The NYTimes could always be relied on for interesting fare.....now, of course, it has to be trimmed the way fat-encrusted cuts of pork belly/bacon to get rid of boilerplate propaganda.
But, one can still find interesting, well-written material, just not as much as in earlier times.
This article, in which it discusses some definitions of 'Liberal' is not to be missed, even though what one used to recognize as Liberal has gone the way of the
1. "Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left.
2. ‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right.... liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms ....
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too.
3.For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers
4. - a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’....this liberal vacuousness:
5. This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing.
6. .....National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
7. When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’
8. Democrats have sidestepped ‘‘liberal’’ and embraced ‘‘progressive,’’ a word with its own confusing history, to evoke the good-government, welfare-state inclinations of the New Deal. Some of the strongest defenses of liberalism’s achievements come from people who identify as ‘‘socialists.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake."
Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left. Who Wants to Be ‘Liberal’ Anymore?
But, one can still find interesting, well-written material, just not as much as in earlier times.
This article, in which it discusses some definitions of 'Liberal' is not to be missed, even though what one used to recognize as Liberal has gone the way of the
1. "Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left.
2. ‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right.... liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms ....
Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too.
3.For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers
4. - a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’....this liberal vacuousness:
5. This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sandersistas might find this vomit-inducing.
6. .....National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.
7. When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’
8. Democrats have sidestepped ‘‘liberal’’ and embraced ‘‘progressive,’’ a word with its own confusing history, to evoke the good-government, welfare-state inclinations of the New Deal. Some of the strongest defenses of liberalism’s achievements come from people who identify as ‘‘socialists.’’
To be a ‘‘liberal,’’ in this account, is in some sense to be a fake."
Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left. Who Wants to Be ‘Liberal’ Anymore?
