Why Liberalism Has A Bad Name

By David Horowitz
March 7, 2005

On Sunday, March 6, 2005, the NY Times Book Review ran a feature interviewing three leftists about the state of the Democratic Party. Of course that's not the way the Times described them: "Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic, Michael Tomasky, the executive editor of The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation are three leading voices for liberalism today." And I'm the Wizard of Oz. Katrina vanden Heuvel as users of DiscoverTheNetwork would know is an anti-American radical, editor of the flagship of the pro-Communist, "progressive" left who thinks that the main problem in the world today is U.S. hegemony or as she coyly puts it in the Times roundtable, U.S. "military dominance."

I would venture that every article the Nation has run since 9/11 about the war on terror, has been about the terrible things America has done -- e.g., destroyed the Consittution while pretending to look for terrorists, killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, traduced the laws of nations to get at Iraqi oil and so forth. Not one I am willing to bet -- and I have read an awful lot of them -- has been about how to win the war on terror, let alone one good deed in the war America has done.

Michael Tomasky is a more intelligent leftist than vanden Heuvel, but he is a leftist nonetheless. Here is the way the Kirkus reviewer described Tomasky's Left for Dead:  The Life, Death and Possible Resurrection of Progressive Politics in America: "A thoughtful, goodnatured critique of the left by one of its longtime supporters."

Peter Beinart is also a leftist but a moderate one who could plausibly be called a liberal. He wrote a sharp critique of the left in The New Republic calling on liberals to purge Communist fellow travelers from their ranks. Beinart referred to them as "Wallacites" after the late fellow-traveling Henry Wallace. Katrina vanden Heuvel would be a prime candidate for such a purge.

Unfortunately, Beinart was intimidated in the interview session by the two leftists present and I guess by the Times' own political sympathies which are also to his left. Under this pressure Beinart came up with this howler which he probably already regrets. "There is no question that this war is going very, very badly." Peter, a war is going very very badly when Katrina and her friends force the United States to throw in the towel and the other side enters the capital cities of the beleaguered country as conquerors, and proceeds to slaughter two and a half million innocents as the progressives in Cambodia and Vietnam did thirty years ago.
In the present case, the Iraqis have won their freedom with (dominant) American military support and the terrorists are on the run. Moreover, the events in Iraq are inspiring a freedom movement throughout the Arab world. This happens when a war is going well.

The first question the Times interviewer asked the trio was this: "Why has 'liberal' become a dirty word for so many Americans today?"

Katrina: "I would being with the unrelenting assault on the term liberalism by the right wing." Tomasky agreed.

Beinart sidestepped the issue and tried bravely but ultimately without success to focus attention on the failure of those on the left to support the war for democracy in Iraq and the Arab world to put it mildly.
Here's the reason liberal has become a dirty word. Because Communists, fellow-travelers, pro-terrorists, terrorist sympathizers have hijacked the word liberal and because organs like the New York Times have abetted them, using "liberal" to describe anti-American radicals and even totalitarian radicals like Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Michael Moore, the organizers of the anti-Iraq and pro-Saddam "peace" movement, and Katrina vanden Heuvel and the Nation.

The nation's last truly liberal leader, a pro-Vietnam war Democrat named Hubert Humphrey, had his presidential chances destroyed by the pro-Communist Tom Hayden and the Yippes nearly forty years ago. Hayden, who even today is working to defeat America in Iraq is invariably referred to by institutions like the Times as a liberal. Wrong. I am a liberal -- a believer in free markets and free individuals, a supporter of intellectual diversity on college campuses against the opposition of the ACLU, the AAUP, the Nation, and the progressive left generally (with one exception known to me).

When the cultural arbiters like the Times stop referring to totalitarians and anti-American radicals as liberals, the good name of liberalism will start the long road back to being a good name. Peter Beinart has made a stab at beginning this process. But if he continues to be cowed by the likes of Katrina vanden Heuvel, he's not going to get very far.