[lbo-talk] Rolling Stone: How Roger Ailes created Fox News starting in 1968

[Carrol Cox]

The _word_ "liberal" stretches to cover too many different political 
positions for it to be useful for precise analysis. Many, perhaps most, 
radicals went through a "liberal" phase in their political development. 
And while Idon't know how to _label_ the category I know a mass movement 
needs masses of "non-radicals" not only on the street but as _part_ of 
the leadership which mobilizes those masses on the street. People from 
Move On plus some more from a loosely left church-based organization 
(google CIOP  or IPA) organized a very promising 30-minute picket at the 
local branch of Chase a week or so ago. I knew very few of those in the 
line, though a couple men I didn't recognize knew me.

No liberals moving left no no mass movement.

I don't know how to define "libeeral" as used in the preceding sentence.

Carrol

On 5/31/2011 4:22 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 31 May 2011 16:22:38 -0400
> SA<s11131978 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> On 5/31/2011 3:53 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> NPR helps organize and lead the liberals
>>> in their historic task of moving farther Right
>>>        
>> I think that's a deeply unhistorical statement. Liberalism, however
>> defined, throughout its history, has moved either left or right
>> depending on the circumstances.
>>      
> "Historic task" was an attempt at drollery on my part. I had
> forgotten that we are among people some of whom no doubt believe
> that this phrase has some concrete meaning.
>
> Of course you are right that sometimes they go one way, sometimes
> the other, but at the moment they're going Right, and NPR is
> shepping 'em right along.
>
>    
>> The existence of a thriving left pushes
>> liberalism (or at least a very large splinter of it) to the left.
>>      
> I suspect this formulation misses the mark. Liberals go
> "left", if you can call it that, when a rough consensus develops among
> the elites that some concessions to public discontent are called for.
> The liberals get to work out the details -- subrule 23(b)(c) of the
> Mole Victims Act, which limits liability to actual lawn-care expenses.
> They love that stuff, the centric with excentric scribbled o'er.
>
> But liberals don't take their cues from the Left. They take their cues
> from highly institutionalized and bureaucratic propaganda mills like
> the New York Times and NPR.
>
> Liberals hate the Left. Their whole schtick is about having it
> both ways -- they're kind-hearted and so on, but they're not
> filthy *extremists*, people who want to bring the system down.
>
> They're hardly ever directly influenced by the Left -- or no, I take
> that back; they sometimes *are* directly influenced by the Left, and
> when that happens, they usually turn into outright carpet-chewing
> reactionaries. We saw a lot of that in the late 60s and the 70s.
>
>