The problem with liberals

Yesterday's New York Times Book Review had two long essays on "The Ideological Divide," one written from the liberal perspective and one from the conservative, both including commentary on a slew of recent relevant books.

What grabbed my attention in the liberal slant, written by Jonathan Alter, began with this:

It's a sign of how poorly liberals market themselves and their ideas that the word "liberal" is still in disrepute . . .

It goes on to say that clarity has such an advantage over nuance, "just as emotion so often beats reason, and the varsity fullback will most likely deck the captain of the debate team in a fistfight." Yes, it's true, we knew all that -- and Drew Westen has been trying to drive that message home for years.

But here is what gave it a new sense of clarity:

Liberals are at a disadvantage because politics, at its essence, is about self-interest, an idea that at first glance seems more closely aligned with conservatism. To make their more complex case, liberals must convince a nation of individualists that enlightened self-interest requires mutual interest, and that the liberal project is better constructed for the demands of an increasingly interdependent world.

So we have the Republicans who know how to exploit this self-interest and the sense that big brother government is going to take it away from you and give it to the undeserving poor -- when in fact the government they want to vote in would take it from them, even more, and give it to the wealthy and the corporations.

If there's genius involved here, it's the Republican genius for inducing the people to vote against their own self-interest by convincing them that the conservatives are exactly the ones who will serve their self-interest. What the Republicans actually deliver feeds the self-interest of the wealthy and powerful; all the little people get is the hope that someday they may be rich and powerful too. It's the old royalty system: we poor just love to slave so that somebody has it all and we can dream that it could be us.

It's even worse: The Republican marketing genius also convinces these conservatives, often self-proclaimed Christians, to vote against the teachings of the one they worship: what about Jesus' teachings about being your brother's keeper, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick and needy? Or no, those are entitlements, they say. Entitlements are bad -- but don't touch my Social Security and Medicare, you socialists.

We ridiculed our once-governor Lester Maddox for saying that the problem with our prisons was that we needed a better class of criminals. But I'm here to declare that the problem with our electorate is that we need a better educated, less prejudiced, less faux-religious and more humane populace that will see through the lies and misinformation that seduces them into voting against their own interests in favor of snake oil.

Ralph