Hi Toni,
Glad for the clarification. I think the term 'liberal' had become a derogatory term quite some time ago, though, perhaps as early as the sixties, maybe even earlier. As I recall ( I was born in '59 ), around the mid to late sixties and then early seventies and on, the term became associated with "hippies" and, crucially, radical activists and even militant groups. People like the SDS, Black Panthers, the "Weather Underground Organization", etc. were actively linked by those on the right to common, everyday "hippies", back-to-nature types and even people not normally thought of as in anyway radical.
With this perceptual shift, thought by many at the time and later as a direct attack on free and widespread dissent of U.S. and other countries' policies ( i.e. environmental issues such as pollution, strip-mining, accelerating disregard for resource depletion, etc., the war in Vietnam, sexual freedom, drug policies, race issues, etc.), "liberals" became demonized. They were characterized broadly as being naive ( some, perhaps many, were, I'll grant!). While through the Clean Air Act and other legislation several steps forward were made, even under LBJ and Nixon (!), the trend toward rejecting liberal ideology solidified into a general distrust by many on the right toward *anything* promulgated by 'those freaks' who had the temerity to question authority.[ Heck, I grew up in Texas at the time and remember in '70 or '71 riding on a school bus in Huntsville and remarking to another kid "why are the black kids in the rear of the carriage?"( I'd just arrived from six years in London, where such a practice was unknown). He looked at me like I was from another planet, and said "that's where n------ belong". Thankfully we soon moved to Houston, where racism was still apparent though much less so.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that while your view of "progressives" (blanket term) may be valid, may be correct in your eyes, I do not think it is how they themselves think. I cannot easily dismiss the 'left' (radical or otherwise) as being naive or misguided, as not being intelligent people who yearn for a better world. Perhaps that is the crux - similar to how astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts and anyone who has seen the Earth in her glory from space - these folk see our planet as a very precious, extraordinary place. We should do all we can to listen to those who think of the long term, and weigh their opinions of what we should do about now and the future with utmost care and consideration.
If as you note the Dems/liberals have committed crimes and misdemeanors, fabrications and manipulations, assorted subvertions of the rule of law both in letter and spirit, the truth will out. It just may happen slower than desired.
As for perpetual liars, how do you believe *anyone* would react to such a characterization? No one would like it. Indeed, human behaviour being what it is, would one not expect a certain amount of vitriol to be thrown back, in kind? I think that's what is happening. The Republicans have acted in word and deed as if the Democrats are all crazy, pie-the-sky lunatics, and the Dems have responded in turn. Or some have - just as some Repubs have and have not. Again a crux - willingness to consider another's view as tacitly valid, to be considered rather than rejected out-of-hand.
Whether this both cultural and ideological impasse was initiated by one side or the other is moot at this point. I just wish we could all calm down enough to find compromise - the way Congress was able to do for (perhaps brief) times in the past. Also, I really wish we could look better, as a nation, in the eyes of the world. Forget nationalism, forget "the good old days" of pre-global trade. They are gone, for good or ill. I'd say for good, as thinking globally is the only way our kids, theirs,
and theirs, are going to have a future which resembles our own past and present. No matter what we do, it's going to be difficult, so dreaming for a past imagined glory will distract us from present realities.
Rick " leftist freak " Jones