I suppose we can blame Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean
\nHannity and the other hit-and-run talk-show hosts on the far right – hey, why
\nnot? – for the denigration of the term “liberal.” You can hear the sneer in
\ntheir voices whenever they invoke the word. Liberals, in their warped and myopic view of
\nthe world, are responsible for everything that’s wrong.<\/p>\n
This patter has been going on for so long now – Limbaugh
\ncelebrated his twentieth anniversary on the air just last week – that many
\nAmericans now believe that anyone who calls himself a liberal is either
\nderanged or akin somehow to a mass murderer or a pedophile. (Savage, if memory
\nserves, even wrote a book whose title asserted that liberalism was a species of
\nmental illness.)<\/p>\n
The ritual castigation of liberalism obviously is good
\nbusiness for people like Hannity, Savage and Limbaugh. In some peculiar alchemy
\nof hatred, they’ve transformed their venom into fortunes. That’s their business
\n– literally! But what’s even more distressing is that liberals themselves now
\nrun from the term and take refuge in synonyms like “progressive” or “moderate.”<\/p>\n
“Moderate” is a comforting word, I suppose, and surely, by
\nthe standards of Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, liberals are indeed “moderate.”
\nBut the word always reminds me of Jim Hightower’s famous maxim that the only
\nthings you’ll find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead
\narmadillos.<\/p>\n
Similarly, “progressive” is pretty inoffensive. But it
\nreally refers to a particular movement in American history that was allied with
\nthe Social Gospel against the ravages of unbridled capitalism at the turn of
\nthe twentieth century.<\/p>\n
It’s time to reclaim the terms “liberal” and “liberalism”
\nfrom the distortions of the right. Liberalism is responsible for some pretty
\nnoble achievements in American life – and, arguably, for the very existence of
\nthe nation itself. Most Americans think that slavery was a pretty bad system
\nand that equality for women is a reasonably good idea. Both the antislavery
\nmovement and the women’s movement were animated by liberalism. In addition,
\nliberals pushed for the formation of common schools in the nineteenth century,
\nand public education (for all of its current faults and inadequacies) remains
\none of the bedrock institutions in our democratic society. Social Security was
\na liberal idea, as was Medicare. All but a tiny slice of Americans believe that
\na society has an obligation to help provide for its elderly. The G.I. Bill of
\nRights, pushed through Congress by liberals in 1944, allowed veterans, including the
\nsons of immigrants, the opportunity to attend college and thereby to toe the
\nbottom rung on the ladder of upward mobility. The civil rights movement,
\npopulated overwhelmingly by liberals, called on Americans to live up to the
\nliberal <\/i>ideals of our charter documents.<\/p>\n
Have there been excesses associated with liberalism? Of
\ncourse. That’s part of the nature of political life and discourse, the back and
\nforth of debate leading to synthesis. But to assert that liberalism is bad or
\nsomehow shameful belies any responsible reading of American history. Besides,
\nare the denizens of the hard right really prepared to extol the salutary
\neffects of conservatism over the past eight years?<\/p>\n
Mark me down as a liberal, and proudly so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose we can blame Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and the other hit-and-run talk-show hosts on the far right – hey, why not? – for the denigration of the term “liberal.” You can hear the sneer in their voices whenever they invoke the word. Liberals, in their warped and myopic view of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-u-s-constitution"],"yoast_head":"\n