Forum Post: The Death Of The Liberal Class
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 2:57 a.m. EST by looselyhuman
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131166027
Chris Hedges masterfully lays it out. Recommended reading for libertarians who hate liberals. Please be open-minded.
I accept my responsibility as a liberal in all of this, but the point is that it's not our ideals that are faulty, but rather that all of our liberal institutions have been bought and paid for - and completely betrayed us all.
Small excerpt:
"Populations will endure the repression of tyrants, as long as these rulers continue to manage and wield power effectively. But human history has demonstrated that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet insist on retaining the trappings and privileges of power, their subject populations will brutally discard them."
"Such a fate awaits the liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state. The liberal class has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power. And as corporate power pollutes and poisons the ecosystem and propels us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs, the liberal class, which serves no purpose in the new configuration, is being abandoned and discarded. The death of the liberal class means there is no check to a corporate apparatus designed to enrich a tiny elite and plunder the nation. An ineffectual liberal class means there is no hope, however remote, of a correction or a reversal. It ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and middle classes will find expression outside the confines of democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy."
What do now?
Thank you for these videos. They are very informative and TRUE. I love these essays as well: http://theassailedteacher.com/
But Hedges is on point. A man whose morals and politics are one.
Hey Talleyrand. Just got around to reading a couple of these. "End the Fed" (addendum) is great; excerpt:
"Chances are, people have heard the “End the Fed” argument in one place first: the internet. Now, if you have only a fuzzy notion of American history or economics and Ron Lawl or Alex Jones are ominously telling you to “End the Fed” and it seems like so many people agree, you would probably agree as well. Of course, this counts as “research” in this day and age. What is funny though is how many of the most popular sources for ending the Fed have outright LIED, like the movie Zeitgesit which presents a Woodrow Wilson quote that has been debunked a zillion times as an outright fabrication or books that have been shown to intentionally misquote the Constitution.
If this was a true scholarly community, these sources would be trashed and the people that wrote them would be outcasts. But on the internet it does not matter if your source has propagated known lies, only that it fits your world view and a lot of other people seem to like it.
“End the Fed” lets corporations off the hook. It implies that the government forced all these banks to gamble away money or Wall Street to speculate wildly. If the government was not forcing these poor heroes who are only trying to play in the free market, they would not have run our economy off of a cliff. All “End the Fed” is is free market rhetoric put in a revolutionary syringe to be injected directly into the blood stream so you can act all rebellious while really being under the spell of uber-capitalism like a good automaton."
Everyone needs more teachers in their lives...
Thank you looselyhuman!
Good reading, thank you. OWS is hopefully a wakeup call...
Have seen the video before. Where he talks about Dostoevsky and the idea that the breakdown means an age of moral nihilism is right on. I see the "defeated dreamers" and "cynical liberals" all over this forum.
And: "what's happened as we are propelled down this road towards an oligarchic or a neo-feudal society, is that we are creating a permanent underclass - a permanently enraged underclass."
His concepts of inverted totalitariansim and the commoditization of everything... that socieities that cannot regulate capitalism cannibalize themselves until they die. Sigh.
Yeah I don't think anyone understands the meta/macro situation as well as Hedges.
Apparently this is only interesting to us.
With comments like the below, it's easy to see why. They blame the shadows of liberal institutions - in many case rightly so - for our ills. They think it's the liberal worldview that's the problem, not realizing it's the sellout of that worldview to the conservative/corporate/neoliberal institutions of greed and power that's enabled this tragedy.
Where does that leave us, when people put more faith in the ideology of the oligarchy than the ideology of the resistance? I sitll don't fully understand how, but Reagan really did a number on us all. We all see the common problems, but the degree to which people are working at cross-purposes is amazing. It plays right into the hands of those that want to keep the people down.
More in depth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCvSntOI5s&feature=relmfu
Fabulous speech! Chris Hedges articulates so well the failures of both parties. Thank you for posting this. I've already passed it around to several friends who will be interested in seeing this. Thank you again!
My pleasure. :) Great handle. Plenty of Ayn Rand fans around here that could use a little of that medicine....
I've seen better death scenes
Yes, this is the man. One of the best speeches I ever heard was "Calling all Rebels." It made every hair on my body stand on end.
I just read it. My one small gripe with it is the hopelessness of his imagery: "rebellion also chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim flames of hope." I like what he, and my absurdist friend Camus btw, are saying in terms of rebellion as a life-affirming act, but don't yet accept that we can't make a difference. I just refuse to. We HAVE to. Naive I guess? It's probably why I'm a liberal. :)
Do you know anything out Chris Hedges? He's the epitome of the limousine liberal type. He talks as though he is a powerless outsider rallying his fellow unwashed masses when in fact he is a pampered member of the establishment. He's the type of guy who will stop by the protest in the afternoon then have dinner with some celebrity at a 5 star Manhattan eatery at night before retiring to his penthouse.
I think the problem with the Liberal Class is that its too liberal.
In what sense? Did you read the article, or better yet watch the video? Didn't I read a pro-FDR post from you?
Liberal thinking is what is destroying the Left. That's what I mean by it.
It's reactionary, rather than progressive; it bases itself in guilt for the past rather than a vision for the future; it cuts itself off from all of progress that has came before it by smearing heroes of the people; etc.
I would not call FDR a liberal, he was an American. He was serious about what was written in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution (including the preamble). He proactively took on problems; he planned for the future; and he knew who his enemies were.
You just have the wrong ideas all around. FDR was most certainly a liberal, in fact he's the archetype upon whom most liberals base their political worldview. Whatever else you're describing is not it. Liberal guilt is a right-wing meme. It's justice we're about, and a more equitable, prosperous, functional society - something the social contract best provides - not guilt.
I think a fair question was asked - did you read the article? Reactionary - I don't think it means what you think it means.
FDR was a liberal American, as am I. If it's people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama upon whom you're basing your views of liberals - those are neoliberals, and have little in common with me, FDR, or Chris Hedges. RTFA.
Yes, Clinton and Obama have shown themselves to be neoliberal while still trying to pander to social liberals. So few people in the US understand what neoliberalism is. It is curious that spellcheck identifies neoliberal as a misspelled word.
"I would not call FDR a liberal, he was an American"
Awesome.. Now find everything you can about FDR, read it, and you'll either find out you're a bleeding heart liberal(according to modern conservatives) or that you disagree with FDR.
"It's reactionary, rather than progressive"
Really?? Reactionary?? Perhaps you're misusing a term that you've heard, but never looked up??
Wow. What muddled thinking. Smearing who?
Try reading someone who isn't a commie, for one thing.