(Host) Commentator Nick Boke wonders just what happened to American liberals.
(Boke) Just a few days ago I read about “the nearly complete collapse of American liberalism in the face of the resurgent new right” in Jeffrey Scheuer’s recent book, The Sound Bite Society. This isn’t the first description of the disappearance of liberalism from the American scene I’ve come upon. These days you read a lot about conservatives, moderates, independents, and, in Vermont, progressives. But hardly anybody seems to think that liberals matter much any more.
Hardly anybody, that is, except those who find it convenient to blame our economic ills on liberals, like the local Republican who recently explained in a letter to the editor that liberal Democrats are at fault for Vermont’s economic woes.
So which is it? Have liberals really vanished from the scene, or are we still a force to be reckoned with?
It was during the Reagan years that liberals began to run for cover. The crowning event was the 1988 presidential campaign when George Bush, senior, began sneering at “the L word”. Liberals decided to call themselves something else. Neo-liberal never caught on, so we began to speak of ourselves as moderates, or to explain that we were liberal on social issues but conservative on fiscal ones, whatever that means.
It’s been that way ever since. There’re plenty of people out there who are, in fact, liberal, but not many willing to admit it in public. I think it’s time for liberals to come out of the closet, to resurrect this political tradition that accepts a simple premise that many seem to have forgotten: the premise that free-market capitalism is not perfect. The Great Depression of the 1930s made it abundantly clear that free-market capitalism is flawed. This event showed that the poor and the elderly need a safety net. Farmers need protection from price fluctuations. Financial markets need careful oversight and regulation. And all the rest of the things we seem to have forgotten since liberal became a dirty word in the 1980s.
So to those who’d blame liberalism for our current woes, let’s get real. Springfield lost its lead in the machine tool industry because work like this can be done more cheaply overseas, not because of anything closet liberals in Montpelier did. And to those who’re still in the closet, I say come on out. Let’s quit pussyfooting around. The evidence is as clear today as it was in 1933 that if government doesn’t take on certain responsibilities, no one will.
So here goes…I am a liberal. Hmm, feels pretty good. Now you try it.
This is Nick Boke in Weathersfield, Vermont.
Nick Boke is a reading consultant, minister and freelance writer.