I have said many times here in this blog, and believed for years, that the old identifiers - liberal, conservative, moderate, centrist, left, right - are meaningless ciphers to be filled in by the person using them. Since Spiro Agnew's attacks on the liberal media, those "nattering nabobs of negativism" (William Safire's last claim to erudition and alliterate grandeur), the far-right claim that liberalism=socialism/communism has become part of our conventional wisdom, no matter how hard we might try to unstick that particular needle from that particular groove. I have experienced it here; some right-wing commenters have simply said "You are a socialist". While part of me protests, another part of me wants to say, "Fine. Whatever." Yet, my own views have never been spelled out very clearly, so with some help from a discussion I had years ago with a British acquaintance of mine, I will try to lay out what I mean when I say that our currently available tags for political geography don't work.
Years ago, in a discussion, my British acquaintance overheard someone calling Ted Kennedy a "socialist"; he snorted, turned to me, and said, "You know, in Britain, Kennedy would be considered on the right of the Labour Party." It was at that point that I knew our political categories were broken. The 1994 Republican take-over of Congress confirmed this for me; to talk of a "conservative revolution" is a bit like talking about "military music" or "Bush Administration integrity" - it's an oxymoron. What the bulk of those Republicans elected to the 104th Congress were, were reactionaries. What were they reacting to? Why, we all know the answer to that one, because we have heard it paraded around ever since - the evil 1960's! From the Peace Corps to Selma, through teach-ins, long hair, dope smoking, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, pretty much everything from the election of John Kennedy through Altamont (December, 1969) was just wrong. The culture warriors take their cues from an abhorrence of all things eminating from that decade.
Of course, the money bags behind these kulturkampfers are even more reactionary, looking to a status quo ante 1933. We see the results of that particular readjustment all around us, and we should be proud of the accomplishments of the Coolidge/Hoover wing of the Republican Party. They have reminded us, as if we needed reminding, why all the laws regulating businesses, corporations, financial markets, banks, and general economic, financial, and business activity were put in place initially - left to their own devices, in pursuit of that ever-desired larger bottom line, there is nothing these folks won't do. The destruction of our civil and social infrastructure is a small price to pay for a larger dividend at the end of the quarter. One would think that Congress would pursue, among its many other pressing needs, a revised Glass-Steagall act, once again separating various branches of the financial world, to prevent all sorts of book-cooking, interest-conflicts, and general malfeasance. If it isn't on the agenda, it should be.
Our present predicament is frustrated by the lack of relevance, leaving aside the utter vacuousness, of political labels. Bush, et al. are not "conservative", and those that are most vocal in support of them are not either. Indeed, a classic conservative a la Edmund Burke would be horrified at what these folks have wrought upon the body politic. Concern for the social fabric was the highest priority for Burke. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rice have pretty much shredded it. Indeed, much of the work ahead of us is reconstituting some semblance of the various social and civil institutions and networks and infrastructure that have been left to die or torn asunder by the multiple abuses of this and previous Administrations and their Congressional counterparts.
The animus directed against the Bush folks, and Republicans in general, stems not from a swing to the left, but from a recognition that Republican governance is destructive of the social fabric of the country. There is nothing particularly "liberal" about this idea; it is simply a result of looking at the evidence presented to us. Those on the traditional left are as distrustful of our current Democratic Party as they are of the Republicans, viewing them as "Republican lite" - less filling, but taste just as bad. The problem with this "pox upon their houses" attitude is that it ignores the real differences between the parties. As someone who used to accept this particular line of nonsense, I confess that I no longer understand the desire to tear down, in the pursuit of never-attainable policies and ideological purity, what is attainable. Politics is the art of the possible, and we who are, for lack of a better word are on the left, should not shrug off possible alliances with those with whom we might hold ideological or policy differences out of a concern for political purity. Politics makes strange bedfellows (to use another metaphor), and we should not be concerned with our political virginity that we ignore the opportunities facing us with the collapse of the Republican Party under George W. Bush. That smacks of political naivete of the worst sort.
Right now, our polity is in flux, and labels simply do not serve the purpose they once did, giving us a shorthand way of navigating the various streams and rivers of our political wilderness. I think a better way of understanding our current situation is this - which party, basically in charge since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, has done more damage to our country, has loosed the chains upon industry to rape and pillage, has created an atmosphere of permissiveness in our social and political discourse whereby racist, homo-hating, woman-hating rhetoric is mainstreamed and acceptable, and officially claims and acts as if it above the law? Which of our two major parties has a longer list of officials who have departed office to Federal Prison, or at least (as this is important as well) under a cloud of serious questions concerning their ethical conduct?
At heart, these are the questions those who have been labeled conservative, liberal, left, right, etc., have been asking themselves in the wake of the multiple outrages of our current government. The answer is pretty clear from the poll numbers; depending upon which you consult, Bush's approval ratings stand between 28% and 33%, and a majority want the Administration to end. Now. That's not liberal or conservative. That's just good ol' American know-how.
Virtual Tin Cup
