PING!
Posted on 07/03/2006 12:09:01 PM PDT by GMMAC
How liberals lost their way
Robert Fulford
National Post
Saturday, July 01, 2006
In 1949 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., then the young intellectual-in-chief of American politics, announced that anti-communism had become an essential part of liberalism. That might seem obvious. Surely the more liberal you are, the more you oppose communist tyranny, no?
Still, it needed saying. Schlesinger and his friends had recently beaten back communist sympathizers in the Democratic Party and the unions. In his much-quoted book, The Vital Center, he said communism's challenge had forced American liberals "to take inventory of their moral resources" and decide they couldn't compromise with tyranny. It seemed a permanent victory. But Schlesinger didn't know how thin the moral resources of liberalism would turn out to be when tested.
These ancient Cold War questions have recently been revived by a fascinating book hidden beneath a clumsy subtitle, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, by Peter Beinart of the New Republic.
This is a passionate political love story. Beinart adores the intellectuals who fought for president Harry Truman's anti-Soviet policies in the 1940s. And, Beinart believes, liberals of today can learn from that noble history. The same principles that eventually defeated communism (even if Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were in at the kill) can now inspire American liberals to fight jihadism.
Emboldened, they could breathe fresh life into the Democratic Party, defeat the Republicans, and build a new foreign policy. They could marry military strength to multilateral idealism, as late-1940s America married the threat of atomic weapons to the Marshall Plan. A patriotic, humanitarian and progressive Democratic administration could restore the internationally co-operative style of previous generations and discard George W. Bush's go-it-alone bravado.
Beinart believes liberals should be ready to use American power -- but in the spirit articulated by John Kennedy, emphasizing "not the export of arms or the show of armed might but the export of ideas, of techniques, and the rebirth of our traditional sympathy for the desires of men to be free."
Is Beinart dreaming? His back-to-the-future argument will certainly be discussed by Democrats -- but perhaps it won't go beyond discussion. Hard-core Democrats won't change their beliefs with a light heart. Their intransigence is founded on cherished 40-year-old memories. Even today, they remain governed by the 1960s. Beinart, a post-boomer of 35, doesn't seem to understand how deeply the '60s ethos burned itself into the souls of his parents' generation. He's studied that period with care, but he knows only the words, not the music.
Kennedy's assassination in 1963, followed by Lyndon Johnson's expansion of the Vietnam war, dissolved Truman's consensus. To the mortification of their elders, many eager young activists let it be known that they considered anti-communism a joke, an obsession of their fathers. The New Left, founded in 1962 to express a generation's ideals, turned against democracy itself, not just Vietnam and other American mistakes. In 1968 New Leftists rejoiced when they helped force Johnson to retire. For a giddy moment, the young and the radical imagined they had all the answers to questions of social justice.
They were fools, but important fools. Ignorant of history, contemptuous of freedom, they nevertheless shaped the underlying assumptions of the generation now controlling much of the Democratic party. And as the New Left gained force, traditional liberalism buckled.
In 1972, Senator George McGovern articulated the new mood: "The war against Communism is over. We're entering a new era and the Kennedy challenge of 1960 is pretty hollow now. Somehow we have to settle down and live with them."
That was the New Left's insouciant belief. Since opposing Moscow had caused nothing but trouble, why bother? When Democrats made McGovern their 1972 presidential candidate, they came down firmly on the wrong side of history. Richard Nixon buried him, and Truman-style liberalism was put to rest in the same grave.
Beinart has given himself a difficult assignment. He wants to persuade a generation of liberal boomers that their fundamental outlook is distorted. Were he to succeed he might help move liberalism to the centre of American society, but success seems unlikely.
Liberals had their reasons for turning against a vigorous foreign policy. They believe Vietnam proved the evil inherent in armed intervention. They are still ashamed of American power and don't know what to do with it. Surrendering this feeling of distaste would be traumatic, since in many lives it's the only remnant of 1960s pride still surviving. To abandon it would be a betrayal of their triumphant youth.
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca
© National Post 2006
PING!
I certainly hope so.
About the only liberal that is anti-communist these days is a Jeffersonian liberl : )
Having heard Beinart interviewed on various occasions, I'd say Fulford has him exactly right--a perennially post-adolescent bright-boy who, predictably, thinks he is inventing the wheel.
Like most adolescent liberals, he is in love with his mind......
Gawd!
Libs know Reagan did more for this country every time he flushed the toilet than the lot of them have done in decades of "public service." They still hate him for it, too.
Liberals won't fight jihad if conservatives do.
Pretty much nails it.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that it's likely too late.
I really wish I could disagree, but I can't. What it's going to take is another "68 Chicago" type of counter revolution. The only way IMO is for them to keep losing elections until they (really) get tired of it.
True, but by that time their credibility will be so trashed, even a rebirth will be questioned. That will mean a long road back.
What once was a proud political party has purposely positioned itself into near irrelevance. And they've done it to themselves.
I despise liberals. Filthy lying freedom-hating America-bashing pissants, the lot of them.
Unfortunately the forced marriage of American military strength and internationalist enthusiasm is unlikely to turn out particularly "patriotic." Beinart is assuming that state-sponsored terrorism is somehow apposite to the international order that grew out of liberal ideals after WWII. It isn't. State-sponsored terrorism is a feature of that internationalist system. Under that system the American military can do nothing about it, and by design.
What really rotted the UN from within did the same for the foreign policy of the Democratic party - a ground assumption that wealthy and powerful versus poor and weak equates to oppressor versus oppressed, and that it is a duty to some sort of "higher law" or "social justice" to tilt the playing field back the other way. Under this set of assumptions the U.S. has no right of self-defense; indeed, it is difficult to tell if the U.S. has any rights at all. Subordinating the U.S. military to adherents of such a system is suicidal.
You're absolutely right.
The Democrat Party is one of the few homes of Communists outside of China, Cuba and Venezuela.
Forgot North Korea.and Vietnam...
That will mean a long road back.
So right. You look at Lieberman. Here's a guy who ADA rating is darn near perfect...except for Iraq and the dems in Conn. want to throw him out.
Once again I...DON'T...GET...IT.
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