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The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Love me, I’m a liberal

58 comments on Love me, I’m a liberal

Love me, I’m a liberal
: Scott Rosenberg gives a boost to my I’m-a-liberal campaign.

Good for him: Liberalism should be a big tent, and surely, just as there were “Cold War liberals” who shared some positions, but not all, with their dovish liberal coevals, there has to be room for “terror war liberals” today — even if their conversations with their antiwar brethren escalate into shouting matches.

And he also notes something fascinating about the John F. Kennedy definition of liberalism I posted, something I saw but didn’t post:

It’s entirely secular. No mention of God. No dutiful punching of the religious-belief card. All the beliefs are specifically and proudly humanist…

Human dignity — not divine dignity — as the source of national purpose. Faith in our fellow citizens — not faith in a deity or a scripture. For Kennedy, as a Catholic trying to become the first president of his faith, keeping God out of his politics made perfect political sense, but it also made moral sense. It still does.

58 responses to “Love me, I’m a liberal”

  1. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Give it up, Jarvis. If you’re a liberal then I’m the king of fucking Siam.

  2. gmroper Avatar
    gmroper

    Robert, apparantly you are having trouble expressing rational thought without resorting to common gutterisms?
    Jeff, as to keeping god out of politics making perfect political sense and moral sense I would have to disagree on both points. There is nothing immoral about mentioning your faith in God, anymore than there is in mentioning your faith in your fellow man. Further, the trend to keep religious feeling out of the body politic seems, given the comments from Robert above for example, may be one of the things that has caused or at least supported the decline in polite debate. As to making political sense, whyso? When I was a kid, my mom always admonished us with “Don’t sing at the table!” Why, some kid with a lousy voice ruined it for all of us? In the same light, some over-zealous emotionally constipated (Jerry Fallwell comes to mind) ruins it for you? There is a growing intolerance (on both sides of the political dividing line) that freightens me. Growing up in the Army, and having lived all around, Europe and Central America, I have seen first hand the devistation brought on by intolerance. We need to really practice what we preach and be tolerant of ALL points of view. We don’t have to agree, but we ought to be willing to listen.

  3. Swopa Avatar
    Swopa

    I had the same reaction as Robert’s first sentence, though not for the reason listed in his second sentence.
    The number of new posts on this subject in the last few days should put to rest the question of whether Jeff is pained by accusations that he’s not a liberal. Like Michael Totten, he loves the accusations. Nothing quite like the rush of playing the martyr, I suppose … but darn it, Jeff, your haste to trot out the stake, the rope, and the torches yourself is getting a mite unseemly. :-)
    Another irony is that this post comes just after one that waxes eloquent about using blogs to promote “open exchange of ideas and understanding” on public policy. If you look at Jeff’s recent posts on liberalism, you’ll see the exact opposite — he ignored posters who attempted to discuss the issue constructively, instead seizing on the most extreme criticism and using it as a club to bash others with. And how has he mobilized other blogs in the discussion? To say, “Look, here’s someone else who agrees with me, so there” … whack, whack, whack. Attempts to understand the viewpoint of those who disagree, and to bridge the chasm? None to be found.
    Which makes all the philosophizing about “a Secretary of Interaction” and the like seem like disconnected pseudo-intellectual blather. If the guy proposing such things doesn’t live up to the ideals supporting them, why does he think anyone else will?

  4. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Swopa:
    No, I just ignore fools.
    Seriously… Don’t read your interpretations into what I respond to and don’t. I get my say on the main page; I allow the conversation to move along in the comments with the least involvement from me.
    But when someone make sport of insulting me, well, then, I do answer.
    And you insult me.
    This is still my home, mate. Please behave accordingly.

  5. Swopa Avatar
    Swopa

    Well, there you have it — the greater tolerance and understanding created by blogging. :-)
    Thanks for modeling that for us, Jeff.

  6. Swopa Avatar
    Swopa

    Hey, no fair editing your comment after I’ve started my snarky reply (uhh, even though I hadn’t posted it yet)! :-)
    My point was that the “fool” (the person who said you had no right to call yourself a liberal) is the one person in that thread you didn’t ignore. You ascribed his views to the rest of us — to the point of demanding an apology from “each and every one of you” for things we didn’t say — and continued to bring it up ad infinitum in new posts.
    But that’s the problem with a wide array of information sources (whether comments to a post, or blogs on the Internet) … the more there are, the easier it is to acknowledge only those that are useful in reinforcing your worldview, and to dismiss anything or anyone that is inconvenient (perhaps by calling them “fools”). This is a challenge that IMO, you ought to address in preaching the gospel of blogging.

