Matthew Yglesias (February 07, 2008) - The Liberal Label (Media)

Look, there's three kinds of people: Conservatives, Liberals, and DFH's.

Conservatives impugned the "Liberal" brand by applying it to DFH. Liberals sought to distinguish themselves from DFH's by rebranding themselves as "Progressive."

It's easy to tell the difference between the three groups:

1. Conservatives are always wrong about everything.
2. Liberals are usually right, but too amibivalent or afraid to fight.
3. DFH are right and ready to fight, but always lose becaue Conservatives and Liberals gang up and marginalize them.

Posted by dogfacegeorge | February 7, 2008 3:03 PM

> And the neutral descriptor people are
> going to keep using it no matter what
> liberals do.

Yet somehow the Radical Right has managed to force numerous changes into popular usage over the last 20 years. "Death tax" comes to mind right away, but there are many others. Howzacome they can do it but others can't?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | February 7, 2008 3:05 PM

I agree with the gist of the argument, Matt, but the first sentence needs editing: "progressive" in for "liberal."

Posted by Will | February 7, 2008 3:20 PM

I agree that Obama (and Hillary, though that's less likely to happen) should embrace the "liberal" label. If he's serious about being the Democratic Reagan, he needs to make being "liberal" cool again.

For some reason, the Republicans all get to argue about who's the most conservative, while Democrats argue about who's the least liberal.

Kennedy provided the blueprint for how to answer this question and Obama can put it into action in this election. We need to embrace the label and redefine it on our own terms.

Posted by Mike | February 7, 2008 3:24 PM

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both in the left-most third of the Senator distribution

And whether you call it left, liberal, progressive, "DFH" (whatever that stands for) or anything else, that fact is gonna impact the credibility of Obama's campaign claim to be "a uniter, not a divider."

Look, liberals think they're right and therefore use "conservative" as an insult - including some who directed it at President Clinton when he wasn't far enough left for them.

Conservatives think they're right and therefore use "liberal" as an insult - including some who've recently been using it to describe John McCain.

In both cases the answer isn't to run from the label, it's to explain why your side is right on the policy merits.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 7, 2008 3:25 PM

Cranky - lots of people pull the renaming trick.

"Death tax" sure has a better emotional impact from the conservative perspective, but at least it's not a flat-out lie like calling people "anti-immigrant" when they are in fact in favor of legal immigration, they're just anti-illegal-immigrant.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 7, 2008 3:31 PM

Liberal is still too closely tied to the excesses of identity politics and seen as elitist. The nomenclature we use to describe ourselves is not worth losing any voters over. Isn't that how you usually describe pointless symbolic votes, like criminalizing flag burning?

We reinvented ourselves and gave ourselves a new name; big deal. Rush can have the old one. Neutral observers should describe us how we describe ourselves. I agree with Chris Bowers.

Posted by bob | February 7, 2008 3:33 PM

there's something mighty impractical about the whole "no, we're liberals" kick.

You must mean the whole "no, we're progressives" kick is impractical. Right?

Posted by southpaw | February 7, 2008 3:34 PM

No. Progressive signifies something different from "liberal." It is not merely an attempt to find a more palatable label for liberal positions. A progressive is willing to fight, as dogfacegeorge says above. There are many liberals in Congress. There are few progressives.

We've had thirty years of demonization of 'liberal', and many supposed liberals have disappointed us time and time again. They can have the name. We'll take the fight.

That said, Obama, alone, could redeem 'liberal' if he wanted to do so. But 'progressive' carries more power, so why would he bother? People who would have self-identified as liberals thirty years ago are increasingly self-identifying as 'independents', which is wrong. Give them a chance to start with a perceived non-pejorative label.

Posted by Scat Cat | February 7, 2008 3:34 PM

If he's serious about being the Democratic Reagan, he needs to make being "liberal" cool again.

I thought admitting that Reagan was effective politician and not the antichrist was grounds for being expelled from the Democratic party. At least it sounded like that a couple of weeks ago.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 7, 2008 3:38 PM

I consider myself a liberal and I prefer the term liberal to progressive. Its not for any intellectual reasons, but just due to the emotional reactions I have to the terms.

For me, the word liberal has a warm emotional connotation. I associate it with people whose hearts are in the right place, even if they sometimes support impractical policies.

Progressive sounds a little colder, more technocratic, and also a little more elitist and radical.

Maybe people in different age brackets (I am early 40s) have learned different associations and that explains why they have different preferences.

Posted by Jim W | February 7, 2008 3:43 PM

lib·er·al
a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
c. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
d. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism [a political orientation that favors progress and reform], especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.

