Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Friday, December 21. 2007

Schlesinger, and Liberals since FDR

From No Left Turns, a quote:

The Journals of the late Arthur Schlesinger have received a good deal of attention, but most of it has concerned Schlesinger’s writing style, personality, or the broad topic of keeping and publishing diaries. The strangely neglected question of Schlesinger’s politics is finally addressed by the New Yorker’s George Packer, writing as one liberal assessing another. “In [Schlesinger’s] long record of speeches, conferences, lunches at the Century, and dinners at Mortimer’s,” observes Packer, “there’s an unmistakable sense that liberal politics belonged to a small group of the rich and famous who all knew one another and knew what was best for the rest of the country, while knowing less and less about the rest of the country. . . . It’s possible, even if you agree with almost every position Schlesinger held, to find the smugness and complacency not just annoying but fatal. His crowd made liberalism a fat target for the New Right; Reagan and his heirs seized the language and claims of populism from liberals who believed that they had had permanent possession [of it] ever since Roosevelt.”

Read the whole brief piece.

Posted by The Barrister in History, Politics at 14:45 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

One can see this now most clearly in the phony egalitarianism of say a Clinton, Kerry, Kennedy or Edwards, along with the self-adoring Leftist crowd from academia, entertainment and the media. To them the rest of the country--meaning us red-staters in fact or in heart--are but the peasants, the tolerated hoi polloi, good for votes and polls, but otherwise fit only for sleeping, feeding and hoarding.
And those that vote for these hollow men (and women) are but covetous parvenus desiring the amoral touch of narcissism upon their lockstep liitle lives.
#1 John Hetman on 2007-12-21 15:04 (Reply)
Whew!
Bet you feel better after getting that off your chest!
I agree.
#1.1 BD on 2007-12-21 15:06 (Reply)
I love modern liberalism. I can feel good about myself while I push other people around, and get a government pension in the process.
#2 Tom C on 2007-12-21 15:19 (Reply)
If good ole conservatism = it ain’t broke don’t fix it,
and good ole liberalism = lets tinker with stuff using new and nuanced ideas,
then pro-life being seen as strictly a conservative position seems screwy to me.

I’d think pro-life conservatives would be arguing for the logic of the way things were before 1973, while pro-life liberals would be arguing for the logic of “politically correct” methods of limiting abortions, or something.

But as it is, it’s “lets keep this color vs. that color” so we (the insiders) don’t have to produce any results at the end of the day.

OT, but I thought I’d get THAT off my chest.
#3 commander clopfelter on 2007-12-21 16:47 (Reply)
No idea what you're trying to say although I'm sure it's deep, profound. (What time's the bar open?)
#3.1 Tom C on 2007-12-21 17:48 (Reply)
Pick one:

A. Bipartisanship = political gridlock.
B. Why is it that team conservatives or team liberals suddenly subscribe to all 100 tenets of their teams beliefs, even if they’ve just recently switched sides?
C. Pro-lifers screwed themselves by putting all their eggs in one basket.
D. Gib me yer address der.
#3.1.1 commander clopfelter on 2007-12-21 18:22 (Reply)
hic...scuze me. when b/s becomes nuance you're cut off.
#4 Tom C on 2007-12-21 18:59 (Reply)
Long live the wedge issue?
#5 commander clopfelter on 2007-12-21 19:41 (Reply)
Long live the wedgie.
#5.1 BD on 2007-12-21 21:58 (Reply)
Mr. Schlesinger was not an easy man to understand, and we miss many of his good points and only see the results of his negatives without understanding how the man could hold both at the same time.

To those that have forgotten: he was a Nationalist, American Exceptionalist, anti-Communist.

He was against multi-culturalism and would stand by American culture, even when he did things that would cause it to erode. From what I have read he was somewhat dismayed at the way things were going but kept to those things he had held throughout his life.

To me his greatest flaw was in forgetting that it was the People of the Nation who set its good to support government... not Government to set the good to support the People. In professing exceptionalism he stood by projects that would cause an erosion in the foundation of that very exceptionalism and in joining in that liberal project he would set in motion the long term problems that now endanger the Nation.

The measure of his life does not start or end with liberal attitudes, and we miss the staunchness of defense of America even while we scrabble hard to deal with the problems created by endangering liberty via handouts. Even when the party he adhered to went too far, he would stick with it and attempt to give voice against those things he disliked. That voice was lost, however, as those who saw as he did walked away from the party because of their feeling of betrayal.

I admire that in a man, even when I think and see that it is wrong-headed: he would not betray those who he thought were his friends. My estimation dropped due to the outcome of his weaknesses, not due to the culminationg of his strengths. Men like him would make ending the Cold War possible, even as American Exceptionalism shifted to an 'Entitlement Society'.

No simple labels takes him in... he made his own way and now should be judged on those things that he did and did not do, so that we can learn to be better Americans in that understanding.

http://thejacksonianparty.blogspot.com/2007/03/passing-of-arthur-m-schlesinger-jr.html
#6 ajacksonian (Link) on 2007-12-22 11:07 (Reply)
All good points although Mr Schlesinger did change as the party changed. His attachment to New Deal liberalism is one flaw, particularly for an historian. He might be thought of as no less contradictory than the evolving contemporary liberalism he tended to support almost as a reflex. His criticism of Ronald Reagan as the president was closing out 40 years of bad policy toward the Soviet Union speaks volumes about Schlesinger's bascically mistaken attitude. Ideologically rigid historians aren't really historians at all.
#6.1 Tom C on 2007-12-22 11:26 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.