Liberals can be just as good at exporting our military as conservatives. Look at the past 20 years, UN sponsored US military operations in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, ect.
All were for 'humanitarian" reasons and all resulted in further hardship for the population. No more "nation building" sponsored by the left or right.

Nobody needs to worry about the reputation of 'liberal' or 'humanitarian' intervention. We'll be hearing further calls for it, and believing them just as readily, the next time some issue of power arises which we feel can be settled in our favour by violence. After all, if Hitler's advocacy did no lasting damage to this most beloved of propaganda tools, I very much doubt that anything the Bush gang does now will last beyond a generation or two.

As the great man himself is supposed to have said, people find it difficult to be consciously evil; instead, they are corrupted. Or to paraphrase J. K. Galbraith, who said the same thing in a different way, nothing so gladens the human heart as some altruistic excuse for selfishness.

Between the oil gluttony, American exceptionalism and the Neocon game plan--what other consideration was there?

"Iraq is at risk of becoming the centre of a wider war..."
and we have the weapons for sale to arm all sides.

Ahh, the stupid white men--that is what I thought while reading this..The club Hillary wants to join--which is supposed to win the votes of women. I wonder if Hillary's "liberal interventionism" would have us attack Cuba or Venezuela rather than have to extend diplomacy to da evildoers.

Liberals ruining the world with their pie-in-the-sky notions…

Domino effect…

Chaos and death when we leave…

Gee John, you left out apple pie and Mom

Well then, we should thank goodness that a conservative, non-interventionist who would never do anything like that is in power.

i must object to the author's cavalier misuse of the word "anarchy" as a synonym for "chaos." anarchy refers to that happy (but so far only theoretical) set of conditions under which people are smart enough and moral enough to live peacefully and productively without the need of government.

that being said, i think there's cause for celebration if indeed we're witnessing the end of "white man's burden"-style foreign policy. "democracy" that can only be maintained by military occupation is a poor substitute for the real thing.

(it really was all about the oil, but don't tell o'reilly.)

Everybody but Hitler knew that the Nazi's lost WWII in June of '41 when the Russian invasion began. That understanding did not prevent one hell of a lot of destruction and mass devastation wrought before it was finally over four years later.

Robert Fisk (Independent of London Mideast correspondent) wrote after the conquest of Baghdad and before the "Mission Accomplished" speech that now the real battle begins --the battle of the occupation. Many in the smart set among journalists and government functionaries mocked him for saying so. How little we learn from history.

Let us hope and pray that someone somewhere has either some bombs or bullets with Bush, Cheney, Hillary Clinton (Bill too), and Pelosi's names on them. It does appear to be the only language that such people understand.

I'm with johnmoffet. It is a good thing that we have the neocons (actually radical reactionaries) in power if the liberals are the ones to start these aggressive wars and export democracy at the point of a gun.
Maybe a return to the books and learning the meanings of terms might be a really good thing. But, of course, we are already past 1984, so what can one expect.

Why are we the world's police man, it only benefits the wealthy, the trickle down (if there ever was one) goes to foriegn regimes, and we are looked upon as the world's bully

The oilmen couldn't lose in this war. Either they were going to gain control of Iraqi oil and boost their fortunes, or they were going to throw the oil market into a panic and drive up their fortunes on all the other holdings they have in the world. Personally, I think they were hoping for both. In reality, they'll have to settle for making the largest profits in the history of mankind on their current holdings. Now all they have to do is keep stirring the pot so prices can't settle back down.

Anyone who would call Lenin a despot is sadly befuddled. And when are we going to see that the Saddam whom we know through the US media is a fabrication?

"Well then, we should thank goodness that a conservative, non-interventionist who would never do anything like that is in power."

USAns are often confused when "liberal" is used in this way. "Liberal" or more often "neoliberal" - means a believer in lazzez faire economics and global corporate power. For example, the Australian Liberal Party is their party closest to the US Republican Party. The "liberal interventionism" of Clinton always had these globo-corporate business interests first and foremost in mind, and the "humanitarian" part was always so much BS.

US progressives really need to get with the rest of the world and stop calling themselves liberals.

Gray accurately concludes that, "The liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war was never much more than a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with crackpot geopolitics."

In fact, 'liberal interventionism', 'humanitarian intervention', 'modern Wilsonianism' and all the rest of that crap was never anything other than a more refined polish on the dirty exploitation and imperialist truth of brutal neoconism. A fact, which by the way, no less an early adherent than Francis Fukuyama has since totally acknowledged.

