Writing in the New Republic, John McWhorter asks us to abandon well-meaning attempts to reclaim the word “liberal.” ”Liberal in the modern sense had a run,” McWhorter writes, “but today, beyond academia, a critical mass will associate it with certain controversial outcomes of New Left politics. That controversy will be utilized as a rhetorical battering ram; the word’s adherents will be ever on the defensive.” He notes that, to some extent, the “political actors formerly known as liberals” have already given up trying to reverse decades of disdain and contempt for the word. To borrow his example, Hillary Clinton declined to describe herself as a liberal – using instead the term “progressive” – when asked during a primary debate to name her “relevant zone of positions.” Among opinion makers and bloggers – small and large – the word “liberal” fell out of favor years ago, again, in favor of “progressive.”
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about all of this. On one hand, my “political awakening” (as it were) took place at the beginning of this decade, and more specifically around the time of the 2002 midterm elections, as the blogosphere was beginning to come into its own, and as “progressive” became an increasingly popular label. I call myself a progressive less out of a strategic or philosophical commitment to the word (though I understand both reasons for using the term) and more out of circumstance and habit. Left-leaning Democrats were calling themselves progressives at around the time I began identifying as a left-leaning Democrat. That said, in the last year or so, I’ve begun reconsidering my use of the label.
The one thing – maybe even the only thing – Jonah Goldberg gets right in his (dreadfully boring, inane) book Liberal Fascism is his observation (which he relies far too heavily on) that the early 20th century progressive movement (which is where the label comes form, in case you didn’t know) had deeply illiberal impulses. Yes, they successfully pushed for the direct election of senators, recall elections, and a whole host of other reforms, but many progressives were equally enamored with eugenics, and other dubious attempts to “perfect” human life. And while it’s possible to dismiss that as a product of the times, it’s still a very ugly product of the times, and one I’m not entirely comfortable with identifying with (if only implicitly).
That’s not to say that the word liberal is not without its own problems, but on the whole, “liberal” encapsulates a large, broad tradition which is more than worthy of admiration. American liberals are responsible for a distinguished laundry list of accomplishments. I hate to ape from the West Wing, but it’s worth repeating Jimmy Smits’ monologue from the seventh season:
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.
The list goes on: from women’s rights to universal education and meaningful labor standards, liberals are responsible for a whole lot of good. And really, “liberal” is the only word which captures not only those accomplishments, but a whole set of values which are integral to what it means to be an American: a belief in fairness, justice, equality and the right to pursue “one’s own conception of the good.” Yes, as McWhorter notes, words change. But pace McWhorter, I don’t think it’s worth abandoning “liberal” quite yet, there’s simply too much caught up in the word to let it collapse under the weight of a few insults.
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