Fallacy of Political Labels

Recently a column, The Vision of the Left, by Thomas Sowell happened in my mailbox. I answer Mr. Sowell herein because it’s applicable to help illustrate the myth of “political labels.” Quoting him, referring to young liberals, “Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded people;” referring to the ‘experienced’ working class, “Ordinary working class people did not lead the stampede to Barack Obama, even before his disdain for them slipped out in unguarded moments;” referring to liberals in general who don’t understand the perils of our world, “Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that "kinder and gentler" approach and the vision behind it.” You get the jest of his writing!

So, Mr. Sowell, just how robust a military do you want, and at what price? It was President Eisenhower who warned us of the military establishment buildup, in his eyes, not that an efficient, responsibly commanded, strong military is not the right thing. Mr. Sowell, did you know the United States’ military budget is already equal the sum of all other nations of this world put together, and it is six-times larger than the next largest, Russia (ref. page 250 Beyond The White House)? We are not paying for the military’s current expenditure. Read Billing The Grandchildren “By the time Congress finishes the latest "emergency" war spending bill, a mere seven years into the emergency, the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will have exceeded $860 billion. For the first time in American history, every penny of that amount will have been borrowed. For the first time, billions more will have been borrowed to finance tax cuts in the midst of war.”

Read We Should Still Like Ike. “From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, the Republican Party has assiduously courted the core of the old Roosevelt coalition: poor, white, working-class voters — mostly rural, often elderly, sometimes sparsely educated and frequently fundamentalist. But in so doing, Republican presidential candidates have shortchanged a vital component of their party: the Eisenhower Republicans.” Yes, many of these grandchildren of Ike’s and our generation are the “liberals” you, Mr. Sowell, claim have disdained, supposedly, the “mature ‘grownup’ conservatives of experience.” These young liberals are not brainless, they read and intently listen to the news; they know what’s going on: a national debt approaching 10 trillion, and now, possibly, another trillion or so with the financial debacle bailouts; a debt speedily dragging this economy and country’s security down a dark tunnel; digging deeper into debt does nothing to give confidence for financial stability. Only if we do the right things now will this trend be reversed? Interest alone is approximately 20% of budget for which we borrow every dollar to pay it. Where are the fiscally responsible, traditional, principled-conservative Republicans (and Democrats; yes, there are the Blue Dogs) of eras gone by, such as Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford? Reagan did some good things, such as enhancing personal savings plans, i.e. 401K, but he did not balance the national budget as promised. Since I wrote A Looming Terror in February nothing has changed my opinion of how I see the perils of our country’s financial instability. Read Reagan era crashes to halt with bailout of Wall Street: referring to the GOP convincing itself that deficits no longer mattered: “The reasoning behind that change of heart was obvious. When the much-beloved Reagan tax cuts inevitably produced massive Reagan deficits, conservatives faced a choice. They could abandon the tax cuts that had brought them great political success and power, or they could abandon their opposition to deficits. They chose to embrace deficits.”

Yes, Reagan helped bring about a quicker Soviet ticket to defeat, a defeat that already had been inevitable, not because of America’s military supremacy but the Soviet’s political and economic system’s bankruptcy. Read: The World Isn’t So Dark “The 1970s witnessed a frenzied argument that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States militarily and was about to "Finlandize" Europe. The reality, of course, was that when neoconservatives were arguing that the U.S.S.R. was about to conquer the world, it was on the verge of total collapse.” One could reasonably ask if America is headed on a similar path. Both our presidential candidates’ budget proposals are projected to get us deeper in debt by the year 2018: Obama by an extra 3.5 trillion, McCain by an extra 5.0 trillion (This doesn’t include the current financial bailout cost.). Fiscal conservatism has not been the standard of the last three Republican presidents.

With regard to political branding, let’s acknowledge that there are, without doubt, left-wing nuts as well as right-wing nuts. Some have expressed themselves on Sowell’s reader responses. Many times those in between the “nuts” mesh in patterns indistinguishable across party lines. Many of us, looking from either side, with a decisive glance realize we have a footprint on each label, if we are really honest about the original meaning of the two labels.

What does it mean to be a Conservative or Liberal?

Conservative means favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change; traditional or restrained in style; moderate; cautious; favoring the preservation of established customs and values, and opposing change; it is to conserve, protect from harm, protect from loss, and avoid waste.

Liberal means not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded; Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism; tending to give freely. I would add a liberal would be an egalitarian: Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

*************If I’m fiscally responsible in my home, believe that the family budgets should be balanced, have as little debt as possible, the same for our Nation to conserve a financial stability for prosperity and security of our Nation, but yet I believe in giving as generously as possible to charities of my choice and that government has some responsibility to share likewise, what does that make me?

*************If I’m all for the sanctity of Life but actually take a Pro-Choice stance politically because of extenuating circumstances women may face with pregnancies; yet I believe that my broader responsibility is to conserve all life, such as providing basic healthcare and emergency food for over 25,000 people who die daily from starvation or malnutrition related sicknesses and other diseases here and abroad, what am I?

*************If I don’t believe in Capital Punishment because my primary reason has always been that a substantial number of innocent prisoners are on death row (Now proven with the advance of DNA) and for the reason that CP does not deter crime as comparisons with other country’s statistics have proved, what does conserving life in this regard make me, conservative or liberal?