As history will judge, "they were all bloody neocon butchers regardless of what they claimed".

Generally the history of Empire has always been the history of elitist deceit and theft under one guise or the other. The only difference in this global corporate elite Empire's lust for oil and power will be resolved by history as this unique global corporate Empire's finely tuned propaganda, guilefulness, and their 'three card Monte' scam of first taking over and then posing as the former nation-state that should now be rightly referred to as "Vichy America" --- doing the Empire's butchery for it.

Other countries use "liberal" in a substantially different way than here in the US. To them, as far as I know, it mean "more open to intervention, more apt to globalize" and so on. Maybe someone can give a better definition of ex-US use of "liberal"...

"The most important - as well as most often neglected - feature of the conflict shaping up around Iraq is that the US no longer has the ability to mold events."

As opposed to when the US was able to mold events...? The actual most important "feature" is this: Cheney's lifelong mission to rule all he surveys is coming to an end. He has no future, he hates being a "businessman" (and is so bad at it, he all but ran Halliburton into the ground until he handed them the keys to our Treasury,) and he ain't healthy enough to lobby. Which means this is his last shot at the gold.

What's a cornered madman facing the end of everything he's worked for supposed to do? Especially when surrender is not an option...

If Lenin and Saddam were not despots, then the word has no meaning.

Obviously, the adjective "liberal" in the phrase liberal interventionism means something quite different in the op-ed pages of the Guardian newspaper in Tony Blair's Britain than it means in contemporary American partisan discourse.

Here on the western hemisphere side of the Atlantic, most people have been programmed to equate liberalism with nonviolence, tolerance, and a moral values relativism that borders on anti-military wimpishness. This redefinition of the term "liberal" is the culmination of years of culture wars' assault from right wing think tankers, Karl Rove's spin doctors, and various neoconservative pimps posing as print and electronic media journalists. And it has succeeded all too well.

As a result, in the United States today liberal interventionism is an oxymoron. Kennedy and LBJ sunk US troops into the quagmire of Vietnam despite their liberalism, not because of it. Virtually all the other great and half-assed American military escapades abroad in the last half of the 20th Century - in Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Chile, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, the Persian Gulf in '91, and now Bush the Younger's invasion and occupation of Iraq - were each the outgrowth of raw Cold War anti-Communist mentality and/or right wing jingoism, not some starry eyed Wilsonian dream of Uncle Sam advancing human rights across the globe at the point of a bayonet.

John Gray is absolutely correct when he declares the "liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war was never much more than post imperial nostalgia and crackpot geopolitics." If Bill Clinton's ventures into Haiti and Kosovo do count as "liberal interventionism..... taking roots", let's not confuse these lapses into pushing foreign policy through the Pentagon with liberalism in any sense of the word.

Bill from Saginaw

sigma:
"If Lenin and Saddam were not despots, then the word has no meaning"

do not agree..add Tito to the pair and you have three 'realists'..
ken

"Maybe someone can give a better definition of ex-US use of "liberal""

I did, in my 3:14 post.

If Lenin and Saddam were not despots, then the word has no meaning.

Don't you mean Stalin? Lenin cannot be compared to Saddam. Lenin got Pussia out of WW1, and instituted numerous measures to bring literacy, womens rights and healthcare to the peasantry. Lenin certainly wasn't a saint in his actions against the invading western forces, the White Russians and other reactionary elements. But the reactionaries themselves comitted equal atrocities that are always very convieniently ignored by the west.

But we can all agree that Stalin was the model of depostism.

But as far as words having meaning, lots of words, like "freedom" and "terrorist" frankly don't seem to have much meaning any more.

PJD,

I believe you're wrong.TERRORISM: Anybody who bombs without an Air force Uniform. FREEDOM: Willing to do as you are told (the freedom to do as you're told). Very simple indeed. You must be one of those people who still think "terrorism" is violence against Civilians for political purpose and that freedom is individual liberty.

"Ahh, the stupid white men–that is what I thought while reading this."

"The stupid black woman" is what I thought of while reading this --condozeela rice, along with hillary clinton, diane feinstien, maddeline albright, etc. But I also remembered Dennis Kucinich, and Barbara Lee, both people who show us that how left or wrong you are has nothing to do with gender, and that people who say otherwise are sexist.

"The era of liberal interventionism in international affairs is over."

