On Oct 2, 2009, at 9:00 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> And that's the this: the opposite of conservative is liberal. And
> if the Nation asked the question Is Obama A Real Liberal? they'd not
> only have to answer it emphatically Yes, so would you and Doug.
I don't. Liberalism is a mushy philosophy. It's watered down social democracy, which is itself watered down socialism, with a dose of imperial self-righteousness thrown in. Actually I'm not even sure of that. Who's a liberal? Obama? He loves the market and doesn't have the balls to redistribute anything, even rhetorically. He once embraced single payer, but no longer. His policies on civil liberties and national security are little different from Bush's. So The Nation is liberal? Maybe, but they're very soft in their criticism of Obama. They run execrable pieces by Eyal Press criticizing Rachel Maddow for being too hard on Obama. How many people even embrace the liberal tag these days? Conservatives have no problem identifying as such, and declaring people and policies to be either conservative or not. Do liberals? Maybe it's just that fuzziness is a congenital disorder of liberalism, but it's the hardest thing to describe in 2009.