I Used to be a Left Wing Liberal
Guest Blog
Jeffrey Rock*
When I was in college I was a left wing liberal. I have not changed my political and economic viewpoints one iota but I am no longer a liberal today. How could that be? If I am no longer a liberal it must be because I have changed into a right winger or a conservative or something, right? Not so fast. When I was a liberal:
Liberals were avid anti-war and pro-peace and they expressed those sentiments with marches and protests in the street and on college campuses across the US
Liberals were against all forms of nuclear weapons proliferation
Liberals were opposed to interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations whether they agreed with the US or not
Liberals supported working class people and the unions that made a decent middle class life possible for millions of Americans
Liberals supported progressive taxation that more evenly spread the burden of the cost of government across all income levels
Liberals supported public education
Liberals supported Social Security
Liberal opposed oligarchies and monopolies
Liberals embraced the Bill of Rights
Liberals supported free speech
Liberals opposed invasion of privacy
Liberals supported equal rights for everyone no matter in which nation they lived
Liberals supported community policing and opposed militarized police tactics
Liberals supported habeas corpus
Liberals promoted non-violence
Liberals fought for women’s rights
Liberals valued the environment and fought hard to protect it.
Then something changed, slowly at first and almost imperceptible.
Over time it progressed until today not one of the values listed above remains part of any liberal platform, policy or program. The only support for any of these concepts is in lip service and then only enough to be elected or re-elected, after which those words turn into meaningless broken campaign promises.
Obama started more wars than any President in the history of the US. Obama also re-kindled the Cold War with Russia. When Russia refused to cave-in to the will of Washington the Obama regime determined that nuclear war is a viable option, something liberals never previously supported. Under Obama the military has reversed its non-nuclear proliferation policies and has begun producing planet destroying nuclear bombs. Obama’s advisors have convinced him that a limited nuclear war is acceptable. To be liberal today means to support all wars, even thermo-nuclear. Clinton surrounds herself with advisors who not only promote nuclear proliferation but who are headed for nuclear war with Russia. Not one Democrat or liberal has uttered a peep in protest, let alone conducted street protests or marches. Cindy Sheehan is alone in anti-war protesting.
Liberals today strongly support interference in the internal affairs of sovereign foreign nations. They hire mercenary proxy armies to de-stabilize governments that do not acquiesce and submit to Washington’s rule. When that does not achieve their imperial goals they bomb small weak nations into submission or annihilation. Hillary Clinton has been directly or indirectly involved in the overthrow of freely elected sovereign nations including Honduras, Ukraine and Syria. She also led the overthrow of Libya and left it in the hands of barbarous criminals.
Liberals have abandoned labor unions and worker’s rights resulting in massive loss of jobs and lower wages and income for almost all middle class citizenry. Beginning with Bill Clinton’s signing of NAFTA only days after assuming office, to the many subsequent free trade deals liberals have made, US workers lost about 25,000,000 jobs. Bill Clinton convinced liberals to support these deals because he promised they would improve the lives of American workers and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. He knew full well, however, that this logic was flawed and that jobs would be permanently exported as a result of his trade agreements and economic policies. But he was personally enriched by those who benefitted the most. The Clintons have made a fortune by doing the right wing oligarchs bidding. The have amassed a couple hundred million in personal wealth since he left office and have stashed about $1.6 billion in a so-called charitable fund. That fund pays for his and Hillary’s planes, expenses and who knows what else. But Americans of all races have been the biggest losers as a result of Clinton’s policies. About 50,000 manufacturing plants were moved from the US to Asia as a result of his trade deals. Liberals are 100% responsible for this massive job loss. The unions have been all but destroyed as a result. Today liberals praise Clinton as one of the best Presidents for our economy in history.
The tax policies pursued and implemented by the liberals are the most right wing corporate oligarch policies possible. In fact, it is not possible to enact more corporate friendly tax policies than the Democratic liberals have. Products made with foreign cheap labor paid $2 per day, flood the US market with cheap goods at the cost of US jobs. Liberals sold out works and the middle class and have put all their eggs in the basket of large international corporations. It has been called it ‘neo-liberal,’ or ‘new’ liberal economic theory. We all know the theory was bankrupt and this one bankrupted American’s middle class. These jobs will NEVER come home and the middle class will NEVER regain its income level or status. According to the Allianz’s Global Wealth Report the US has the largest income disparity of the 55 nations it studied in its 2014 report. Also according to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has family income distribution Gini Index score of 45.0, which makes the United States rank thirty-ninth out of one hundred and thirty four countries in that category. Namibia ranks worst, with a Gini index score of 70.7. Previously, the United States ranked forty-third in this category, one step above Nigeria.
Liberals no longer support free education except with meaningless slogans but no real action. Why should they when most liberals are in the upper class and send their kids to private schools and colleges?
Liberals want to do away with Social Security by privatizing it. Liberals have robbed the US coffers of all Social Security funds and put in their place a bunch of IOU’s that are basically worthless. One day soon it will be reported that Social Security is bankrupt and will be abolished as an antiquated and unnecessary program. For all those people who contributed for a life time, they will get squat. And the liberals will blame it all on working class Americans who they have sold out lock-stock- and-barrel.
