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someguy

12-11-2009, 11:10 AM

By Chris Hedges

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.

“You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. “The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a ‘least-worst’ voter you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.”

I save my anger for our bankrupt liberal intelligentsia of which, sadly, I guess I am a member. Liberals are the defeated, self-absorbed Mouse Man in Dostoevsky’s “Notes From Underground.” They embrace cynicism, a cloak for their cowardice and impotence. They, like Dostoevsky’s depraved character, have come to believe that the “conscious inertia” of the underground surpasses all other forms of existence. They too use inaction and empty moral posturing, not to affect change but to engage in an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity. They too refuse to act or engage with anyone not cowering in the underground. This choice does not satisfy the Mouse Man, as it does not satisfy our liberal class, but neither has the strength to change. The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.

Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.

I learned to dislike liberals when I lived in Roxbury, the inner-city in Boston, as a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School. I commuted into Cambridge to hear professors and students talk about empowering people they never met. It was the time of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Spending two weeks picking coffee in that country and then coming back and talking about it for the rest of the semester was the best way to “credentialize” yourself as a revolutionary. But few of these “revolutionaries” found the time to spend 20 minutes on the Green Line to see where human beings in their own city were being warehoused little better than animals. They liked the poor, but they did not like the smell of the poor. It was a lesson I never forgot.

I was also at the time a member of the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team. We fought on Saturday nights for $25 in arenas in working-class neighborhoods like Charlestown. My closest friends were construction workers and pot washers. They worked hard. They believed in unions. They wanted a better life, which few of them ever got. We used to run five miles after our nightly training, passing through the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Projects, and they would joke, “I hope we get mugged.” They knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with across the Charles River. They would have felt awkward, and would have been made to feel awkward, at the little gatherings of progressive and liberal intellectuals at Harvard, but you could trust and rely on them.

I went on to spend two decades as a war correspondent. The qualities inherent in good soldiers or Marines, like the qualities I found among those boxers, are qualities I admire—self-sacrifice, courage, the ability to make decisions under stress, the capacity to endure physical discomfort, and a fierce loyalty to those around you, even if it puts you in greater danger. If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don’t. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.

Chris Hedges, author of “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” will speak with other anti-war activists at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House at 11 a.m. Dec. 12 in a rally calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thad

12-11-2009, 08:54 PM

It would be very interesting to begin the competition right here in Sonoma County for the smartest person on the planet... Jackpot Rodeo... someone must do it first to declare their candidacy for that position.

Its an across the board rating, you don't have to be first in any particular position only the accumulation of workable notions across the board ~

and so ~ as the first plank in "my" candidacy ~ this welcomes other competitors of who think their notions critically important as this plank attempts to become a ship or an ark or an arc as the first rule comes into play..

So I wonder what that first rule might be ?

By Chris Hedges

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy...

babaruss

12-11-2009, 09:56 PM

I'm looking at a 'liberal' amount of unmitigated horse shit in this article.
Baba

It would be very interesting to begin the competition right here in Sonoma County for the smartest person on the planet... Jackpot Rodeo... someone must do it first to declare their candidacy for that position.

Its an across the board rating, you don't have to be first in any particular position only the accumulation of workable notions across the board ~

and so ~ as the first plank in "my" candidacy ~ this welcomes other competitors of who think their notions critically important as this plank attempts to become a ship or an ark or an arc as the first rule comes into play..

So I wonder what that first rule might be ?

someguy

12-12-2009, 08:28 AM

I'm looking at a 'liberal' amount of unmitigated horse shit in this article.
Baba

Are you talking about the article I posted, because you quoted Thad?

If you are talking about the Chris Hedges article, what is it that you found to be so unpleasant?

Thanks.:):

babaruss

12-12-2009, 11:30 AM

I have no idea how Thad's contribution got attached to my response to the Hedges article you submitted.
The thing which annoyed me was that it was a blanket indictment of all liberals (though most specifically liberal intellectuals).
I thought that was going a bit too far.
Regardless of how accurate his assessment of the specific liberal intellectual examples he cited might have been.. the 'one size fits all' label was unacceptable to me.
Baba

Are you talking about the article I posted, because you quoted Thad?

If you are talking about the Chris Hedges article, what is it that you found to be so unpleasant?

