🚀 go-pugleaf

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]