Really? Better take a closer look at Obama, Clinton and the rest of them.

WRONG CONCLUSION:
"Liberal interventionists who supported regime change as part of a global crusade for human rights overlooked the fact that the result of toppling tyranny in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing. Equally they failed to perceive the rapidly dwindling leverage on events of the western powers that led the crusade."

HERE'S WHY, THE TRUTH:
That's precisely what the Neocons planned on a "civil war and ethnic cleansing." The next step would be to nuke Iran for interfering, creating a pretext for greater ethnic cleansing. The shock and awe bombing was the opening salvo in a holocaust of the shiite Persian population. This was probably to be carried out under the popular banner of the "armageddon," or some such fantastic mythical christian propaganda.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld saw that a civil war, two or more peoples living together closely locked in mortal conflict would create a human meat grinder (two gears locked together in conflict).

The purpose: to depopulate what Rumsfeld called a large "piece of real estate" and gain access to the mineral rights below the surface. The need was to reduce the population density to levels equal to other gulf states already under American control.

The nuclear bombing of Iran would A) destroy the population through fire and radiation perhaps permanently. B) Teach a Carthaginian lesson to all resistors of the US empires power C) at worst tie up these oil reserves for 50 years, while radiation levels sank, leaving them in American hands later, when supplies grew more critical, and open for options trading now. This would allow the US through Saudi Arabia to retain greater power over worldwide trade of oil over time, which is protected behind a bullwark of loyal states.

GENOCIDE WAS AND REMAINS THE POLICY.

Let's remember that the USA was founded on three genocides: 1. Conquistadors of indians 2. US citizens genociding indian populations and finally 3. a genocide against African people.

Let's remember these genocides are still ongoing.

This is how America's old boys do things.

Point is this: It won't work this time. And there is going to be a high price to pay for it.

The neocons intend to go back in and continue killing Iranians, Kurds and Iraqis for the next 10 years.

Oh! So now "liberals" are at fault for the invasion of Iraq. What's in a label? Identify politicians in the Democratic Party who make bad judgement calls as liberals and then condemn all liberals. So George Bush and his lying-through-their-teeth, "new realities", neo-con pals by this definition are liberals. Well I'm a liberal who has stood up in my town with other liberals to protest the Iraq invasion BEFORE it happened. We knew the MSM was doing a number on America. My asthma would keep me up in the middle of the night. It was amazing what expert information was aired between 2:30 am and 5:30 am that countered what the Bush administration and MSM were saying. Those were the days when somebody was still trying to tell the truth. As it was, the claim that Democrats approved Bush's invasion of Iraq in March of '03 back in October of '02 is ludicrous. The Congress was being lied to. They full well expected Bush to obey the Constitutional law and standing treaty with the UN. Without approval by the UN Security Council there was no congressional authority to invade Iraq. John Kerry made that clear in his speech when he voted on it.

Food for thought :

Things will change only when the populace is alienated and hopeless.
Then they may :
STAND UP - for what they beleive to be right.
SIT DOWN - in the nearest street to bring transportaion, retail, everything to a standstill.
FIGHT - I hope like Gandhi's Pathan friend Badshar Khan(Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) (check him out)a Pashtun nonviolent Muslim
FIGHT - Even if it means sacrifice to themselves to totally repudiate the oligarchy
FIGHT - As if our lives depend on active resistance - which they do

When people realize that they cannot ignore the actions of the government and relaize they themselves are the governmet, only then is change possible..

Allow me to quote another blogger of my vintage - estebandito:
(I hope he does not mind)

'As an old hippy draft-dodger,who has been out in the streets se'veral hours a week behind my Iraq anti-war signs demanding an end to the madness since this insanity began (how many years now?), I gotta report: very few people of any age give a good goddam. Oh yeah, we "protestors" get a free coffee now an then and lots of happy honking as the cars go by, but the truth is very sad. Old radicals tell me they are afraid of losing their subsidized rents!! " FBI lists! Got no time for it…"

Practically no one can remember that the way a people get new governments and new directions is ancient and simple: you stop up the streets and you go to jail for misdemeanors and then you go back and do it again. respectfully and peacefully. The fact that this is so self evident yet almost completely ignored tells me that our population of united statesians has largely ceased to function as truly caring, conscience-filled people. Reasons are many……but we are losing hope, and we deserve whatever happens to us now. This is not nice talk in front of the children, or at parties.

