LogikAndReazon
Gold Member
- Feb 21, 2012
- 5,351
- 668
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"Last week I spent a few hours with one of America's finest writers. My old friend is still writing, producing some of the best fiction published in America today. And like most writers and intellectuals in this county, my friend is a staunch liberal.
He has been a liberal for over 60 years. Like many in his generation, his liberalism is a relic of the days when the left identified, or at least claimed to identify, with hard-pressed working men and the unemployed. My friend's liberalism has not evolved. It is stuck in fond memories of a childhood during which FDR's soothing voice filled the airwaves with those heartening fireside chats. For 11 years Roosevelt proclaimed that prosperity was "right around the corner." The corner was never turned, but three times the people reelected him.
That is the jolly, hopeful, "we're all in it together" sort of liberalism to which my writer friend still ascribes. He seems not to have noticed that the left has become at once more radical and more cynical. Today, the American left doesn't care a whit about hard-pressed workers or the unemployed -- not that it ever did. What now concerns the left are the massive donations from special interests that make it possible for radicals like Obama to occupy the White House.
Those special interests include unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers, billionaire financiers and entrepreneurs, academics, and minorities. This is not the same broad base that voted FDR into office. Unions no longer represent the poorly paid mass of workers -- they represent an elite whose wages and benefits far exceed those of non-unionized workers. Trial lawyers and academics constitute another elite, while minorities seek to preserve their supposed right to educational and hiring preferences. Environmentalists oppose growth at every turn, even at the expense of the livelihoods of their fellow men. In fact, none of these liberal special interests advances the needs of the broad middle class. All of them are working to further their own interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.
The left's special interests have sacrificed today's hard-pressed middle class on the altar of their own greed and lust for power....."
Read more: Articles: Liberal Decay
He has been a liberal for over 60 years. Like many in his generation, his liberalism is a relic of the days when the left identified, or at least claimed to identify, with hard-pressed working men and the unemployed. My friend's liberalism has not evolved. It is stuck in fond memories of a childhood during which FDR's soothing voice filled the airwaves with those heartening fireside chats. For 11 years Roosevelt proclaimed that prosperity was "right around the corner." The corner was never turned, but three times the people reelected him.
That is the jolly, hopeful, "we're all in it together" sort of liberalism to which my writer friend still ascribes. He seems not to have noticed that the left has become at once more radical and more cynical. Today, the American left doesn't care a whit about hard-pressed workers or the unemployed -- not that it ever did. What now concerns the left are the massive donations from special interests that make it possible for radicals like Obama to occupy the White House.
Those special interests include unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers, billionaire financiers and entrepreneurs, academics, and minorities. This is not the same broad base that voted FDR into office. Unions no longer represent the poorly paid mass of workers -- they represent an elite whose wages and benefits far exceed those of non-unionized workers. Trial lawyers and academics constitute another elite, while minorities seek to preserve their supposed right to educational and hiring preferences. Environmentalists oppose growth at every turn, even at the expense of the livelihoods of their fellow men. In fact, none of these liberal special interests advances the needs of the broad middle class. All of them are working to further their own interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.
The left's special interests have sacrificed today's hard-pressed middle class on the altar of their own greed and lust for power....."
Read more: Articles: Liberal Decay
