Posted on 04/14/2008 10:28:26 PM PDT by goldstategop
The Democratic Party's preoccupation with the question of when America will leave Iraq rather than with how America will win in Iraq reminds me of how and why this nearly lifelong liberal and Democrat became identified as a conservative and Republican activist.
I have identified as liberal all my life. How could I not? I was raised a Jew in New York City, where I did graduate work in the social sciences at Columbia University. It is almost redundant to call a New York Jewish intellectual a liberal. In fact, I never voted for a Republican candidate for president until Ronald Reagan in 1980. But I have not voted for a Democrat since 1980.
What happened? Did I suddenly change my values in 1980? Or did liberalism? Obviously, one (or both) of us changed.
As I know my values, the answer is as clear as it could be -- it is liberalism that has changed, not I. In a word, liberalism became leftism. Or, to put it another way -- since my frame of reference is moral values -- liberalism's moral compass broke. It did so during the Vietnam War, though I could not bring myself to vote Republican until 1980. The emotional and psychological hold that the Democratic Party and the word "liberal" have on those who consider themselves liberal is stronger than the ability of most of these individuals to acknowledge just how far from liberal values contemporary liberalism and the Democratic Party have strayed.
Here are four key examples that should prompt any consistent liberal to vote Republican and oppose "progressives" and others on the left.
The issue that began the emotionally difficult task of getting this liberal to identify with conservatives and become an active Republican was Communism. I had always identified the Democratic Party and liberalism with anti-Communism. Indeed, the labor movement and the Democratic Party actually led American opposition to Communism. It was the Democrat Harry Truman, not Republicans, who made the difficult and unpopular decision to fight another war just a few years after World War II -- the war against Chinese and Korean Communists. It was Democrats -- John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson -- who also led the war against Chinese and Vietnamese Communists.
Then Vietnam occurred, and Democrats and liberals (in academia, labor and the media) abandoned that war and abandoned millions of Asians to totalitarianism and death, defamed America's military, became anti-war instead of anti-evil, became anti-anti-Communist instead of anti-Communist, and embraced isolationism, a doctrine I and others previously had always associated with conservatives and the Republican Party. This change was perfectly exemplified in 1972, when the Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern ran on the platform "Come home, America."
This in turn led to the liberal embrace of the immoral doctrine of moral equivalence. As I was taught at Columbia, where I studied international relations, America was equally responsible for the Cold War, and there was little moral difference between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. They were essentially two superpowers, each looking out for its imperialist self-interest. I will never forget when the professor of my graduate seminar in advanced Communist Studies, Zbigniew Brzezinski, chided me for using the word "totalitarian" to describe the Soviet Union.
I recall, too, asking the late eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that America was, all things considered, a better, i.e., more moral, society than Soviet society. He said he would not.
It was therefore not surprising, only depressingly reinforcing of my view of what had happened to liberals, when liberals and Democrats condemned President Ronald Reagan for describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
Identifying and confronting evil remains the Achilles' heel of liberals, progressives and the rest of the left. It was not only Communism that post-Vietnam liberals refused to identify as evil and forcefully confront. Every major liberal newspaper in America condemned Israel's 1981 destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor (in which one person -- a French agent there to aid the Israeli bombers, and who therefore knowingly risked his life -- was killed). As The New York Times editorialized: "Israel's sneak attack … was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression."
Most Democrats in Congress even opposed the first Gulf War, sanctioned by the United Nations and international law, against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and its bloody annexation of Kuwait.
And today, the liberal and Democratic world's only concern with regard to Iraq, where America is engaged in the greatest current battle against organized evil, is how soon America can withdraw.
There were an even larger number of domestic issues that alienated this erstwhile liberal and Democrat. But nothing quite compares with liberal and progressive abandonment of the war against evil, the most important venture the human race must engage in every generation.
I can understand why a leftist would vote for the party not one of whose contenders for the presidency uttered the words "Islamic terror" in a single presidential debate. But I still cannot understand why a true liberal would.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“I will never forget when the professor of my graduate seminar in advanced Communist Studies, Zbigniew Brzezinski, chided me for using the word “totalitarian” to describe the Soviet Union.”
I thought Brzezinski was a staunch anti-communist.
Please tell me that this is a trend.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Ugh, just reading and remembering how badly Democrats have acted makes my stomach feel all sick and woozy again.
How can Democrats be so dumb, how can they be so stupid, when Liberalism means human rights and Liberation it is a false term and definition. The only war that Liberals like was WWII and that was when we got into the war after getting attacked. FDR didn’t care about freeing the Jews, he cared about popular opinion.
I changed into a Republican(first time I registered for party registration) when I realized that all of the arguments for Iraq had no point, the Anti-War protestors were vile, malicious and had no point, in fact nothing had any point but to put on a travelling circus. It was then and all of the evidence for Saddam’s destructive tactics that made me align with Republicans because they saw the world the same way I did. The Democrats cannot as they are completely warped on the Iraq War.
I also learned about the common sense values of Fiscal Conservatism, started to oppose mulitculturalism(which I found to be very stupid already), other Liberal pet issues(which I also found dumb) and I also found out that what I liked culturally was linked to the values of the GOP mostly as it emphasized taste and class in culture. I also loved Libertarianism and I think that the GOP is America’s best kept secret. It is that hidden by the Media and the colleges.
I can never be a Democrat today, they are too pretentious, too hypocritical, too “cool” and hip, and too linear. They are idiots, who really have no idea how people feel and take their time coming with the populist shovel to drive America down a ditch.
I mean arguments against the Iraq War.
I always knew that Democrats were bad even though my mother was a flaming liberal. Although I’m not a Republican and I don’t always vote for them, I have to this day never voted for a Democrat and I’m proud of it.
He was/is also a chief proponent of the theory that totalitarian regimes cannot improve on their own without intervention. Zbig used and uses the term totalitarian frequently. It seems to be one of his favorite words. Something doesn't sound right about this narrative.
I do. There were news clips of him standing in front of Pastuns crowds in Pakistan urging them to go fight for Allah in Afghanistan. The way I remember it Zbig was the most hawkish member of the Carter administration.
Democrats and liberal leftists must be protected from their own stupid ideas. For if we gave them everything they want, even they would hate what they end up with.
They’re emotional, simplistic and short sighted, in other words, they’re foolish.
You’re so absolutely spot-on! Because (seemingly) no liberals/Dems are willing to address this most vital issue or even voice it, they seem (at least to us conservatives) to not care a whit about it, or even worse, not care about our country and its future. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
And he’s also an active and vocal anti-semite as is Carter. Not good and never was, for our foreign policy.
Brzezinski’s Back:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1997264/posts
Excellent article. BFL.
Remember which president Brzezinski served? 'Nuff said.
In the 1970s, I'd wager hard cash that the term 'totalitarian', or any derivative thereof, only ever crossed his lips accidentally, if at all.
He was, while serving Jimmuh Peanut, the ARCH-accommodationist to Soviet expansion.
That's the line the media fed us during the Carter years. It's pretty laughable. It's kind of like when they call Ruth Bader Ginsberg or the Clintons a “moderate.”
You know the media. They live in Bizarro land.
“The only war that Liberals like was WWII and that was when we got into the war after getting attacked.”
Liberals were isolationists until Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
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