Barry Rubin
The following statement from Lawrence O’Donnell is being widely circulated on
the Internet. I’m sure that most of those who read it think these are
self-evident truths about history proving that Republicans and
conservatives are so obviously evil that the issue is beyond reasonable
debate. Such credulity in the face of the current hegemonic narrative is
an accurate sign of how American history has been taught to the current
generation. It also shows us why we hear the equivalent of “the science
is settled” on the difference between the two currently competing views
of America.
“What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party?
I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote.
Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created
Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty.
Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the
Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean
Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed
them on every one of those things, every one. So when you try to hurl
that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed
of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, because I
will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.”
This statement is well worth analyzing. Begin by noting that while
this is supposedly a pro-liberal statement it is actually intended as a
pro-Democratic Party statement. The message is by the “Anti-Republican
Crusaders” directed explicitly against Republicans. The conflation of
the accomplishments listed and the word liberal, on one hand, with the
Democratic Party creates considerable problems for his historical
narrative.
As a side remark, I thought the word “Crusaders” was not PC. Weren’t
the Crusaders supposedly aggressive, cruel bigots? What will O’Donnell’s
radical Islamist allies think of this usage?
In addition, either O’Donnell doesn’t know much about American
history or he thinks the American people don’t. Probably both parts of
that statement are true.
I am still a registered Democrat but I’m also someone who tries to be
an honest historian. The following analysis is academic–in the old
sense of the word–and as balanced as I can make it.
O’Donnell’s list is the dominant narrative in America today. You will
find it promoted in every mass media outlet and taught as the only
possible interpretation of U.S. history in schools. How accurate is it?
Well, that’s the third question that should be asked. The first two are:
–Why is it that Obama and the current radicals-pretending-to be
liberals have to run on an old historical record rather than their own
record in office and the current anti-liberal ideas they propound?
–Why is it that we should assume that the situation faced by America
today is the same as it was in 1913 or 1933 or 1964? Perhaps more
government and regulation was needed in those years but since we have
had decades of more and more of these things isn’t it possible that
we’ve had enough, in fact, far more than enough?
These are two questions most of the American people never see.
Let’s go through O’Donnell’s list:
–Liberals got women the right to vote. Of course, the main credit
belongs to a women’s suffrage movement. But which ardent supporter of
that movement first introduced the nineteenth amendment in Congress?
Senator Aaron Sargent who was a—wait for it—Republican from California
and a conservative. The legislatures of most of the state passing the
amendment were also dominated by Republicans. This was not primarily a
partisan or wider ideological issue at the time because many people held
views which, in today’s context, would be considered quite
contradictory.
–Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. That seem obvious
but hold on and let’s look at the facts. The main opponents of civil
rights were not Republicans but Southern Democrats. And since the
Democratic party put its own interests above racial justice the party
held back for many decades on this issue. President Woodrow Wilson was a
particularly nasty racist. Most politically active African-Americans
were Republicans. Only at the last moment did President Lyndon Johnson
really turn around the Democratic Party and it changed course. Yet such
people as Al Gore’s father and the powerful ex-Klan leader Robert Byrd
continued to oppose civil rights. Liberals and Democrats deserve credit
for what they did but they did far less than they claim.
I also seem to recall Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves and
Republicans creating Reconstruction while the Democrats were the party
of secession, surrender to the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jim
Crow.
Note carefully something very revealing here. Liberals “got” women
and African-Americans the right to vote. I thought there were powerful
grassroots’ movements that forced these changes on the Washington power
brokers! Yet O’Donnell accurately reflects the profoundly patronizing
attitude of today’s leftist elite toward the little people. Funny, isn’t
it? A real liberal or even a historical leftist would stress the role
played by the average people who courageously grouped together to bring
change. This is one more indication of the isolation of the current
political-intellectual ruling elite (which in many ways is profoundly
reactionary) from the liberals of the past. According to O’Donnell–and
none of the admirers of his statement see the incongruity here!–the
white, male establishment of the 1920s and 1960s, respectively, gave out
these gifts to dependent people the way that government “gives” rights
today. Thank you, master!
–Liberals created Social Security and helped the elderly. That’s
absolutely true but that was a long time ago. What’s relevant today is
that contemporary liberals refuse to deal with or even recognize the
crisis in Social Security and have done much to make it worse. They may
have created it but who is going to save it?
–Liberals ended segregation and passed the civil rights and voting
rights laws. See civil rights, above. If you count the votes the
partisan story is—if you forgive the play on words—hardly so black and
white as O’Donnell and others make it. And certainly since this
legislation was passed, Republicans and conservatives immediately
accepted it and have not really challenged or blocked implementation. Of
course as J. Christian Adams of PJ Media has shown, these laws have
recently been manipulated for partisan purposes by Democrats.
Liberals created Medicare. See Social Security, above. Again, this
program has long enjoyed bipartisan acceptance. Moreover, Republicans
have supported its expansion on several occasions. The question is how
it will be managed now and Obamacare gutted Medicare.
Liberals created clean air and clean water laws. True but see above
on Social Security. The issue is whether these should be continually
expanded, made more expensive and subject to strangling legislation.
As we also can see, it is false to accuse conservatives and Republicans of having opposed all of these things.
In short, O’Donnell largely misstates the record and tries to
distract from the real issues of 2012. I think I could make a better
case for the historical virtues of liberalism than does O’Donnell.
Ignorance aside, why doesn’t he do better? Because his choices reveal
what’s going on today. There are basically two issues on which the
Obama era rests: more entitlement payments and playing the race (or some
other ethnic/gender) card.
You don’t expect O’Donnell, for example, to cite how most
liberals—but not leftists—joined in a bipartisan policy to fight
Communism. There was also a time when liberals supported genuine
academic openness and a relatively balanced mass media. Those times are
also far gone.
O’Donnell goes on to say that “liberal” should not be a dirty word
but a badge of honor. I agree. It should be but it has been tarnished
far less by conservatives’ attacks than by radicals who have hijacked
that word and use it for an agenda that is bankrupting the United
States, reducing liberties, and making a mess of U.S. foreign policy,
among other things. There are certainly many conservatives who believe
they can or must make their case by proving that every liberal president
was terrible and that every liberal action in U.S. history was
detrimental. These people are the perfect counterparts of O’Donnell. But
that doesn’t make either “my side was always right” school of American
history and politics correct.
Of course, it is deliciously ironic that this statement is made by
O’Donnell who is an avowed left-winger and socialist. He is one of those
who epitomize the problem and the reason why so many Americans have
concluded that the “L word” is something to be ashamed of. That will
change only when liberals and Democrats rebel, perhaps after a
resounding electoral defeat, and throw out the left-wing hijackers.
And what if that doesn’t happen? Well, between 1861 and 1913, a
period of 52 years following their dreadful performance during the Civil
War crisis, the Democrats only held the White House for eight, and that
was the conservative Grover Cleveland. Following the debacle of Jimmy
Carter, the president whom Obama most resembles, during the years 1981
to 2009, the Democrats held the White House only eight of those 28
years, and that was by Bill Clinton who ran as a centrist. A whole long
list of Democrats from the left side of the party also failed
miserably. Remember George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry,
and Michael Dukakis?
The truth is that neither Democrats nor Republicans, liberals nor
conservatives have a monopoly on historical virtue. It all depended on
the specific circumstances of the time. And the specific circumstances
of our time make the Obama-O’Donnell crew a disaster for America.
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