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The People Voted For A Liberal
Politico does a wrap up piece on the McCain campaign. In it Mark Salter, the co-writer of McCain’s books, says:
“Our polling showed that more than 60 percent of voters identified Obama as a liberal. Typically, a candidate is not going to win the presidency with those figures. But I think the country just disregarded it. People didn’t care. They just wanted the biggest change they could get.”
That is a wrong, but typical Washington inside talk.
"People do not want liberals," the elite in DC says. How do they know?
Could the fact that lots of people voted for someone they (falsely?) perceived as liberal be explained by their will to put a liberal into the White House? Yes, it could and it is the most logical explanation.
But the Washington elite is full of this nonsense. "The country must be ruled from the center," they now say. What bullshit. Did Bush ever ruled from the center?
Now give the people what they asked and voted for.
Yeah, I agree with mats. The term Liberal has been so abused that it no longer means what it used to mean. As such, I don’t consider myself a Liberal, and I’m insulted when people refer to me as such. I read an excellent book just this past year in regards to the subject of Liberal, and Liberalism in the United States. Here’s a link to an article about it and an excerpt:
Sorry, Thomas Friedman, the World Is Round
Pox Americana
Slipping into my window seat, I smile to myself. There, in the adjacent seat pocket, with a gold sticker shouting its status as “the bestselling nonfiction book in the world today,” is another copy of The World Is Flat. I nod hello to the young female executive sitting next to me and pull out the book I have brought along. It’s a thin essay by the 75-year-old Marxist intellectual Samir Amin that issues its own grim warnings about the future of our globalized world. Titled The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World, the cover photo shows a Chinese kid dressed in army fatigues, standing on the Wall of China holding a Coke can.
If Thomas Friedman is the prophet of 21st century capitalism, then Samir Amin is his anti-Christ. But to hear Amin tell it, Friedman is the only one leading humankind into the depths of Hell. Writing from Dakar, Senegal, where he runs the Third World Forum, Amin’s thesis is essentially that liberalism, if allowed to continue on its path of creative destruction, will lead to an apocalyptic end. He likens the globalizing force of liberalism to a virus that has destroyed all ideological competitors and that is now making its final assault on its host species. According to Amin, the ethic of liberalism — “Long live competition, may the strong win” — is now ravaging societies of the Third World, causing further “social alienation and pauperization of urban classes.”
It’s nothing new from the far, far left. There are shelves full of books by anti-globalization writers from the developing world. What made me pick up Samir Amin’s essay, though, was the striking specificity of his warning. In Liberal Virus, he argues that liberalism’s most decisive effect will be to divide the world into an apartheid system that sees 3 billion peasant farmers pushed from their land and forced into the cities where they will die. This, he explains, will result from the implementation of a 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) mandate that all agricultural markets be opened to the expansion of commercial agribusiness producers. Without the ability to make a subsistence living from their own land, half the world’s population will have to migrate to the urban centers where there is no work for them. And thus, he concludes, they will be trapped in an “organized system of apartheid” on a global scale.
“What is going to become of these billions of human beings, already for the most part, the poor among the poor?” Amin asks. You don’t have to be a red-blooded socialist to intuit his answer. “Capitalism,” he concludes, “has become barbaric, directly calling for genocide.” In this drive to satisfy the insatiable hunger for new markets of its Western clients, the WTO is sanctioning a process that will “destroy — in human terms — entire societies.” Writing in a style that starkly contradicts Friedman’s cheery cartoon of the flat world, Amin paints an ominous image of capitalism as a force that is in constant need to consume itself and the communities that lie in its path. Through his eyes, the agents of globalization bear an eerie resemblance to the Borg that battle Star Trek’s Jean Luc Picard and his Enterprise crew. American liberalism echoes the Borg with the claim that it only seeks to “improve the quality of life for all species” through the spread of democracy while simultaneously warning the world that “resistance is futile — you will be assimilated.” But that is not to say Amin views liberalism as the victor. Rather, he describes it as a “senile system” that ultimately cannot stop the horror of its destiny.
