Staff Columnist
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
last updated January 9, 2002 11:10 AM
As we enter a new year, our natural tendency is to look for signs of progress in the preceding year. We want to see milestones.
Unfortunately, the words to describe this sense of political change — progressive and liberal — have been smeared over the past 50 years. As a result, we don’t dream the big dreams and we leave no milestones to posterity. That leaves us unable to answer the most important question of them all: has our civilization gotten any smarter?
The answer is no.
We have become protectors of the status quo. Our ruling philosophy is laissez faire capitalism. However, this narrow philosophy is contrary to our own political history. The previous century brought us visionaries such as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Each of them furthered the progressive dream started by Teddy Roosevelt, who knew that life was more than money.
Teddy Roosevelt rode this country out of the starting gates and into a new century. He was president from 1901 to 1909. He ran again in 1912 as a candidate for the Progressive Movement. His platform guided big dreams for the next 50 years: minimum standards of industrial safety and health; medical, old age and unemployment insurance; public ownership of natural resources; a progressive income tax; government supervision of the securities markets; the creation of the department of labor; and the prohibition of child labor.
Instead of dreaming big dreams, we try to avoid being tagged as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” (George H.W. Bush to Michael Dukakis) or a “thumb-sucking liberal” (James Baker to a crowd of summer associates in reference to people who believe in the International Criminal Court). Our own Herbert Hoover once wrote of “fuzzy-minded totalitarian liberals.” This name-calling has stifled our confidence to chart the future and make our country smarter than it was before.
Now, we have an MBA president. He tinkers with the economy and reacts to world events. So far, he’s providing solid leadership in the wake of the horrible carnage of Sept. 11. The problem is that he lacks a progressive agenda to take us to the next level. He’ll guard the status quo while his political cronies throw a cage of disrepute upon anyone who uses the word “progressive” or “liberal” to describe his or her political agenda.
The word “liberal” first started to sound dirty around 1948 when the Progressive Party asked the U.S. to pursue a policy of accommodation with the Soviet Union. Around 1950, the Progressive Party opposed American intervention in the Korean War. This sounded the death knell, as the progressives looked like a bunch of pansies. Even today, “liberal” still sounds somewhat soft and un-American. William Safire’s Political Dictionary offers the following synonyms: Knee-jerk, Pinko, Parlor Pink and Egghead. However, none of these synonyms would apply to post-Cold War progressives.
The words “progressive” and “liberal” should be rescued from political shenanigans and restored to their former majesty. George Washington described liberals as generous and open-minded people. He contrasted them with narrow-minded people who wanted to deprive Jews and Catholics of their civil rights. Earl Warren, then-Governor of California and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote this in 1948:
“I particularly like the term ‘progressive.’ To me it represents true liberalism and the best attitude that we could possibly have in American life. The reactionary, concerned only with his own position, and indifferent to the welfare of others, would resist progress regardless of changed conditions or human need.”
The past 20 years have fallen under a “reactionary” model, to use Warren’s words, in which each person has been concerned only with his own position.
LBJ was the Last of the Progressives. His Great Society called for an end to poverty and racial injustice. He made it happen, too. The Last of the Progressives created Medicare, passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and started what is now the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His vision suffered a slow death. Bill Clinton put the final nail in the coffin by dismantling federal welfare and returning those responsibilities to state governments.
In 2000, Bill Bradley ran as a progressive Democrat (he refused to characterize himself as a liberal when asked at a debate), but he drew narrow support from people with advanced university degrees. It seems that progressives have lost their popular appeal.
We should learn from our own past experience as well as the experiences of smaller, but smarter, countries like Norway and Sweden. Scandinavians believe in social learning. They believe that society as a whole can learn, develop and progress into a better national community. We should follow this philosophy. Progressives can guide us there while, at the same time, improving our scorecard relative to other countries in the United Nations Human Development Index.
Why does Sweden have more Internet users (as a percentage of their population) than the U.S.? Americans developed the Internet and the U.S. exports the vast majority of high-technology products. Why do 14 percent of Americans live below the income poverty line while only four percent of Norwegians and six percent of Swedes live under the poverty line? Why does Norway have 413 physicians per 100,000 people, Sweden 311 and Finland 299 while we only have 279 physicians per 100,000 people? The answer is social learning.
There is more to politics than protecting the status quo. We have LBJ’s War on Poverty to finish. We have to fulfill Teddy Roosevelt’s dream of national health insurance. We have to encourage female political leadership. Only 14 percent of seats in the U.S. Congress are held by women, as opposed to 37 percent of seats in the Norwegian legislature, 37 percent of seats in the Finnish legislature and 43 percent of seats in the Swedish legislature.
As we enter the new year, we should think about milestones we can establish. In doing so, we should wear the progressive label with pride, scoffing at those who would disparage the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK and LBJ.
We must dare to dream again.
Rob Gaudet is a third-year law student.