(Liberals) Hold Your Heads Up

[ProSense]

Op-Ed Columnist

Hold Your Heads Up

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 8, 2008

Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?

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Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.

Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.

The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.

“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 <1935>, fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”

Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.

When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”

Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”

Scary.

Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.

Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).

Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.

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[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Great article. I love this quote:

"Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas."



And look at Sarah Palin. She pretends to be a feminist while working to destroy all things female.

The only women and black people that would vote GOP or work for the GOP are those that hate themselves and hate those like themselves.

Think of it, after Lincoln, the GOP became the party of the white rich industrialist male, the white rich male, the white robber baron male, and so on. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that they play chameleon and change their spots, but they're still the same old scumbag males. They hire psychopaths to work for them. The only women and blacks they hire are self-abhorrers. The equivalent would be, I guess, a prisoner in a concentration camp who is willing to torture and kill those like him, in order to eat a little better and be spared from certain death.

I don't see any other way the GOP can be looked at.

[Blaukraut]

2. k and r! A Must Read for Every Liberal! n/t

[ProSense]

5. Exaclty,

spread it around.

[jannyk]

3. I am ALWAYS proud to be a Liberal! Democrat - not so much anymore....

American - not for quite a while :eyes:

[secondwind]

4. progressive liberal thinkers have always been at the forefront of new technology,

progressive liberals like Aristotle, Socrates, etc. formed the essence of liberal thought.

If conservatives had had their way, women and blacks would still not have the right to vote!