  7. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Swopa…
    Mate, you’re the one who fired the shots. Read your last post again. Tell me it wasn’t rude.
    You want to discuss ideas here — please do.
    You want to attack me — well, guess what, mate, I’m going to respond.
    I’ve said this before and I will say it again now:
    This is not a forum where, like Saturday night at the bar, you can say whatever you want and no one will know you or remember you in the morning.
    This is my home on the web, my space, and when you come into it, I expect you to act with at least politeness.
    You attack me personally, I will respond. Keep attacking and I will ask you to leave.
    Start talking idea again and I will read with interest. Your choice.

  8. Michael J. Totten Avatar
    Michael J. Totten

    Wow. You never know who is reading your blog.
    Jeff, how did you get the King of Siam to read yours? I’m jealous.

  9. Swopa Avatar
    Swopa

    Jeff,
    At the time I was typing that reply, the comment to which I was responding was “No, I just ignore fools” (with nothing after it). What I posted wasn’t any ruder than that. In fact, I presume you would have invited me to leave on the spot — and rightly so — if I had posted those words as a one-line response in disagreeing with you.
    Questions of tone aside, though, there’s plenty of idea-related content (about the gap between ideals and reality as blogging becomes more widespread) in my comments above, as well as others in reply to recent posts. I sincerely would be interest in seeing you address those issues.

  10. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Swopa:
    I don’t need to respond to everything you say and you don’t need to attack me when I don’t. I have a blog and say what I want to say on the front page. I then let the comments go for people to discuss at will if politely. As for tone: You’re the one who started attacking me. You set the tone.

  11. Rook Avatar
    Rook

    You’re a liberal? Damn, when did that happen? I tell ya, it’s a strange, tipsy topsy world. Next thing I’ll here, Michael Totten is a liberal as well. I’ll be looking out for that asteroid for sure.

  12. Rook Avatar
    Rook

    Man, I hope you caught the sarcasim there.

  13. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Sure, Rook, deftly done.

  14. AST Avatar
    AST

    Why keep God out? There are plenty of liberals who believe in God. A lot of liberals conflate religion with politics. Why is helping the poor contrary to religious ideals? Or loving your fellow beings?

  15. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    If you are a liberal as you claim, then why don’t you point me to one of your liberal posts. Surely you must have blogged something that is in line with a liberal ideology.

  16. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Uh-oh, Robert — or, pardon me, your highness — I seem to have been called before the high court of liberalism. But who the hell made you judge? The same guy who made you king?

  17. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Look, if you want to claim to be a liberal, then you have to show evidence of it. Otherwise you are nothing more than a dishonest conservative.

  18. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    And I repeat, your highness: Who the hell made you judge? You want to hear what I have to say? Hit the archive links. Plenty there. I won’t suffer your inquisition. It’s not your crown, King.

  19. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    So then you don’t care that you have no credibility.

  20. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Are you the judge of that, too?

  21. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Yes, one of them. So are all your other readers. And it’s obvious by the amount of attention you’re devoting to this that your readers think you are a right winger.

  22. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    OK, Robert, I’m tired of this game now. There are plenty of readers who already argued with the three or four self-appointed liberal thought police. You want to speak for them, too? Yes, that’s right, they made you king. I’m done with this now. Enjoy yourself.

  23. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >I’m done with this now.
    Somehow I doubt that. I’m sure we’ll be seeing another one of your, “I really am a liberal, even though I spend most of my time supporting Bush’s policies, bashing Dean and other liberals” posts.

  24. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    Dammit, Robert, he answered your question. Read his archives. There’s plenty in there. This is not the Spanish Inquisition, where one has to defend their orthodoxy on demand.
    If you can’t be troubled to read Jeff’s archives, then take a hike.

  25. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    I have been reading through the archives and I’ve yet to come across anything that identifies him as anything other than a right winger.

  26. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    Then I suggest you don’t actually know what a liberal is, having mistaken “liberal” for “agrees with me in all things.”

  27. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    It has nothing to do with agreement. There are lots of posts I agree with Jeff on, but the fact remains that he talks like a right winger yet claims to be a liberal.
    By the way, I’m not a liberal.

