Liberal Is the New Right Wing

Roberto Unger, a law professor at Harvard under whom Barack Obama studied, recently issued a statement that Obama must be defeated if the Democratic Party is ever to be returned to its roots. Huffington Post

While I don’t believe in the Democratic Party or its roots any more than I believe in Santa Claus, I see Unger’s point. A successful return of the Obama presidency will validate and solidify the Blue Dog Democrat cooptation of that party. The Democrats have never stood for all the wonderful ideals liberals imagine they have stood for. FDR was a racist, Truman an anti-Semite. Southern Democrats controlled the party until Fannie Lou Hamer and her Freedom Democrats stood up to them and to the Party itself, which supported its bigoted buddies. JFK and his beloved brother Bobby called the Freedom Riders “rabble rousers” and insisted the “time was not right” for black Americans to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Clinton replaced welfare with “workfare,” hawking the canard that getting paid $11 an hour would bring dignity to the poor, all the while subsidizing business instead of people. And the list goes on.

Even so, the illusion of fundamental differences between the two parties held somewhat more validity with the presidencies that preceded that of Bill Clinton.  You can trace the degradation of the Dems through the decline of our economy. Beginning in 1985, during Reagan’s term, the share of pre-tax household income enjoyed by Americans in the top brackets began to escalate. The only period in recent American history in which the wealthy held onto as much of their riches as they do currently was during the Great Depression.

Under Bill Clinton, that share climbed more steeply than it did under George W. Bush. By 2005 and beginning in 1979, the top ten percent feasted on a 175% increase in their post-tax income. Again, the initiation of this increase came under Ronald Reagan and continued through Bill Clinton. Wikipedia

Unger argues that while Mitt Romney and Obama differ in some respects around domestic policy, they do not differ at all as foreign adventurers, eager to draw “enemy” blood in order to convince Americans they are true warriors. (Enemy is in quotes because the new definition of terrorist places anyone in the vicinity of a putative terrorist in that category, including children.) Americans seem to like warriors, along with presidents they can drink beer with. We are a belligerent people.

One disturbing aspect of a Romney presidency is uncertainty about his judicial appointments, in particular to the Supreme Court. I suppose they are hoping for more liberals of the sort that voted to allow Arizona and other states to demand the equivalent of an identity card. Perhaps under the new regime, younger people don't recoil at the idea of identifying themselves whenever asked. My contemporaries feel disgust at this violation of a basic American right. It smacks of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But then so does "Homeland Security" and nobody's bitching about that.

The definition of liberal has swerved sharply right over the last thirty or forty years. Obama, for example, would not have passed for a liberal in 1970. He would rightly have been perceived as a right-wing conservative. So-called “conservatives,” as I’ve argued here before, would not have passed as “conservative” because they are not. They want to conserve nothing. They long to prevent government from reigning in the profit motive (whether it leads to killing workers, via, for instance, mining, or consumers, via, for instance, the pharmaceutical industry) and to intrude more deeply into American family life. They are right-wing revolutionaries and they have effectively stolen our democracy while we keep mislabeling them and misperceiving their intentions.

Like Obama, we have compromised our principles into dust. In choosing “the lesser of two evils” because the alternative would be unthinkable, we have plunged our country into the unthinkable.

Many progressives speak of fascism casting its ugly shadow over our nation. The trouble with talking about fascism is that it really doesn’t mean anything except right wing dictatorship. Because we don’t live in an obvious dictatorship, those who defend the Obama presidency aren't getting the point. More useful are questions of how our country looks today and how it got there.

My life spans two terrifyingly oppressive eras in US history: McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and now. This affords me access to a wider view than my juniors could possibly have (which doesn’t necessarily mean I have that wider view, merely that I could have it and, naturally, I believe I do). When I carried a picket sign in the streets, Vietnamese children were being napalmed courtesy of Dow Chemical Company’s profit motive. When I protested working conditions with teachers in Oakland, California, many years ago, that city’s children were attending schools that resembled the prisons too many of them would eventually populate.