Thanks.:):

someguy

12-12-2009, 11:54 AM

I have no idea how Thad's contribution got attached to my response to the Hedges article you submitted.
The thing which annoyed me was that it was a blanket indictment of all liberals (though most specifically liberal intellectuals).
I thought that was going a bit too far.
Regardless of how accurate his assessment of the specific liberal intellectual examples he cited might have been.. the 'one size fits all' label was unacceptable to me.
Baba

Well the author did call himself a liberal in this article. So I don't think he was blanketing all liberals as useless, but mainly liberal democrats who love and maintain hope for Obama/Obama's agenda.

babaruss

12-12-2009, 12:01 PM

even so...he painted with far too wide of a brush, and that remains my objection.
And for what it's worth, I still have 'hope' that Obama will prove to be one of our finer Presidents.
Baba

Well the author did call himself a liberal in this article. So I don't think he was blanketing all liberals as useless, but mainly liberal democrats who love and maintain hope for Obama/Obama's agenda.

Hotspring 44

12-12-2009, 01:36 PM

babaruss

12-12-2009, 03:58 PM

Nice of you to break it down for me.
The individual examples cited apply to certain liberal democratic members elected to office. But the over all declaration that 'liberals are useless' was more than enough to tick me off. Blanket indictments of all liberal democrats would include those of us who are not elected officials who have spent our lives taking lumps for causes we believed/believe in.
Please feel free to fault this too o.k. ?
Baba

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> I disagree with the assessment that babaruss made:

My pointed reasons why:
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> [I]Chris Hedges article\ Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> This may not be absolutely 100% it still is a general tone that the so-called “liberal” political aficionados have, (not “horse shit”).
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> [I]Chris Hedges article\ They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> That statement is not “H/S” Consider the budget that the “conservatives” screwed-up in the last 8 years along with the NAFTA (that the so-called “liberals” in Office at the time signed into law) that is somehow lost from the equation.
Why?

:2cents:Maybe the so-called “liberals” in Washington are corporate stooges and either have skeleton in closet (John Edwards affair as 1 example) that they don’t want to have exposed; and they have been blackmailed, or are (have) either been bought or have vested interests in the “too big to fail Wall Street system (plutocracy). What do you think?
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Not “H/S”. I agree with this point.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Where is the factual rebuttal to that statement?:hmmm: Not “H/S”.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ “You have a tug of war with one side pulling,” Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. “The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a ‘least-worst’ voter you don’t want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don’t want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can’t afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.”
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> What is so “H/S” about that statement? I think it’s right on the “money”!:thumbsup:
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Again, not “H/S”; unless the “liberal class” is such a minority that it is as good as dead, (:rip:).

<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA.
And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing </td> </tr> </tbody></table> That is exactly what I did!...(walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994) for those and other similar reasons :idea:.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ ...—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens?
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> This statement is not “H/S”.
Yes, Exactly; where has the Obama campaign promise gone to regarding habeas corpus, (and an) end (to) torture in our offshore penal colonies?... ...1 trial of someone that was tortured (“water-boarded”); in a Civilian court? ...and pre-judged by the prez himself!...:wtf:!
Doing that in my way of thinking is another way of wreaking havoc on the "progressive" "liberals" causes... mainly because if something goes wrong it will be blamed on the (so-called "left of center") liberals.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Not “H/S”. That is instead an excellently well-put question, and the statement (..."at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.") does have historic significance.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ I learned to dislike liberals when I lived in Roxbury, the inner-city in Boston, as a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School. I commuted into Cambridge to hear professors and students talk about empowering people they never met. It was the time of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Spending two weeks picking coffee in that country and then coming back and talking about it for the rest of the semester was the best way to “credentialize” yourself as a revolutionary. But few of these “revolutionaries” found the time to spend 20 minutes on the Green Line to see where human beings in their own city were being warehoused little better than animals. They liked the poor, but they did not like the smell of the poor. It was a lesson I never forgot.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> What is so “H/S” about his educated point? I’ve had similar experiences.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ I was also at the time a member of the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team. We fought on Saturday nights for $25 in arenas in working-class neighborhoods like Charlestown. My closest friends were construction workers and pot washers. They worked hard. They believed in unions. They wanted a better life, which few of them ever got. We used to run five miles after our nightly training, passing through the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Projects, and they would joke, “I hope we get mugged.” They knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with across the Charles River. They would have felt awkward, and would have been made to feel awkward, at the little gatherings of progressive and liberal intellectuals at Harvard, but you could trust and rely on them.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> A good point! Not “H/S”.
<o:p> </o:p>
<table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Chris Hedges article\ I went on to spend two decades as a war correspondent. The qualities inherent in good soldiers or Marines, like the qualities I found among those boxers, are qualities I admire—self-sacrifice, courage, the ability to make decisions under stress, the capacity to endure physical discomfort, and a fierce loyalty to those around you, even if it puts you in greater danger. If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don’t. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Exactly! No BS, I mean; “H/S”.
<o:p> </o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>

Hotspring 44

12-12-2009, 11:12 PM

w

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style>The individual examples cited apply to certain liberal democratic members elected to office.