  28. Yehudit Avatar
    Yehudit

    As far as this liberal is concerned, Robert and Swopa thoroughly hijacked this thread. And you both have really odd ideas of what “rightwing” is. You both sound like you’re about 19. Well, Jeff and I are both over 50 and we remember what “liberal” used to mean, we didn’t just read about it in a sophomore poli-sci class. Anyone who grew up in the 60s/70s would peg Jeff as a liberal immediately – it sticks out all over him.
    Onward.
    “Why keep God out? There are plenty of liberals who believe in God. A lot of liberals conflate religion with politics. Why is helping the poor contrary to religious ideals? Or loving your fellow beings?”
    That post doesn’t claim these ideals are contrary to religious belief, but a key tenet of liberal thought is that moral behavior is possible without religion, that religion is optional. My sense of conservatism is that only believers are considered capable of moral behavior.
    I have a religious identification, but I don’t believe we have a monopoly on righteousness.

  29. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Yo, Yehudit… not over 50 YET!

  30. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >Well, Jeff and I are both over 50 and we remember what “liberal” used to mean, we didn’t just read about it in a sophomore poli-sci class. Anyone who grew up in the 60s/70s would peg Jeff as a liberal immediately – it sticks out all over him.
    Right, that’s another bit of right wing propaganda. That liberals really aren’t liberals anymore because they’ve like, changed.

  31. James Avatar
    James

    You know, Jeff, maybe it would have been better to put the shoe on the other foot right from the get go: anyone who opposed the war against Saddam should explain how *they* can still call themselves liberal. Since they were against the removal of a fascist, genocidal, racist dictator, the onus is on them to explain why they did so, on liberal principles. (And let’s quick and dirty define “liberal” here as “Someone who believes that all individuals should be given the means, opportunity, and freedom to flourish as they see fit, regardless of race, creed, class, sexual orientation, religion, or national origin.” And here, “be given” is an operative keyword, in the sense that liberals tend to support government intervention via education and social programs, while conservatives do not– as is “national origin”, since liberals tend to support increased foreign aid and amelioration, while conservatives usually do not.)
    So what, again, was the *liberal* argument against the war?
    Well, here were all the general anti-war arguments:
    1) It’s really an oil grab.
    2) It’ll lead to massive civilian casualities.
    3) It’ll provoke more terrorism.
    4) It’ll destabilize the region.
    5) It’s unilateral.
    6) It’s backed by the conservative Bush administration, which is not to be trusted.
    7) It’ll require a massive post-war reconstruction effort that we can ill afford.
    8) It’s actually being done for the sake of Israel, because the Jews secretly control the White House.
    9) It’s a distraction from the war on Al Qaeda.
    Hope I haven’t missed any. Because I can’t see the *principled* liberal argument in there at all. 1) is actually Marxian in premise, in that it assumes government policy is merely the product of capitalist interests. 2) is pacifistic or anti-military, in that it’s grotesquely ignorant about how the US armed forces fights wars. 3), 7), and 9) are apolitical, *prudential* arguments, as is 4), which is also more *conservative* in nature, in that it values preserving the status quo. 6) can be refuted by the fact that the war was equally backed by the liberal Blair government, and 8) is better described as right wing, anti-semitic, or bat-s*** crazy. (Take your pick.)
    So we’re left with 5, because liberals do, by tradition *if not in principle*, tend to support multilateralism. But you can easily find many counter-examples of liberal interventionists rejecting absolute multilaterism (i.e. Clinton making an end-run around the UN, over Bosnia). And a war with the support of 60 or so countries is difficult in any case to qualify as “unilateral”. So unless total, unrelenting fealty to the will, letter, and spirit of the UN is a liberal principle (I don’t think it is), I fail to see *any* anti-war argument that is truly liberal in nature. Since when are liberals defined as Marxist, isolationist, pacifist, preservers of the status quo? And so why the hell should Jeff Jarvis have to defend his right to call himself liberal, in this regard, when he’s following liberal principles like he really believes in them? And those who criticize him evidently don’t?

  32. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Pro-choice.
    Pro-everything liberal I can think of.
    Pro-humanity.
    Now people say he’s right-wing for believing in any military action that improves millions of lives? Utter non-sense. I must be a Liberal because I believe in government staying out of my life and keeping me safe, right? Wrong.
    I’m pro-gun, pro-legalization of marajuana and maybe even crack(deciding on a stance is hard work), Pro-life(protecting the unprotected future children), pro-vouchers, I’m for a low flat tax, and I could care less if two men had sex with eachother. I’m for freedom of press, speech, and action(as long as action doesn’t directly hurt others).
    Wait, I don’t agree with everything GWB does? I must be a Liberal.
    As a Conservative with a Liberatarian bend, I say to Jeff: Onward Liberal soldier.