Nevertheless, I will continue to sally out and attempt to show folks the facts as well as try and get them to laugh at our predicament ( i usually dress as a clown 'cause clowns have more fun…..it seems like the compassionaste thing to do.'

Additional thoughts:

"To me nonviolence has come to represent a panacea for all the evils that surround my people. Therefore I am devoting all my energies toward the establishment of a society that would be based on its principles of truth and peace." – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

"Today's world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people." – Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to an interviewer in 1985

Much appreciation to PJD and Bill from Saganaw for doing a darn good job of clearing up the misunderstanding by readers of term liberal as used in this article.

To those who still do not understand please do some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal

TO PJD- I am taking your words to heart. I am a Progressive and a bleeding heart one at that.

BTW - American Socio/Political liberalism is most despised for it's big government, poorly administered, centralized, top down, self perpetuating bureaucratic, approach to implementing social programs. While it is completely true that the neo-conn movement of the last 50 years has worked relay hard to demonize the term "liberal" as it pertains to American politics. This is not completely unfounded, but neo-conns have fooled evryone into believing they want to get rid of Big Government, this is not true, as evidenced by the Bush administration. They want to use big government to rule, rather that govern.

Poet: Your words are very much worth repeating:

"How little we learn from history."
"How little we learn from history."
"How little we learn from history."
"How little we learn from history."
...etc...

Curmudgeon99:
Brilliant post, -thankyou very much for that.

This is nothing but western propaganda about WESTERN VALUES, WESTERN DEMOCRACY, and WESTERN "HUMANITARIAN" INTERVENTION.

HOW LONG CAN YOU DECEIVE THE WORLD WITH THIS CRAP? HASN'T THE HISTORY DISCLOSED THIS MYTH? Does the western countries honor democracy in other countries?? Come on. Open your eyes and see what has happened in Palestine, Iran, Chile, to name a few? Who were/are the closest FRINEDS of the WEST and the US: Shah of Iran, Pinochet, Idi Amin, Musharaf, King Abdullah, Saudi Kings.......... Are you telling the world that the WEST AND THE US promote democracy????

Do not search for despots somewhere in Asia, Africa, or Russia. If "despot" is "a ruler with absolute power and authority", then the present American president is a despot. You will name an American or a Westerner as a despot. Because you look in a DISTORTED MIRROR!!!!

Let us not limit the definition of a "despot" to the boundaries of a country. A despot is also one who does not respect international laws and tries to impose his/her absolute power and authority on other countries. According to this wider definition, Bush, Blair, and the presidents/primeministers of most of the western countries are DESPOTS.

Hi,

The different reactions to the use of the word "liberal" testify to the degraded public consciousness in the United States.

Typically, as an ideology through different stages of history, "liberalism" has meant open-mindedness, commitment to liberty, and tolerance of difference. However, it has also meant other, more nefarious things, in the actual practice of "liberal" states.

Political democracy itself was a "liberal" idea, which was resisted by "conservative" idealogues at the time of its invention. The same is true of free-market economics, in their original form of small-scale independent locally-based operations.

The more modern forms of social liberalism built on the successes of political and economic liberalism to use the power of the state to support basic standards of social welfare for all citizens. This stage of liberalism was triumphant under the New Deal of FDR.

The interventionist "liberalism" that the author of this article is referencing has deep roots. The concept that liberal states can intervene in the affairs of other states to (supposedly) promote democracy, free markets, and social welfare has been used repeatedly to justify wars and other forms of intervention. When the "neoconservatives" adopted this doctrine as ther own, they were adopting an aspect of "liberal" ideology.

In both the "liberal" and "neoconservative" forms of this justification for intervention, the public proclomations of good intent typically have been cover for more nefarious ends, which is why for much of the world's peoples, the word "liberal" and especially the word "neoliberal" have such nasty meanings.

And, the author is correct, YES, many "liberals" in the US political structure, in the House and Senate, overtly voted to support Bush and Cheney's "neoconservative" invasion of Iraq, specifically on the grounds that removing the dictator Saddam would produce positive results for the people of Iraq.

Of course, any understanding of the historical development of ideologies is sorely lacking throughout much of US society.

