Two quick notes: One, what prompted this were some articles mailed to me by a friend, asking for comments. (Yes mailed. You know, paper, envelope, stamp, that sort of thing.) One of them was a silly thing from US News & World Report. (From the date, it should be obvious there's no link to the article.)
And two, this is somewhat edited from the original to relate a little more closely to what I'm trying to raise by posting it here, which in turn required some additional editing for clarity.
John Leo's USN&WR bit about "A new crisis on the left," on the other hand, is more an occasion for pitying laughter and a shake of the head than true anger. For one thing, I wish conservatives and "neo-liberals" would get it straight as to just what it is they want to accuse liberals of. For years the party line was that liberals would destroy all freedoms with a "socialist" view in which the individual didn't figure and that the best interests of society were advanced by competition and the pursuit of personal self-interest. Now comes John Leo, arguing that what's wrong with liberalism is that it's promoted "the breakdown of community" by "fostering excessive individualism!" Incredible.Reactions are welcome.
His description of defenders of the ACLU as being "embarrassed" by the organization and likening it to "a dear but slightly eccentric uncle spouting off during otherwise serious occasions" is an exercise in wishful fantasizing. The notion that the ACLU is so far removed from the American public as to be an "embarrassment" to liberals is true only to the extent that it's an indictment of liberals' craven cowardice, not the ACLU. Remember what I've said in the past about the reactionaries' on-going practice of trying to "prove" things by assertion? This is just another example: Attack the ACLU. If it goes undefended, you've damaged an effective voice for the underprivileged and oppressed. If it's defended weakly, you tar both the group and its defenders. If it's defended strongly, just smirk "they don't really mean it" and talk as if everyone agreed with you. Truth is not a strong point for these people.
I don't know how John Leo would describe himself - conservative, liberal, "neo-liberal," or what. I suspect it'd be some variant of the L-word. But Leo is utterly devoid of anything that could reasonably be called "liberalism." According to my dictionary, to be liberal is to "favor progress and reform," to be "open-minded and tolerant," to be "characterized by generosity." There's absolutely nothing progressive or open-minded or generous about this piece; it is, instead, conservative from its roots to its buds, conservative because it advocates (albeit by implication) rolling back time to a dimly-remembered earlier day when all the nasty irritants and icky problems Leo has such trouble with were ignored into oblivion. It looks to go back to a time when everybody knew their place and didn't question the positions of the privileged. A world where the powerful decided what was "best" for the poor, the homeless, the mentally disturbed. A world where "privilege" and "power" were synonymous with "white male" - particularly "rich white male" - and blacks, women, Asiatics, gays, the handicapped, and others - all those "permanent lobbies of the left" Leo sneers at - knew better than to get uppity. A world, in short, where the prerogatives of such as John Leo went without question.
For my part, as a radical, I applaud the "obsessive love affair with rights" Leo condemns. Is it an easy course? Not always. Does it present us with hard choices such as the right of a disturbed person, who can still tend to themselves and is no threat to anyone but who could clearly benefit from some humane therapy, to refuse such assistance, no matter how sincerely offered? [This was one of the areas Leo addressed.] Yes, most certainly - and depressingly often. But Leo's alternative of asserting, in essence, that some have rights, which can't be taken away, and the rest of us are granted favors, which can be given or retracted at the discretion of our social betters, is an unacceptable council of fear, selfishness, and greed.
The "social fragmentation" Leo blames a concern for rights for accelerating is not a creation or even a creature of the left, but of the right. It's a playing out of the consequences of the rightist notion of "looking out for #1." His argument with the left, when you come right down to it, is that it's enabled more people to play the game. And Leo just doesn't like the competition.
(Which means, perhaps, that John Leo is a liberal: It was Phil Ochs who described a liberal as someone "10 degrees to the left of center in good times and 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.")
That self-centeredness gives the lie to his entire argument. For it's the left, not the right, that declares the existence, indeed the importance, of community, of a sense of people having a mutual responsibility each to the other for their welfare. For example, contrary to Leo's claim, "dumping mental patients onto the streets" was never an effort of the left - what the left advocated was "de-institutionalization," which was to release from mental institutions those who did not truly need to be there and provide them with community-based services. It was the rightists' lack of concern for community, their greedy rejection of any responsibility for another's welfare, that led to their opposing such services, all too often successfully.