Again, it isn’t hard to find doomsday prophecies about the evils of capitalism. But what is interesting about Amin’s book is that he offers an explanation for the phenomenal success of Friedman’s ideas. Expanding his metaphor, Amin describes the liberal virus as one that “pollutes contemporary social thought and eliminates the capacity to understand the world, let alone transform it.” So there is a kind of delusional episode occurring within the mass American psyche, one that has obscured what Amin terms “really existing capitalism” and replaced it with a fictitious model based on an “imaginary capitalism.” According to Amin, liberals like Thomas Friedman conjure the illusion of a system that is inherently just and self-regulating while, in reality, it only creates permanent instability and requires constant intervention and protection by the armored shield of the state. “The globalized ‘liberal’ economic order,” he writes, “requires permanent war — military interventions endlessly succeeding one another — as the only means to submit the peoples of the periphery to its demands.”
I started reading Amin’s book a few weeks after finishing The World Is Flat. And what struck me was that his description of the forces driving globalization was far closer to that of Sgt. Hollis, the tank commander I met in Iraq, than to Thomas Friedman’s. What’s more, his theory about the impact of the liberal virus on our ability to interpret the world drove me back into Friedman’s book, where I found a quote that basically mirrors Amin’s. Just before the halfway mark, Friedman writes: “The perspective and predispositions that you carry around in your head are very important in shaping what you see and what you don’t see.” Of course, he’s not applying this to himself. Rather, it’s a blunt critique of the fearful, knee-jerk reactions that American politicians and union leaders have thrown up to “protect” the U.S. economy from a genuinely “open” market. But the point is that, as we well know, everyone is the captive of their perspective. It frames and defines our worldview. Hence, for Friedman, the liberal business columnist, globalization = good, while for Amin, the African Marxist intellectual, globalization = bad. And for millions of readers who aspire to be a part of the new capitalist revolution, Friedman’s vision is far more appealing than Amin’s. Who can blame them?
But what if he’s wrong? What if Friedman is as short-sighted and ill-informed as the military and government leaders who claimed to have had no forewarning of the Sept. 11 attacks? Beyond the sheer tactical breakdown of that day, much of the blame for the failure rests in a kind of voluntary blindness assumed by a great majority of Americans. It was that myopia that prevented so many brilliant and influential foreign policy analysts, defense experts and journalists from foreseeing the coming threat. And they continued to ignore the messages being sent from the developing world, collectively evading the difficult work of questioning what aspects of American foreign policy might have brought on such an attack, even after thousands of Mexican soccer fans chanted “Osama” at a post-9/11 match against the United States. Proving how little he has learned from his worldly travels, Friedman repeats the hollow mantra in his book, describing the terrorists as “angry, frustrated and humiliated men and women.” And not far behind them, in his estimation, are the anti-globalization protesters — comprised mostly of Trotskyites, anarchists and old hippies — who are influenced by a heavy dose of anti-Americanism and defined by their denial of the inevitable triumph of flatness, arguing over the moot point of “whether we globalize.” Naturally, Samir Amin is one of these people.
And herein lies the most troubling aspect of Friedman’s popularity. He, and his readers, assume that anyone who opposes globalization from the side of the developing world — either violently or ideologically — is driven by a deep sense of shame at their poverty and inability to keep up with the West. But, at least as it applies to Samir Amin, nothing could be further from the truth. What Amin is articulating is a detailed warning about the same globalized world for which Friedman is such a wide-eyed proponent. But Friedman, and the millions who buy his books, is immune to it, because from his perspective, the forces of liberalism have only left enriched and industrialized societies in their wake. And this is precisely the kind of shortsightedness that crippled the West’s ability to understand, or indeed prevent, the 9/11 attacks. In the somber days after al Qaeda hit New York and Washington, D.C., Americans like Friedman were unwilling to identify the causal forces that had inspired the terrorists. “Why do they hate us?” Friedman rhetorically asked in his column. Because of our freedom, he answered. Because, the liberal answered, we are liberals.
It would be easy to attribute Friedman’s blockbuster sales to his orgiastic, gee-whiz, look-ma-no-hands celebration of all things corporate — he never fails to name-drop his favorite brand names, from eating a Cinnabon while waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight on the way to see his daughter at Yale to the 3M logo’d cap being worn by the caddy of an Indian executive who uses a distant HP skyscraper as a tee-off marker. Or to the fact that it is easy and very profitable to scare the shit out of an entire generation of Baby Boomers by essentially telling them their kids are in a neck-and-neck race to the top of the global food chain and, guess what, they’re losing. In those respects, the book is a brilliant and well-conceived product. But I believe there is a much deeper significance to Friedman’s success. And it has to do with the fact that America has reached a stage in its quest for global dominance in which it has no choice but to aggressively and openly tap these impoverished countries for cheap labor. And Thomas Friedman has come to put a lipstick smile on that old, twisted visage.
