Pro-Hillary Democrats

It is quite alarming to me how many liberals are in support of Hillary Clinton for the presidential ticket. It seems to me that the main reasons for such support is (1) political pragmatism (2) nostalgia for her husband's presidency and (3) simple ignorance. It should be established to begin with that she doesn't stand a chance of winning. The most blatant reason for that, no matter how stupid it may be, is that she's a woman. The most important reason, however, is that not only is she hated by everyone on the right, and therefore will not win swing votes from such people, but she rightly is beginning to be rightly hated on the left (at least outside of the mainstream). Based on those things alone, a Hillary nomination for the president is not only a determined loss, but completely undesirable even if I put myself into the liberal mindset.

Yet I've encountered quite a few leftists that blindly support this oppurtunist politician, no matter what facts one throws at them. Such people seem to be blinded by their partisanship. For a simple look at the woman's record in the senate should reveal her to be an enemy, even by liberal standards. The list is endless. She voted for the Patriot Act and still supports it. She voted for the use of force and still supports the Iraq War. She supports government spying on civilians and the Department of Homeland Security, and voted Condi Rice in. She strongly supports censorship, with both the liberal bugbear of violence and the conservative bugbear of sex. She supports the Drug War. She believes in "strong police powers". She votes yes on flag burning amendments. She votes yes on corporate welfare. She supports much of the right's social programs, and yes, the right do have their own social programs (check my essay "Big Government Conservatism: An Analysis of the Modern Right" for details). In short, she is completely complacent to if not supportive of the neoconservative's foreign policy and police state agenda. And people consider such a person to be "the leading liberal of our time"? Jehosephat!

Of course, on the economic plane, Hillary is a total train-wreck. She has not one ounce of "fiscal conservatism" in her. She wouldn't cut a budget, lower a tax or abolish a tarrif if her life depended on it. Thus, it should be obvious that such a person is no help in (if not hostile to) decreasing government spending, balancing the budget, or lowering the tax burden of everyone (which obviously includes the poor and middle class). Take practically any economic issue and she will be on the socialist side of the equation, which includes much of the corporate welfarism of the right. It should be no wonder that Rupert Murdock, the neoconservative owner of Fox News and other tabloid-esc corporations, is an ardent financial and political supporter of Hillary Clinton.

One would think that her stance on the Iraq War alone, war being perhaps the most important issue of our time, would be enough to exile her from the left. But no, it seems that she is merely a reflection of the establishment left. However, while I am not coming out in support of him, figures such as Russ Feingold appear to be true liberals in comparison to the Hillaries and Liebermans of the world. The grass-roots leftists and anti-war movement should be absolutely appauled and enraged at their own party. The majority of the Democrats have been nothing short of complacent and supportive of most of the Bush administration's most agregious violations, abuses and usurpations. Even with their shouting in congress about "the culture of cronyism and corruption", a good deal of their criticisms are misplaced and misinformed to begin with, especially on economic matters.

Democrats should think twice when they fancy their side of the aisle to be somehow dissident. For sure, in the current political atmosphere it is in comparison to the rubber-stamping Republicans, but the vast majority are also either rubber-stampers or oppurtunists. When one's own party is in power, things change quickly, positions are reversed and the very things critisized are put into practise by the very same critics. Afterall, the left is fooling itself if it claims to stand for peace and liberty. The Cold War was originally initiated by the left, multiple Democratic presidents presided over Veitnam and Korea, Clinton attacked Bosnia and had secret bombing campaigns on Iraq, FDR interred Japanese Americans in what amounts to concentration camps, Woodrow Wilson got us into WWI. Indeed, the old left played a vital role in the developement of the Military-Industrial-Complex and Corporate State. These things may have been taken over by the right, but much of it was initiated by the old left.

And lo-and-behold. Here we have Hillary Clinton, supporting the neoconservative's agenda on some of the most important issues of our modern times. I do not think it going to far of me at all to pretty much consider her a neo-con, or a neo-lib, which is not very different from a neo-con. Neoliberals are leftists that have retained left-socialistic tendencies in economics while moving towards conservative and fascist tendencies on the social and foreign policy domain. It is the result of a certain fusionism between left and right politics, a fusion of much of the "bad" tendencies of liberal and conservative. Hillary Clinton presents a glaring example of the bad consequences of the fusionist/centrist movements - a move towards authoritarianism.

There is a way out for the left and it's called libertarianism. For a leftist (and I am a former leftist turned Libertarian myself), Libertarianism could be considered the result of taking a strong liberal that is opposed to war, the police state, the government-buissiness alliance, and imbueing them with strong economic/free-market tendencies. To the libertarian, it is a fusion of the "good" tendencies of left and right. The anti-war movement and anti-authoritarian leftists have no real solance or fulfillment in the establishment left, in the Democratic Party. Figures such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Leiberman are betrayers of the "good" parts of the current grass-roots liberal cause. They are completely determental to the cause of liberty and peace. Unfortunately, such people are the mainstream in the Democratic Party, and it's about time people on the left figured that out. As Murray Rothbard once beckoned conservatives to leave their hijacked movement in the 60's, I beckon liberals to leave their hijacked movement today.