Joe McCarthy's Ghost, Or Why Can't America Like the Left?

Veteran reporter Marsha Johnston offers this commentary on the tarring of the progressive political agenda as either too liberal or unpatriotic.

As a confirmed progressive American who has lived long enough in Europe to see the benefits to average citizens of governments that support social services, I am frankly sick and tired of the typical knee-jerk aversion to anything "left" that I see among many of my compatriots.

A classic example has been the Democratic "Leadership" Committee's warnings to its party faithful about "moving too far left" in choosing an opponent for George W. Bush. In the DLC's venerable analysis, supporting the "activist base" of the party that everyone believes responsible for driving former Vermont governor Howard Dean's phenomenal presidential campaign, is frivolous at best and irresponsible at worst.

Why? Because, to hear the honorable Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind) tell it, such support indicates simply a visceral, destructive anger, rather than any constructive desire to govern the country. The DLC's fear of the "left" is palpable; indeed, it issued two such warnings in the space of about 6 months.

Their cowardice is painful to witness. You'd think McCarthy was still chairing the House Committee on Un-American Activities! Have they been so cowed by this administration's tarring of any opposition as "unpatriotic" that they cannot avoid such cliched reactions that serve only to keep McCarthy's spirit alive and well? (God knows pro-Bush attack-dog columnists like Ann Coulter are doing a fine job of that all on their own! It would seem that, if she had her way, history books would be rewritten to say that McCarthy was, in fact, right about a Communist threat to the US.

Others will say that it is not the specter of McCarthy that motivates the DLC, but simply those of McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, and the spectacular losses they suffered because the American electorate was persuaded they were "too liberal" to govern the country "properly".

That the US is a politically and culturally conservative nation cannot be debated. Its two-party, winner-take-all system practically guarantees that any candidate considered even slightly ahead of mainstream thinking will be steam-rolled. And the events of September 11, 2001 have unfortunately served primarily to feed the fires of jingoism, militarism and fear, which are hardly characteristic of progressive philosophy. (Where is FDR when we need him most?)

Nonetheless, the Bush Administration's radical conservatism has created a singular opportunity to recapture and redefine the political debate in my beloved country.

Now is the time for the Democrats to declare that "liberal" is not a dirty word meaning "bereft of moral compass" that the right-wing opinion media would have people think.

Rather, "liberal", and its cousins "left" and "progressive", mean just the opposite. Those terms, as incarnated by the likes of the Roosevelts, Truman and the Kennedys, signify respect for the dignity and rights of every American, and a determination to see that government, with its uniquely not-for-profit mission, protects and serves those interests. As FDR said, "In our personal ambitions, we are individualists, but in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up-or else we all go down-as one people."

A renewed determination by progressives to embrace government as the only means to ensure the survival of America's vital middle class would surely resonate with the majority of the population. It is certainly easy enough to demonstrate that another four years of Bush will only accelerate its 20-year decline. Already, the gap between low- and middle-income Americans is certain to gape even wider as a result of the Bush Administration's tax cuts. Non-partisan research group Citizens for Tax Justice has estimated that, while they will provide the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers just $350 over the next four years, the exorbitant cost of the cuts' average $96,634 doled out to the top 1 percent will force ever more draconian cuts in public services to pay for them. Fewer public services for the classes that rely on them can only result in the tragic consequence that Abraham Lincoln envisioned over 100 years ago: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that…causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

To push its agenda, the administration has repeatedly capitalized on cliched American prejudices left over from the McCarthy era, successfully diverting attention from radical policies that few Americans, were they informed, would condone.

One of those prejudices is that, somehow, spending on social programs is a waste of tax dollars while military spending is so virtuous it can be likened only to supporting charity. Reagan began such spin shenanigans back in 1984 to garner support for the biggest peace-time military build-up in history. I remember hearing renowned columnist George Will spout that line to a bunch of IT industry execs, saying that, whether or not they liked Reagan's military buildup, the president "had to be admired for avoiding the inflationary spending on social services." Not all Americans are dupes for that cliché, however. When I challenged Mr. Will as to how he justified exempting Pentagon spending from the "inflationary" category, execs congratulated me afterwards for blowing a hole in the columnist's propaganda. And even Dwight D. Eisenhower, a valiant Army general and Republican, warned back in 1960 of the risks of a self-serving "military industrial complex." I cannot help but long to see how he would react today, as the country's civilian public sector is bled dry by a military budget that very nearly dwarfs all other countries' combined. Or as the Bush Administration spends $4 billion a month on its imperialistic military adventurism and yet denies comparably paltry sums to Head Start children in America.

The other convenient myth neo-conservatives like to trot out is that progressives are committed to a bloated, out-of-control "tax-and-spend" government that will "hurt business" and stifle growth. Once again, this myth must have McCarthy's ghost chuckling, as it paints liberals as "commie-pinkos" opposed to private wealth creation and to the viability of that most sacred of American institutions, The Corporation.

The "out of control" tax-and-spend part of the myth is so completely ironic, as to be laughable. At least progressives tax in order to spend! This and other neo-con (and I use the term "con" loosely) administrations would have people believe they can spend endless billions in tax dollars on their beloved Pentagon while cutting taxes too! Amazing. Such a con game is rivaled only by the one Enron pulled on an unsuspecting public.

The charge of being opposed to private wealth and corporatism is ludicrous. Opposed to corporate coddling and protectionism for US corporations, yes. (Indeed, Virginia, the US practices protectionism). Oh, and we are less likely to believe that it serves the public interest to let corporations write the laws that govern them. The naivete of neo-cons (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, here…) on this score is almost touching. But, hey, just call us hard-nosed!

Rather, I believe that today's generation of progressive, liberal Americans yearns for a corporate America that harks back to the pre-Gordon Gecko/Reagan "greed is good" era, when reasonable profit was an honorable aim. More importantly, liberals today focus on government providing the incentives only it can to jump-start futuristic industries that fall short of the market mass needed to attract profit-centered corporations. A prime example is the call from the True Majority, guided by Ben and Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen, for an Apollo-like federal spending plan to push America's energy infrastructure into the 21^st century.

Finally, I am most sick and tired of the endless right-wing opinion media cliché that liberals hate America and have no God. On the contrary, liberals are critical today precisely because their love of America makes it impossible to watch the country's optimistic, courageous, fair-play nature be supplanted by one that is fearful, selfish and arrogant. And for progressives, God is full of forgiveness and love for all men and whose son said it would be "harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." In fact, Jesus was probably one of the first true progressives. All which seems a far cry from the religion of neo-conservatives, as it apparently fosters a holier-than-thou, self-righteous moralizing that has little respect for others.

In fact, Howard Dean has one of the most mainstream-America takes on the progressive philosophy that I've ever heard, which is probably why his campaign has caught on like wildfire. In fact, having worked on Dean's campaign, I can testify that the majority of its core volunteers are not seasoned leftist activists, as the DLC suggests, but politically disaffected Americans who have suddenly been inspired.

At more than one of his appearances, he has asked, to a roar of excited supporters: "What ever happened to the idea that we're all in this together?"

Amen.