The American Mind: A Historical Look at American Liberalism

Source:The New Democrat

I like how Walter Mead put it about liberalism that there have been different stages of liberalism, but I would put it differently. And that the Liberals that Mead was talking before America and the Federal Republic was put together with its federal system and the Liberals are of the eighteenth century were the real Liberals in America. Mead used the term real liberalism, I’ve used that myself as well, but I tend to use the term real liberals instead. I don’t buy the notion that if you call yourself a Liberal, Conservative or whatever, than that is what you are. That if you want to be part of those clubs, there are certain values you have to believe in and practice.

I would’ve love to of seen our Founding Fathers the Founding Liberals of America and what they would’ve thought of today’s so-called ‘modern liberals’. I seriously doubt they would’ve seen people on MSNBC talk, who watch MSNBC talk, who read or write for The Nation and what now has become The New Republic, after apparently it was hijacked from Socialists, I doubt they would’ve viewed these leftists as Liberals. You have writers for The Nation and TruthDig supposed to be Liberals, who identify their own politics as democratic socialist. John Nichols and Chris Hedges, respectfully. Certainly on the Left, but who make Liberals look very conservative in comparison.

I’m a Liberal, a proud Liberal at that and have always identified my own politics as liberal. Tom Jefferson perhaps the Founding Liberal in America and Jack Kennedy are two my political heroes. Jefferson for the idea of the Federal Republic, individual rights and freedom, a real individualist, who also believed in responsibility. Yes he owned slaves, but his vision for what America should be and could be for everyone, even if he didn’t include Africans and women of all races, still stands as this great liberal democracy where is freedom can be achieved for everyone.

Except for slavery and racism Jack Kennedy believed in the same things as Jefferson. A bit more progressive than Jefferson when it came to the idea of a public safety net. But Kennedy believed in individual freedom both personal and economic for everyone. He believed that all Americans should and have equal rights under the law. You can be a Liberal and believe in individual freedom and also believe in the public safety net for people who fall on hard times. A public insurance system for people who are going through rough economic waters. What separates Liberals from Social Democrats lets say, is that Liberals believe in insurance. Social Democrats believe in welfare and government dependence regardless of income level.

Jack Kennedy believed in the public safety net, but again a social insurance system for people in need. That would help them in the short-term be able to survive, but would also empower them to be able to get themselves on their feet and live in freedom, not of government. Thats the main difference between a Liberal and a Socialist. Between a Jack Kennedy/Bill Clinton and a Bernie Sanders. Limited government to help and empower people, vs an unlimited government designed to take care of everyone for an indefinite period. The real Liberals believe in opportunity and freedom. Good opportunities to achieve freedom in life. Not the freedom to live off of a welfare state and take no responsibility for one’s own affairs.

The American Mind: Individual Rights vs. The Administrative State

Source:The New Democrat

I agree with some of what John Marini was talking about as far as the Progressive Era as far as Progressives back then wanting to change the country and put in public social insurance that people could use when they are in need, that we as a society a collective would all contribute to finance those services. But where Marini and I separate is that Progressives back then wanted to change the U.S. Constitution, or even be more radical and do what today’s so-called Progressives, who aren’t real Progressives, but that is a different subject, but today’s so-called Progressives are much more radical. And if anything would throw out the U.S. Constitution and replace it with something a lot less individualist and more collectivist.

The Progressives of the Progressive Era were radical back then and even through the New Deal period and perhaps even as far up to the Great Society era of the 1960s. But today they would be pretty mainstream, especially compared with Occupy Wall Street or the so-called Coffee Party movement from the New Left that came about in the late 1960s and all through the 1970s and we now see their sons and daughters carry this movement through today. People who support Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders and want them both to run for president in 2016. And these people are Social Democrats that don’t like our federal republican form of government with our individualist constitution. And would like to see more a a social democratic collectivist form of government. That perhaps doesn’t even have a Constitution.

What the Progressives of the 1930s and before that, what they were actually were moderates more mainstream leftists. You had Communists and Marxist Socialists who wanted to the U.S. Government to respond to the Great Depression by creating what is known in Europe, especially Scandinavia as a superstate or welfare state that would make the New Deal look like a child in comparison. Because there would be a boatload of new federal social insurance programs that would be designed to provide most if no all the human services that people need to live well. Education, health care, health insurance, banking, housing, childcare, pensions, unemployment insurance, energy and perhaps even more. To go along with nationalizing major sectors of the American economy.

