Recently I’ve received a spate of those nasty politically-naive, rather insipid yet clever emails that go round and round, forwarded from one to another to hundreds, spouting off about the woes of the country, the supposed sins of the Left, and all containing a germ of truth wrapped in misinformation, outrights lies, and substanceless assertion. Mostly I delete them without a second thought. They are noise, distraction, mud thrown into the waters of discourse where above all clarity should be our goal.
All of them have to do with what liberalism has done to our country. All of them are concerned with telling anyone who will listen what the Right is trying to “save us” from. And all of them are pretty thoughtless. It would be funny if there wasn’t so much at stake.
Below is a post from Lawrence O’Donnell, a newscaster and polemicist who I have listened to occasionally. I don’t follow such people, on either side. From time to time I listen to someone from both camps. I’ve found Mr. O’Donnell more reasonable than most. But I thought he really captured something with this, so I’m borrowing it to express my own views.
For the record, I am very tired of the attempt to make me feel guilty for the progress I support. The only charge I ever heard that had any traction with me about the problems with liberals was the “tax-and-spend” one, but that doesn’t even hold water anymore with me. Conservatism these days seems—may I stress seems—to be all about preventing people from doing things, about taking rights away from those deemed undeserving. Liberalism has always, even traditional free market liberalism (which, yes, free market enterprise is a liberal invention), been about letting people do more, have more rights. I don’t see much wrong with that as a fundamental principle.
So, just to let anyone interested know…