  33. Angie Schultz Avatar
    Angie Schultz

    Liberals haven’t changed, Robert. Liberalism has. Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, I was all liberal and stuff. I was against racism and sexism and stuff like that, and believe me in rural Missouri these were not always popular positions.
    One day I bent to pluck a gentle flower to offer in peace and love, and when I straightened up again there was a woman screeching that I’d destroyed twenty acres of Madagascan rain forest and murdered twelve Indonesian children by plucking that flower, because don’t you know we’re all connected and a butterfly can’t flap its wings in Ohio without causing a drought in Kazakhstan. Someone else said I was racist, because yellow flowers symbolized the Asians I wanted to murder, and someone else pointed out that flowers are the sexual organs of plants, which showed my oppression by the patriarchy. While I was down messing with the dandelions liberalism roared past me, going leftward.
    Liberalism is the victim of its own success. The great struggles of the sixties—racial and sexual equality—were (largely) won. No one serious now argues for the return of segregated lunch counters, not even the Robert Byrds and Strom Thurmonds of the world. Ideas that were once fairly radical are now mainstream.
    Today, many of those former reformers decided that, if the world was not perfect, it was a close enough approximation, and settled down to enjoy the better new world. Some, however, had come to love the fight more than the goals they fought for. For one thing, when there was Evil to be fought, they were important. They decided that “much better” wasn’t near good enough. Sometimes they had to really stretch to show that there was still injustice, but they managed.
    They’re joined by younger people who’ve been raised on the brave tales of yesterday, who long to stick it to the Establishment, man. For them, the fantasy of being brave dissidents was more important than what they were dissenting against (which wasn’t altogether unknown back in the ’60s, either).
    These are the people thought of as “liberals” today, whereas poor old fashioned liberals like Jeff have become mainstream.
    If it makes you feel any better Jeff, you wrote something a while back that made me think you were some kinda damn Commie. Can’t remember what it was, now.

  34. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >And so why the hell should Jeff Jarvis have to defend his right to call himself liberal,
    Because he is the one who keeps bringing it up on his blog. Because he is the one who is making the claim but doesn’t provide any currency to back up that claim.
    Maybe in real life Jeff is a raging lefty, but in the blogosphere, he’s nothing more than a common right winger. He even has the right wing lexicon down pat.

  35. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >These are the people thought of as “liberals” today
    No they aren’t. They are considered left wing extremists and do not represent liberals today any more than right wing extremists represent Republicans.
    And your belief that there are no more injustices to be fought only betrays that you do not understand liberalism at all. Liberalism says that there must be equality for all, not we’ve gotten equality for most, so let’s be satisfied with that.

  36. JD Lasica Avatar
    JD Lasica

    Jeff, I think your points are well-taken. Liberalism needs a big tent. The last thing the left needs is a litmus test for its dwindling membership.
    The trouble that a lot of folks may be having with your professed liberalism is that by repeatedly arguing that 9/11 means that we are in the middle of World War 3, it opens the door for the most right-wing administration in U.S. history to clamp down on our civil liberties, to engage in foreign misadventures that have nothing to do with the war on terrorism, to use 9/11 as a pretext for other agendas.

