IN THE END, LIBERALISM WINS

(August 16, 2003) Lots of people (well, two) have wondered why I'm not bombarding them with e-mails anymore. So here 'tis. At least in this country, in the end liberalism wins, though it certainly takes awhile. The reason I take pen to paper (or more accurately fingers to keyboard) regards Rick Santorum, a Senator [now former] from Pennsylvania. You remember him, he is the one who became famous for intemperate comments about all laws regarding morality were off because of a Supreme Court decision that Gays have a right to privacy in their own homes and which struck down a Texas law. Less noticed in his speech was that he said this followed from an earlier Connecticut law, also struck down by the Supreme Court, in which it was against the law for married people to use contraceptives!

Well, now Santorum leads a charge accusing the Democrats of playing an anti-Catholic card to prevent a couple judges, who happen to be Roman Catholic, from promotions to be judges on higher courts (I suspect that once he is away from cameras and reporters, he laughs his head off.). Lost in all this is that President Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, and also, as it happens, a Democrat to boot. If you are old enough, you may recall that the Republicans opposed him on the grounds that he would be taking orders from the Pope, a charge that Kennedy vehemently opposed. Well, time moves on, and now we have Republicans wanting to appoint Roman Catholic judges to high court positions (even if they won't nominate one for President). If the Democrats have charged that they would be taking orders from the Pope, I haven't heard it. Boys and girls, this is a real advance. You also may recall that one knock on Adlai Stevenson, when he ran for President, was that he was divorced. By the time Republican Ronald Reagan, who also was a divorcee, ran for President, it was a non issue. As to pot (Marihuana), it was a big issue when Clinton was running for president, but George "Dubya" Bush got let off by simply saying he had done some things when he was younger that he wasn't proud of. Whether I agree or disagree with what these people are doing or saying, liberalism is winning.

We now have in a Republican administration, a Black Secretary of State and a Black woman, of all things, as the Presidential security advisor. I mention the woman part because it was just a few Republican administrations ago that a prominent official, male of course, said that women don't understand things like throw weights (for rockets). I can hardly believe my eyes, and ears. There are Republicans who grouse about such appointments, to be sure, and can hardly wait to get Secretary Powell out of there, but it looks like he will stay a whole term. For good measure, I believe we have an Asian-American woman as Secretary of Labor and an Asian-American man as Secretary of HUD. We also have a Republican Governor, Jeb Bush, married to a Hispanic American and former Senator Gramm married to an Asian woman. Ditto for a ''conservative" columnist (George Will, in case you can't guess).

Well, I grew up in a pretty conservative Republican neighborhood, and I can tell you people would have been shocked if I had come home with a Black, Asian, or Hispanic girl friend. I also might mention that had I come home with a Roman Catholic girlfriend, it would have created a strained situation with my parents who would have at least gotten a lot of sympathy from the neighbors. It used to be said by the more liberal members about any of these groups that "They are nice people, but I wouldn't want my child to marry one!" I'll bet many of you remember this phrase. Yes, liberalism is winning.

While I am at it, I might mention that some aspects of liberalism have been adopted by Republicans that probably shouldn't be. The neighborhood I grew up in was fiscally very conservative, not to the point that they wouldn't take out a loan to buy a house and maybe an automobile, but they thought Federal deficits were immoral. I recall one neighbor telling me in the late 1940s that these Federal deficits would destroy the economy though he admitted he didn't know exactly when. So what I have in mind here is the adoption by Republicans of the liberal notion that the bigger the Federal deficit the better. But then, after all, it was President Nixon who said that we are all Keynesians now (though Keynes actually said we should pay back deficits in economically good times).

I might add that then, as now, you heard about the evils of handing Federal deficits on to our children. Well, here I am one of the children paying off for the Federal deficits from our parents age and handing on even bigger ones to the current children. Make no mistake, I believe this is a serious matter. The deficit for the current fiscal year is estimated to be $450 billion. That is just about the sum of all the discretionary spending in the Federal budget (All the departments such as Interior, HUD, Treasury, Energy, Health (excluding Social Security and Medicare which are not discretionary because they are supported by special taxes.), Education, Veterans Affairs, etc.). So you would have to wipe all these out to just balance the budget, and, incidentally, you would probably run up a deficit next fiscal year which is expected to be bigger than this year. There still are a few fiscally conservative Republicans, but they seem to get rolled.

Well, if the Democrats want to get into our wallets, the Republicans want to get into our bedrooms. Santorum isn't alone in feeling frustrated that the Supreme court won't let him (so far). Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice by the way, wrote that the verdict of privacy for Gays would destroy lots of state laws controlling morals, among which he mentioned masturbation (!). It would be kind of fun to see him take a lie detector test on whether he had disobeyed that law.

An update added November 8, 2008: We have just witnessed Sen. Barack Obama - a black man and a Democrat - being elected president of the United States on November 4, 2008, and the Republicans ran Sen. John McCain - Roman Catholic - against him. Walter "Fritz" Mondale selected Democrat Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his Vice-Presidential nominee in the 1984 election, the first woman nominated in that position. Ferraro was eventually followed by Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who was selected by John McCain as his running mate in 2008. Although neither candidate became vice-president, it is now all right for women to be selected as presidential running mates. William Clinton had Madeleine Albright as the first woman Secretary of State. In the first term of George "Dubya" Bush, Gen. Colin Powell was the first Black Secretary of State who was followed by Condoleezza Rice -a Black woman. In the end, liberalism still wins in these United States.

An update added October 4, 2009: Now with Sonia Sotomeyer, six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Roman Catholics, two are Jewish, and one is Protestant.

An update added December 31, 2009: There is lots more that could have been said about liberalism winning in the long run. Women and minorities being able to enter any university and graduate schools of any university is certainly not a minor advance. Getting rid of legalized Jim Crow was certainly another major advance. The Voting Rights Act of 1964 was another major advance, in this case put over the top by Republicans (This was before the solid south of the Democrats became the Southern Strategy of the Republicans.). Today you will even see women and minorities as CEOs of major corporations. And Hillary Clinton certainly put a whole lot of cracks in the glass ceiling of a woman running for president of these United States.