One other detail. Typically, when the "conservatives" viciously attack and demonize the "liberals", this is to prepare the ground for Fascism, by equating "liberalism" with effeminacy, wimpiness, coddling of enemies, lack of patriotism, and other horrific characteristics. This is not some new phenomenon in recent United States history. Back to the father of Fascism Benito Mussolini, who famously stated "Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary... does not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal." The vicious right-wing attacks on their caricature of "liberals" in the US over the past fifteen years should be seen in this context.

That said, historically, the author is correct: "liberal interventionism" has played a very prominent role in the growth and development of the military-industrial complex and the setting of the stage for US empire.

Of course, it also remains true, that for most people in the US, "liberal" means whatever the person using the term wants it to mean. And it is very difficult even to have a useful discussion involving the term, because of its multiplicity of perceived meanings and lack of historical and international perspective and grounding.

Everyone might usefully read Chomsky on the meanings of liberalism in 20th century US political history.

What ?

Write an article about the failed oil war of fascist George Bush and saturate blame throughout the article on liberalism

What an extreme misuse of the word "liberal"

What an intellectually dishonest article

By misusing the word "liberal" as Chomsky and this idiot author does..... gapping holes are created for the Republican nattering naybugs of nepotism to scurry through and lay blame at the feet of those who have most opposed the corporate treachery that is America today.

It's confusing and frankly dishonest

George Bush is a clone of Joe Stalin...why not blame communism for the Bush administrations atrocities. Similar misuse of the english language

Misusing liberal? Haven't you read Marx, noted that liberalism is merely "liberalized capitalism", another bourgeois ideology, actually denotes the long-time fairly conservative party in Japan, and has been the century+ long stumbling block to Labor, Socialist, Social Democrat, Green, Libertarian or practically any other third party from ever gaining traction in the US?

I've often suggested that it's like how you respond to poverty. Conservatives say you should eat the poor, liberals say subsidize Big Industry (which has been pricing the poor out of food), progressives and others ask why it is that we have a gap between rich and poor to begin with.

Liberal is not really a term that's worth redefining, reclaiming, etc. and I applaud those who now rally behind the progressive label (if labels are all that important). Only in America is anything left (or down) of plutocracy considered "liberal".

Anthropologists say that the Inuit had over a dozen or two words for "snow". How is it that Americans have only one word for anything left/down of reactionary-right?

Right on, Peace Warrior! These people are clinging to old definitions of liberal and conservative. Here is the new definiton of conservative:

Conservatives Deconstructed
by Joel Bleifuss
In These Times magazine, October 2003