The word Liberal has been abused beyond recognition, it has a fixed meaning and it's meaning is not relative to what some right wing nut job is hawking.

Example:

Would a "liberal" in Nazi Germany believe Jews should be humanely euthanized while a conservative would gas 'em any old way?

Wellstone's well timed death, there are now 0.0 "liberal" Senators in the Senate. The Democratic senators are just right of center...and the Republicans are off the map.

Here's a little reality check for those inside the bubble:

Name me ONE right wring leader in a developed country that has tried to dismantle universal healthcare?

Maggie Thatcher?

Guess again.

Both Hillary and Obama are right of center with Obama tilting further towards the Right, Nixon would be to the left of both of them.

Posted by S Brennan | February 7, 2008 3:59 PM

I thought admitting that Reagan was effective politician and not the antichrist was grounds for being expelled from the Democratic party. At least it sounded like that a couple of weeks ago.
Posted by Ralph Phelan

I believe the antichrist is supposed to have the qualities that make him an effective politician, so it's all good.

Posted by Njorl | February 7, 2008 4:19 PM

What we need is a catchy jingle:

If it says,
Liberal, liberal, liberal
on the
Label, label, label
you will,
like it, like it, like it
on the
Table, table, table.

Posted by Njorl | February 7, 2008 4:27 PM

I am a liberal and proud of it. Call me a liberal, a progressive, a leftist, a leftist tool even. I don't care. I'm a liberal in the truest sense of FDR, JFK, RFK and whoever else applies. Why would I surrender this term just because the conservatives made it a dirty word? Five, 10, 20 years from now, it will be turned around anyway and "conservative" will be the new dirty word. I will ride out the storm, thank you.

http://13martyrs.blogspot.com/

Posted by Rob Wagner | February 7, 2008 4:39 PM

Jim W.

For me, the word liberal has a warm emotional connotation. I associate it with people whose hearts are in the right place, even if they sometimes support impractical policies.

Progressive sounds a little colder, more technocratic, and also a little more elitist and radical.

Yeah I sort of agree. All that is good about Obama is what is good about liberals, which is why he has stirred such enthusiasm.

The terms depend on the context. I consider myself a progressive or radical, b/c the goal isn't to be satisified with a liberal capitalism, although I'll admit that anything else seems like a far-off distant, unlikely possibility. I think Edwards was about moving the ball down the field, thereby setting up the possibility for further progress in the future.

Liberals who just use Conservatives as alibis or as a foil to further their own ambitions, like the Clintons, annoy the hell out of me.

Posted by Peter K. | February 7, 2008 5:13 PM

Liberals sought to distinguish themselves from DFH's by rebranding themselves as "Progressive."

This was astonishingly stupid, what with pretty much everyone who called themselves a "Progressive" before the 1980s having been, you know, a DFH. In the postwar political context, "progressive" was a term used by the hard left.

Posted by John | February 7, 2008 5:41 PM

I always felt the problem was there were two types of liberal - economic and social. From the 80s on there were not that many Democrats that were both.
I thought progressive was a label that showed commitment to both types of liberalism.

Posted by 2 cents | February 7, 2008 5:53 PM

I think Romney gave a very effective speech, made more so by his misuse of the term "liberal" as a synonym for "leftist", plus maybe "libertines".

Meanwhile, Democrats who care more about their personal identities as ratified by the peer group than they do about the Party, or for that matter the country, bang on endlessly about their moral superiority as exemplified by the label du jour.

Labels that lie are a real problem. See "Bolshevik". Leftish Democrats are about the most orthodox, fundamentalist, traditionalist, authoritarian, and intolerant element in the current US body politic. This, friends, is not liberal.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 7, 2008 5:53 PM

The name "liberal" is confusing because it has been used to mean lots of different things, some of which are diametrically opposite to each other.

Is opposing government regulation liberal or not? Depends where you are and when.

Is opposing speech codes liberal or not? Depends where you are and when.

....and so on........

Posted by Stuart | February 7, 2008 6:10 PM

"It's a conservative country." - John Harris

Duh. It's practically impossible for a sole superpower not to be a conservative country. A liberal America would be spending $500 billion a year on foreign aid. And it would probably not be imprisoning five times as many of its people as liberal countries.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 7, 2008 6:48 PM

I disagree with Matthew's imperative to use "liberal" over "progressive".

"Liberal" has connotations of "libertine" and "loose pursestrings" that don't work for the left movement.

Just because it's been the traditional appellation doesn't mean we have to stick with it. Rebranding often makes sense. The "death tax" plays better for the right than the "estate tax". And "progressive" plays better for the left than "liberal".

"Progress" is a better rallying point.

