But What Are They For?

Posted on September 5, 2003 in Crosstalk Liberals & Progressives

I went through Michael J. Totten’s weblog just to see what made him tick. I should note in advance that I am statistically what Michael and his friend “real liberal’ Sean LaFreniere call a “Boomer sellout”. It’s not due to any action that I’ve taken in my life. It’s because I was born in 1958 and, perhaps, because I have a beard. I look like a hippie, I’m the right age to have been a hippie, so therefore I must be one. It’s an old charge that I am used to youngsters throwing my way. The fact is that I failed miserably at being a hippie: I didn’t get nearly enough sex with enough women, I didn’t do drugs all that much, I didn’t care much for psychedelic clothes, I have only gone to two anti-war rallies, and, in 1980, I registered Republican for John Anderson. So there you have it. I failed at being hip.

As for the sell out part, here’s the story: I don’t drive a Volvo, I don’t live in a gated community (as a matter of principle), I don’t go out of my way to buy organic food (it’s more expensive and we’re on a budget), and for medical reasons I haven’t had any children.

As representatives of Gen-X, Sean and Michael claim to be the antidote to everything bad that my generation did. It’s the same old “hate your parents” crap that has fueled American politics since the 1960s. I might actually qualify as one of the first latchkey children: both my parents worked due to the fact that my father kept getting laid off in the post-Vietnam war era. He finally took a lower paying but secure job with the Department of Defense and remained there until he died of a heart attack in 1980. So in this way, I probably belong more with Gen-X as described by Sean:

After school, on weekends, and during summers we were offloaded to latchkey, grandparents, and summer camps while our parents focused on “learning to put themselves first”. Our generation largely raised itself… on cynicism… and we mocked anything that we didn’t see as ours, which was everything.

Except for the part about being shipped off, that pretty much describes me. You could hang the label “angry white guy” on my shoulders except for a few things: beneath all my cynicism, I never let go of the optimism. I don’t blame things on generations as much as I do on classes of people — especially a select group of whites — who are out to preserve their own special interests. I get ticked off when stupid people assume that because I am a white male that I am going to vote with those interests. Actually, I do vote my interests, but they happen to overlap more with people of color and women than with the white male elite of this country.

Reading over these two blogs this evening, I found a lot of rhetoric about how we “leftists” are going wrong. We don’t honor the flag enough for one thing. We don’t support our boys seemed to be an underlying theme. Michael went so far as to post links to a pair of lists which dredged up every negative attribute some pundit has ever uttered about either the left or the right. (Equal opportunity bashing is the centrist’s motto it seems.) There was plenty of complaining about what elements of the Left and the Right were doing wrong — especially the Left — but very little talk about what these self-professed Gen Xers actually stood for, except “We’ve got to bring the flag back” and “We’ve got to fight terrorism”.

The Left that Michael and his friend Mike Silverman believe in tramples on the flag and loves terrorists. We build bombs in our basements, we’re happy when U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, we hate Jews, we think Howard Dean is too conservative (I’ve already announced that I will vote for Dean if he’s the Democratic candidate), we quote Noam Chomsky incessantly (um, yeah? Where?), we like destroying private property, we admire suicide bombers, we support the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, we despise law enforcement, etc.

I will say this: Michael, Mike Silverman, and Sean have no clue what I stand for. And I think that they have no clue what they stand for, either!

That’s at the heart of my criticism of this trio: they’re all bluster and no positive program. They claim to be “liberals”, but I have yet to see indications of what they mean by that except in their negativism. Sean believes that by cradling the flag that Gen Xers can overcome the cynicism with which they were raised, but I find this poor, silly patriotism (to allude to what Quaker founders thought of the practice by a younger generation of dressing only in gray to show their piety — they called it “poor silly gospel”.)

My question for these three is what are you doing on behalf of the People? How are you making them more free, less cynical with this talk? What programs other than kissing the flag and bashing both Left and Right do you have in mind?

I can think of a few things that I can declare myself for:

• National health insurance based on the idea that a country’s greatest resource are its people
• High caliber public education, like we had before the sell outs of the 1980s and 1990s. Again the foundation principle is that a nation’s greatest resource are its people.
• Adequate and affordable national defense defending our territories and our ships at sea. (No more war toys, no more foreign adventures, a budget that doesn’t end up in the hands of war profiteers.)
• Adequate care for our veterans injured in these unnecessary wars.
• Adherence to International Law and respect for treaties which seek to end the use of napalm, cluster bombs, land mines, above-ground testing, etc.
• Budgets that address the real needs of the American people and aren’t just pork barrel politics for a few defense contractors and energy despots.
• An economy founded on money circulating.
• The reinstatement of the Progressive Income Tax. Money needs to be spread like manure if it is going to do any good.
• Protections for the working class including a decent minimum wage, overtime pay, reasonable job security, home ownership, work safety regulations.
• Preservation of our national heritage in land against special interests which see them only as a means of making a profit.
• Laws that apply to all sectors of our society — policemen who beat suspects don’t get special treatment, for example. Liberty and justice for all.
• A mixed economy.
• Fair and balanced access to the mass media as we used to have. Nothing can out a loony of any political stripe more surely than putting her or him on the air where others can talk back.
• An end to the culture of fear that overwhelms us.
• A civil, inclusive public forum where differences can be discussed and worked out — this cannot be rendered by government as much as it can by the commitment of concerned citizens. Both government and corporations are in a position to crush such forums. Trust neither in this area.
• An end to the Angry White Boy syndrome — where white boys are included and respected in the decision making processes of the Left and white boys understand that they are part of a greater whole, too.
• Respect for diversity. Again, white boys have to be included, but they also need to include others. Another thing that neither government nor corporations can do to effect, but can do plenty to prevent.

This is an incomplete, evolving list of the things that I am for, things that I continue to stand for. I’m not going to suggest that the trio are “bad liberals” or “bad Americans” because that is to stoop down to the level of attack that they have adopted. I’m just going to ask again: What are you for? What vision do you have? Surely it’s more substantial than “I love America” and “I hate terrorism”. Surely you have a kingdom on a hill (to steal a phrase from Reagan who stole it from Jonathan Edwards) that you dream of? Surely you can imagine something that includes everyone instead of just attacks everything you don’t like?

What is it?