Liberal = Left?

[David Bergdahl]

>Assuming for the sake of argument that the media really does have a
"left-wing bias",

Not necessarily.. but only that no one in media will openly acknowledge
anything as "right" or "right-wing" without the clear message that such a
position is beneath contempt: I would say, instead, that "left" means
"normal, intelligent, thoughtful" and that if one departs from the left one
encounters error.  The word of abuse for "too-far left" is "radical."
Consider the use of the abuse-term "fundamentalist"--whether it's said of an
American pentecostal or an Israeli haredi, the intent is to eliminate
sympathy.  "Ultra-orthodox" is the English scare-word equivalent for
"haredi."  (I suppose it's all right to be moderately orthodox...)

>does that mean that most journalists subscribe to a range of political
beliefs already known >as "left-wing",

My experience as a college teacher is that most students associate
"left-liberal" views with being educated--the gown--and "right-[wing]" views
as not--the town.  Since most journalists are college-educated (with notable
exceptions such as Peter Jennings who only finished high school), they
consider "left" to be what "normal people like themselves" believe and
"right" to be what the hoi polloi believe.

>or does that mean that said range of beliefs is called "left-wing" because
journalists
>already believe in it?

Yes.  I think that's what I mean.  The positions on the "left" do not have
to be so-labelled (remember Dukakis & the L-word?) but they are assumed to
be politically correct.  In fact, the right's use of P.C. as an abuse-term
(which we talked about on this list a while ago) shows how sensitive the
media are to having their positions identified as left.

For anyone who remembers 1950s Republicans hating the national debt, asking
themselves "Who Lost China?" and isolationist, it's a real surprise to meet
debt-is-irrelevant, internationalist (or if you prefer, globalizationist)
Republicans; likewise, now that the largest union membership in the country
is government workers (incl. teachers), the Democrats aren't "Labor" anymore
either, in the steel & mineworkers sense.  We have to upgrade our political
vocabulary.  If "left" is defined as anti-globalizationist (as a
continuation of distrust of Business < a Labor past, even though most of the
college-educated leftists don't do labor in the traditional sense) and
activist government and supportive of people who are conceived of being
powerless (women, minorities and gays), and "right" as devolutionist (to the
extent of being states-righters again and anti-federalist), and believers in
limited-govt. (except when it wants to keep an eye in your bedroom).
Clinton, however, and his "New Federalism," is clearly "right" socially and
"left" for his support of minorities.  Which is just to say the old terms
get reanalyzed each political generation and what once guarenteed one to be
sitting on the left side of the French Assembly and opposing the crown, or
sitting on the right supporting state power, no longer holds...

--David Bergdahl
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"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
--Albert Einstein