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> Yes, that is in most part, the gist of what my read of the article is.
<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style>Blanket indictments of all liberal democrats would include those of us who are not elected officials who have spent our lives taking lumps for causes we believed/believe in. Please feel free to fault this too o.k. ?

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> Well “fault” is a little heavy handed a statement I do say. But that being said, when the end result of the Office of top lawmakers is essentially a choice of the “lesser of 2 evils” I instead of voting for (what I believe to be “evil” (like I used to); I vote my conscious instead.
So instead of being responsible (feeling guilty, being an “accomplice” to war, or economic crimes.), I have done what I know is best; even when it’s against the “odds”.

Just think if a 3<sup>rd</sup> party candidate gets enough votes in a general election that candidate (or party for that office) would be eligible for some Government funds in a following election that would most likely be more then otherwise. Particularly a pro little guy (lower middle class) candidate; because no big business would likely fund them.

Then the “Democrat” (in this case) would be more likely to actually be more representative to the constituents. Rather than blowing them off after the election.

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style>But the over all declaration that 'liberals are useless' was more than enough to tick me off<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style>Yes, me too. But there is a term that that gets bandied around that term is: “Neoliberals”. That can get rather odious because of the common misunderstanding between what the average “West Coast, California” “liberal” mindset is and the meaning that is: “[I]Neoliberalism (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/neo+liberal)”; the word “liberal”.<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> <table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> “Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer control over the economic from the public to private sector. The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by neoliberalism is often taken to be John Williamson's"Washington Consensus" , a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the IMF and World Bank). Williamson's list included: Fiscal rectitude, meaning that governments would cut expenditures and/or raise taxes to maintain a budget surplus (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/budget+surplus) “…<o:p></o:p>
…Competitive exchange rates, whereby governments would accept market-determined exchange rates, as opposed to implemented government-fixed exchange rates, as had prevailed under the Bretton Woods System (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Bretton+Woods+System)<o:p></o:p>
Free trade (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Free+trade), which means the removal of trade barriers (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/trade+barriers), like tariffs (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/tariffs), subsidies, and regulatory trade barriers <o:p></o:p>
Privatization (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Privatization), which means the transfer of previously-public-owned enterprises, goods, and services to the private sector. <o:p></o:p>
Undistorted market prices, meaning that governments would refrain from policies that would alter market prices. <o:p></o:p>
Limited intervention, with the exception of intervention designed to promote exports, some kinds of education or infrastructural development.<sup>[6] (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Neoliberalism#endnote_rf-6)</sup><o:p></o:p>Other studies also cite the following policy changes associated with neoliberalism<sup>[7] (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Neoliberalism#endnote_rf-7)</sup>: <o:p></o:p>
Reduced capital controls (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/capital+controls), which involve removing governments laws that hinder or control the cross-border flow of finance <o:p></o:p>
Deregulation (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Deregulation), the abolition or reduction of government-imposed restrictions on the conduct of business' decision-making <o:p></o:p>
Union busting (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Union+busting) policies, as unions are generally taken to be impediments to economic development by adherents of this worldview <o:p></o:p>·Export-led development (https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Export-oriented+industrialization), as opposed to a development strategy that emphasizes the protection of domestic industry” … … (etc)<o:p></o:p>
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> Some of these “[I]Neoliberal” things when they are undesirable to the “strict” Constitutional constructionalest’ (Constructionism): example;
<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> <table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style=""> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt;" valign="top"> Robert Bork Making the Case for “[I]Originalism”: “If the Constitution is law, then presumably its meaning, like that of all other law, is the meaning the lawmakers were understood to have intended. If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: "Law...." This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones. Any time he does so, he violates not only the limits to his own authority but, and for that reason, also violates the rights of the legislature and the people....the philosophy of original understanding is thus a necessary inference from the structure of government apparent on the face of the Constitution.”<o:p></o:p>
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> …get blamed on to the “liberal” side of the interpretation of the (constitutional) law.
But on the other hand when it comes to the interpretation of law regarding budget, “free trade” and “corporate personhood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood)” the “conservatives” do not interpret those so “constructional”.

