Lions or Lambs ??
A friend sent this excellent article, published in The Guardian (a United Kingdom newspaper).
At the risk of incurring the wrath of many of my friends, I agree with the author. We “liberals” have been too polite, too complicit and too compliant with the onslaught of “conservatives.” In other words, we have been “lambs” while the wolves have been tearing the country to shreds, devouring the poor, gutting the treasury, and bankrupting the country.
Is it any wonder that the use of anti-depressant drugs has doubled in the last ten years?
One of the reasons that Barack Obama has gained so much respect is that when someone attacked him during his campaign, he came right back with an intelligent response.
He continues to engage those with whom he has differences, and while being politically expedient, he has not been politically impotent.
One of the main reasons we “progressives” have not fared well in the last decades is that we are afraid to take on issues, bullies, malcontents and liars. Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer seem to be the only persons in congress with good old fashioned “balls” and “backbone.” Maybe it’s because they are both Jewish and understand that when you’re dealing with bullies, you need to fight back, period.
Until we “progressives” are willing to fight back, hard, we will continue to lose ground, which we can no longer afford to do, both for the sake of the nation and the planet.
Here it is, please feel free to comment below.
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To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go tohttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/29/edward-kennedy-democrats-defeat
Ted Kennedy: a lamb, not a lion
I admired and supported Ted Kennedy ? but he was the symbol of an era when liberals lost the battles that mattered
Muhammad Cohen
Sunday August 30 2009
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/29/edward-kennedy-democrats-defeat
Ted Kennedy was the champion of the American left during the greatest surge to the right in US political history. Rather than the liberal lion of the Senate, fiercely defending his turf, he was a lamb who failed to halt, and even abetted, the country’s slide away from his principals and ideals. The very word “liberal” morphed from an adjective to an accusation while Ted Kennedy was the keeper of its flame.
I don’t make these charges as one of the legion of Kennedy-haters. Quite the contrary: I’m a proud, card-carrying liberal. My “To sail against the wind” poster, a campaign contribution keepsake from Kennedy’s one and only presidential run in 1980, showing the senator stoutly striding to the left, has graced my walls on three continents. I would have voted for Kennedy over any presidential candidate of the past 40 years, so count me as a true believer.
I don’t blame Kennedy for that 1980 run against Jimmy Carter, a sitting president of his own party. I don’t even blame Kennedy ? although many do ? for Carter’s subsequent defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. In 1979, Jimmy Carter threatened: “If Kennedy runs, I’ll whip his ass.” Kennedy let Carter whip his ass, and that’s unforgivable. Though friends and foes alike salute Kennedy’s legislative record, those bills are mere footnotes to the dominant US trend of the past 40 years, a huge ass-whipping for liberals. The Americans With Disabilities Act, No Children Left Behind and the Occupational Safety and Health Act don’t stack up to a single Clarence Thomas or Rush Limbaugh that Kennedy helped create. Kennedy was the leading light on the left during an era when liberals got whipped in every battle that mattered, a loser of historic proportion.
Kennedy didn’t just fail to stem the rightward tide, he helped power it. Through his own personal misconduct, from cheating at Harvard to Chappaquiddick to his binge with William Kennedy Smith of blue-dot rape trial fame, Kennedy exemplified the privileged irresponsibility that fueled the rightwing revolution.
The Kennedy name was said to be magical among liberals, but it became even more effective for conservatives. The mere mention of Ted Kennedy on any issue was enough to open rightwing wallets. For every dollar Kennedy raised for causes he supported, his name probably raised ten times more for causes he opposed. While portraying himself as a champion of the working class, Kennedy financed the movement that convinced millions of Joe the Plumbers to vote against their own interests.
Kennedy became a powerful symbol for his enemies of everything that was wrong with government, liberals, Democrats, and Washington, but failed to use his iconic position to inspire and move his allies. He was the one liberal politician of his time guaranteed a national audience whenever he spoke out. But Kennedy rarely chose to grasp that big stage to galvanize his side and move public opinion on key issues that defined the US over the past four decades.
Where was he on the George Bush the elder’s Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, the rightwing extremist whose lifetime appointment to the court will have a far greater impact than Kennedy and his brothers combined? When Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearings deteriorated into a circus with pubic hair on soda cans in the centre ring, where was Kennedy to tell the president and the country that it had to demand someone better? Actually, Kennedy was right there on the Senate Judiciary Committee, gagged by his own string of sexual peccadilloes.
