Date: November 10, 2006 4:40:03 PM PST
Subject: The "L" Word
Why is it that only in America --alone among Western industrialized democracies-- has "liberal" become such a dirty word that members of the "opposition" Democratic Party feel compelled to publicly bend over backwards to disavow being "to the left of" Republicans?
There is NO HOPE for change, for progress, in American domestic or foreign policy so long as America functions as a "one party system" that demonizes any political position that is not from the extreme Right as illegitimate and potentially as treacherous as Communism.
Only in America, unique among all the other democracies, has the centuries-old, universal, traditional left/right or liberal/conservative political spectrum been completely RE-DEFINED, revisionistically, as a fractional one -- reduced to the tiny range of variance possible between "moderate" and "ultraconservative" at only one pole, on the Right -- forbidding not only the check-and-balance of genuine opposition from the liberal/Left but the moderating influence of a Center (as traditionally defined, NOT far right of center according to these revisionists).
Ever since the demise, in practice, of the extreme Left, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accompanying liberation of Soviet satellites with "the fall of Communism" in the ReaganBush '80s, the American Right has lacked a reliable "partner in crime" in its Hegelian dialectic of power, heavily dependent on invoking the threat of the "Boogeyman."
As a result, the Far Right had to resort to the sliding of the balance-point for the scales from the extreme Left --a vacant position-- to the moderate Left, i.e., "liberalism" -- a more heavily populated position occupied (unfortunately for America) by proponents of true democracy who offer the only possible counterweight to advocates of an oligarchic elitist "Republic."
Historically, "liberals" have played the CENTRAL role in giving America ANY "democracy," achieving that by bitter, sometimes even violent, conflicts with the moneyed "aristocrats" who now monopolize the political spectrum from "the only LEGITIMATE political position."
The fact is, if not for "those damned liberals" (like Founding Fathers Jefferson and Franklin),
a unique "American" culture of "rights" and "freedom" would not even exist today, because NONE of those rights and freedoms were viewed as anything but a THREAT by the Right --which to this day eschews the fearsome word "democracy," preferring the word "republic,"
in honor of the "noble" Roman Republic (erected on cowering slaves and corrupt tyrants).
No "Democrat" afraid of being called a "liberal" should be respected as anything other than a coward, a quisling, and a sycophant to the enemies of the American democratic tradition -- the enemies of every right and freedom implicitly represented by the very word "Democrat." Such "Democrats" deserve not respect but rather the fullest measure of our contempt, because it is THEY, PRIMARILY, who are REINFORCING the evil magician's semantic spell that holds us all enthralled, powerless to resist, when the word "liberal" is uttered, and more damning still, it is THEY who dare not even cry "foul!" when (as is already happening) not only "liberal" but the very word "DEMOCRAT" is being demonized so it can be uttered by the Far Right to trigger the same mind-freezing, panic-evoking response as the scare-word "Communist" (or "terrorist," more currently).
"A vote for the Democrats is a vote for the terrorists" --George Bush, November 2006
When THAT becomes the case, there is NO POSSIBILITY WHATSOEVER of marshalling any resistance against --ensuring any checks or balances to-- one-party ONE-MAN rule --except through a THIRD Party that rejects all Democrats, en masse, for COLLUSION, or, absent that, "extreme measures" last seen when America FIRST faced "tyrannical rule."