The fact is, it's the right that says "I," the left that says "we." It's the right that says "gimme," the left that says "we'll give." It's the right that says "compete," the left that says "cooperate."
Where the left says "us together," the right says "me first." Where the left says "hope," the right says "fear." Where the left says "you can come for help," the right says "you can go to hell."
Leo is, however, right about one thing: Leftists "tend to be straight-ahead rationalists who do not respond much to symbols or calibrate their power." (In other words, we think.) It's the rightists' sensitivity to manipulation of symbols that is the source of much of their power - even when the symbols, such as "community," are concepts in which they do not believe, which, in fact, they destroy even as they celebrate.
Which relates to another question you asked; in fact, it pretty much answers it: "Is the American left working toward true social justice or power-seeking by means of government largesse or promises thereof?" Now, in one sense of course the left is looking for power, because it takes social power and political authority to enact, establish, and enforce the policies and programs in which we believe. And I doubt there's a single person alive with a strong feeling about something who hasn't once thought "If I ruled the world...." But I assume you're asking about the reverse: advocating justice as a means to get and maintain power, rather than using power (or, more correctly here, authority) to advance justice. Bluntly, if you want lessons in power-seeking, you'd do much better to look to the Republican Party than any part of the American left. Because if all we were interested in was power, we'd not be saying half of what we do. Picturing Michael Dukakis blowing kisses to Willie Horton is power-seeking; telling the truth about the prison system and opposing capital punishment is not.
Barring violent insurrection, minority political movements gain political power in one of two ways: either by speaking the truth (as least as best as they understand it) over and over again, trying/hoping to convince enough people with facts, logic, evidence, and moral values, or by playing to people's prejudices, saying what they want to hear, and giving the truth a twist (and sometimes a wrench) that works to their advantage. When political issues arise, which side - the left or the right - challenges the prejudices and widely-shared assumptions of the audience and which side plays to them? When approaching the issue, for example, of family farmers going bankrupt, do you think it's the Socialist Party or the Posse Comitatus that says part of the problem is the go-for-yourself "free enterprise" system in which many of those farmers firmly believe? And is it the Socialist Party or the Posse Comitatus that argues instead that it's all the doing of a conspiracy among "international Jewish bankers?"
In point of fact, where the left has had the greatest impact on our national psyche has been in those areas where we've been able to persuade so many people of the truth of our arguments that ultimately even the right had to admit we were correct. The advances we've seen over the last 75 years or so that have benefitted the poor, the elderly, women, blacks, working men and women, and so on have come at the instigation of the left over the resistance of the right. Even limited programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, child labor laws, anti-monopoly legislation, civil rights laws, and so on were all regarded as the wild-eyed ravings of a lunatic left out to destroy the "American Way of Life" less than a century ago. Just 20 years ago, even something as obviously and universally-beneficial as environmental regulation was being denounced by corporations more interested in their bottom lines than public health as a communist plot intended to destroy our economic system. But the truth won out and now you'd be regarded as a threat to that same way of life if you proposed doing away with such programs. In short, the power of the left to advance justice has come from its commitment to the goal itself, and if the history of this century shows nothing else about political movements it shows that constantly arguing for justice against the prejudices of the day can help advance that justice, but it won't get you into power.
Another way of judging the same question is to ask yourself who benefits. When the left argues for national health care (which will cost federal tax dollars) and the right proclaims the glories of "free choice," who benefits from having their side of the argument prevail? Whose motives appear the more selfish? When the left argues for housing for the homeless and the right spins tales about "voluntarily" living on the streets, even (as one Reagan administration official did) waxing poetic about how wonderful it must be to live without obligations, who benefits from having their side of the argument prevail? When the left pushes for more social spending and the right pushes for cuts in welfare and taxes, who benefits? When the left demands toxic waste controls and the rights wails "unwarranted government intrusions into the economy," who benefits? Time after time after time, the left argues for choices that primarily benefit the needy. Time after time after time, the right argues for choices that primarily benefit the needless. Time after time after time, when folks on the left benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a broader community. Time after time after time, when folks on the right benefit from their proposals it's because they're part of a narrow clique.
It's the right that says "I," the left that says "we."
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