Are they nuts?
Have you ever wondered about those ubiquitous conservatives?
Why do they support tax breaks for the rich when so many of their fellow citizens are in dire straits? Why do they applaud John Ashcroft and his post-9/11 curtailment of civil liberties? Why do they oppose laws that address historic wrongs and enforce constitutionally guaranteed rights? Why do they respond to a societal drug problem with incarceration and expanded prison construction? Why do they gut regulations that are meant to protect the environment? Why do they invest more than half of our tax dollars in the military? Why are they so meanspirited? In other words, why do conservatives do what they do? Are they nuts?
No, not according to a fascinating new study in Psychological Bulletin, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." Conservatives do, however, possess certain psychological traits and motives that no one in their right (or is that left?) mind would want to share.
The study's four authors, John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Frank J. Sulloway, write, "People embrace political conservatism (at least in part) because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption and ambiguity; and to explain, order and justify inequality among groups and individuals." To come to this conclusion the authors examined 88 different psychological studies conducted between 1958 and 2002 that involved 22,818 people from 12 different countries. They boiled that information down into a number of psychological attributes that are closely associated with people who are politically conservative.
Rigid and closed-minded
"Dogmatism has been found to correlate consistently with authoritarianism, political-economic conservatism, and the holding of right wing opinions," write the authors. Conversely, studies have found that conservatives in general have little tolerance for ambiguity. A fact that helps in decoding this statement that George W. Bush made in Genoa, Italy: "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right."
Such thinking could explain why the Bush administration officials ignored those intelligence reports that failed to support going to war with Iraq. "[Conservatives'] intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic clichés and stereotypes," write the authors.
Numerous studies have also shown that conservative policymakers entertain less cognitively complex thoughts than their liberal or moderate counterparts. A study of speeches made in the House of Commons in 1984 found that "the most integratively complex politicians were moderate socialists." Their complexity of thought was found to be significantly higher than that of extreme socialists, moderate conservatives or extreme conservatives. Similarly, in the United States, a study of speeches on the floor of the Senate in 1975 and 1976 found that senators with liberal or moderate voting records exhibited significantly more complex thinking than their conservative counterparts.
That explains a lot, doesn't it. Bush again comes to mind. As he told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think."
Further studies show that conservatives have been found to shun new, stimulating experiences and to avoid situations where the outcome is uncertain.
The authors write that the fact that conservatives are "less tolerant of ambiguity, less open to new experiences, and more avoidant of uncertainty. may help explain why "congressional Republicans and other prominent conservatives in the United States have sought unilaterally to eliminate public funding for the contemporary arts."
From an early age, conservatives demonstrate a personal need for order and structure. One study has shown that conservative teens are more likely to say they are "neat, orderly and organized" than are liberal adolescents. The authors note that this desire for set rules correlates with the examples of mental rigidity mentioned above, and can be seen in the political realm when conservatives attempt to order their own and other's lives by advocating drug testing, core educational curriculum, controls on people with AIDS, and strict parental control of children.
Impulsively aggressive
R.A. Altemeyer, a psychologist who has extensively studied people with right-wing beliefs, has observed:
[Right-wing authoritarians] see the world as a dangerous place, as society teeters on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. Second, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly self righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others - a self perception considerably aided by self-deception.... This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out their fear-induced hostilities.
George Will seems steeped in that fear. To illustrate that point the authors quote this passage from an essay by Will: "Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse." Psychological studies back Will up. People with right-wing personalities hold more pessimistic views and left-wing personalities hold more optimistic ones. And that pessimism and optimism appears to inform how conservatives and liberals view their fellow humans. A 1984 survey of "emotional reactions to welfare recipients" found that conservatives "expressed greater disgust and less sympathy" than liberals.
While this propensity of conservatives to be threatened and fearful does not appear to induce neurotic behavior, one study of dream lives discovered that Republicans had three times as many nightmares as Democrats, indicating that fear, anger and aggression might be a factor in the subconscious motivations of conservatives.
The authors speculate that this susceptibility to fear "may help explain why military defense spending and support for national security receive much stronger backing from conservative than liberal political leaders."
Afraid of loss
It has long been known that conservatives resist change while progressives accept change. Indeed, according to studies, this is the most common way that people from both groups self-define themselves.
"To the extent that conservatives are especially sensitive to the possibilities of loss-one reason why they wish to preserve the status quo-it follows that they should be generally more motivated by negatively framed outcomes (potential losses) than by positively framed outcomes (potential gains)."
Consequently, conservatives respond better to threats. In a study conducted five days before the 1996 presidential election, researchers presented voters with persuasive arguments that stressed either the potential rewards of voting ("it is a way to express and live in accordance with important values") or the potential losses from not voting ("not voting allows others to take away your right to express your values"). More generally, the authors suggest that "framing events in terms of potential losses rather than gains leads people to adopt cognitively conservative, as opposed to innovative, orientations."
Haunted by death
Of course, the greatest personal loss is death. Studies demonstrate that the people who most fear death are the most conservative. More generally, the fear of death and the resulting protective posture that such a threat engenders cause people to become conservative and to strongly "defend culturally valued norms and practices" and "to distance themselves from, and even to derogate, out-group members to greater extent." Similarly, the fear of death has also been linked to "system-justifying forms of stereotyping and enhanced liking for stereotype-consistent women and minority group members" and "greater punitiveness, and even aggression, toward those who violate cultural values." Applying that knowledge, the authors write, "High profile terrorist attacks such as those of September 11, 2001, might simultaneously increase the cognitive accessibility of death and the appeal of political conservatism."
While trying to retain the impartiality of scientists, albeit social ones, the authors warn that the available evidence indicates that governments can manipulate people's conservative tendencies by raising the specter of death. They write, "Priming thoughts of death has been shown to increase intolerance, out-group derogation, punitive aggression, veneration of authority figures and system justification."
That is what we have seen in the wake of 9/11 as public opinion and media coverage took a sharp turn to the right, setting the stage for pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The authors acknowledge what has long been assumed by sociologists, economists, and political scientists: people adopt conservative beliefs to serve their own self interests. They agree that this helps explain the conservatism of "upper-class elites." However, the authors hold that the personal need to "reduce fear, anxiety, dissonance, uncertainty or instability" better explains why a vastly greater number of people who are not part of the elite, and particularly those who are disadvantaged or from low-status groups, "might embrace right-wing ideologies."
The authors also take issue with the common notion that people inherit ideological beliefs from their parents. A statistically significant correlation exists between the two, but it is far from overwhelming. The authors maintain, "Conservative ideologies, like virtually all other belief systems, are adopted in part because they satisfy various psychological needs."
Conservatives have not taken kindly to "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." Will, perhaps fearing the truth, ridiculed the study in the Washington Post, making fun of the authors' academic jargon.
Yet this delineation of the psychological needs that motivate conservatives provides progressives with lessons on how they might communicate with a wider audience. For example, when speaking to the problems of the PATRIOT Act, administration critics could reach out to a conservative audience by emphasizing that the act presents a radical infringement on the Bill of Rights, and should therefore be opposed by all who value the precepts on which America was founded.