When Thomas cast the vote that made the younger George Bush president, where was Kennedy to say it was wrong in a democracy for nine judges to order vote counting stopped? Where was Kennedy to express liberal outrage at this farce and to lead a movement to refuse to recognise Bush as president until the votes were counted? Why wasn’t he calling on fellow lawmakers to stand and turn their backs whenever they were confronted with this immorally-appointed president?
Well, Kennedy was too busy then crafting the flawed and under-funded No Children Left Behind Act that not only made public education less effective but gave the sham president legitimacy. After asserting Bush betrayed him, Kennedy went back to work again with that same administration on prescription drug coverage for seniors, only to see his support used to create a government handout for drug companies. Fool me twice….
Where was Kennedy’s call for liberals to take to the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq, as they had to end the war in Vietnam? Where was he on the erosion of civil liberties under George Bush? Where was he over the past 40 years on taking meaningful steps to end America’s dependence on imported oil and stop fouling the planet?
Most important, where was Kennedy on the decades-long slide starting with Reagan that transformed government’s mandate and public opinion about the very mission of America? Kennedy’s silence was deafening as Republicans and Democrats alike pandered to business and cut taxes on the wealthy, mocking his brother John’s clarion call in his inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
It’s deeply ironic that Kennedy dies in the midst of a national firestorm over healthcare reform, the cause that he hoped to make his crowning achievement. He leaves the issue mired in the lies and muddle that he didn’t challenge while it spread to poison the national debate. Senior citizens with their social security benefits and Medicare cards stand up at town hall meetings today demanding, “Keep government’s hands off my healthcare,” not only because of Fox News and rightwing radio, but because Ted Kennedy refused to use his mantle to refute the noise and nonsense on the right, leaving it instead of the likes of Al Franken.
Kennedy eschewed that national spotlight to become the consummate Capitol Hill insider. His accomplishments, while noteworthy and substantial, did nothing to counteract the nation’s lurch to the right. He chose to work in the comfortable, clubby confines of the Senate while his team desperately needed a public leader. Perhaps, given the times and trends (though with Watergate, Reagan and his hoodlums, 9/11 and Iraq, the Democrats certainly have had some cards to play), Kennedy drew a Mission: Impossible ? but unlike the fictional agents, Kennedy chose not to accept his mission.
Renowned as an orator, it’s fitting that Kennedy’s best known words have come in tragedy and defeat. There’s this beautiful tribute in his eulogy for Robert Kennedy: “As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: ‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say, why not?’”
After Carter whipped his ass, Kennedy told the 1980 Democratic national convention: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the dream will never die.” In his electrifying appearance at last year’s Democratic party convention in Denver, the stricken Kennedy, whose early support helped Barack Obama secure the presidential nomination, said, “The work begins anew, the hope rises anew, the dream lives on.”
Because of Kennedy’s own failures and flaws, despite nearly half a century in the Senate, so much of what he stood for remains nothing more than dreams.
An earlier version of this article appeared in Asia Times Online.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:50 am
A friend sent these comments, written by a friend of hers, that seem to nail “The Kennedy Situation” very accurately. Regards, Ed
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The Kennedy who might have been the one liberal activist in the family was Bobby. We’ll never know how strong a force for change he might have been if not cut down. It wasn’t John. It might have been Edward if he had not been so muzzled by his own personal failures as a younger man. Because of that, we always thought, he was unable to take too prominent a role as the leader of the liberal wing of his party. But perhaps it was that he didn’t really have it in him to be a fighter and a public leader, and was more comfortable being collegial and making bi-partisan deals. If he was our leader, did we know it? We never heard from him except in regard to legislation, not all of which was wonderful — No Child Left Behind being perhaps the worst example.
Edward Kennedy never apologized for being a “liberal,” never ran away from the label, wore it proudly. Unfortunately, neither he, nor any other leader, nor all of us together, tried hard enough to stop that label from becoming increasingly unpopular, as it still is today.
I think the quite overdone eulogies we are hearing now are, in part, based upon the realization that the last of the three brothers is gone — and that not a single Kennedy of the next generation has inherited the charisma they brought to the public realm. So it is, indeed, the end of an era. The tragedy is that none of them lived up to their potential - the older two because they were murdered, the younger one because he had the name but not their spark.