On Oct 2, 2009, at 9:39 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Doug Henwood 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.
>>
>> 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.
>
> And that isn't your idea of a paradigmatic liberal?
Not really. The paradigmatic liberal was devoted to civil liberties, modest redistribution, civil rights, etc. - in tortured and often contradictory ways, but with at least those professed allegiances. The ACLU, ADA, etc. Precisely the sort of thing the DLC was organized against. In that fight, Obama's on the side of the DLC.