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
Mark Twain

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith

Welcome to "Jesus is a Liberal"

We created this website because we believe the historical, Biblically documented teachings of Jesus
Christ clearly show that Jesus is a Liberal. His philosophy, based in compassion, equality,
inclusion, forgiveness, tolerance, peace and - most importantly - love, is 100% Liberal.

For 20 years we have seen the growing domination of the radical right wing evangelicals on TV, on
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plain reading of His words, any genuine interpretation of His intent, outline a Liberal, Progressive,
Tolerant, Loving and holistic world view.

Biblical Quotes Supporting the Belief that Jesus Is A Liberal

Peacemaking, not War Making: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9] Resist
not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39] I say unto you, Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute
you; [Matthew 5:44]

The Death Penalty: Thou shalt not kill [Matthew 5:21]

Crime and Punishment: If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7] Do not judge, lest
you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to
you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.]

Justice: Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. [Matthew 5:6] Blessed are the
merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7] But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. [Matthew 6:15]

Corporate Greed and the Religion of Wealth: In the temple courts [Jesus] found men selling cattle, sheep and doves and other
sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle;
he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. [John 2:14 & 15.] Watch out! Be on your guard against
all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. [Luke 12.15.] Truly, I say unto you, it will
be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23] You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.]

Paying Taxes & Separation of Church & State: Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the
things that are God's. [Matthew 22:21]

Community: Love your neighbor as yourself. .[Matthew 22:39] So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you.
[Matthew 7:12.] If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
[Matthew 19:21]

Equality & Social Programs: But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed,
because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13 &14.]

Public Prayer & Displays of Faith: And when thou pray, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou pray, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret…
[Matthew 6:6 & 7]

Strict Enforcement of Religious Laws: If any of you has a son or a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take
hold of it and lift it out? [Matthew 12:11] The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. [Mark 2:27.]

Individuality & Personal Spiritual Experience: Ye are the light of the world. [Matthew 5:14]

Follow the Truth.....wherever it leads you!

http://www.jesusisaliberal.org/

Have to agree with Hazmat, up top. The author uses the pejorative sense of the word "anarchy". Iraq would be much better off if it was organized along anarchist lines, i.e. if the Iraqis were left alone to organize themselves without the interference of foreign governments, without a "democracy" imposed on them from without. Goes without saying that this includes Iraqi control of their own oil resources.....but what are the odds of that?

PJD--I think your comment on Lenin is an excellent one. Lenin was far from comparable to Saddam....but Saddam seems to have modeled himself in many respects after Stalin.

And you did an excellent job clearing up the confusion on the term liberal, which completely confounds most American readers since they link it to left and progressive values.

Two great 'articles' by Ezeflyer. Let me summarize it for the people who do not want to read the entire piece.

The Republican Party is for stupid people.
Democrats and Progressives are more intelligent.
Now it has been academically proven, but of course stupid people do not like to hear what intelligent people have to say.

That is what it comes down to and that is what I think nearly everybody here on CD feels intuitively already.

I have one question:
Why are conservative people so much afraid of death ? Are they maybe worried that they might NOT go the heaven after all ?

I also like to point out that the vast population of unintelligent and fearful people is a unique problem of the United States. In most other countries, even when there are real dangers of tyranny, violence and crime, people are not as fearful as in the United States and consequently, people have more faith in democracy.

Democrats are just as guilty as the Bush-Cheney Crime Syndicate for voting for the attack on Iraq years ago. They knew the UN inspectors were in Iraq, but they went along with King George's lies. Now they're playing dumb, pretending they were led astray.

Don't you mean "Playing dumb, pretending they were LIED astray"

Oh yeah- they don't need to pretend they were LIED astray- they WERE lied astray.

