Reich - Reason : why liberals will win the battle for America

CONTENTS

To the memory of Paul and Sheila Wellstone

If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.

Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

Edward R. Murrow

INTRODUCTION

In my view, being a liberal is something to be proud of. Yet for more than twenty years, liberals have been on the defensive, and conservatives ascendant. I have watched and chronicled the nations rightward drift, sometimes fretting and fulminating about it, twice participating in Democratic administrations that have tried to slow or co-opt it, every four years or so advising political candidates what they might do about it, often debating right-wingers on television and radio about whether its good or harmful (it is, indubitably, harmful, as I will make clear), once running for office myself in a vain attempt to halt it in my home state, and rarely but occasionallydare I admit it?telling myself I should stop worrying about it and get a life (obviously, I havent).

I write now with greater urgency. In recent years, the conservative agenda has become far more radicalized. Its latest incarnation is more threatening and potentially more destabilizing to America and the world than its previous forms. Barry Goldwaters extremism in defense of liberty was merely quirky and quixotic. Ronald Reagans buoyant divisiveness was at least tempered by moderate Republicans, congressional Democrats, and two generations of Americans who had experienced the were-in-this-together solidarity of the Great Depression and World War II.

Now, however, radical conservativesRadcons, I call themare taking over the public agenda, and they are meeting with woefully little resistance. Public debate has become grossly imbalanced. The Democratic Party has turned timid. The marketplace of ideas has retreated to a back-alley stall.

The administration of George W. Bush was more the result than the cause of this radical conservative ascendance, and its end will not mark the end of radical conservatism in America. Casting Bush as the villain of a dark conspiratorial drama may be emotionally satisfying to many liberals, but it doesnt illuminate the larger clash of ideas and principles. We need to look beyond any specific election in order to understand what is occurring and why, and consider the alternative choices facing America in the years ahead.

The Radcon agenda, undiluted and unopposed, is dramatically out of sync with the needs of America and the world. As such, it endangers our future.

Consider:

When the integrity of our economic and political system is threatened by unbridled greed and abuses of powerfraud in corporate suites and on Wall Street, exorbitant payments to top executives, and unprecedented sums of money flowing to politicians in exchange for political favorsthe nation needs tough laws backed by sturdy enforcement and uncompromising public indignation. But instead of a reinvigorated public morality, Radcons are focusing on private sexual morality, on personal sin and sex. They would rather police bedrooms than board rooms.

When the differences in income and wealth separating rich Americans from everyone else have become wider than at any time since the Roaring Twenties (by some measures, wider than at any time since the Gilded Age), Radcons are cutting social services and school budgets, and showering the rich with tax breaks. When jobs and wages have grown especially precarious for the vast majority of Americans, Radcons are shredding social safety nets and privatizing social insurance.

When international cooperation is most needed to guard against global terrorism, Radcons are turning their backs on the rest of the world, often treating it with contempt. They believe America has enough wealth and power to go it alone, so they launch preemptive wars and occupy nations they deem hostile. When we need to be especially vigilant to protect American freedoms at home, Radcons would prefer to stifle dissent and restrict civil liberties.

In all these respects, there is a clear alternative to radical conservatism. It is a bold new liberalism, properly defined. Such liberalism is more urgently needed than everto stop abuses of power and unconstrained greed at the highest reaches of America; to prevent this nation from becoming a two-tiered society comprising a few who are very rich and a majority who are barely making it; and to unite the world effectively against terrorism and hate.

We live in an era when liberalism, a great and essential tradition, is mocked and its meaning grossly distorted. Radical conservatives have made a point of doing so, akin to demonizing an enemy during a war. They have depicted liberalism as a caricature of the sixties left. It is the equivalent, in their lexicon, to moral laxity and sexual permissiveness. It means taxes on the middle class in order to spend money on the undeserving poor. It is caricatured as the creed of blame America first pacifists who hate this country and dont want to use force against our murderous terrorist enemies. They call liberals effete and elite, traitors and scoundrels, and blame their naive, softhearted generosity and permissiveness for everything thats gone wrong with America. So the Radcons sayover and over again.

In fact, liberalism is not at all the cartoon version of the sixties left that the Radcons accuse it of being. The liberal tradition is directly relevant to the challenges America faces today. The classical liberal ideas that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and took root in American soil soughtfor the first time in human historyto improve the well-being of all people, not just the rich and the privileged. Liberalism has stood for an economic system that betters the lives of average working people, and for a democracy that gives voice to the little guy. That liberal tradition animated American abolitionists of the nineteenth century who fought against slavery. It inspired suffragettes who demanded that women have the right to vote. And it motivated civil rights workers who put their lives on the line for equal rights.

American liberalism has also functioned like a balance wheel, saving capitalism from its worst excesses. It moved reformers at the turn of the last century to stand firm against monopolies and political corruption. It inspired progressives to battle for safety, health, and food and drug regulations. In the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, it led New Dealers to regulate banking and clean up Wall Street. As the Depression deepened, it prompted them to create Social Security, unemployment insurance, and a minimum wage, rather than resort to European-style socialism. The same liberal spirit aroused labor leaders to fight for better pay and working conditions for average working people. And it animated public-works spending to put millions of Americans back to work.

Those who see in liberalism a flaccid pacifism either dont know history or seek to distort it. Liberals have always stood in sharp opposition to fanaticism and violence, and against religious bigotry, totalitarianism, and nationalist zealotry. Liberal ideals inspired Americans to confront Hitlers fascism and Soviet totalitarianism, not only with our military might but also with our moral clarity about the sanctity of human life. In contrast to the us versus them swagger of Radcons, liberals understand our interdependence. Theyve held to the goal of an international community. After World War II they created the United Nations and international economic institutions. They relied on collective security against Soviet aggression. They pioneered a system of international law and human rights.