Posted by Petey | February 7, 2008 6:53 PM

Liberal and Progressive are distinct political terms. Many of us who prefer the label "progressive" do so not because we think it's a catchy rebranding for liberalism, but because we don't actually consider ourselves to be liberals.

Modern American liberalism was born in FDR's first 100 days and died in the Mekong Delta. It was essentially the marriage of the welfare state to the military industrial complex, with support for global capitalism, as well as support for racial integration and other socially progressive causes. Liberalism had a good run, but the time for this particular coalition of interests has passed. If you look at the 1924 Progressive Party platform, there are a few anachronistic items, but in general I think it provides a much more timely set of principles for the American Left than the perpetual efforts by liberal think tanks to resurrect Truman and JFK.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | February 7, 2008 8:09 PM

La Follette, you do Fighting Bob proud. But perhaps the liberals on this thread seem to have bought Jonah Goldberg's bogus argument that people who called themselves "progressive" before the 1930s were proto-fascist authoritarians.

We on the left are the true (and only) heirs to the Enlightenment and so I don't mind calling myself a "liberal" in that sense. But I certainly wouldn't assume that label to tip my hat to Harry Truman, JFK or any of those other assholes.

Posted by Adrian | February 7, 2008 9:31 PM

I think LaFollette Progressive is on to something when he says liberalism and progressive could mean different things. I'm a liberal, so my views may show anti-progressive bias, but generally, I think liberal means rather dogmatic commitment to freedom of speech and religion, the view that free markets are basically good but have a few problems which can be ameliorated, and take the values and culture of the populace as a given outside of the domain of government. Progressives tend to regard freedom of speech and religion as negotiable vis-à-vis other values such as opposition to racism and sexism, regard markets as a basically wrongheaded way of satisfying human wants (e.g., citing Barry Schwartz's work as evidence that markets can just make people less happy), and believe that the government should try to improve and uplift the populace, changing its current values and culture into better ones.

That's how I tend to see things, at least.

Posted by Julian Elson | February 7, 2008 9:50 PM

"lib·er·al
a. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
b. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded."

Gee, Transhumanists are "liberals", according to those definitions. Who'd'a thunk it? Oh, wait, I guess we're not "free from bigotry" - since we don't like chimpanzees...

"d. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism [a political orientation that favors progress and reform], especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States."

Oh, really? So, what is "liberalism"?

"liberalism

"Main Entry:
lib·er·al·ism
Date:
1819

1: the quality or state of being liberal"

No shit.

"2 a often capitalized : a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity"

Well, well, well - liberals as Christians...

"b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard"

Well, well, well - liberals as supporters of the free market and THE GOLD STANDARD! Not from THIS crowd, I think! But this is a definition that would fit almost all (right) libertarians, small-l and big-L, if not left libertarians.

"c: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties..."

Well, that would seem to be in accord with the standard concepts - except I don't see much distinction here with "progressive".

I also don't see much "autonomy of the individual" in most so-called "liberal" discussions - with the possible exception of abortion rights - certainly not when compared with libertarians.

Not to mention that anybody believing in the "essential goodness of the human race" is clearly out to lunch...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 7, 2008 11:11 PM

I am a proud liberal, and a citizen of a great liberal nation.

Progressives don't realize that they don't get out of being tarred with the warped "liberal" label conservatives use just because they call themselves progressive. It just frees the term up to be an uncontested insult.

You can't escape it. Own it. Use it.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | February 7, 2008 11:15 PM

DFH = dirty frelling hippy, (if you are a Farscape fan. For everyone else the "F" stands for something else).

The reason why "liberal" is seen as a pejorative is largely due to the huge crime increase that followed the imposition of the Great Society, due to the sudden explosion in underclass illegitimacy, particularly among blacks, and due to the refusal of a lot of liberals to do anything about it other than blame middle-class whites for their racism and try to take away their guns.

I think "conservative" may soon become a dirty word as well, after this $%#^&&*&**!! moron the GOP put in the White House.

Posted by Glaivester | February 7, 2008 11:24 PM

The reason why "liberal" is seen as a pejorative is largely due to the huge crime increase that followed the imposition of the Great Society, due to the sudden explosion in underclass illegitimacy, particularly among blacks, and due to the refusal of a lot of liberals to do anything about it other than blame middle-class whites for their racism and try to take away their guns.

The crime rate nose-dived in the 90s. Illegitimacy, meanwhile, remained near constant or grew. Kind of messes with your pseudo-social science.

Posted by Freddie | February 8, 2008 12:42 AM

There's nothing wrong with Glaivester's description of the historical context. Current declines in crime are strongly associated with the different demographics (Boomers are out of the high-crime age segment now), and the manifestly different level of social disruption now as compared to the '60's.

