I’m a liberal, and I don’t want complete confiscation of private property. Or confiscation of any property.* In fact, I don’t know a single liberal who wants that.
Certainly to the left of liberals you will find socialists and communists, who are more friendly to this idea, but it isn’t legitimate to claim that everyone to the left of center shares the most extreme ideology found in that half, any more than it is legitimate to claim that conservatives are all Fascists.
*As long as we’re talking confiscation of property, something tells me that it wasn’t liberals and Democrats that came up with the Constitution-stomping notion to seize the personal property of persons * suspected * of crimes, and permitting law enforcement to keep it without any conviction whatsoever. Just a WAG, though.
Lets go down the list of die-hard conservative stances and see which are intended to retain the status quo or even revert back to a previous standard:
[ul]
[li] **Guns: ** More rights for gun owners, fewer restrictions (welcome to the wild west)[/li][li] **Foreign Policy: ** hardnosed unilateralism when the UN doesn’t comply (to heck with modern international law; hello old school imperialism)[/li][li] **Immigration: ** More INS supervision (here is one issue where conservatives are deviating from the status quo; a nation of immigrants trying to close its borders…sheesh)[/li][li] **Crime: ** More jails, harsher penalties, and keep the chair warm (been that way since the 70’s, never mind that its done nothing to deter drug related crime which has been on the increase the entire time)[/li][li] **Civil Rights: ** Let minorities fend for themselves they get enough special treatment already, and gay marriage not now or ever (yeah that’s a step in the forward direction)[/li][li] **Environment: ** Let business regulate itself (just like in your Houston, Shrub? The most polluted state in the union)[/li][li] **Economy: **Deregulate everything, the market system will work it all out (yeah that whole Enron/ Worldcom thing was just a random glitch) [/li][li] **Taxes: **Lower taxes for the wealthy they have it hard enough as it is (nothing new here)[/li][li] **Social Security: **Privatize it (never mind that takes the security out of SS, and IRAs and 401k already let people tap the markets for their retirement)[/li][li] **Education: **Devolution and vouchers (they seem to think the fed gov can’t fix the schools so why bother trying)[/li][li] **Welfare: **Lower caseloads by making it a byzantine task to qualify (never mind that housing costs sap 50 to 80% of people living below and just above the poverty line’s yearly income… someone get Bush a copy of “Nickel and Dimed”)[/li][li] **Health Care: **Minor reform (universal coverage is for pussy socialists)[/li] **Abortion: ** Overturn Roe v Wade, and abstinence only education in schools (possibly the most backwards of all conservative stances… America leads the world in teenage pregnancy, and the solution is to make condoms a secret and don’t let people have abortions? Yeah, people are going to stop having sex any day now)[/ul]
I think that McGovern is selectively choosing the good liberal ideas of the past and ignoring the bad ones. Certainly communism was a liberal idea (even if it is an extreme one), and those who disagreed with it more conservative than those who supported it.
Maybe we’re just arguing definitions, but if you divide the world into two camps as McGovern has done, then Communism certainly falls in yours while segregation and other more conservative ills fall in mine.
Please forgive the numerous typing errors in my above posts.
elucidator, I don’t think that poverty can be solved simply by throwing money at it. I think the long term solution to poverty has to involve education and cultural changes. I’d be interested in debating it in another thread if you’d like.
Forget McGovern’s challeneg a second- let’s put this issue in non-political terms.
You’re a music critic. Musician So-and-So makes makes an album of music that you find horrible. The songs are tuneless, the lyrics are incoherent drivel, and the guy can’t sing to save his life. You write a review in the local newspaper slamming this musician, and proclaiming him a talentless clown.
Musician So-and-so doesn’t take this lying down. He’s interviewed on MTV, and he laughs at you, saying, “Critics once said that Stravinsky wrote ugly music. Critics used to write that Elvis was a talentless clod, and that the Beatles’ music was unlistenable. In fact, virtually EVERY musical of the past century was assailed as a talentless noisemaker. So, it stands to reason that if critics are attacking me, I MUST be a brilliant musician too.”
Well, he’s right about one thing- many musicians (and artists and writers) now acclaimed as geniuses were once looked upon with scorn by the art establishment and by the public at large.
So… does it follow that everything being mocked by critics and shunned by the public today MUST be a work of genius?
Not hardly!
So, McGovern’s foolishness lies in this: in supposing that, since some measures that are popular today were opposed by people deemed “conservative,” why, ANYTHING opposed by latter-day conservatives must be desirable.
I noticed that the sale of Conrail was mentioned above as an example of a good thing the conservatives have done.
As a first-hand witness to what Norfuckup-Southern has done to Conrail, let me tell you, it was not a good thing. Not at all.
