>I've long been a big fan of Manning Marable's, admire his
>critical support of Nader, and generally agree with the gist
>of his article furnished here. But ...
>
>Marable writes:
>
>>A more effective and persuasive
>>position would have been to say that on many public policy positions,
>>especially on civil rights, women's and reproductive rights, on the
>>Supreme Court and most labor issues, Gore is clearly superior to Bush.
>>But on a number of other crucial issues, such as the immoral embargo
>>against Cuba, military spending, trade and globalization, civil
>>liberties, ending the mass incarceration of over a million African
>>Americans and the vast expansion of the prison industrial complex, Gore
>>is at least as bad as Bush.
>
>Marable doesn't seriously consider the organic links between Gore's
>pro-global neo-liberalism and his progressive stances on race and gender
>issues. There's always been a clear connection for "corporate liberals"
>between free trade imperialism abroad and civil rights gains at home --
>see LBJ, Vietnam, and the War on Poverty.
During the Clinton years, the career & death of Ron Brown (he died on a U.S. Air Force plane that slammed into the side of a mountain in Croatia in April 1996) were most symbolic of liberal "anti-racist" internationalism.
>And there are organic links
>between Bush's slightly more "America first" foreign policy and pseudo-
>populist social conservatism -- see the Taft wing of the Republican Party,
>circa the 1950's.
Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas stands out as an oddball in the Democratic Party, combining -- like "America First" Republicans -- domestic conservatism with oppositions to reckless foreign interventions (the escalations of the Vietnam War), at the same time leaving his name attached to the legacy of liberal internationalism & anti-anti-intellectualism.
***** The New York Times February 10, 1995, Friday, Late Edition - Final Correction Appended SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk HEADLINE: J. William Fulbright, Senate Giant, Is Dead at 89 BYLINE: By R. W. APPLE Jr., Special to The New York Times DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Feb. 9
J. William Fulbright, the Arkansas Democrat whose powerful mind and eloquent voice helped to rally opposition to the Vietnam War, died at 1:15 this morning at his home here. He was 89.
The cause of death was a stroke that he suffered three weeks ago, said his wife, Harriet Mayor Fulbright. He had suffered an initial stroke that weakened his right side in 1988 and another, more severe one in 1993.
A Senator during three decades of cold war and domestic upheaval and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee for 15 years, Mr. Fulbright left a lasting imprint not only on foreign affairs but also on education, as creator of the Fulbright fellowships for international study. His skepticism about the statements of his own Government, stemming from the Gulf of Tonkin incident off Vietnam in 1964, affected a whole generation of Americans.
Bookish and sometimes supercilious, the antithesis of a "good ol' boy," Mr. Fulbright introduced legislation as a young man that helped pave the way for the establishment of the United Nations. He criticized Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin when few dared to speak out against Communist witch hunts, and he untiringly preached American withdrawal from Vietnam -- in his 1966 book "The Arrogance of Power" and in vivid televised hearings in 1966 and 1967.
Yet, Mr. Fulbright said in an interview six years ago that he was proudest of his role as legislative father of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts....
...He pressed for detente with the Soviet Union throughout his career, but not always with complete consistency. On Oct. 22, 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy met with senior officials just before going on television to announce his decision to "quarantine" Cuba as a way to stop Soviet ships from reaching the island.
According to recently declassified audio tapes released to historians, Senator Fulbright berated Kennedy, arguing that the action was too feeble a response and advocating instead an invasion, accompanied by bombing.
Mr. Fulbright was not without his critics, to put it mildly. President Harry S. Truman once called him "an over-educated Oxford S.O.B." Senator McCarthy dubbed him "Senator Halfbright." President Lyndon B. Johnson said he was "unable to park his bicycle straight." But Senator Frank Church of Idaho said, "When all of us are dead, the only one they'll remember is Bill Fulbright."
Though internationalist and tolerant in foreign affairs, Mr. Fulbright was a much more typical Southern conservative on domestic issues, including race. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As late as 1975, he opposed civil rights legislation, "first, because I doubted its efficacy; second, because my constituents wouldn't have tolerated it."...
...In the Senate, Mr. Fulbright viewed the budding cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union as being "like two big dogs clawing on a bone." As the conflict deepened, Mr. Fulbright supported the Truman Administration. He backed United States intervention in Korea in 1950, but by early 1951 he was so troubled by the prospect of a new world war that he called for the withdrawal of American forces.
Mr. Fulbright was the only Senator to vote in 1954 against financing the McCarthy investigation into reported Communist influence in the Government. And later that year it was Mr. Fulbright who wrote the bill of particulars attached to the censure motion that, in effect, ended McCarthy's career.
The Senator admired the prudence of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and commended it to his successor, President Kennedy. When Johnson became President in November 1963, Mr. Fulbright privately urged him not to escalate the war in Vietnam but publicly went along with him as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. This led to the episode of which Senator Fulbright was most ashamed.
In August 1964, the White House announced that North Vietnam had attacked two United States destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. At the President's request, Mr. Fulbright introduced a resolution approving the bombing of North Vietnam in retaliation -- in effect, giving carte blanche to make war. Only Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska voted against it.
Johnson had insisted that the bombing would end the war. As it dragged on, Mr. Fulbright came to believe that he had been deceived. "The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam," he said later, "is not to trust government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on government statements."... *****
>I don't think Marable deeply explores enough the
>historic ties b/w policy options he backs and those he abhors. I'm not
>saying that one has to be pro-WTO to affirm gay and lesbian rights, or
>anti-reproductive rights to be anti-NAFTA. But Marable takes too much of
>a timeless, placeless approach to electoral choices, in effect saying,
>"Golly, Gore's _x_, why can't he be _y_ and _z_," or "Golly, Nader's
>for _a_ and _b_, why can't he be for _c_ ?" Politics is not or cannot
>be about politically correct laundry lists.
I agree wholeheartedly. We have to forcefully _reject liberal internationalism_ & develop an anti-racist, anti-sexist, & anti-heterosexist program _within the framework that breaks sharply with it_. Easier said than done, I know, but we really must.
Yoshie