Zeitgeist 18.0: WTFWJD w/ American ideology

(World)

In his NYTimes essay, The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal, Peter Beinart channels "the tall, German-American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr." Niebuhr was a dedicated opponent of communism, but he was concerned that in pursuing a just cause, Americans would lose sight of their own capacity for injustice. "We must take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization," he wrote. "We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized." Americans, Niebuhr argued, should not emulate the absolute self-confidence of their enemies. They should not pretend that a country that countenanced McCarthyism and segregation was morally pure. Rather, they should cultivate enough self-doubt to ensure that unlike the Communists', their idealism never degenerated into fanaticism. Open-mindedness, he argued, is not "a virtue of people who don't believe anything. It is a virtue of people who know. . .that their beliefs are not absolutely true."
______________________

(America)

I caught the cartoonist, Jen (who is now a myspace friend) during my Beatitudes Fellowship last summer. Regarding this strip she writes: I'm reminded of a thought I had while reading What's the Matter With Kansas? not long ago -- an absolute must-read for anyone interested in how the Republicans have convinced so many working-class people to vote against their own self-interest. One begins to wonder whether some people have so few progressives in their social networks that it becomes easy for them to believe that Hollywood celebrities are indicative of the norm. I say this as someone who grew up in rural Lancaster County, PA and who lives in a rural area now, albeit not far from fairly cosmopolitan Charlottesville. The "Hollywood liberal" meme fits so perfectly with the "liberal elite" smear -- the right-wing frame that convinces non-elites to vote for politicians who serve the real elites -- that we would do well to recognize it as part of their strategy.

_______________________

(Community)

Word from that incisive blogger, Glenn Greenwald, Esq. pointing out that even conservatives are realizing that Goldwater/Reagan conservatism is over, killed by Bush and globalization. He writes: The central tenets of the right wing movement in this country -- which has seized and now defines the term "conservative" -- are easy to see. They're right there in plain sight -- they want to expand government power in pursuit of mindless, bloodthirsty warmongering and empire-building abroad, and the accompanying liberty-infringement at home.

But here Greenwald nails down what the future means for those who really care about an America that works.

As a result, to be considered "liberal" or "leftist" now means, more than anything else, to oppose that agenda. All of the people now deemed to be on the "left" -- including many who have quite disparate views about the defining political disputes of the 1990s -- have been able to work together with great unity because all energies of those "on the left" have been devoted not to any affirmative policy-making (because they have had, and still have, no power to do that), but merely towards the goal of exposing the corruption and radicalism at the heart of this extremist right-wing movement and to push back -- impose some modest limits -- on what has been this radical movement's virtually unlimited ability to install a political framework that one does not even recognize as "American."

Regardless of what other beliefs one might have, opposition to endless warmongering in the Middle East (and the wonderful tools used to promote it, such as rendition, torture and indefinite detentions) -- combined with a belief in the rule of law, along with basic checks and balances, as a means of modestly limiting the power of the federal government over American citizens -- is now sufficient to render one a "liberal" or "leftist." That's because the political movement that dominates our country is radical and authoritarian -- "security leads to freedom." Our political spectrum is now binary: one is either a loyal follower of that movement or one is opposed to it.

_______________________

(You)