  37. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Liberalism is the victim of its own success. The great struggles of the sixties—racial and sexual equality—were (largely) won.
    This part of Angie’s post I agree with.
    Today, many of those former reformers decided that, if the world was not perfect, it was a close enough approximation, and settled down to enjoy the better new world.
    This part, too. And while we’re all waxing poetic about the evils of today’s liberalism, the new toxic element might as well join in. This is precisely the problem with liberals today: complacency (although it’s very slowly receding). Liberals were so convinced that the major fights were won once and for all that for a long time they were oblivious to those who were determined to roll back things like, say, multiple voices in the media (the conservative canard about “liberal bias” basically means “gosh, a piece of news my party didn’t approve managed to sneak through”), the basics of liberal economics that built a uniquely prosperous society between the 50s and the 80s, and so on. Moreover, they were under the illusion that the increasingly loony rightists who were assaulting them as enemies of America were in any way genuinely interested in debate, or an exchange of ideas. The end result of this is garbage like Todd Gitlin’s “Can there be a decent left?”
    As we see consistently in the right-wing blogosphere, there is little or no such interest. The point of too much of blogistan is not a parliament, but an echo chamber in which all but a few politically correct ideas are forbidden. Swopa is 100% correct that Jarvis is replicating this pattern, in particular with his repeated attempts to defend himself as a “liberal.”
    As for James. Well, let’s see how his summary of anti-war arguments fares:
    1) It’s really an oil grab.
    In truth a very common left-wing argument against the war. Conservative opponents of the adventure were often dead set against it to the point of absolute denial, and I sympathised with them… but even they had to raise eyebrows when, in the first days of the invasion, American troops were seen posted at the doors of the Oil Ministry and protecting virtually nothing else.
    Put it this way, if you wanted to convince the world this wasn’t an oil grab, that was a Bad Call.
    Nevertheless, since Iraq has yet to yield Dime One in oil revenue, it’s fair to say that if it was an oil grab, it was spectacularly boneheaded. Obviously there’s much, much more going on.
    2) It’ll lead to massive civilian casualities.
    Some anti-war arguments focussed on the civilian casualties of the initial invasion as probably horrific. We don’t know to what degree they were right, because we don’t have numbers. (The Pentagon is against body counts because in earlier wars they were misused by commanders in the field.)
    Others focussed on the probable death toll from a war plus an ongoing insurgency. Here, too, we have little information.
    Anyone who feels comfortable dismissing either argument can be dismissed immediately as unserious; the American military has very obviously never been shy about incurring civilian casualties when it was felt necessary. But right now we can’t say anything conclusive, with the possible exception that as many Iraqis have very likely already died as would have in an average year under Saddam. “Humanitarian” hawks would do well to take note of developments here.
    3, 4, 7, and 9 are all, of course, very good points against the war. Of them, 3, 7 and 9 are certainly conservative arguments rather than traditionally “liberal” ones. One of the hallmarks of the recent antiwar movement was ideological diversity, and many, many more conservatives were part of it than is usually the case… and many liberals learned from them and came to appreciate their viewpoint. A process of learning evidently alien to too many commenters here.
    4, however, is not a “conservative” argument — favouring any particular status quo is a situational affair, and neither a preserve of liberal or conservative. It’s context that matters.
    5) It’s unilateral.
    The runup to the war featured some extraordinary diplomatic boneheadedness by the Bush Administration. “It’s unilateral” vastky oversimplifies the response to this; the call for “multilateralism” was really an attempt by parties across the political spectrum (again this was far from just a “liberal” thing) to wake Bush up to the fact that he was obviously trying far too hard to screw over and humiliate too many traditional allies for the sake of an apparently under-planned and tenuously-justified war (on the last point, see below). Egregious childishness like the “Freedom Fries” incident obviously didn’t help matters either.
    6) It’s backed by the conservative Bush administration, which is not to be trusted.
    This is either inaccurate or dishonest summary, and frankly it doesn’t matter which. The reason people didn’t trust the Bush Administration is not because it was “conservative,” but because it openly repudiated basic elements of traditional deterrence (the infamous “Bush doctrine”) and was apparently being guided by a hyper-aggressive overall strategy in re: the Middle East and the world (the “Axis of Evil” looked a lot like a group of states named in PNAC’s “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” report, for example… and see below on this).
    8) It’s actually being done for the sake of Israel, because the Jews secretly control the White House.
    For people who regularly froth at the mouth every time some clueless anarchist compares Bush to Hitler, pro-wars are awfully free and unconcerned about cheapening the charge of anti-Semitism by flinging it around very carelessly indeed. Given that anti-Semitism is a real and serious problem, one had to really question the integrity of a person who would descend to using the term as a bludgeon against anyone who criticizes a self-identified Washington lobby group. It’s so obviously counterproductive and obscurantist that it almost seems, frankly…
    well…
    anti-Semitic.
    Okay, never mind that; that’s sinking to your level, innit? Really, it’s just the kind of rank bullshit recently peddled by the likes of Brooks, and Josh Marshall gives the appropriate response to it. No doubt it will need to be given again (and again, and again) as boneheads in comments sections and blogs try to engage in the same dishonorable behaviour, thinking it’s cool.
    Missed reasons:
    10) The official motives for the war were lies.
    Which turned out to be correct.
    11) The war will lead to a bloody insurgency that will effectively scotch the so-called “humanitarian” rationale that remains after you relinquish the official motives.
    Which thus far is also correct, and also not specifically “liberal.”