It took many deaths to get voting rights in Mississippi for its citizens. It took many bodies on the line to end the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese naturally call “the American War”). But during the years in between the rampage of the lunatic Joe McCarthy (who destroyed many lives) and the lunatic Fox News (destroying more), I witnessed, first, the rise of the American middle class, the opening up of possibilities for at least some African Americans and some other people of color, and the public shaming of language that had once been the prerogative of bigots. But since Reagan, all that has been under attack, yet the defense of those (admittedly humble) gains has steadily dwindled.

Under Obama, we continue to see abrogation of the Constitution, arrogation of executive privilege, secret wars and murders of civilians abroad, including young children, and here at home the ever widening gap between rich and poor. Obama has not changed that. The primary advantages he brings to the presidency domestically will be enjoyed solely by the middle and upper classes.

Record joblessness still haunts our nation, in particular in minority communities. Foreclosures have picked up again now that the banks have slipped back under the radar. States have usurped monies paid by the Federal government to aid those facing eviction, dumping those funds instead into the general budget. It scarcely matters since the funds allocated were a pittance compared to what was needed. The proof of Obama’s failures lies in part in the failure of the housing market to recover. Had half of what was paid to the banks been given instead to householders on the verge of foreclosure, we would have seen a strengthening of the housing market, not a steady free fall. Had the banks been forced to restructure loans instead of being given that as an option, one they just about universally did not take, the housing market would have recovered. Go back even farther: Had Bill Clinton’s administration not endorsed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s participation in the sub-prime mortgage market and had they not repealed Glass-Steagall, our entire economy would not have needed a “recovery”.  Here’s Clinton’s admission:

I think [Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers] were wrong and I think I was wrong to take [to take their advice], because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency. And the flaw in that argument was that first of all sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency. Washington Independent

Wrong, indeed. According to this same article, as a result of that “advice,” at least 4.3 trillion dollars escaped all monitoring.

So what does Obama propose to do to strengthen our economy and ensure that these wildly irresponsible (and greedy) practices never trouble us again? A bill that ties executive compensation in institutions that receive TARP funds to their repayment, a bill that permits ongoing investment by banks in the derivatives market, a bill that still permits an unconscionably low (real) balance on the books, and a bill that relies on the creation of agencies and bureaus to “fix things.” This latter presumably took its inspiration from the SEC’s “diligent” oversight. We all know how thoroughly government agencies supervise their targets.

In fact, the banks raced to pay back TARP funds so they could continue to feed voraciously from the profit troughs, reinstating obscene bonuses instantly. And we're back to business as usual. Just as Nancy Pelosi refused any investigation of the mendacious rhetoric leading us into the Iraq War, Barack Obama refused to investigate the financial industry, both in spite of obvious illegal practices.

Apart from abortion and Obamacare, few domestic issues likely to pass Congress mean squat to the homeless or the jobless. But do we have abortion rights still? In 2011 24 states enacted 92 abortion restrictions. Think Progress Restrictions together with harassment and even murder have effectively gutted the center of our country of access to abortion, certainly in all rural areas, and increasingly in urban centers. None of these restrictions, of course, will end abortion; they will merely result in more deaths of women at the hands of butchers. But our putatively Christian nation relishes such punishment of women for the sin of fornication.

One Nation letter writer argued that when Mr. Obama entered the White House, he learned many things he hadn't known about "how to keep us safe." Because he knows things we don't know, she insisted, we should cut him some slack. This is the President as Daddy, the Protector. At this point, Obama more closely resembles Vlad the Impaler. And would that we could ask this tolerant lady whether she might cut George W. Bush the same slack since her argument applies equally well to his presidency.

What about Obamacare? It will almost certainly be invalidated by this Supreme Court in spite of those so-called liberal justices. In other words, progressives have very little to look forward to in a second term for Obama or a first term for Romney.

In hoping to win minor league skirmishes, progressives have squandered opportunities to wage the more important war against those who have been steadily taking over this nation. By pretending Barack Obama does not represent those same people, in spite of so much evidence to the contrary, progressives have relinquished the right to be called progressive.