Loss of liberalism

By David Auerbach

I decided to expand my horizons this semester by shopping a few political science classes. Yet after 10 miutes of one class, I ran out and retreated to the safe haven of my group IV major. The reason: the professor said that journalists were mostly liberal, since a high percentage of them voted for Clinton. I was certain that Yale's most prestigious political science professors would never say something like that, but he tossed the statement off with such casual ease that I had to marvel at the complacent brain-deadness of the rest of us.

The question is, why does voting for Clinton make you a liberal? Possibly it makes you more liberal than if you had voted for Dole, but so what? David Duke is more of a racist than Louis Farrakhan, but that doesn't make Farrakhan a bastion of tolerance. There are millions of confused conservatives out there who voted for Clinton out of pure disgust for Dole's vapid and contemptuous platform. Calling them liberals would probably get you a shotgun between the eyes.

Perhaps the problem is with the definitions themselves. Every six months some keen analyst tells us that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are hopelessly out-of-date. To the extent that the term still has meaning, I associate practical liberalism (as opposed to pure ideology) with fierce protection of civil liberties, economic regulation for the sake of egalitarianism, and generally hapless idealism--environmentalism, for instance. As far as this definition holds, the term isn't obsolete so much as inappropriate.

No, the real problem is that our society has redefined the right and left to correspond with our two parties, just as this political science professor had done in class. Unfortunately, because the parties are less concerned with ideology than corporate handouts, the terms have become quite confused. Since both parties are in the pockets of the same corporations and lobbyists, how much difference can you expect?

The Clinton Administration has disregarded gay rights via the military fiasco and the marriage bill, and promoted the Communications Decency Act, brazenly allowing loggers to pillage the Pacific Northwest. It has disregarded antitrust laws to promote "big business," carelessly hacked welfare laws, and refused to regulate insurance companies while paying lip service to health care reform.

Yet somehow we still think of Clinton as the moderate liberal and Dole as the moderate conservative, when, if anything, Clinton is the moderate conservative and Dole is the right-winger. Voting for Clinton makes you a liberal, because it's as far left as you can go. The Democrats have to be the liberals, because there have to be some liberals in our government, right? Guess again: there isn't any liberalism left in our government. The only way to be a liberal is to contribute to causes that get you mocked as an extremist, because, obviously, someone that far to the left of even Clinton must be off his rocker. The Democrats are far more insidious than the Republicans; by proclaiming themselves champions of the left and then shimmying right, they brought an end to all the grand ideals that might once have possessed the country, however poorly executed they were.

Yale Democrats: you are contributing to the existence of a corrupt body of politicians that advocate an agenda as cynical and conservative as the Republicans'. Which is fine if you'd like to be a career politician, but morally poisonous if you joined out of idealism. And if you hope to guide the party to the left from the inside, then you're even more naïve than I am. The Democrats have succeeded with their new agenda, and you can't fight what works.

Life is unfair, there is no Santa Claus, and Clinton is not a liberal. I hesitate to belabor the obvious, but sometimes the obvious seems so manifestly ignored that I'll risk sounding stupid to point it out. But again, that's why I'm here.

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