  38. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    …it opens the door for the most right-wing administration in U.S. history…
    Put down that Kool-Aid and back away, J.D. This “most right-wing” administration has — among other things — expanded Federal control of education with Teddy Kennedy’s active support, expanded entitlements massively, expanded foreign interventions, and proposed something just short of an amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
    This is not the most right-wing administration in history. Or at least it’s not if “right wing” means anything more than “don’t like it”. Not if “right wing” doesn’t apply equally well to Jack Kennedy’s administration, which — after all — campaigned to the right of Eisenhower on defense, cut the top marginal tax rates massively, and engaged in foreign “adventures” and unilateral interventions in other countries (including Cuba twice, once nearly leading to another world war).
    Nor — unless you can document that the Bush administration has imprisoned tens of thousands of American based on their ethnic origin, used the FBI to harass political opponents, took total control of commerce, enforced rationing with criminal law, and actually incarcerated or committed really vocal opponents of the country’s foreign policy — can you reasonably compare Bush’s restrictions on civil liberties with Franklin Roosevelt’s.
    More than anything else, I think it’s obvious that they really don’t teach history in the schools any longer.

  39. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    Okay, Dr Slack, to summarize, you appear to agree that “liberal” anti-war argument (1) (oil grab) was mistaken. (By the way, that business about US troops only guarding the Oil Ministry is one of those legends which turned out not to be the truth, going right along with the tens of thousands of items looted from the Iraqi Museum.)
    You feel that it was a reasonable argument to claim that the war would lead to increased terrorism (3), destabilize the region (4), and (9) prove a distraction from the rest of the War on Terror, specifically with al Qaeda (9). You agree that these are not “liberal” arguments. (They’re also clearly not supported by the facts now.)
    You also don’t feel that (4) the desire not to disturb (“destabilize”) the status quo is “conservative”, which is just ignorant, look up the word for God’s sake.
    You agree that the criticism that the war was unilateral (5) is wrong — as well as not specifically “liberal” — except in the extremely specialized (and Humpty-Dumpty-ish) sense that “unilateral” means “certain to piss off some allies.” Considering that it turns out the so-called allies it pissed off were in fact military allies of Iraq (Russia, Germany, and France have all now been documented as having provided materiel support to Iraq in violation of UIN sanctions, and in the interval leading to war) this doesn’t seem like a serious criticism.
    You don’t believe it a valid argument to claim the war took place because the White House is in thrall to the Jews and Israel (8). You also apparently don’t believe these explicit accusations were made in “mainstream” channels. You need to read The Guardian, watch BBC commentary shows, and get out to the foreign press more often.
    You do apparently believe that the reasons offered for the war were lies (10) and that there is a massive and bloody insurgency in Iraq following the war (11).
    (10) has been refuted so often and so thoroughly that if you continue to believe it I suspect it’s willful, and that it’s futile to argue with you about it, and (11) is also simply not true in any informed sense: the insurgency has been quite low-level, if heavily covered in the press, and the murder rate in Iraq is lower than it is in Washington DC.

  40. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    But now I’m confused (he said, continuing — I pressed the wrong button) — Dr Slack, you appear to have concluded that the arguments against the war were either conservative, or not specific to either end of the political spectrum, rather than liberal.
    Why in the world does it make sense to claim that support for the war is conservative, or illiberal? I mean, just logically? It would seem the only valid inference is that it either is liberal, if liberal is the opposite of conservative, or more likely that it’s neither liberal nor conservative, and claims to the contrary are vacuous.

  41. Hipocrite Avatar
    Hipocrite

    You can be a liberal and support the war.
    You are likley not a liberal if you are busy spouting the right-wing mantra about the war. You are likley not a liberal if your only policy position is supporting the war.
    Your search – “safety net” site:buzzmachine.com – did not match any documents.

  42. Angell Avatar
    Angell

    {For Kennedy, as a Catholic trying to become the first president of his faith, keeping God out of his politics made perfect political sense, but it also made moral sense. It still does.}
    Interesting!Similarly, Hermann Rauschning, a Hitler associate, said, “One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both.” In addition, Hitler declared Nazism the state religion and the Bible was replaced by Mein Kampf in the schools.

  43. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    By the way, Angie, that was a lovely second graf.

  44. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    So, Hipocrite, you’re now arguing that Jeff isn’t a real liberal, not even because he doesn’t write enough about abortion or whatever, but because he hasn’t used the specific phrase “safety net”?
    Words fail me.

  45. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Safety net. Safety net. Safety net.

  46. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    *Whew*. I’m glad that’s settled.

  47. JorgXMcKie Avatar
    JorgXMcKie

    And some of these folks evidently seriously don’t understand why they are losing so many of us who were on the liberal side a few decades ago. I can remember the time when we willingly accepted the company of any non-lunatic who would help fight the good fight. (I was even let in.)
    Today, apparently, we have to suffer more scrutiny at the hands of the self-proclaimed “liberals” to get into the (not-so) big tent than a presumed Al-Qaeda member would get from the Ashcroft DoJ at Dulles Int’l. Keep making those litmus tests harder guys (I’m thinking Robert and swopa, here) and pretty soon you can all meet conveniently in any handy elevator.