Make no mistake: the Democrats role in the Iraq fiasco pales in comparison to the crimes committed by the ringleaders in the Bush admin.

The Dems fault now lies in their inaction in the face of impeachable crimes....

A thought provoking article and thought provoking responses. That's why I'm a CD regular.

However, I think the rumors of the death of this "crackpot creed" are greatly exaggerated, if I can borrow a phrase from Mark Twain.

As long as the average American believes that the way to win in the world is through military strength, there will always be politicians willing to pander to that sentiment. And the average American seems to be completely impervious to reality.

Chalmers Johnson in his book,"Nemesis", discussed the idea that the US must choose between having a democracy or being an imperial ruler of the world, but cannot exist with both. He wrote that England chose the former and is now a democracy, while Rome chose the latter, reducing it's government to an all powerful emperor with an irrelevent senate. So shall it go with the US.

"while it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is nevertheless true that most stupid people are conservative."

---john stuart mill

We can argue semmantics all day but the fact is a liberal has never held public office in the good ole USA.

My biggest problem with this article is that it implies that this trillion dollar windfall on behalf of Bush/Cheney was a mistake. That they didn't think it through, or had good intentions.

The goal was and still is to perpetuate the idea of war so as to drain the US treasury. These asshats don't give a damn if oil goes to a thousand dollars a barrell given the amount of hard cash they are pocketing.

They sure as hell didn't consider the stability of the region as they intend to continue to dismantle it as long as they can get away with it. To say it is only about the oil gets harder and harder with each billion being stolen or unaccounted for. I don't know the value of the fossil fuels under the sands of Iraq, but I do know that these crooks couldn't possibly spend the amount of cash they have acquired through misappropriation, no bid contracts, lost pallets of hundred dollar bills, etc. on oil in their lives.

I'm afraid we have given these fools more credit than they deserve when we speak of control of resources, regime change, geo-political control, national security, or even empire building. These idiots are simply plundering the treasury for all the trillions they can before their term limits expire.

Liberals in the US government, gimme a break.

Please let's not show our ignorance by allowing ourselves to
allot only one definition to the word "liberal"! Check out Webster's before getting all hot and bothered by John Gray's use of the word.

Gray is right if you seriously study political philosophy as I'm sure Professor Gray does coming from such a prestigious university. Webster's is definitely NOT more than a dictionary, and its definition of 'liberal' is hardly satisfactory.

I totally agree with the good professor's diagnosis and people should read more before they jump to conclusions that somehow 'conservative' isn't a relative term. In many ways Bush is a 'liberal' from the political philosophy perspective.

Consider Jeremy Bentham's view on the Gentoo (Hindu) Laws as they were applied by the British East India Company's shareholding buccaneers and their sycophants to large swaths of the Subcontinent. Instead of making the case for maintaining localized courts/rules Bentham made the case for a centralized Hindu court system codifying many 'rules' which had never before been codified in Indian society. Sound similar to American rationales for centralized as opposed to localized courts and lawyers in Iraq? A capital in Baghdad instead of more autonomy for regional governments? An oil law instead of an agreement with oil workers' labor unions?
In truth, the United States was a confederation before we were a constitution. So how much sense could it possibly make to not allow regions to pursue their autonomy? If economics brings them back together into a unified country good for them. But we should not impose our universals on them.

In truth, it is Liberalism's centralizing ontological thrust borne from Bentham's and subsequent 'liberal' authors' tendency to discern universal desires ('pleasure' and 'pain') and 'social structures' (predominantly 'economic structures') in other states' and cultures' and then impose that 'knowledge' on those societies that has most marked Western European 'political' rule. Let's stop trying to tell other people what to do and who they are; that their 'economic' identities are more important than their 'other' identities, or that their 'economic' identities are 'fixed'. Let's embrace the notion of a 'social' milieu in foreign affairs, and stop trying to impose our 'knowledge' of 'economics' on other states and cultures. Let's stop intervening with our 'liberal knowledge' that structures 'politics'around 'economics'; our limited, fixed, and (often times imposed) economistic definitions of identity in the 'political' spaces of other states and cultures.

Lets observe and listen instead, and accept that most people have interpenetrated identities, not fixed ones.
Iraq should be defined by Iraqis, not the Dick Cheneys of the world who predicted that all the freed 'rational actors' in Iraq would celebrate our supermarket American reforms.