The Enemy Is Us - Liberalism Fails

[WiffenPoof]

Death of the Liberal Class

If you haven't had a chance to review the posted videos of Thom Hartman's interview with Chris Hedges, you should. It is "must see" video that helps to put into perspective what has happened to our country.

To my surprise, Mr. Hedges takes the unique view that we, as Liberals, are our own worst enemy...that we have failed this country. Implied is the idea that there were certain times in our history that we had opportunities to control the direction of this country and we failed...miserably.

Mr. Hedges whole point concerning Inverted Totalitarianism is excellent. Traditional Totalitarianism put the governing body in charge, whereas Inverted Totalitarianism puts corporations first. This Inverted Totalitarianism can continue even if credit dries up taking us further down the road to ruin.

I particularly liked his point that our current President has codified the Bush policies including the destruction of basic civil liberties.

If you review only one political video today, make it Part 2 of the interview with Chris Hedges.

Now, back to your sniping.

-PLA

Part 2:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x537073

[WingDinger]

1. Wrote a song about it, and it goes like this

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/WingDinger/40

[WiffenPoof]

6. Wow...Wing! Very Nice Essay

Your essay should be a post that others can discuss and share. Your use of the language is excellent and your points are profound. Very nice.

-PLA

[WingDinger]

7. and that was in the key of C.

[Laelth]

2. Bunch of hooey.

Liberals haven't failed. There are hardly any liberals left in government. Blaming them for the country's failures is preposterous.

Our political caste is conservative, and they run the country. They have abandoned liberalism, and that explains the state we're in.

-Laelth

[Tansy_Gold]

4. What you said. n/t

[fascisthunter]

5. "They have abandoned liberalism..."

he states that, those who "claim to be the liberal Elite" are the ones who abandoned liberalism. I just finished watching the first clip and am looking at the second one right now.

[Laelth]

13. I don't know of any person who claims to be "the liberal elite."

There are elites, yes, but very few of them are liberal.

-Laelth

[bbgrunt]

12. exactly!

[eomer]

14. I believe your beef is with the wording of the OP, not with Chris Hedges.

Hedges makes exactly the same distinction as you do, actually in the very first paragraph he utters in the interview:

Hartmann: There's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the liberal side of the spectrum, as it were, you know, that Chris Hedges is picking on us, he's taking us on, he's calling us out... how do you respond to that?

Hedges: Well, the people who represent the liberal class, who oftentimes don't represent liberal values have walked away from the essence of liberalism and we're paying for it. We paid for it with the last mid-term elections where we saw the beginning of the empowerment of the lunatic fringe of the Republican right. The fact is that traditional liberals were uncompromising in their defense of civil liberties, in their defense of the working class, in defense of social service programs that protected the weak, the poor, the mentally ill, the indigent, children, especially children who were growing up in poverty, they supported a robust system of public education including public universities -- City University in New York before Nelson Rockefeller gutted the budget was one of the great Universities in the United States and produced an amazing set of graduates, mostly sons and daughters of first-generation immigrants who went on to enrich this country. And all of these values have been abandoned with the rise of the corporate state and the collaboration of liberal institutions -- the pillars of the liberal establishment: the press, the Democratic Party, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, culture -- which have sold their souls. And our democracy has been severely weakened, if not destroyed, because of it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x537072">Thom Hartmann: Conversations with Great Minds with Chris Hedges, Pt 1

I added emphasis (italics) to the word "represent" to reflect that Hedges emphasized it with his tone, imparting the clearly intentional distinction that he wasn't talking about liberals in general, as Hartmann had put it, but rather the people and institutions that he calls out by name in the elaboration in the rest of the excerpt.

_{Edit to add: the above is my transcription of the beginning of the interview, any errors are mine.}

[Laelth]

18. Hedges is right to say that most Democrats fail to represent their constituents.

Most Republicans fail to represent their constituents as well. That's my point. It's not the liberals in Congress, per se, who failed. Both major parties serve the American political caste, and the American political caste thinks liberalism is a joke. Liberalism is thoroughly discredited among the people who actually run our country. Blaming liberals in Congress for that misses the point, I think.

As I argued here:

http://laelth.blogspot.com/

-Laelth

[eomer]

19. Thanks, your rant is "spot on", as Hartmann would say.

I've only watched about the first quarter of the interview but, so far, it seems to me you're saying exactly the same thing as Hedges.

The OP, on the other hand, has mis-characterized Hedges position, IMO.

