> 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.
Hmm, let's see.
When the sixties hit, the main liberal group in America was the ADA. What happened to the ADA?
The following is from a review of the only existing full-length history of the ADA (_Politics and Vision_, by Steve Gillon), summarizing the book's narrative:
> The average ADA member was a white, middle-to-upper-class professional
> male with an income twice the national average. He was apt to live in
> Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts. From the Truman
> presidency to the Kennedy years, he favored New Dealism, peace, decent
> levels of health, shelter, and education for all, a prosperous,
> partially managed economy, and big defense budgets. Poverty was not a
> category. He was profoundly anti-Communist but otherwise generally
> approved of civil liberties. When it came to imple- menting such
> goals, however, the ADA found itself continually supporting whoever
> might beat the Re- publicans, no matter what the candidate stood for.
>
> [...]
>
> There always had existed in the ADA a split between the more
> conservative "traditionalists," led by Gus TFyler of the International
> Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and the "moderates" represented by
> John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. With the coming
> of the political upheavals of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, a new,
> younger group within the ADA began to make its presence felt. Led by
> Allard Lowenstein, the "reform liberals" demanded that the ADA support
> peace negotiations with Hanoi, reject Lyndon Johnson, and support the
> antiwar candidacy of Eugene McCarthy. The ADA, still seeking respect-
> ability, voted to back Hubert Humphrey. This was the traditionalists'
> last gasp as they left the ADA, and the moderates joined forces with
> the reform liberals. The resolutions of the ADA convention of 1969
> were startlingly similar to those of the Socialist party. The ADA
> finally eschewed expediency and moved away from the "mainstream" to
> uphold its vision.
>
And what were those resolutions of the 1969 ADA convention? The book describes them: A resolution calling for cessation of offensive military operations in Vietnam was rejected by a 2-to-1 margin in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate and full withdrawal of all troops. They called for a "fundamental restructuring of US foreign policy" to address "the needs and demands of the poorest countries." "Our values as a nation continue to be distorted. Our economy fabricates new material wants and a credit system to satisfy them while the environment deteriorates." They called for a "massive redistribution of wealth and power in America," involving "effective democratic control over the economic organization of the country." Guaranteed full employment, national health insurance.
"The ADA's convention resolutions became barely distinguishable from the Socialist party platform. Socialists like Michael Harrington, who was elected to the ADA National Board in the early 1970s, believed that this change in liberalism presented an opportunity for liberals and Socialists to forge a new coalition. 'For better or worse,' he claimed, 'I think we have carved out a socialist presence in the democratic left of this country.'" Leon Shull confirmed that a close relationship existed between the ADA and democratic Socialists. 'There was not a bit of difference between the ADA and Socialist party on economic issues in the 1970s.'"
SA