  48. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >The last thing the left needs is a litmus test for its dwindling membership.
    No, the last thing the left needs is for right wingers to pose as left wingers and then bash everything the left wing does or says. Jeff is undoubtably a right wing blogger.

  49. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >Keep making those litmus tests harder guys (I’m thinking Robert and swopa, here) and pretty soon you can all meet conveniently in any handy elevator.
    I’m not a liberal, I’m not even American (note for all you frothing at the mouth right wingers. I’m Canadian so if you’ll turn to page 5 in your Republigoon playbook you’ll see that the proper way to address me is as an anti-American socialist).
    But I digress. The simple fact is that Jeff portrays himself as a right winger on his blog. There is nothing in it to back up his claims that he is indeed a liberal. So his claims that he is one is being treated as yet another Republicon propaganda trick. It’s simple, if he wants to claim to be a liberal, he has to show his blog readers he is a liberal, otherwise his claims are empty.

  50. Charlie Avatar
    Charlie

    Robert, I lived in Canada for years, and I’m quite aware of what Canadians are like — and at least you haven’t started taling about health care yet, thank God.
    But the more you insist that Jeff’s “a right winger” the more you demonstrate Jeff’s essential point: that the current litmus test for some people is that you must object to the War and think that Bush is a Machiavellian plotter who is also a semi-human anthropoid, or else you’re not a “liberal”.
    I recall Jeff off hand talking about being pro-choice, a registered Democrat, a fan of the Clintons, and in favor of a social safety net. The only thing I can think of that he’s not been “liberal” about is the war. You claim you can’t find it in the archives, and frankly I’m leaving for Seattle in about 4 minutes, so I’m not going to look it up for you.
    In any case, I don’t think it matters: it’s clear that lockstep agreement on this single issue is the only measure on which you decide. Fine; you’re entitled to your opinion.
    But be honest with yourself; admit to yourself that that’s the only thing on which you are basing the opinion.

  51. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    By the way, that business about US troops only guarding the Oil Ministry is one of those legends which turned out not to be the truth
    No doubt a reference to “embedded reporter” Jonathan Foreman’s claim — which appears to rest on an assertion that there were “no photos” of the US troops protecting the building. If you feel Foreman is to be taken seriously, then we’d have to ask why the US military didn’t swiftly debunk AFP reports that named and quoted specific commanders protecting the building and offering rationales for why they were doing so. Maybe they did do this and I’ve somehow missed it.
    to claim that the war would lead to increased terrorism (3), destabilize the region (4), and (9) prove a distraction from the rest of the War on Terror, specifically with al Qaeda (9). You agree that these are not “liberal” arguments. (They’re also clearly not supported by the facts now.)
    We don’t know to what extent they’re supported by the facts, because these aren’t arguments that lend themselves to the instant gratification atmosphere of blogging. Al Qaeda’s level of international activity, however, strongly suggests they haven’t been dented. The degree to which the threat to the US specifically has been increased, or reduced, or changed at all is impossible to say — the Homeland Security “terror alerts,” for instance, seem more like a tool of political theatre than of actual threat assessment.
    The jury is still very much out on the long-term effects on the region; we’re only safe now in discounting the most radical of predictions, which were far from the most important, influential or numerous. (Many of the most pessimistic predictions were based on the assumption that the Bush admin’s WMD claims could be trusted. Big Mistake.)
    You also don’t feel that (4) the desire not to disturb (“destabilize”) the status quo is “conservative”, which is just ignorant, look up the word for God’s sake.
    Now, now, don’t be a prat. There’s an obvious difference between using the word “conservative” in the ideological sense and using it literally. Unless, that is, you think ideological “conservatives” are automatically constrained to defend any status quo, no matter the context.
    You agree that the criticism that the war was unilateral (5)
    The question of whether it was “unilateral” is really a misstatement of the argument about whether or not it represented a return to ad hoc alliance-building and an attack on the ideas of international law and institutions.
    Considering that it turns out the so-called allies it pissed off were in fact military allies of Iraq . . .
    Hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of the scurrilous allegations against Germany and France aren’t regarded as especially credible — most of them are apparently based on vague suppositions and insinuations by anonymous sources. Those conspiracy theories have always struck me as one of the looniest and most dangerously immature of pro-war memes.
    Of course, most Western powers, and Russia, were in bed with Saddam at some point during his reign and supplied him with weapons. The US is no exception to this, and neither are France or Germany. Which in the current context is pretty much meaningless.
    You don’t believe it a valid argument to claim the war took place because the White House is in thrall to the Jews and Israel (8).
    The neocon policy that inspired the war was pretty explicitly, and often stated by the neocons, to be partly about protecting Israel. That was a motivation for a war with many of them, and many outlets pointed this out. You’re no more honest or credible than Brooks if you imagine this amounts to a claim that “the White House is in the thrall of the Jews.” Nor is it honest or credible to pretend that anyone whose focus does dot the i’s or cross the t’s as you dictate can be dismissed as anti-Semitic.
    (10) has been refuted so often and so thoroughly
    In the bubble-world of kneejerk Bush apologetics, where selective amnesia and obsessive parsing amounts to “refutation.” The world outside the echo chamber is not fooled. Time to start asking yourself why.
    (11) is also simply not true in any informed sense: the insurgency has been quite low-level, if heavily covered in the press
    I’d say that hairsplitting about what according-to-Hoyle “level” the insurgency is at is fundamentally misguided.
    and the murder rate in Iraq is lower than it is in Washington DC.
    Given how little information we have about anything that’s currently happening in Iraq, I highly doubt either you or John Lott really know what the murder rate is in Iraq. And I find this claim highly suspect.

