🚀 go-pugleaf

On 1 May 2005 07:05:00 -0700, lanruvi2@yahoo.com wrote:

Another off-topic crosspost in state political newsgroup's buckie!


>ll Clarkson  	  Feb 20, 5:29 pm     wrote in: milw.general,
>soc.retirement, pa.politics, dc.politics, wash.politics
>From: Bill Clarkson <wpclark...@N0SPAM.C0M> -
>Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 20:29:40 -0500
>Local: Sun,Feb 20 2005 5:29 pm
>Subject: PROOF THAT LIBERALS HATE AMERICA ==> See & Hear Ward Churchill
>for Yourself - "Some People Push Back"
>-----------
>http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=1jc70i32o9r29m48zyunst4qtqvv2fq3
>The Triumph and Collapse of Liberalism
>By JOHN LUKACS
>
>The history of politics -- more, the history of human thinking -- is
>the history of words. Consider what happened to the word "liberal" in
>the United States.
>
>It has become a Bad Word for millions of Americans. Confident that a
>large majority of the American people have come to regard, see, or hear
>the adjective "liberal" as definitely pejorative, the president of the
>United States found it proper and useful to affix it to his opponent in
>campaign speeches day after day, across this vast country. Meanwhile,
>his opponent thought it best not to identify himself as a liberal.
>
>This accusatory label is reminiscent of the habit of some political
>speakers 50 years ago who declared that their opponents were
>"Communists" or "Communist sympathizers." Such a similarity, while not
>precise, is at least interesting, since the increasingly rapid fall of
>the popularity of "liberal" began just about 50 years ago. It may be
>worth tracing the curve of its descent.
>
>In the year 1951 no less a demagogue than Sen. Joseph McCarthy still
>used "liberal" positively, at least on one occasion. In a speech he
>accused Gen. George C. Marshall and Secretary of State Dean Acheson of
>being part of "a conspiracy so immense as to dwarf any previous such
>venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so bleak that,
>when it is finally exposed, its principles shall be forever deserving
>of the maledictions of all liberal men." In that very year Sen. Robert
>A. Taft, idol of recent American conservatives, thought it necessary to
>state that he was not a conservative but "an old-fashioned liberal."
>
>But lo and behold: By 1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower would declare
>that he was a "conservative." A tectonic shift in the development of
>American thinking, and of politics, had begun.
>
>I put "thinking" before "politics," since the history of the latter is
>often a slow -- and belated -- consequence of what is happening under
>the surface of publicity.
>[end of sample--read the complete article at the url given]