01 Dec 2003 Liberals Angry; Presses Stopped

My brother, Christian Moritz, sent along this USA Today article: “Liberals Finding their Voice and It’s Angry.”

The liberals are always angry. No newsflash there. But this article is worth reading for a couple of reasons, not least of which is its exploration of the similarity of feeling between the left-wing now and conservatives a decade-plus or more ago.

One distinction between the angry left now and conservatives-then not explored, however:

The angry left today is genuinely on the left and is radical. The angry left is genuinely trying to change society in a radical manner; to re-form it with mores new not only to Americans, but to any society Earth has ever known.

The angry left folks face a burden conservatives, circa, say, 1980, didn’t face. Conservative social perscriptions were and are far less radical. What passed as a right-wing economic policy in 1980 would have been called “socialism” a mere few decades before. Bush’s national security model is no less unilateral than FDR’s. Bush’s and Reagan’s tax cuts were based on the same stimulous premise as JFK’s (howevermuch the Kennedys hate to have anyone notice).

The left, however, should be taken seriously. It doesn’t take a majority of the voters to change society, and by volume alone, these guys have to be considered players.

Let’s hope the new journals, blogs and websites mentioned in this article, after they get through venting, start offering something of substance to talk about. They might start by reducing the amount of energy they spend hating one individual, George Bush, and increasing the amount of energy they expend promoting ideas.