  52. Hipocrite Avatar
    Hipocrite

    I recall Jeff off hand talking about being … in favor of a social safety net.
    This would mute my problem. Could someone please find Jeff saying something positive about a social safety net? I’ve tried searches for welfare, safety net, aid to families, food stamp, eitc, section 8, housing assistance, school lunch, progressive taxation, among others, all with nothing.

  53. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >Could someone please find Jeff saying something positive about a social safety net?
    I doubt it. Apparently the old definition of liberal was anyone who supports Republican policy and bashes liberals.

  54. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >But be honest with yourself; admit to yourself that that’s the only thing on which you are basing the opinion.
    No, it is based more on the fact that he doesn’t blog anything liberal but merely professes to be one.

  55. Sortelli Avatar
    Sortelli

    Mr. Jarvis comes across as much more credible to me than someone who insists on arguing against him by putting him on “The Other Side”. Get a new line, Robert. This one is worn out.

  56. CBK Avatar
    CBK

    Robert is the same troll who ruins/ruined Alaa, the messopotatmian’s, comments section.
    He is best ignored.
    CBK

  57. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    Incidentally, the post just above Hipocrites was me.
    Mr. Jarvis comes across as much more credible to me than someone who insists on arguing against him by putting him on “The Other Side”.
    Speaking in terms of American political ideology, both “conservatives” and “liberals” have identifiable policy positions on numerous key issues (and folks, the talk about “litmus tests” is hypocritical bullshit, unless you’re willing to abandon definitions that have any meaning whatsoever). Those who have noted that he doesn’t seem to exhibit much other interest in things liberal are, AFAICS, quite on point.
    Now, maybe he’s done so in the past and I’ve missed it. Frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination to go digging through all his archives to confirm this, but if Jeff is as liberal as he’s mounting a “campaign” to claim in this sense, that wouldn’t be an issue anyway.
    The war, of course, is not strictly speaking either a liberal or conservative issue. OTOH, liberal partisans of the war seem to have a strong tendency to be heavily influenced by the dominant atmosphere of war apologetics. That atmosphere is very much about supporting the versions of reality put forth by those who started and are currently prosecuting and defending the war: the GOP. So it’s not surprising that folks like Jarvis start to cut an increasingly right-wing profile, and they shouldn’t be shocked that people notice this.
    If Jarvis is claiming to be liberal in a vaguer sense (and who would argue with thinbgs like “human dignity as the source of national purpose”? the whole point of Kennedy’s speech was feel-good appeal to the broadest possible demographics) then fine. But then, Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia are “liberals” too. Somehow I doubt many conservatives would buy that.

  58. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    >So it’s not surprising that folks like Jarvis start to cut an increasingly right-wing profile, and they shouldn’t be shocked that people notice this.
    I think Jeff’s penchant for bashing Dean makes him appear to be a right winger more than his support for the war. I think his propagation of the right wing propaganda that liberalism has changed makes him appear to be a right winger more than his support for the war. And of course, his lack of any liberal postings makes his claims of being a liberal nothing more than hot air.