************Take what I consider imperatively the number one issue facing our country, foreign oil independence: This N&O columnist capsulated my reasoning: Oil and offshore realities: “Increasing competition for oil reserves by emerging economies will serve to keep prices escalating. By ending the moratorium will we be wasting investment on oil exploration that could be better spent on research and development of alternative, clean and sustainable fuel sources, our ultimate tactic against foreign oil imports.” Rather than reduce the energy issue to an expedient slogan, “drill baby, drill,” why not face the issue head on with a long-term realistic solution that will ensure security for our country. Liberal or Conservative?

Drawing from a pragmatist view, political labels have lost their meaning, and certainly have become mute in most people’s minds, giving no thought to what conservative or liberal really means. People say, “I’m a proud conservative Republican.” On the other hand you hardly ever hear anyone say, “I’m a liberal,” not to mention being proud. And there is a reason for that.

As you put it Mr. Sowell, “The working class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the left.” By all means give the working class praise (I can identify with the working-class, coming through the ranks, having moved side-by-side.); they are smart, hardworking; and, as you might like, some of them also get caught-up emotionally in the culture wars, antigay, religion, abortion, guns, etc. Staking one’s decision on a single issue does little to help solve the most critical problems of our nation. In fact it is the culture-wars entanglement that in part blurs the conservative/liberal labels’ distinction, and further propagates polarization of our citizenry. It was the former NC U. S. Senator Jesse Helms, in his maneuverable rise as The National Master of negative politics who gave new meaning to “liberal” in its stigmatization: spat on it, demoralize it, criminalized it, and disdained it. His right-wing editorials on WRAL TV during the 60s paved the way for entrance to politics and his first run for U. S. Senate in 1972. It was his extension of the right-wing-racial-intolerant-nationwide appeal, the Christian-right support, and being the “tax and spend” watchdog for the nation that gave him a permanent political financial base. This support throughout the USA, in deviation to representing only the good people of NC, was to ensure his continued election to 5 terms, serving 30 years. He shamed many good, middle of the road, liberal or by past standards, moderate Democrats out of the party. His unsavory appeal to social, ethnic strife of the era was ripe, and he adroitly capitalized on it; the post-Civil Rights Act of 1964 had given him a fertile base by those still burning racial prejudices in the South. President Lyndon Johnson has been quoted as having said at the act’s signing, paraphrased, “We have lost the South for the next 50 years.”

I don’t want to be too hard on Jesse. God rest his soul! And I believe he sought some redemption in his last years. It did seem he had softened in his demeanor and tone. And others in their eulogies seemed to be helping him have a legacy more kind; it could have been an attempt of heritage revision. At Helms death, betrayal emotions ran so high that L. F. Eason III, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff. He quit rather than lower flag for Helms defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

Mr. Sowell claims the liberals have so much disdain for the working class, but over the years I’ve seen a sea of contempt against liberals, and Democrats as a whole, painted with the right’s broad brush. Very few Democrats over the last thirty years ran for office without being labeled “the most liberal.” Even Obama is labeled “the most liberal,” when in fact by most ratings it’s about 13th. In today’s N&O the neo-conservative columnist, William Kristol, in his Pounding Home the Liberal Label, (How McCain Wins) reprinted from The N. Y. Times, brands Obama “a garden-variety liberal.” But what does “liberal” really mean? It’s not at times what the opposition would purport it, “a denigration of values or character.”

Many progressive, moderate, liberal Democrats were shamed, or otherwise annulled of their principles to fight back the onslaught of the right’s attack led by Helms/Reagan, thereby drumming them out of the Democratic Party by the droves. My former employer of eighteen years, J. Marvin Johnson, a County Democratic leader for many years and a NC State Senator, road the wave of Reagan Democrats in the 80s. My friend, Eddie Knox, the former Charlotte Mayor, a State Senator, and 1984 Democrat candidate for NC Governor who was defeated in the primary by Rufus Edmisten, joined the Helms bandwagon. Some Democrats said the Party left them, and that possibly was true to some extent. However, the questions should have been asked, “Why not stay to work for and ensure the time-honored principles of what the Democrat Party had always stood for?” Convenience became an overriding factor; it’s easier to go with the flow; being attached to a stigmatized label, “most liberal,” was not expedient; it was easier to get elected on contemporary populist slogans and sound-bits, whether or not those mantras were cogent to good public policy. Is that still the way it works? Maybe!

There is an upheaval within the Republican Party that seeks definition and identity. The party can no longer legitimately claim ownership of the “conservative ID.” The word has lost its meaning within the party; it’s now same to the “liberal” word that has no political meaning in the Democratic Party. What will happen within the different elements of each party is unpredictable, but I suspect as individuals seek to find an identity and a place of comfort in their party, we’ll see even more switches, many going “Independent.” You might call it the Lou Dobbs factor! Many will cross party lines this fall, in either direction and for various reasons. I don’t know if any of the former Helms/Reagan Democrats turned Republican “are coming home to roost.” But they have a lot of reason to rethink what has evolved over the past many years. Although, many of those have now passed on or are fading into the sunset; a new youthful generation of either ideologues or hopeful, pragmatic idealists are emerging to take their place. Which will it be?

I respect all my Republican friends and even love some of them. But as for me I’m still a Democrat. If you must brand me, just call me a “Rational Democrat.”