Liberals Quotes
“Liberalism” was a catch all Chinese term at the time which was very derogatory in Communist vernacular very much like the negative connotation of liberalism to American Conservatives at the turn of the millennium 1990-2010.
Many people had come to the conclusion that capitalism as it then existed was not sufficient to correct some of the serious inequities in society. They saw that socialism tended more to focus on those. However, they also saw in socialism per se, as it was than advocated, many other problems. Steffens seems to be the first person to describe that type of person, in this case, himself.
Essentially, this was the claim of many of the supporters of Fascists who claim liberal values like Mussolini. See {640793} for more of Hayek’s views on dictators.
Gingrich was one of the most polarizing political figures of his era. He conflated liberals with intellectuals, and people he called “elites” creating a form of class warfare where the class divisions were educational and cultural instead of socioeconomic.
“Liberalism” was a catch all Chinese term at the time which was very derogatory in Communist vernacular very much like the negative connotation of liberalism to American Conservatives at the turn of the millennium 1990-2010.
This is a very noteworthy quotation. The reason is that in America, the extreme right wing accuses liberals of being communists or supporters of communism. However, here one of the two major Communists in the world, condemns liberalism and states that liberals are the enemy of communism.
This may be one of the most anti-intellectual, anti educational statements made in the history of American campaigns. Santorum was one of 9 Republicans seeking the 2012 Presidential nomination. He was a favorite of the radical religious right which was an important constituency of the Republican Party at that time. The 9 candidates tried to outdo each other in how they could attack President Barack Obama, then running for a second term. While Obama had a very large percentage of Americans who “liked him” even when they disagreed with his policies, the right wing base of Republicans literally hated the man and would see evil in anything Obama did or said. One of the main positions of the President had been making college affordable for every American young person. Normally, this would be approved by almost all citizens and voters. However, this quotation illustrated the degree of hatred and paranoia. The audience, instead of laughing at the absurdity of Santorum’s accusation, roared its approval. There were not enough Republicans who shared the same degree of Paranoia about Obama, and Santorum was not elected as the nominee. There has always been in America a fundamentalist religious minority who feared college and higher eductation as not adhereing to the literal reading of The Bible, even when the colleges were Christian religious institutions which the early Ivy League colleges were: Brown, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia. As these schools have become secular, some religious fundamentalists opposed sending their children to them and saw the institutions in a negative light. Santorum’s constituency included those Americans.
After Roosevelt, most eras of American politics more or less followed the pattern Roosevelt described herein as a “calamity”, with the anger becoming more or less intense. Jefferson thought that these were natural divisions of politics in all societies--{604810}. The thing that masked this for years was race and slavery. In Lincoln’s time there were liberals and conservatives in both parties if race were ignored. In Theodore Roosevelt’s era, he, Taft and others were generally liberal reformers, while a large number of Republicans were conservative supporters of the status quo. Some democrats were radical reformers like William Jennings Bryan while others were arch conservatives. Until 1964 and the Civil Rights Act there were many conservatives in the Democratic Party, but almost all switched to the Republican Party in anger. The Republican conservatives tended to drive the Republican liberals out of the party and for the last part of the 20th century Roosevelt’s “calamity” well described the American political scene, and the anger increased carrying partisan bitterness into the 21st century.
This another DeLay quote that deviates from the truth. After 9-11, almost ALL Americans supported the effort to go into Afghanistan and attack the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, after President Bush invaded Iraq and tried to justify it as a part of the War on Terror, many liberals and Democrats opposed and protested that part of the war. However so did most of the conservative Libertarians, and many main line Republicans also opposed that part of the war effort. Many in the media opposed the Iraq war efforts, but almost as many supported it—especially most radio talk show hosts. Fox News where he did this interview was a major supporter of the war along with many other media outlets. At the end of President George W. Bush’s second term, a majority of Americans opposed continued fighting in Iraq and most of the media so reported that. Reporting anti war public opinion was interpreted by DeLay as “undermining” the war effort. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
