solidarity forever

I always considered myself a liberal. I think it was my mother's influence. She had a classic politics of care, a political identity of compassion and generosity. The best liberals, in my experience, have always been generous in two sense at once, in the sense of pursuing a world where more is given to those in need, and in expanding the definition of what needs are real and legitimate. The question is, what would you work to provide for others, were it in your power to try? Which of their desires would you take as your responsibility to fulfill? If it's not a moving target, I don't know what the purpose of any of it is.

At the bottom of it all, though, is the need to be recognized as a human being. Liberalism, to me, has always been at heart the simple principle that human beings are of equal value. Not the idea that all humans are of different abilities or potentials-- that's a caricature of liberalism-- but that all human lives deserve equal dignity and equal protection. It's a simple idea and one that most everybody will claim to believe, but it's violated, every day, oftentimes by the same people who assert that principle most loudly. Nowadays, public people can't usually come out against this principle explicitly, so they find various ways to talk around it. When conservatives talk about welfare mothers, they justify their violation of the principle of equal human value by subtly insisting that the people in question aren't people at all. When liberals sigh about collateral damage in Pakistan, they are justifying the violation of the principle of equal human value by accepting as a "necessary evil" that which they would never accept if the victims were different people. The functional difference between American progressives and the left-wing critics of same, these days, is that the former justify and support these violations of that basic and sacred principle. The latter call them on it.

Why has Glenn Greenwald become such a ritualized hate figure to the progressive blogs? And he has: the vitriol and rancor that attends any mention of his name, in most movementy Democratic blogs, genuinely frightens me, and I'm no shrinking violet. I think they direct their hate towards him because he points out how deeply complicit they are in our most common and malicious violation of the principle of equal human value, our treatment of Muslims. The history of America is a history of violations of the various principles that we spend so much time celebrating. In the present moment, the most common and worst is our collective punishment of the Muslim world. What we are doing to those people will one day be looked back on as one of our great national shames. There was a time when American liberals recognized that, and fought against it, and eloquently expressed the moral reasoning that compelled them into that fight. But then the Democrats decided that it was in their political best interest to take part in that collective punishment, to demonstrate their "toughness" to the American electorate. The liberal blogs got in line, and those principled stands against the killing of Muslims turned immediately to justification. Greenwald, along with a few others, represents the voice reminding them what they used to argue, and why. He shames them.

Liberals and Democrats have flattered themselves for a long time that they are not merely correct, in their disagreements with conservatives and Republicans, but far healthier too. Independent of any stance on the issues, the argument goes, liberals and Democrats are far more honest, far fairer, far less angry, far less insane. As someone who has become the frequent target of progressive blogs (and, more, their commenters) I feel equipped to say that this simply isn't true. All of the petty misbehavior and ugliness that people associate with conservative sites is fully present in those comments. I've been on the receiving end, not that I mind. And the bloggers themselves work this dynamic in a deeply cynical way. They chum the waters and wait for the sharks to attack, and then can claim to have clean hands. Think of Greenwald again; whenever his name comes up at these blogs, he's personally insulted by commenters through barely-disguised homophobia or references to the fact that he lives abroad. The bloggers themselves, meanwhile, maintain plausible deniability. It's gross. It's also indicative of weakness.

Nowadays I'm as likely to evaluate people based on their language as anything else: what percentage of their statements of principle come before the word "but"? "I don't like drone strikes, but..." "I don't like that Obama put social security and Medicare in play, but..." "I don't like that the administration has been aggressively going after medical marijuana dispensaries, but..." Last night, when I reflected on the people I've been fighting with, it occurred to me that I couldn't recall the last time they expressed a moral principle that wasn't just a setup for an argument for why it had to be violated. Yes, I know, it's an imperfect world. But at some point, if you want to claim a principle, you actually have to stand for it itself, and not use it as a chip to be traded on, to be given away. Surely the fact that everyone must sometimes compromise is not an argument that every compromise is principled, or benevolent, or fair. I have asked my various antagonists many times, and in as specific and frank a way as I know how: where is the limit? What is the boundary beyond which you will not compromise? I've never received any answers.

Married to the notion that you must compromise your beliefs in the pursuit of partisan politics or else be worthless is the proud acknowledgment that partisan politics will likely bring you little anyway. The furor with which people argue that politics happens only within the boundaries of Democrats and Republicans is, somehow, married to an admission that we cannot achieve truly moral ends with those means. So what you end up with is a perfect lockbox of acknowledged impotence and aggressive enforcement of same. This stance has the virtue of an impregnable defense. Unlike the activism vs. partisan politics debates of my youth-- I always tried to do both-- the debate is now not between people arguing how best to improve the world. The argument is rather against those who have walled off every avenue to effect that improvement. As I said, that's an easily defended opinion, because the cynicism of "it cannot be done" speaks volumes in an age defined by reflexive retreat to the presumption of failure. The problem is that people are suffering, are dying, and they don't have the luxury of a showy disbelief in the ability to create positive change.

Only the comfortable could insist that there are no politics but partisan politics while they simultaneously acknowledge that partisan politics will not stem our violence or our cruelty. Only those who have never suffered could assert that impotence with pedantry and with pride.

If the problem was just with me, it would be no problem at all. But I am not alone, out here. I speak bluntly and provoke fights because I believe that papering over these distinctions only serves to make the problem deeper. Democrats and liberals have to decide what they would tolerate from Barack Obama and the leaders who come after him, if there are literally no limits to the logic that compels them to support policies they themselves call murderous or inhumane. They will have to reconcile righteous rage against Ralph Nader for somehow contributing to the Iraq war with love for Hilary Clinton, who supported that war with full force and the power of her vote. They will have to ask whether defining any and all political questions as a matter of opposing the far worse Republicans actually amounts to letting Republicans determine the future of our country. They need to reckon with the fact that most every observer of the 2012 election could detect no meaningful difference in the foreign policy of the two candidates. They have to ask whether an ideology that has always defined itself by its forward-thinking and evolving definition of the good can systematically cut out extremists and hope to survive. And I think they have to ask themselves what they risk becoming in their pursuit of victory.

None of which means, of course, that they can't avoid the questions. But I call them liberals in part because I believe that they have it within themselves to ask them, and perhaps even to answer the call. I believe in this principle for arguing: go with full force at all times, without restraint, but be quick to forgive and quick to ask forgiveness. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I have asked, in the past, a question I don't mean rhetorically: what is the proper relationship to ones own conscience? I never asked to interpret politics as anger, never wanted to feel as intensely about them as I do. But here it is. And I have absorbed a literature that tells me, quietly, that the problem with life is not conscience but its lack, not conviction but its marginalization, not too little compromise but too much. Pick through a library of great books, read a list of quotations from famous people, synthesize the compatible ideas of the world's religions; they'll tell you to pursue the good and the true, without apology. I'm just trying to take their advice,

I'm a hard person to like, but it's not hard to earn my admiration. I will break bread with anyone who can look me in the eye and tell me that they are following the dictates of their conscience. That so many take abandoning conscience not only as necessary, but as self-evidently necessary, as obvious, as a prerequisite of being taken seriously-- well, I wonder what happens to democracy in those conditions. I find the pose of self-seriousness and superiority from those who advocate the principle of limitless compromise to be made of iron. But that's okay. I have a little iron in me too. And maybe we'll all be able to make up and get along sooner than we think.

(but only after I win)