Liberals

"I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail", 1963

 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/oct/04/labourconference.globalisation
The danger of liberal imperialism
Blair's vision of a new world order is a moral absurdity based on colonial delusion
Hywel Williams
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 October 2001

"It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peace-makers and conservatives the war-mongerers. But the imperialism of the liberal may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature - its conviction that it represents a superior form of life."

 

Love Me, I'm a Liberal

By Phil Ochs
(Born 1940, died 1976)

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every coloured boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the AFL-CIO board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New Republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the Democratic Party.
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/11/pissing_in_the__1.html

Joe Bageant | November 13, 2006 | Category: Essays
Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl Again
The Democratic Conga Line in the American House of Lords

 

http://prorev.com/2008/10/swampoodle-report-passive-aggressive.html

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2008
SWAMPOODLE REPORT: PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE LIBERALISM
Sam Smith

Given the number of foreclosures, the size of the credit crunch and a market collapse unlike anything in almost three quarters of a century, Barack Obama continues to hold a turgid lead in the election. These are conditions meant to place Democrats at the right hand of God; instead they struggle along with an unmoving and mundane monologue unable to even rise above the petty and putrid babble of the McCain campaign. Thanks to the desperate conditions, the GOP responsibility for the same and the bumbling incompetence of their candidate, it still looks like Obama will win, but not out of hope for the future so much as from a growing discomfort over the recent past and distaste for the electoral alternative.

If you ask liberals why this is so, they will tell you with remarkable frequency that it reflects the racism of American voters. And in that response lies an important part of the problem. To tar an entire malleable constituency with such a phrase is like rejecting tons of voters at the polls for not having the proper psychological profile on their registration forms.

Further it reflects the passive-aggressive nature of today's liberalism - remarkably passive in policy and commitment thereto but deeply aggressive in contempt towards all seen as not on their side, particularly those unwilling to share their enthusiasm for whatever flawed icon with whatever fuzzy philosophy they happen to be pushing at the moment.

 

http://prorev.com/2008/06/swampoodle-report-nightmares-hangovers.html

MONDAY, JUNE 9, 2008
SWAMPOODLE REPORT: NIGHTMARES & HANGOVERS

Sam Smith

those who tried to tell the truth became the pariahs.

It was my introduction to a new journalism. And to a new politics because, with Clinton, establishment liberals dumped their policies, their ideals and their standards. It wasn't like corruption back the in day, when liberals fought the bad guy. Now they helped manage his campaign, crying "Move on" and things like that. They came aboard not just as pragmatists, but as evangelical enthusiasts.

The Democratic Party would lose more seats at the state and local level under Clinton than with any Democratic incumbent since Grover Cleveland. Programs of the New Deal and Great society would be eviscerated. America's "first black president" would oversee an explosion of prison time for young black males.

But none of it mattered because liberals, especially the politically active upscale ones, had essentially abandoned what was once their essential business: helping those being screwed by the system. Their interest, driven by their own place in the economy, had turned to glass ceilings instead of hard floors and locked factory doors. And eventually they would replace it all with the simple expediency of a black Jesus, never mind that Barack Obama reached his magic delegate count the same week that the number of other black males, those in prison, hit a record level.

It's really not that surprising. The same mythological approach that created the Clintons was also used to justify the Iraq war and is now being used to create the new Obama era.

Check it out. Try to discuss with liberals the effect of Obama's Iran and Israel positions on our future in that region and in the world. Try complaining about his healthcare program or his support of the Patriot and No Child laws. Note that nobody seems to know who got him where he is so fast and that you don't get there without owing someone a hell of a lot. Try asking for just one new good idea that he has had. Try saying that Obama may be the best we're going to get, but it isn't that much.]

Come to think of it, don't try it. I have and have largely given up. Because to many of his supporters, as with the supporters of Clinton and the Iraq War, facts just don't matter anymore. Faith is what counts. Anything else is heresy.

And the same media that didn't fairly report the rise of the Clintons, or the beginnings of the Iraq war, are now engaged in the same error with Obama. It's bad enough to have liberals turn into a bunch of secular evangelicals, but at least the press should have a little more self respect than to join in the shouting and the clapping.

Still, arguing with evangelicals - whether Christian, media or liberal - is a waste of time. Consider anything immutable and argument becomes irrelevant.

You just have to save it for the agnostics, free thinkers and those who understand the difference between a press pass and a bathroom pass, which is that the former allows you to disseminate information while the latter is for those who just need to dump shit. It's a distinction much of the media has forgotten.