What the New Deal Progressives wanted to do was to create a public social insurance system that people could take advantage of when they needed it. Unemployment insurance for people who are out of work. Welfare insurance for people without the skills they need to get a good job and who also have dependents. Food assistance for people who do not make enough money to feed themselves adequately and feed their kids. Public housing for people who do not make enough money to even afford an apartment. These are social insurance programs which is much different from a welfare state that is designed to take care of people and are universal so that people regardless of income level would be eligible, if not required to take them.

Now in the last years of Franklin Roosevelt’s life he even moved further left as President and proposed something called the Economic Bill of Rights. Which would’ve been the next phase of the New Deal and perhaps gone as far as creating that superstate that Socialists in the 1930s wanted. But that is not what he was talking about in the 1930s and what Teddy Roosevelt Progressives were talking about at the turn of the 20th Century. Progressives tend to be fans of the U.S. Constitution and even things like individual freedom, just as long as it is not used to hurt and prey on innocent people. Its today’s so-called Progressives, Social Democrats welfare statists in actuality, who tend not to be fans of the U.S. Constitution and American individualism.

The American Mind: Charles Kesler & William Voegeli: 'The Pity Party, A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion'

Source:The New Democrat

The whole time that Charles Kesler and William Vogeili were talking about what they would call liberal compassion and that anyone who disagrees with them must be either immoral, ignorant, or hates poor people or something, gave me the idea that they didn’t know who they were talking about. This is why we should never link the Left or the Right under one ideology. That if you are on the Left, you must be a Liberal no matter how far to the left that you are. And if you are on the Right, you must be a Conservative no matter how far to the Right you are.

I wish the Left was just made up of Liberals, well not really, because then it would get kind of boring over on the Left always talking to people on the Left who always agree with me. And we would stop thinking as a result because we always believe we have all the answers and stop coming up with new ideas, because we always agree with each other. You should think of the Left the way you think of the Democratic Party. As a broad coalition of different political and ideological factions. Liberals such as myself and many others who are Center-Left New Democrats. Progressives who are a little further left, people like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. And then you move Far-Left and you’ll find Bernie Sanders Social Democrats and Socialists.

The people who Kesler and Vogeili were talking about are the people who would make of up Far-Left flank of the Democratic Party. Social Democrats who believe government always has the answers to the nation’s problems. “Especially the Federal Government and that nothing else is needed to fix the problems of the country. That is government is not completely running something and that there might be a public/private partnership, or taxpayer subsidization of private sector programs to address certain needs of the country, than those programs don’t go far enough and aren’t substantial”. People who think like this I call Social Democrats or welfare statists, but certainly not Liberals.

I notice you don’t see many books critiquing the Center-Left in America, again Liberals and not people who believe in unlimited government at least as it relates to the economy. Why, because Americans tend to either be center-left or center-right or in some cases dead-center. And like the idea of public assistance, especially education and job training for our low-skilled adults who are currently trapped in poverty, to help people in need get themselves on their feet and live in freedom like the rest of the country. They like public education and infrastructure investment. Americans like smart regulations to protect individuals and consumers from predators that would prey on them. They like both economic freedom and personal freedom. And these are all liberal values that most Americans support.

The people who Kesler and Vogeili were talking about are leftist radicals on the Far-Left in America that came about in the 1960s and 70s. Because they didn’t believe Liberals and Progressives went far enough with the New Deal and Great Society. “And that we needed a superstate that is common in Scandinavia to manage people’s affairs for them so they would make fewer poor decisions with their money and lives that society as a whole would have to pay for”, in their view. And these are the people who watch MSNBC talk, read The Nation, AlterNet and unfortunately now The New Republic since it is no longer a great center-left liberal magazine. Who are part of Occupy Wall Street and want Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders to run for president in 2016.

Bibleo Traditions: 'The Men Who Killed Kennedy (1988)'

Source:Bibleo Traditions- Communist activist and JFK assassin Lee H. Oswald. 

Source:The New Democrat

I’m already there as far as believing that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy. I don’t know that is the case, but I think there’s enough evidence to suggest that is the case. But as far as who actually shot President Kennedy, we already know that and that person is Lee Oswald. And for anyone who believes the shooter wasn’t Oswald, or there was another shooter, they have an obligation it seems to me if they are going to make those views public to produce evidence that suggest they are right.

We’ve heard conspiracy theories suggesting Lee Oswald was not only the shooter, but someone from the CIA or organized crime shot the President. But have yet to hear who those people might have been. We’ve ever heard theories that Vice President Lyndon Johnson was behind the plot to assassinate President Kennedy. But haven’t seen or heard any evidence to back that up. The reason why I believe the theory suggesting that Oswald wasn’t the only person in this plot goes to Jack Ruby and who he was connected to and the fact that Ruby shot and killed Oswald. And that organized crime also wanted President Kennedy dead.
Source:Bibleo Traditions

James Stark: Conspiracy: Why Did Jack Ruby Kill Lee Harvey Oswald?

