In his latest NYT column, Bob Herbert urges liberals to stand up to ignorant and dishonest attacks from the right, and to be proud of their achievements.
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?…
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression…
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane…
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
Pretty good column, no?
Liberals could have achieved even more if they had more guts and more commitment to their stated principles. Yet the political “left,” such as it is in America, seems unable or unwilling to embrace and promote the best parts of its own heritage, for fear of being labeled liberal or “elitist.”
The right, on the other hand, is proud of its conservative label, and its history. It is a history of consistent opposition to even the most common-sense environmentalism (yeah, yeah – the Nixon administration started the EPA. Look at the rest of the history of the past 35 years or so). It is a history of using bogus, doctrinaire arguments to fight against a livable minimum wage. It is a history of redistribution of wealth – from the bottom and the middle to the top.
And the right is proud of its hero, Ronald Reagan – the guy who coddled the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He’s also the guy who – in a mind-bogglingly illegal scheme – tried to sell weapons to Iran, in part to fund another illegal covert action that supported the brutal Contra squads of Nicaragua. And he is the guy who helped make demonizing the poor a standard part of American political culture.
And the more recent history of the American right? It includes illegal wiretapping, an attack on the constitution and individual rights that ranges from ignoring the fourth amendment to revoking habeas corpus, starting a disastrous war under totally false pretenses, torture and contempt for the Geneva Conventions, and the abuse of “signing statements” to undercut the federal concept of separation of powers, among other things.
So hey, liberals, progressives, Democrats, etc. – let’s heed Herbert’s call and have some guts and some vision for a change. Do not be afraid.