They shut down the largest car shop in Pennsylvania (Sam Rae Shops in Hollidaysburg), even though it was making money (which they lied about to the Surface Transportation Board), was the only shop in America that repaired some types of cars, and had a waiting list just to backorder.
They’re not interested in the actual business of Conrail. They only bought the company so they could use the rail right-of-way to lay fiber-optic lines. They’ve destroyed the rail economy in this traditionally railroad town completely.
This is privatization. Long live the people they rolled over to get there…
If you like that jayjay, you’ll love Bush’s choice for new Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, a railroad exec who benefited greatly from deregulation and has been a staunch proponent of it in all industries since the Ford administration.
McGovern’s a duplicitous jerk. One only need look at the record of Teddy Roosevelt to put the lie to his statements.
How 'bout the Square Deal? How 'bout the, granted before he was president, reform of the civil service? How the 225+ million acres of land he protected (the forerunner of the National Park Service), how about the Panama Canal? How 'bout the investigation he launched into the meat-packing industry laying the groundwork for the Pure Food and Drug Act? How 'bout strengthening the ICC thereby ending exploitative and unsafe railroad practices? He settled that ugly coal miner’s strike, too and the workers were awarded a nine-hour workday.
Bullshit. He can probably be labeled a progressive, but he wasn’t a liberal. Woodrow Wilson was the liberal of the day. Hell, TR was accused of being imperialist, which most certainly wasn’t true; he has no intention of acquiring colonies. He did however, wholeheartedly support treaties which would advance U.S. business causes. He also oversaw, through cabinent appointments, the expansion of the Army and the Navy. These are hardly liberal ideals.
This entire debate revolves around terms, as yet undefined, anyway. Anything that a Republican has done that the liberals like, can be hijacked by simply redefining terms. It’s almost as silly as McGovern.
McGovern’s dumb enough to mention the Federal Reserve???
The Federal Reserve was created, basically, in order to quash inflation and maintain price stability. As such it was basically a conservative sop to moneyed interests in Manhattan (read: net lenders), and was bitterly opposed by liberals, populists, and Free Silver types (c.f. William Jennings Bryant and the whole ‘Cross of Gold’ thingamabob) throughout agrarian America (read: net debtors, who generally benefit from inflation.)
The Federal Reserve was an idea by conservatives for conservatives.
Huh. Guess McGovern isn’t planning to open another inn. In 1990, before the Stratford Inn he operated went bust, he said, “I wish I’d done this before I’d run for President. It would’ve given me insight into the anxiety any independent business man or farmer must have…now I’ve got to pay the bank every month…I’ve got to pay the state of Connecticut taxes….It gives you a whole new perspective on what other people worry about.”
When the conservatives finally are able to enact meaningful tort reform, both conservatives and liberals will agree that it was a good idea a decade or so hence.
Exept, of course, conservatives who think liberalism=communism.
Vic Ferrari:
How many American liberals ever voiced support for full-blown communism? That idea has always been too far to the extreme and unpopular to be considered part of the liberal “camp”. OTOH, segregation really implemented and actively supported by mainstream conservatives for many years.
There’s no “can” about it, Roosevelt was definitely a progressive (sometimes a Progressive). He also fits the modern definition of liberal pretty well, with the exception of his foreign policy views (the same thing could be said of Lyndon Johnson). He regulated and broke up monopolies, supported nature conservation, and was much more concerned for the well-being of black people than most people of his time. The fact that he wasn’t called a liberal during his time has more to do with the definition of liberal.
The point is, nowadays progressive and liberal are often used interchangeably. Is that wrong? Maybe. But I don’t think when George McGovern uses the world liberal he is talking about John Locke or Adam Smith.
Anyway, why shouldn’t liberals claiming that policies they like are liberal? I think it works the other way around, actually - people find policies they like, and then they try to find a name for the combination of them. (If the combination they support is really unusual, they have to find an usual term or they are out of luck.) If you add support for nature conservation, civil service reform, anti-trust legislation, and civil rights together, the term to describe it collectively is going to vary with the era. The shoe that fits for a certain period (1930-1980 is my guess, but that’s arguable) is “liberalism”; before and after that period “progressivism” is a better choice.
For someone politically formed when McGovern was, liberal seems like an apt word choice.
Obviously the Federal Reserve wasn’t a dramatic departure with capitalism or private property, but despite claims to the contrary liberals don’t desire that. Modern bankers like the systems because it works, but it doesn’t look from those links like their counterparts felt the same way 89 years ago.
I didn’t mean to kill this thread. I feel like Charlie Brown (or was it Linus? - memory fuzzy) trying to decorate a Christmas tree. Oh well, I don’t know if it will resurrect the thread or just sprinkle more dirt on the coffin, but I was wondering how people felt about the role of Daniel Patrick Moynihan in shaping the ideas of welfare reform, and whether he should be considered a liberal or not.
