”Where have all the liberals gone?”
”Liberalism is dead.”
”Who can a liberal support in this election?”
”What do liberals believe?”
”Why are liberals hiding out?”
”What`s the liberal program for the `92 election?”
These statements have been printed/uttered in recent weeks, and it reminds me of a 1989 conference at the temple of modern American liberalism, FDR`s home at Hyde Park.
Here`s a sample of the papers read there: ”Liberalism: What It Was, Where It Is”; ”Dilemmas of Modern Liberalism”; ”The Comeback of Liberal Internationalism.”
Intellectually stimulating but lacking vitality.
First, liberalism is not a program and cannot be static. As reformer John Gardner once wrote, ”The only possible stability is stability in motion.”
Sure, liberalism like everything else is shaped by history. But let`s face it, old virtues can become merely slogans. And ideas that once led to opportunity get clogged with privilege. Liberals can pay homage to the past, but we`re not trapped by it. Not even by FDR`s brand. We operate in the present.
Second, liberals are self-aware and have a healthy sense of skepticism-they do not belong in packs.
If that expresses what liberalism and liberals are not, where does one go?
Simply put, liberalism is the conviction that for political power to be legitimate it must be derived from the consent of the people. The old social contract. If liberals have a faith, it is in government by consent.
The social contract, of course, is a myth. Liberals insist on making the myth fact. As southern liberal Leslie Dunbar recently wrote, ”To make consent actual has been and is the ideal-the end and purpose-of liberalism.”
Since liberals don`t run in packs, someone else might not agree with what I believe to be the central human rights. My list includes the right to dissent from authority; the right to be let alone; the right to have a job;
the right to own property; the right to live under a rule of law; and the right to live in dignity.
All these rights, however, presuppose the central right-they, in fact, guarantee the right to live. If a liberal must have a commanding cause, it is that: to ensure the right to live.
Liberals in the 1960s produced results that continue to thrive: Head Start, neighborhood health centers and legal services. They embraced and empowered the poor. Brought them into the social contract in new ways. These developments actualized the myth of the social contract.
Unless liberals (much less conservatives) are willing to change economic relationships and structures such as military spending, not much will happen. William Julius Wilson`s marvelous book ”The Truly Disadvantaged” pointed that out in 1989.
There are lots of poor people, but they exert little influence, for their interests are seldom represented.
As citizens we are in constant tension with what some folks call the American Civil Religion. It is clear that civil religions always come from the top down and not from the people. Ironically, tastes-speech, dress, music-come from ”the people.” Values-decency or meanness, honesty or dishonesty, greed or generosity-are established at the top and imitated by those below.
Civil religions have been and continue to be ways that the few rule the many. America`s civil religion historically has commanded support for a lot of nasty things including manifest destiny, white supremacy, locating the highest social value in the interests of private business, and most recently anticommunism.
Tragic things have been done historically in the name of ”national security”-normally to support some tenet of the moment`s civil religion. In fact, nothing has more effectively squelched the improvement of American life since 1945 than the irrational anticommunist movement.
The phrase ”in the interest of national security” has been used to legitimize acts of violence, efforts at clandestine subversion and overt attempts to overthrow governments around the world.
Recent American presidents, the high priests of the American Civil Religion, have ignored human-centered domestic issues to pursue warmaking and related foreign adventures. Note the tragic invasions of Grenada, Panama and most recently the Middle East. There seem to be no limits to our power-and how we use it.
Here`s where liberals ought to be concerned. We must endeavor to limit, to discipline the use of power.
Liberals can oppose state violence. Individual violence, person against person, is horrible, but ”state-administered violence as in war or capital punishment is the least justifiable of all violent acts,” according to Dunbar.
Likewise, liberals can establish goals. But they must be human-centered goals. No national security. No national interest. And above all, no
”America, love it or leave it.”
Liberals must be concerned with apathy and low (30 percent to 40 percent seems to be the current norm) voter turnout at election time.
Editorial after editorial, article after article, chastises the American electorate for ignoring its duties. The reason for apathy is clear.
Forget presidents and their foreign misadventures. The quality of American congressmen is poor, as in ”lacking in value, trivial,” to quote Webster. Congress has abdicated its responsibility in controlling and disciplining power. It has exalted mediocrity and venality. The public has simply turned away in disgust and despair.
Liberals-whose faith is government by consent-need to live by that faith. Liberals must call a halt to Congress` irresponsible behavior in foreign, trade and domestic policies.
The time has come to call our representatives to account and to hold them to their constitutional responsibilities. It is crucial for liberals to challenge power and authority.
To quote Leslie Dunbar once more, ”Dissent and protest, even occasionally to the point of disobedience, can never be separated from liberalism.”