Scribbling notes on a drink coaster as the plane climbs past 10,000 feet, I think of Thomas Friedman writing his book in his own spacious business class seat on Lufthansa. Looking out of my window, I suddenly realize how he came so easily to his revelation. There, below me, the dark blue Atlantic Ocean stretches west for 1,000 miles and darned if it doesn’t look flat. I wonder how much of Friedman’s worldview has been shaped by the rarefied company of billionaire CEOs he keeps. Perhaps he has fooled himself into thinking that the invisible hand of liberal economics still softens to caress the weary shoulders of the poor, offering the opportunity for all people to reach the heights of corporate domination. We’ll never know. What we do know is that it’s been a long time since the champions of free market capitalism pretended to have any priority other than their quarterly profits and year-end bonuses. Of course, many of them have started making noises about the environment and poverty, but never in a way that will actually bring them to analyze root causes of these global ills. Until that happens, we can assume that it’s mostly PR. And in this regard, Friedman plays a very important role as a kind of useful idiot. If capitalism is the sport of wolves, then the kind of happy-go-lucky globalization heralded by Thomas Friedman is the sheep’s clothing. It’s a sheath to cover the glint of their blade.
Posted by: Obamageddon | Nov 6 2008 20:28 utc | 3
Agree with others here who say that liberal is a much misunderstood and misused term. It’s meaning is frequently more dependent on geography than context.
For example in Australia, Liberal means someone in the mold of John Howard, shrub’s loudmouthed, hate-filled and bumbling deputy. Someone who professes an understanding of the problems confronting aboriginal Australians, but who then turns on one of the facets of liberalism, the belief freedom is absolute, to justify allowing mining companies on to aboriginal land, despite the owners’ protest. Of course the principle of property ownership takes on a different light for the australian liberal when the land belongs to a whitefella farmer and the usage is for something more mundane like a public road, school or library.
Like the libertarian, a political school of thought created because of the perversion of the word ‘liberal’ liberalism is a series of ugly contradictions in reality. The adherents profess a belief in freedom. eg The freedom to trade without government interference, but that freedom is only applied to the holders of capital. When a group of workers try to utilize their freedom to withdraw their labour, under a ‘liberal’ political party’s government,they are declared to be breaking the law and are punished.
In england liberal means something else entirely. The liberals were the third party in england for many years, designed to capture the votes of upper and middle class voters who felt too guilty to vote for the mean-spirited tories but who couldn’t bring themselves to vote labour which was pre Tony Bliar, the party of the left aimed at the masses (or plebes or sheeple if you are of that mind). The english liberals whose chances of winning a majority ended when britons finally realised that the master could no longer dismiss you if you voted out of your self interest rather than his, were likely to care more about the rights of foxes than those of humans.
This left them so far on the outer that when the thatcher prick took government at the same time the left wing of the Labour Party finally got control of the party they had created, funded and voted in for for nearly a century, that a large number of pols (the early bliarites careerists who greed makes them see the huge pool of leftish voters as a valuable resource but whose private conservatism makes it impossible for them to represent their electors honestly) fled the labour party and joined with the liberals to for the worst horse by committee camel observed thus far. The party called the ‘liberal social democrats’.
Here in NZ the liberal Party which had been the leftish party of reform under Dick Seddon (votes for women in the 1890’s, old age pensions, universal suffrage ie no gerrymander for landowners) died as soon as the Labor Party won government.
The nz liberal party and the ironically named Reform Party (a very conservative bunch of right wing english pricks), joined together to form the National Party, still the major conservative party in NZ.
Maybe it helps to define liberals by considering the root of the word.
According to Bill O’connor a very conservative democrat who wrote on this very subject in Counterpunch a couple of weeks back.
