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Good Night Modern Liberalism

George Clooney gave an interesting interview to Norman Lear discussing his movie Good Night and Good Luck about CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. The interview is transcribed on ClooneyStudio.com.

Understanding the sad tale of McCarthyism helps people appreciate how it happened and to guard against it happening again. McCarthyism is not a tale of liberal versus conservative, but Clooney ventures into that territory in his interview. Generally, Clooney demonstrates a clear grasp of the material. Unfortunately, he inserts one disturbing, illogical paragraph of popular notions that contribute to political fog and confusion:

I believe in all the qualities of being a liberal. I keep going back to all the great social events in our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches. Women wanted to vote, and liberals thought that would be okay. Blacks wanted to sit in the front of the bus--we didn't see anything wrong with that. We thought Vietnam was wrong. We thought Nixon trying to steal an election was a mistake. Over the years, over the history of our country, liberals have stood on many of the right sides of the issues.

So glib a statement, full of unfair representation. Too bad the the premises fail and the conclusions don't logically follow. George Clooney is ripe for a fisking:

Clooney: I keep going back to all the great social events in our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches.

In 1692 there were no conservatives or liberals. Classical liberalism might hark back to John Locke in the late 1600s, but that was not at work in Salem, and it was a far cry from early American liberalism and a further cry from modern liberalism. And no one confuses the blind religious paranoia of Salem with the conservatism whose genesis was Edmund Burke in the middle 1700s.

Clooney: Women wanted to vote, and liberals thought that would be okay.

But it was the Progressives of Republican Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party who pushed woman's suffrage to the forefront of the 1912 national politics. Neither the Republican or Democratic candidates of 1912 endorsed women's suffrage at the national level.

Clooney: Blacks wanted to sit in the front of the bus--we didn't see anything wrong with that.

In practical fact, it was Republican Earl Warren, chief justice of the Supreme Court, who forged a unanimous decision in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed separate but equal schools and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C. schools, federalized the National Guard in 1957 to enforce the ruling, and who, working with Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson lent his support to a congressional effort to guarantee the vote with The Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Clooney: We thought Vietnam was wrong.

Vietnam was complex, driving a wedge between hawk and dove liberals. The war was promoted in the 1960 campaign by the liberal President John F. Kennedy.

Clooney: We thought Nixon trying to steal an election was a mistake.

Of course, six of the House Judiciary Committee's Republicans joined all 21 Democrats in voting for the article of impeachment and it was the Republican leaders of the Senate who convinced Nixon that there were enough votes in the Senate, including those of Republicans, to convict the President.

Clooney: Over the years, over the history of our country, liberals have stood on many of the right sides of the issues.

... On the right side of issues along with many Conservatives, Republicans, and Independents. Modern liberals haven't been on the wrong side of issues so much as they have been on the wrong side of how to address them.

Clooney engages in the modern liberal tendency to rewrite history into overgeneralizations that fit his fancy. Worse, he fails to recognize is that modern liberalism is different from early American liberalism and that early American liberalism was quite different from classical liberalism. It turns out modern liberalism isn't liberal at all. So what does Clooney mean when he says "I believe in all the qualities of being a liberal."?

John Locke, in the 1700s drew together the basic tenets of classical liberalism to stand for the rights of individuals against the state, the right of property and of the free-market system, and a desire for a limited constitutional government to protect those rights from others and from its own expansion. Early American liberalism different because it considered government a necessary evil and promoted public education to liberate people. Modern liberalism remains devoted to individual liberty, but generally rejects the laissez faire economics of classical liberalism in favor of institutions that promote social and economic equity. That puts liberalism in conflict with itself since it forsakes equality of opportunity for equality of result. Adherents feel perfectly justified forsaking the rights of individuals to take larger and larger portions of property from them, under the direction of an ever expanding government. Nothing is liberal about that.

No one questions liberal compassion, but the most damning characteristics of modern liberal behavior are belief in oppressive government, peace at the expense of individual liberty, controlled economics, politically correct education, and throwing other people's money at problems not to solve them but to cover them up. Modern liberalism is entwined in false premise, over-simplification, and inconsistent logic that seems anti-intellectual when contrasted with the open, intellectual tradition of classical liberalism. Modern liberalism isn't liberating.

Too often entertainment politics runs afoul of the "Tim Robbins effect" -- when Hollywood celebrities read lines with gravity even when they do not grasp the shallowness of what they say.

George Clooney is welcome to join the sensible people who run from modern liberal positions that combine the retrograde with the foolish. There is no obligation to embrace equally obtuse positions at the other, reactionary end of the political spectrum. Rediscovering what classical liberalism is all about, they might find themselves in kinship with sensible conservatives who believe in liberty and modest government. Who knows, the new majority may be made of liberal conservatives.

Discuss

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