Cut-and-Run Liberal, and Proud of It

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted June 21, 2006.

I want to be perfectly clear about this. We liberals really do want to cut and run.

I admit it. We are cut-and-run liberals, just as Karl Rove alleges. More than that, I am proud of it and encourage more Americans to join us.

We are liberals/progressives and, damn it, we want to cut and run.

We want to cut and run from the borrow and spend, borrow and spend economics of the GOP that have piled an additional $4 trillion in debt onto our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

We want to cut and run from the unholy alliance between the GOP and energy companies that has left us at the mercy of a bunch of medieval Islamic tribal leaders who run their own countries like feudal states and treat their own people -- especially their women -- worse than Americans treat farm animals.

We want to cut and run from a national health care system designed by and for giant health care and pharmaceutical interests, that enriches a few while leaving 45 million Americans without affordable health insurance.

We want to cut and run from a government that, over the past six years, has become not only increasingly closed to public scrutiny and accountability, but overtly hostile and suspicious of citizens who insist on either.

We want to cut and run from a style of governance that not only plays on fear and petty prejudices, but cultivates and exploits them for cheap political gain. From the cynical, dishonest, purposeful pitting of majority populations against minority groups on the grounds that they don't share "American values," and later denying responsibility for the entirely predictable destructive consequences of those tactics.

We want to cut and run from policies that view science and scientists as adversaries whose findings must sometimes be suppressed, while embracing, even endorsing, religious dogmas that have no basis in fact whatsoever.

We want to cut and run from GOP economic polices that have handed the already wealthy a couple of trillion dollars in tax cuts while leaving working Americans' payroll tax virtually untouched.

We want to cut and run from GOP economics that argue -- with a straight face -- that the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour should not be raised to a still unlivable $7.25 an hour because doing so would "hurt low-wage workers."

We want to cut and run from policies that scoff at mandating substantially higher fuel mileage standards, even as the fossil fuels run out and the effects of global warming become more apparent with each passing day.

We want to cut and run from policies that justify turning "the land of the free and home of the brave" into a place where none of us can any longer feel sure that the government isn't listening to our private phone calls, reading our emails or keeping an eye on us from a pole-mounted camera on the corner.

We want to cut and run from an administration that wraps inconvenient truths in the opaque blanket of national security while justifying selective disclosure of classified information for purely political reasons -- such as the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and the now discredited disclosures that Iraq tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.

We want to cut and run from policies that allow religious extremists to determine what medical procedures or family planning medications women will be allowed access to.

We want to cut and run from policies that allow our government to decide which American citizens will be allowed to enter into legally recognized, committed relationships, and which will be banned by law from doing so.

We want to cut and run from policies that encourage counseling and treatment for Americans suffering from alcohol addiction, but incarceration for those suffering drug addiction.

We want to cut and run from cynically selective policies that treat some dictators as friends of America and others as enemies requiring a deadly dose of regime change.

We want to cut and run from policies that are increasingly militarizing entirely domestic matters, such as internal terrorist threats, border control and domestic law enforcement, particularly the gathering of intelligence on political groups and movements.

We want to cut and run from policies that allow industries government is supposed to regulate for the public good to write the very rules under which they will be regulated.

Do we want to cut and run from Iraq? I wish the hell we could. But that fat is already in the fire. Liberals understand we can't cut and run from Iraq. But whose fault is it that we're stuck there now? Not ours, that's for sure. We would like to see U.S. troops leave Iraq as soon as possible -- but not in a way that would make matters worse for ordinary Iraqis than our invasion already has.

In the meantime, we are not about to let the very neocons who got us into that mess shift the blame onto liberals who oppose the war. You guys started it, and that dead chicken is hanging around your necks, not ours. So, Karl, stop the blame-shifting and wear it like a man.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

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