Document text
SATURDAY December 6, 2003 - Subscribe - Contact Us Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels December 1, 2003 Liberalism Never Had a Chance By Harry L. Cook Ashland In retrospect, liberalism never had a chance. It was in the 1930s during Roosevelt's New Deal that modern liberalism began. The whole liberal idea of "activist" government, that is, that government could actually become constructively involved in the market processes of capitalism was a revelation. There were a raft of things going wrong with free-running capitalism problems in banking, the securities markets, public utilities, agriculture, monopoly pricing, consumer and labor exploitation, and above all, at the moment, intolerable unemployment. Vast personal fortunes were being made, but the economy as a whole was going to pot. For society it was an epiphany that capitalism with government guidance and control could be made to work for the common good, not mainly for those running it. It made so much sense once it was pointed out. Society could have the miraculous benefits of capitalism without its warts. The logic of liberalism seemed impregnable. What was more natural and reasonable than for people in a democratic government to use their political power to make the system shape up. But after a short run liberalism was stopped cold. Within a few decades society had turned against liberalism and embraced a faux conservative ideology that was the opposite of liberalism at almost every point, especially on the point of an active role for government. What happened? What happened was that business got organized. In the early1950s CEOs from Alcoa, G.E., Mobil Oil, U.S. Steel and others got together to think about how to deal in a serious way with this pesky liberalism that was getting firmly established. The group became the nucleus of a wide-ranging, highly developed campaign at many levels to discredit liberalism and replace it with something compatible with laissez faire. So on the one hand there was the liberal side. There was some media support, but mostly unorganized individuals mainly in public service and education, but with wildly different ideas of what liberalism meant beyond the general idea that government had an important role to play to rein in capitalism and to deal with such issues as education, poverty, crime and unemployment. On the other hand there was this overwhelming juggernaut of power, highly organized and with a focused message and with virtually unlimited corporate financing. There were numerous business organizations, trade associations, think tanks, most newspapers, conservative talk shows, the Republican Party and eventually the conservative's very own TV network, Fox News. On top of this several powerful single-issue groups such as the American Rifle Association, anti-abortionists and religious fundamentalists all had a common interest in ridiculing liberals and liberal policy, and all found a home in the Republican Party. So it was no contest. What is called "conservatism" won hands down and its patrons are now in charge of all three branches of government in a way that will fundamentally change the direction and character of America at least for decades to come, and perhaps ensure near-permanent Republican supremacy. A betrayal of the democratic process? Three of the main cornerstones of the corporate/conservative strategy and of the Republican Party erode the very foundations of democracy. 1. Charter and parochial schools are promoted at the expense of public schools that alone will provide the liberal education needed for an informed electorate. 2. Mainstream news sources, the main sources of news, are discredited as biased and unreliable. 3. Government is treated with cynicism and portrayed as oppressive and wasteful. How ironic, but perhaps not entirely fortuitous, that these policies are made to order for the elitist political system that the founding fathers had in mind. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Road Cams