The word liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, or free man. On Joe’s T.V. set, the word is used pejoratively and is code for pinko, leftist, or commie. Traditionally conservatism requires strict adherence to the constitution, separation of powers, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility, as well as separation of church and state. Conservatives don’t nation build; instead, they are in accord with the Constitution that the right to declare war belongs exclusively to the Congress. The reactionaries in power the last eight years have given us preemptive strikes, wire tapping, and suspension of Habeas Corpus along with the largest government, largest deficit, and largest transfer of wealth in the history of the .world. The party responsible for this incredibly insists it’s conservative.
The O’Connor article is pretty apt for this discussion even if most of us would question other aspects of the man’s politics.
If liberal means free man or the ideas of freemen which is how it almost certainly began, the best way to counter this continual tirade of bullshit about liberals from mainstream media and the punditocracy who unceasingly capture words and phrases they don’t clearly comprehend, then turn them into some vague pejorative, is to stand up to the pricks.
The next time some dickhead next to you starts spouting off about ‘the liberal media’ pull them up and say so you don’t believe in freedom eh? You don’t believe amerikan (when you say this natch you will pronounce it with a “c” not a “k”) TV and newspapers should argue for freedom?
Of course they will splutter about freedom not meaning the freedom for two mean who play with each others bottoms to marry or some such emotive garbage. But you will say “no I’m talking about the freedom of any amerikan to fulfill his destiny or speak his/her mind, you just said that you didn’t like the liberal media and since liberal means the right of all people to be free, I can only assume that you are opposed to the rights of all amerikans (said with a “c”) to be free”.
This isn’t as petty as it sounds, the twisting and perverting of our language by the right xtian imprisoners of their fellow humans occurs only because we allow it to.
Anti-semite is another powerful word which has been captured by these assholes and turned from it’s original meaning, that is one who dislikes, prolly hates all semitic people (a group that includes both jews and arabs) into a word that means anyone opposed to zionism, and it’s agenda of palestinian colonialism, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine of all non-jews.
Like anti-semitic, liberal has become so perverted by these scum that the word now means the opposite of what the person who first spoke/wrote it meant.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 6 2008 23:30 utc | 8
Obama is a liberal in the US sense of the word – He is a democrat. Note though that 40% did not identify him as such (it all depends on the questions asked; the overlap between ‘lib’/’cons’ and R / D is not good.) As pointed out above the term is so polysemic as to be meaningless, see debs is dead masterful explanation.
US citizens (voters, plus the non-voters, registered or no) are in a solid majority ‘liberal’ or ‘leftish leaning’ or ‘democrat,’ ‘progressive’ – on Education, on the Environment, on Health, and issues of ‘fairness.’ See a swedish kind of death, who gives a link. The organization of voting, elections, etc. in the US, and the patterns of registration / voting, with the rich and educated voting more than the poor, has always favored the Republicans. However, voter’s general attitudes (socially favored, and always appear in surveys, etc.) aren’t perhaps so terribly significant when they vote for a particular man in the one out of two case.
Poor states vote Republican, rich ones Democrat, with states classified according to average per capita income. However, rich people vote Republican (e.g. bush o4: 62% of over 200K earners.) So there is a lot of confusion – on the one hand liberals are rich – caviar left, latte Democrats – live in towns, rely on the heartland for their food, work in the media, etc. – a snobby elite. On the other, the poor are strongly D; and Rs have always held the richest chunk of the electorate.
Obama managed to federate the two parts of the Dem. electorate, by being young, black, not rich (supposedly) and a smoothie Harvard graduate!
Obama made very good gains amongst the rich, reinforcing a long term trend, for ex: Ford/R won 10 or 11/12 of the richest states in 1976; Kerry/D took them in 04, much good it did either of them. The R’s split the R vote by picking that fruitcake – I surmise the repubs. did it to McC on purpose – which makes for firing the base and rah-rah shows on the TV screens but is a sign of capitulation – letting the dirty secret out so to speak. (The co-opting of white, poor, religionists.)
If those who actually voted were as liberal as they say they are in questionnaires, and if that dimension was a crucial one, Obama would have won by at least 10% – 12%, maybe more. Hard to say, because you have to subtract those ‘liberals’ or dems who voted for Kerry but nixed Obama, which happened to some startling degree in Tenessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Miss.
one link on rich
Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 8 2008 8:06 utc | 18
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