"Liberal" simply doesn't apply any more to the people who claim it, most of whom seem to be every bit as dogmatic and intolerant as any conservative, just about different things.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 8, 2008 2:56 AM

"The reason why "liberal" is seen as a pejorative is largely due to the huge crime increase that followed the imposition of the Great Society,"

Unfortunately, this isn't true.

Self-identified conservatives have outnumber self-identified liberals in America since at least the 1950's.

Posted by Petey | February 8, 2008 3:55 AM

Well there are two kinds of progressives. There are those liberals that choose to call themselves progressive because the term has less baggage than "liberal" (for example, the progressives at the Center for American Progress).

Then there are progressives who, like Phil Ochs, associate "liberalism" with mealy-mouthed center/center-leftism and therefore prefer to consider themselves progressives (as in the progressives at The Progressive magazine.) This group would consider it an insult to labeled as liberals.

Posted by Adrian | February 8, 2008 5:42 AM

The crime rate nose-dived in the 90s. Illegitimacy, meanwhile, remained near constant or grew. Kind of messes with your pseudo-social science.

Not when you consider that one way to reduce crime is to get rid of the criminals by locking them up.

People credit the conservatives with the decline, because that decline is largely due to imprisoning huge numbers of young men, particularly young black men, by strict enforcement of certain of the drug laws.

There are still almost as many criminals as there were in the 70s and 80s (probably there are somewhat fewer because a lot of them killed each other or themselves), it's just that most of them are in prison instead of in society.

Posted by Glaivester | February 8, 2008 8:14 AM

Freddie:

The crime rate nose-dived in the 90s.

With the Clinton welfare reforms!

Clinton didn't try to "rebrand" liberalism, he tried to make the product more appealing. He recognized that a lot of Great Society programs however well intentioned had perverse incentives built in and tried to fix them. He responded to legitimate criticisms of affirmative action with "mend it don't end it" rather than "la la la I can't hear you." I could go on.

If the Democrats could find a way to embrace WJC's excellent policies without having to embrace WJC the less than excellent human being you'd be an unshakeable majority party.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 8, 2008 8:42 AM

I like progressive and I like liberal, but whatever word we use will just be tainted by Republicans if we don't defend it.

God knows why we haven't attacked "conservative" in the same way.

I've always just wanted someone in a public setting--say Obama in a debate with McCain--to respond to the liberal charge by saying, "Well, that's right. Liberals led the fight to create this nation, to give Americans civil rights, to free the slaves, to create better working conditions for American workers, to build the social security safety net, to end Jim Crow horrors and protect the rights of Americans against this secretive and intrusive administration. You're damn right I'm a liberal, Senator, but the bigger question is, how can you be an American and not be?"

Posted by nitpicker | February 8, 2008 8:58 AM

As I mentioned in the previous thread, "progressive" has a bit of a history of anti-Catholic bias that older Catholics remember. We don't want to have, for example, part of the presidential campaign to have to be about how our nominee doesn't believe Catholics are dirt people or something, especially when running against an old Catholic in McCain. "Liberal," as LaFollette Progressive pointed out, may have married the New Deal to the military-industrial complex, but only a handful of people who study this stuff remember the second part. Political labels mean nothing in a representative democracy if they are completely disconnected from a political movement and / or a political party. Considering that the Democratic Party is the party that FDR built and FDR, one of our most universally recognized good presidents (even Reagan had to pay lip service to him and Nancy had to stop Republicans from trying to put Reagen on the dime), so liberalism is our basic party ideology. It has a good history worth saving. Meanwhile, we've already turned the "neo" in neocon into an insult. Now we just need to flip the discourse of the past 30 years on its head and do the same with "con."

Posted by Reality Man | February 8, 2008 9:19 AM

I don't think finding ways to turn ideas into labels, or labels into insults, is going to get us where we want to go.

Modern "progressives" are not racist and nativist as their name-sakes were, but they have adopted a more domesticated form of both tendencies in the smarmy, holier-than-thou attitude towards welfare dependency and the current non-system of immigration that exploits migrants while degrading the circumstances of US workers. Anyone pointing out problems in these areas is dismissed as a racist, ending any meaningful discussion.

Modern "progressives" also don't usually take overtly protectionist or isolationist positions like their forerunners, but on the most important current international issues this is the net result of their favored policies.

Modern "liberals" share these "progressive" weaknesses, along with a preference for recourse to The State for nearly everything, and add several of their own. Perhaps the root is the essentially dishonest co-option of Liberal by FDR in the first place. What's not to run away from?

