> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
> Ah yes, the guy Doug always tells me was so much more liberal
> than Clinton.
> Much like Doug's other favorite liberal Nixon.
> --Nathan
Max then said:
> Well, they were. Ain't no two ways about it.
> In what dimension were they not?
Well on foreign policy, Clinton's military body count - even if people opposed every deployment of force by his administration - is orders of magnitude less than either LBJ or Nixon.
And while people are denouncing the fact that "all" Clinton has done is cut off military aid and supported a multinational force in responding to the present Indonesian atrocities, it was Johnson's administration that supported the Suharto coup in the 60s and it was under Nixon-Ford that the first Timorese mass slaughter was waved on.
If social spending peaked in the 1970s, that had something to do with mass movements, but it also had to do with LBJ-Nixon making the third world safe for capitalist exploitation and the export of the union-heavy mass production industries to countries like Indonesia. The crash of those industries, the downward pressure on wages, and the threat of capital flight all combined to structurally strengthen anti-welfare state forces in society.
Not that Clinton is doing particularly positive alternatives, but his policies also are not as flat out murderous and in support of completely reactionary forces in the third world as LBJ and Nixon were.
There are reasons that Nixon was pelted with rocks when he travelled in the third world.
-- Nathan Newman