Liberals no longer oppose big corporations, they love them. Liberals stand up for the rights of oligarchs and billionaires, not middle class Americans. And liberals are well rewarded by their corporate oligarch masters for such support.
Liberals have abandoned the Bill of Rights. They support the invasion of everyone’s privacy by the NSA. They have not protected free speech and the right to privacy. They insist as long as a person has nothing to hide then the right to privacy is not relevant; anyone who has something to hide is a criminal anyway. In fact, liberals now jail brave citizens who have risked their own safety and freedom to inform Americans of the crimes of their own government. These are the whistleblowers, people who risk their security for the betterment of everyone else. In return they have been convicted and sentenced to long jail terms for crimes against the imperial state. The list of jailed whistleblowers is too long to write down here.
Liberals no longer respect the rights of people of all races, creeds, colors and religious backgrounds. Witness what is happening in South Dakota. While the local police are robbing the Native Americans of their land, granted in the treaty of 1851, the liberal-in-chief does nothing. And the future wannabe liberal-in-chief (aka Hillary) has not mentioned one single word about the plight of these Native Americans. They fight for their rights all alone. In the 1960’s this would have been unconscionable for liberals. In the old days liberals joined the protests, got on buses, travelled to the South to support African American civil rights. Today when police shoot Native Americans on their own land liberals do not even bat an eye or raise their hand in protest.
Liberals have presided over a great shift from community policing to a fully militarized police force. George Orwell’s Animal Farm could not have described better what the liberals have done. They are the piggies in Animal Farm.
By voting alongside Republicans for the Patriot Act almost unanimously liberals have completely accepted the overturning of habeas corpus, originally earned by brave Englishmen in the year 1215 and adopted in the US as a part of the common laws that had been in place in Britain for centuries. Habeas corpus is the fundamental cornerstone of any democratic or self-governing nation. Most people today do not even know what it means. So-called liberals voted 100 to 1 against habeas corpus.
Liberals are also a very violent bunch. As noted above, Obama started more wars than any US President in history. As Secretary of State Clinton took a morbid delight in the torture and murder of Ghaddafi even though he had created the most prosperous and egalitarian nation in African sharing all the oil wealth with the citizenry; building schools , hospitals, roads and providing government subsidies to young people getting married and going to school, among other progressive economic policies. In the most bloodthirsty and brutal display of any leader of a major nation since Germany in WWII, Hillary bragged, “We came, we saw, he died.” This was followed by her gleeful laughter. The type of enjoyment she relishes in the death of another human being is sick beyond measure. She is a madwomen. She is also the leader of the liberals. All liberals must take full responsibility for her bloodthirsty actions.
Liberals no longer fight for women’s rights. Just like the rights of Native Americans liberals have no commitment at all to support women’s rights. For example, both Obama and Clinton (Bill and Hillary) are very cozy with Saudi Arabia where women are property and are stoned to death as punishment for being raped. So why are women voting for Hillary in such high numbers? Look up the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ and you will know why. Liberals will toss anyone under the bus if it suits their financial gains.
Liberals no longer support the free and objective independent media. Reporters covering the South Dakota protests have been arrested and threatened with decades of imprisonment for exercising their rights to a free press while the liberal administration of Obama does nothing.
Finally, we always used to be able to count on liberals to clamor for action to save the planet and environment. This year’s election did not include one iota of support for cleaning up the environment and stopping global warming. After eight years of a liberal Obama administration the environment is worse than it ever has been and no laws have been implemented or even introduced by any liberal to address pollution and climate change. What a disgrace.
Today to be liberal means to embrace all the far right wing neoconservative oligarchic policies which destroy not only our nation but the entire planet. Liberals have no backbone as it turns out, to stand up against the criminal shadow oligarch government. Instead they prefer to profit therefrom. And though my politics and position have not changed one iota, I find myself in an extremely small minority of what are now thought to be far leftists. That’s ok… who the hell would want to be a bloodthirsty, war-mongering, anti-free speech, anti-middle class, anti-environmental, pro-corporate, violent and criminal liberal anyway? Not me.
About Jeff Rock:
*Influenced by the four years spent at Millfield School, a British boarding school in Somerset England, economic studies at Univercité de Montpellier, in Montpellier France, and eventual graduation from Antioch College, Ohio in 1976 with a degree in Economics, Jeffrey Rock has maintained a lifelong passion for political economy. Jeffrey’s focus is comparative economic systems and the relationship of national and global power structures to the living standards of the poor and middle class in every nation of the world. Jeffrey has had the good fortune of spending a lifetime in practical application of economics during his 40-year career in real estate development, engineering and construction. Since 2001 Jeffrey has penned articles critical of the economic conditions of the poor and middle class and the destructive influence of the corrupted political systems that have perverted the global economy causing unnecessary suffering for those left behind in the new world oligarchy. Jeffrey lived in West Africa for five years and witnessed firsthand the misery of tens of millions of third world citizens. As a US citizen born in Ohio and living in California most of his life, Jeffrey is ashamed of the contribution to global poverty and suffering caused by his own nation and the hypocrisies of its oligarchy which holds a death grip over world affairs. Jeffrey aspires to make a meaningful contribution to ameliorating the conditions of the poor by bringing attention to the root causes of war and poverty.