Source:The New Democrat

The only tragedy I believe of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, is that if destroyed a possible great opportunity to figure out how many people were involved to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Was it just Lee Oswald that was part of this murderous plot, or did he have help from Dallas organized crime factions and perhaps the Italian Mafia in America. That is the real crime that Jack Ruby is guilty of, at least as I see it. I don’t see Oswald being killed as a tragedy in any other sense. I don’t enjoy seeing people being killed. But was Oswald was garbage and he assassinated a U.S. President.

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that since Lee Oswald was killed by someone with organize crime factions and if anything a mobster himself who works with Italian and Jewish mobsters, that he was also put up by the Mafia to assassinate the President. And that since he was caught in the crime, that now he’s a threat to bring down the people who put him up to the assassination. Because he has his own life to save and doesn’t want to take the fall for this murderous plot all by himself.

The problem that I have is that I just have a theory, an educated theory, but still a theory. And one person that could’ve shed light on this was killed himself, before he had much of an opportunity to share with the rest of us, was he meaning Oswald alone in this. Or did other people put him up to it and paid him to do the operation and financed the assassination themselves.

David Finn: The Big Cube (1969)

Source:The New Democrat

I’ve seen this movie a couple of times in the last week. And there really isn’t a slow or dull moment in it. Sure some of the writing is kind of cheesy, at least by today’s standards, but is a very exciting, entertaining and at times a very funny movie. Sort of like a funny soap opera where a very successful movie financier played by Dan O’Herlihy who is a widower with a young adult daughter, is about to get remarried and to a very successful gorgeous veteran actress Adriana Roman played by Lana Turner.

The Dan O’Herlihy character’s daughter Lisa, played by Karin Mossberg, doesn’t like her future stepmother, but grows to like her. And without her new boyfriend John Allen played by George Chakris, the two women probably would’ve gotten along very well. But John wants Lisa’s father’s money and sees Lisa as his ticket to get the money. And he has other ideas and uses Lisa throughout the movie to get what he wants, which is Lisa’s trust fund and whatever he believes Lisa is entitled to financially.

What makes this movie even more interesting, is that Dan O’Herlihy, well actually his character dies in the movie. In a boating accident with his new wife when they are caught in a big storm in the water. He drowns trying to save his wife who gets knocked off the boat. She somehow makes it to shore and suffers a serious concussion from the accident that is effecting her memory and other things. Lisa’s boyfriend John sees this as an opportunity to get what he wants. And the fact that he’s a former medical student, gets him what he needs to carry out his plan.

This is where LSD comes in and John convinces Lisa that her new stepmother, will never allow for them to be happy and get married. One of the conditions of Lisa’s trust fund an inheritance is that she can’t marry John or anyone that Adriana disapproves of. So John hatches a plan to drive Adriana legally insane with LSD and with Lisa and John coming into her bedroom late at night and forcing her into nightmares with different special effects. They almost succeed, but Lisa breaks it off when Adriana is almost killed during one of the stunts.

This is a ninety-eight minute movie without any slow periods and pretty exciting almost the entire movie. Richard Egan has a big role in this movie as perhaps a screenwriter, director, informal agent and adviser of Adriana’s and perhaps her only real friend in the movie. And he helps bring her out of what she is suffering. Someone with memory loss and trying to hide the nightmare of the boating accident that killed her husband. As well as helping her come back from what Lisa and her boyfriend put her through in the movie.

Roger Sharp Archive: Talking to Jack Ruby's Lawyers (1963)

Source:The New Democrat

The Jack Ruby case had to been fascinating and one of those cases that I bet just about any hard-working good defense lawyer would want to take. Because it was not clear if Ruby was guilty of actual murder, at least not first degree murder and for at least a couple of reasons. One, Ruby didn’t kill and innocent person. He killed Lee Harvey Oswald, but he killed the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. It is clear now and perhaps even when Ruby Killed Oswald, that Oswald at the very least had something to do with the JFK assassination. Not saying Ruby is innocent here, just saying it is not first degree murder. And I believe you could’ve easily of gotten it down to second degree murder, twenty-five to life. Or first degree manslaughter is twenty-years, twenty to life. And you could’ve made a pretty good case for temporary insanity on Jack Ruby’s part.