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> <table class="MsoTableGrid" style="border: medium none ; border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr style="height: 170.5pt;"> <td style="border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 0in 5.4pt; height: 170.5pt;" valign="top"> Judge Richard Posner on the Importance of [I]Judicial Gap-Filling: “A constitution that did not invalidate so offensive, oppressive, probably undemocratic, and sectarian law [as the Connecticut law banning the use or distribution of contraceptives] would stand revealed as containing major gaps. Maybe that is the nature of our, or perhaps any, written Constitution; but yet, perhaps the courts are authorized to plug at least the most glaring gaps. Does anyone really believe, in his heart of hearts, that the Constitution should be interpreted so literally as to authorize every conceivable law that would not violate a specific constitutional clause? This would mean that a state could require everyone to marry, or to have intercourse at least once a month, or it could take away every couple's second child and place it in a foster home....We find it reassuring to think that the courts stand between us and legislative tyranny even if a particular form of tyranny was not foreseen and expressly forbidden by framers of the Constitution.”
Both Bork & Posner quotes I listed here & more can be found here: Theories of Constitutional Interpretation (https://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interp.html)<o:p></o:p>
</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
Also some (intentional?) confusion in the general public because of “mass media” and “popular opinion” to have an under informed public is par-for-the-course & “[I]business (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business)” as usual.

Dynamique

12-13-2009, 10:24 AM

The comment in the article that self-professed liberals glibly vote for self-proclaimed liberal candidates who support things like NAFTA chapped my hide, too.

Is there really a choice? The winner-take-all system forces voters of all political leanings to choose between the "lesser evil" or not voting at all. If the latter, then people like Hedges would really have a hissy-fit, wouldn't they?

The problem is not necessarily liberals or conservatives (although I certainly consider "conservatives" to be nothing but trouble), it is an outdated and rigged system.

Nice of you to break it down for me.
The individual examples cited apply to certain liberal democratic members elected to office. But the over all declaration that 'liberals are useless' was more than enough to tick me off. Blanket indictments of all liberal democrats would include those of us who are not elected officials who have spent our lives taking lumps for causes we believed/believe in.
Please feel free to fault this too o.k. ?
Baba

wbreitman

12-13-2009, 01:24 PM

A classic definition of a liberal, which I first heard in the late '50's from one who was a committed radical for decades:

A Liberal is a person who has both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

W

Thad

12-13-2009, 08:58 PM

How about a Mechanical liberal as a new category, like bolt calls a thread with a washer and a nut and you have just made something, There's too many words, too few solutions, so pick one now become tribe lower your privacy threshold, diminish your life support frenzy, breath deeper than you have for awhile, they don't have the answers, you do in what you do on a daily basis, become nines, become familiar with more people in your architecture, get a bit hobbit with your designs throw away the keys to your front door and replace them with people ~~~

Hotspring 44

12-13-2009, 10:16 PM

theindependenteye

12-16-2009, 06:06 PM

Speaking from my expertise as a Useless Liberal--

The issues are more complex than the Left would have us believe. And they're a helluva lot more complex than the Right would have us believe.

To categorize any segment of the politlcal spectrum as Chris Hedges does speaks more to self-hatred than to his superb journalistic skills.

We elected a very cautious middle-of-the-roader to the Presidency, when Progressives expected a Che Guevara (and were encouraged in this illusion by the poster). And we elected a Democratic Congress who achieved a majority by compromise. If you want to call it sell-out, do. But we've never in 200+ years had a "progressive" Congress. Roosevelt and that bastard Lyndon Johnson got progressive legislation through a Congress that was infinitely more diverse & conservative than this one by dint of extreme arm-twisting genius.

"Mechanical" liberal? "PC"? Word structures become reality in the popular mind. What's the point of making enemies of the people who sort of agree with you, but don't quite? It simply guarantees your own failure, and national disaster, and I fear that's what you're addicted to. ("You" being merely a rhetorical device.)

Oh, never mind. Enjoy what you get in 2010.

-Conrad

Thad

12-16-2009, 08:21 PM

Its so easy "the solution"

People have so much that is so unused

<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style>I am not sure about me starting a thread on “Mechanical liberal”. I don’t even know what a “Mechanical liberal” is, but I could guess that you may have an idea of what one may be. Maybe you will start that thread? <link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> One “solution” that I have “picked” is for me is to vote my conscience.:idea:
<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> That is poetic but I do not understand that abstraction :hmmm:
<link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CSH%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>  </style> That is also too abstract for my mind to follow. But it may take “too many words” to use for me to understand it.:2cents:

Hotspring 44

12-16-2009, 08:36 PM

Could you elaborate?

Its so easy "the solution"

People have so much that is so unused