[Laelth]

20. I've seen excerpts, but haven't watched the whole interview yet.

I'll do that. Thanks.

And I agree that the OP could be a little better.

-Laelth

[90-percent]

3. About this video

I think it is one of the most important and key videos on DU in the last five years.

Your summary is excellent.

-90% Jimmy

[WiffenPoof]

8. Extremely Important Video...

I agree.

-PLA

[blindpig]

9. Liberalism isn't what people want it to be.

Liberalism is a variety of ruling class governing philosophy. It made a marriage of convenience with labor out of necessity in the 1930's, but it is no longer convenient. Seems that many imagine it to be some sort of 'socialism lite' but the manifestations which lead to that conclusion are proving to be ephemeral. This is because there is no middle ground, anything built there sinks into the quicksand of capitalist necessity. All of the wishing and wanting in the world ain't gonna change that.

Inverted Totalitarianism, wtf? Jesus, it's Capitalism, why is that so hard to say?

[WiffenPoof]

10. Uh, Okay...

Capitalism...

Nope...still feels the same.

-PLA

[JoseGaspar]

17. You are dead right, Mr. Pig...

Liberalism has always been one of the two basic ideologies of Capitalism. The argument has been that an enlightened or reformed or regulated capitalism could overcome the basic inequalities and unfairness which were all too easy to see by simply looking around. Liberalism has been the ideology of Capitalism plus intervention, contrasted to the Conservatives assertion that Capitalism by itself would more or less achieve the same result.

The failure of Liberalism is then obvious based on an objective determination alone. Liberal policy doesn't stand on its own. It is supposed to be a means to an end. If the end is not achieved, then "progress", slow or fast has no meaning.

Was the objective of Civil Rights to be formal equality or was actual equality intended? Whether one believes that policies ranging from the elimination of overt racism to the efficacy of affirmative action to the role of "positive role models"... whether one believes that those policies yielded positive results or not, what is the status of actual social equality in 2010? Are African-Americans more or less equal than they were 50 years ago when Jim Crow was still the law of the land? Objectively speaking, what is the reality of segregation, housing, health, education, incarceration, income, and economic power? This is not a matter of opinion.

What about the status of women? Despite the breaking of "glass ceilings" and ignoring the issues of "social Liberalism" for a moment, are women equal today?

What about poverty, income distribution, and the rights of the aging?

What about the incremental elimination of aggressive war and of the implementation of equal justice? What are the objective "advances" since 1960 when modern Liberalism was reborn?

As an objective matter, Liberalism has clearly failed to deliver "progress" by its own definition, regardless of whether we regard its intentions as purely cosmetic, cynical, or sincere.

People like Hedges are trying to tell part of that story while further confusing the matter with talk of the "Liberal class" and "elites".

Liberalism has clearly failed to change anything fundamental, and that is the whole point.

[bbgrunt]

11. Hedges' book is called "Death of the Liberal Class" and while

I have not yet read it, I get the impression that the death is due to raging corporatism and government/media efforts to suppress expression of liberalism rather than to the liberals themselves.

While he expresses the idea that the liberal elite class have failed totally to bring the financial markets under control, he talks about Democratic administrations like Clinton and Larry Summers, etc, which to me is DLC. Yes, the DLC has coopted the message of traditional democrats, but I don't consider them to be liberals, but infiltraters. This is the way it is always done. Create a company-sponsored union to coopt the real unions, put infiltrators in peace groups--cointelpro, create the "pragmatic" dlc inside the Democratic party to coopt its intent and loyalties. Too bad it seems to have worked so well.

[martymar64]

15. Phil Ochs had a good take on liberalism

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

[craigmatic]

16. Things are rarely as bad as people who write these books see them.

Liberalsim hasn't failed because we haven't had real liberalism in this country since the 1960's. He talks as if history runs in straight lines when it doesn't. It breaks and makes turns abruptly. Do you think people could've imagined the New Deal in the 1880's? How about the Civil Rights movment in the 1910's? Things change and sometimes things get better or worse. The charactistics of one generation differ from the ones before and after it. Power shifts. Political coalitions rise and fall. One thing is for sure, we're at the end of the reagan era because the government has started to do things for the average person. Is it doing the best job it can? No. But are we better off now than we were under bush? I think so. The problem with the liberal class is that it hasn't had a big idea besides univerals health care for a while and our spokes people (Obama and Clinton) were still too afraid of the repubs to do any lasting good just like Nixon was still afraid of liberals. I still think our day will come to move this country further left.