Question for the liberal/independents

[BrianFromWA]

I'm writing a paper about foreign assistance, national security and the "liberalization" of US foreign policy as seen by other countries. Who are some of the authorities and authors/speakers/policymakers who espouse the "progressive" and "liberal" viewpoints philosophically? I really want to have something that'll stand up to academic rigor, but when I think of "progressive/liberal" genesis at the turn of the 19th/20th century I think of Marx, Freud, Skinner, etc. and I don't want to shortchange the subject by picking on the weaklings of the movement. Any suggestions on how the shift from constitutional, Smith-type "liberalism" to New Deal "liberalism"? Specifically in the economic and social realms, b/c I have enough of the pacifist/passivist stuff? Thanks in advance.

 

[Denny Crane]

Woodrow Wilson.

More recent? Jimmy Carter.


Oddly, the former made us into an international interventionist type power, while the latter made us so weak we couldn't muster a rescue attempt to get our hostages back in Iran.

For an eye-opener, read up on the eugenics movement.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

There was liberal appeasement by Chamberlain in England (and associated policy) that led to WWII and Clinton appeasement that led to "911".

 

[jlprk]

Depends on how you define liberal. In Europe, the liberal party is what America calls moderate conservative. Liberal can mean a tolerant attitude, or it can mean something in economics, or it can mean freedom, and each group opposing liberals has its own separate definition. In the late 60s, the American left criticized liberals much more than it did conservatives. The truth is that both liberals and conservatives consist of many contradictory factions forced into alliance to win elections, and not liking it.

Freud and Skinner have usually been criticized by the left. (I like Freud as worldshaking, but both left and right dislike him.)

You won't find many leaders, much less authorities, considered to be liberal, if you define liberal as tolerant and easygoing. The few who actually led anything for short periods were removed through dirty tricks.

So your task of finding conservative structure in the history of liberals is hopeless. Of course, you can always change your goal to describe ideas instead of leaders. You can mention journalists and writers of those ideas as you find them, without ascribing leadership to those writers. But that approach might be too eclectic and liberal for a serious study of liberalism.

It's like writing a history of sex leaders. You know that what you will find written down will be hit or miss, 99.999999% miss. You know that feelings are rarely recorded. That's what researching liberal leaders is like.

 

[MARIS61]

JFK, RFK, Ted Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, Gore, the Clintons, Mike Gravel, Martin Sheen, John Lennon, Paul Newman, Warren Buffett, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Streisand, Robert Redford, Ted Turner, Michael Moore, Ed Asner, Susan Sarandon, Muhammad Ali...

 

[julius]

There was liberal appeasement by Chamberlain in England (and associated policy) that led to WWII and Clinton appeasement that led to "911".

you have an interesting view of what history is. Appeasement wasn't a "liberal" thing. It was more of a "holy crap. We just barely got our shit together now, and we can barely survive. I don't know how I can tell my people that we're going to potentially go right back into a clusterfuck again, so let's let Germany go into other countries and let them deal with it" thing.

To tag that as a 'liberal' thing seems to be stretching a bit.

People use it as a slur to imply negative things happen because of the other parties beliefs. same with how people make fun of the french for "giving up", considering they had been beaten down severely in WWI.

But it's easier to just say neat taglines instead of actually saying what happened (both sides do this).

As for the Clinton crack, that's somewhat true. But you can't say that Bush didn't have access to stuff before 9/11 and still didn't do anything. Oooh, I know, "blame Bush!"

I'm sure some people here could come up with a list of people who represent what it means to be a conservative and have it full of people who did questionable things for the country/world, instead of piecing together a list of people who have done good. But like I said, it's easier to just repeat the same crap over and over without actually adding anything to the argument.