Posted by Robert Powell | February 8, 2008 11:56 AM

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again - just as Obama is the black candidate who transcends race, he's also the liberal candidate who transcends liberalism. More to the point, he transcends the narrow or outright wrong aspects of what the labels, defined almost entirely by the right, traditionally mean, providing a new definition.

As to race, even the right's favorite betes noirs (the pun is mostly intended) Jackson and Sharpton have a more nuanced view of race than the noise machine gives them credit for, but the other baggage they carry (some very heavy baggage in Sharpton's case) enables the noise machine to demonize them, and also makes it difficult for us liberals to cotton to them totally. But, Obama is a fresh face with far less baggage - too little baggage (or, if you prefer, seasoning) for some - so he might be able to move the conversation from nooses and quotas to a constructive conversation that recognizes the objective facts that (a) black poverty is the result of 150 years of non- or second-class citizenship and (b) no matter what policies are adopted to ameliorate this, individuals will have to a lot of the heavy lifting themselves.

As to liberalism, most of our baggage is 40 years old - there may well be some people who sincerely that believe any Dem in the White House will govern like Abbie Hoffman reincarnated, there are certainly numerous conservative pundits who know better, but spread the lie to keep the unwashed on their side. This has been too easy, partly because we ceded the definition to the noise machine, and partly because we have not had a liberal standard-bearer to define liberalism through his/her actions and policies. We haven't had a liberal president since LBJ, and when we haven't had the predidency, in contrast to parliamentary democracies where the opposition has a single leader and even a shadow cabinet to define what the oppostion stands for, we've had no one who was in a position to say, "I speak for liberalism, and here's what we believe." Conservatives leapt into this breach, and concocted betes noir (Teddy) and noire (Hillary) to which they attached all kinds of false and negative things.

The best way to defeat this isn't through unmasking the lies - you unmask one and another springs up to take its place, and even repudiating obvious lies will fail to win over people who have been conditioned to believe that libs are pure evil: "Well, this allegation may not be literally true, but it might as well be because it captures their evil essence."

No, the best way to defeat this is by being clear and forthright about what we believe, with no obfuscation and little tempering. Both Hillary and Obama have been doing an excellent job of this, thanks mostly to the long primary season which has polished, publicized and defined their views more than Kerry's entire campaign, primary and general, did.

Another tactic is to make an emotional connection with the voters - here Obama is the champ. We've been waiting 40 years for a liberal politican who could make a speech articulating our deepest beliefs that makes grown men (and everyone else) cry. (Unfortunately, our famous speeches since the 60's have been by the losers - Ted in 1980 and Cuomo in whatever years he was famous.) He doesn't say "I'm a liberal and I'm proud of it", and in fact doesn't even say he's a liberal. But he does articulate the foundation for his beliefs as well as any liberal ever has, not by reciting a laundry list of policies, hoping that people who like the policies will decide to like him, but by calling us back to the core principles that conquered the Great Depression, won WWII, rebuilt Europe and Japan and made them pillars of the civilized world, gave blacks equal citizenship and meaningful voting rights, and contained the Soviet Union until it collapsed under its own weight.

Bottom line, by the time this election is over, both Hillary and Obama will have redefined and revived the liberal brand. Obviously, there will be some conservatives who continue to flog the old bogeyman, but that horse is dead (pardon the mixed metaphor), and Hillary and Obama (and Edwards too) killed it.

Posted by Geoff G | February 8, 2008 1:16 PM

Before this and related threads, I wasn't even aware that there were people who use “progressive” as a more acceptable version of “liberal”. For me, “progressive” has always been the term used by those who see "liberal" as being too centrist.

So what is happening here?

I suspect that the progressive-as-liberal-but-nicer-sounding group is within the larger centrist Democrat group. Perhaps they've misunderstood why some leftists they've known have rejected the “liberal” label?

For myself, I'm ambivalent. I'm an outlier in that I prefer the centrist economic policies of the Democrats but am far leftward with regard to social policies. I'm like a classic liberal, only moreso. When I want to emphasize that I'm further to the left than most Dems on social issues, I tend to identify as “progressive”. For example, if I'm in a discussion involving gay rights. When I want to emphasize that I prefer market solutions, trade, and the primacy of the individual rights of speech and similar, I tend to identify as “liberal”. In those senses, I'm a classic liberal and proud of it.

But most people I know, who are generally further to the left than the Democrat mainstream, prefer “progressive” because they favor further left social and economic policies. For them, “liberal” is approximately equivalent to the DLC. For them, mainstream Dems are just slightly to the left of the DLC.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | February 8, 2008 7:23 PM

The Liberal Label

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