the role of government is to extend liberty to as many as feasible. conservatives believe the role of government is to perserve the status quo (because the unintended consequences tend to be worse).
the iraq war was a liberal war. that's not to say it was right. but all the language surrounding the reasons we went to war was essentially liberal language. now, i'm willing to grant that the reason BUSH supported the iraq war had to do with evangelical reasons, prostelytising, and so forth, but these reasons seemed to coincide with fundamental liberal principals...
focusing on USC/USA is essentially making a conservative argument against liberal initiatives. which is fine...but it's an ideological and tactical choice.
as a side note, you could make the same argument about the civil rights movement, that people in the north had no business telling the south what was right and what was wrong, and that, in fact, northerners going down to the south and agitating the situation were merely making it worse. that would be a conservative point of view and i believe, in hindsight, it was proven wrong...but then again, who knows....
"you think "liberals" focus on george bush because they think in the long term focusing on bush's policies will have a long term benefit to equal rights in the middle east?"
Yes. Short-term and long-term, focusing on Bush's misguided policies is the best we can do for our own country and for the Middle East.
"the iraq war was a liberal war."
No, it was not. It was a conservative war to assert American strength, and sold as a way of preserving the American homeland by getting rid of a dictator with WMD. The liberal character wasn't adopted until the WMD dimesion fell apart. Don't call it a liberal war- if it was, there would have been a serious plan for reconstruction, which there wasn't. Rumseld and Cheney expected to be gone in six months.
"as a side note, you could make the same argument about the civil rights movement, that people in the north had no business telling the south what was right and what was wrong, and that, in fact, northerners going down to the south and agitating the situation were merely making it worse."
There is some logic to this concept, but given that the south and north are not real boundaries, and that the area in question is inside one country, it isn't the same in comparison to the US and say, Iran.
fair enough, you can argue the conservative reasons for supporting the war, that's a good point. but there was and is a liberal argument to support the war as well.
as far as the boundaries issue, the fact is, we are in a much different world than both the civil war era and the civil right era, during both those eras it was unthinkable that a radical non governmental islamic group from thousands of miles away would have any interest in attacking us. i guess what i'm talking about in the concept of globalization, which shrinks the size of the world and makes boundaries a lot less clear.
abraham lincoln argued that the civil war must be fought to preserve the nation. many both in the south and north didn't see the value of preserving the nation, particularly because it meant imposing northern values on the southern states.
so what was the civil war fought over? slavery? or preserving the nation?
slavery was the liberal and moral argument for the war. preserving the nation was the conservative argument for the war.
the value and structures of nation states today is a lot different than bygone eras, where Americans identified first with states and second with the nation. even since the cold war, the idea of nation states and identities are confusing and complicated issues - as we are finding out in iraq right now.
so i don't think it's as simple as pointing out that america has always been one coherent nation and imposing rules and laws have been widely accepted.
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