Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West...

[Ben]

Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West


by Chris Hedges


The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/16-1), prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that are bankrupting the nation. It proclaims its adherence to traditional liberal values while defending and promoting systems of power that mock these values. The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside.
The capitulation of the liberal class to corporate capitalism, as Irving Howe once noted, has “bleached out all political tendencies.” The liberal class has become, Howe wrote, “a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.” The decision to subordinate ethics to political expediency has led liberals to steadily surrender their moral autonomy, voice and beliefs to the dictates of the corporate state. As Dwight Macdonald wrote in “The Root Is Man,” those who do not make human beings the center of their concern soon lose the capacity to make any ethical choices, for they willingly sacrifice others in the name of the politically expedient and practical.
By extolling the power of the state as an agent of change, as well as measuring human progress through the advances of science, technology and consumption, liberals abetted the cult of the self and the ascendancy of the corporate state. The liberal class placed its faith in the inevitability of human progress and abandoned the human values that should have remained at the core of its activism. The state, now the repository of the hopes and dreams of the liberal class, should always have been seen as the enemy. The destruction of the old radical and militant movements—the communists, socialists and anarchists—has left liberals without a source of new ideas. The link between an effective liberal class and a more radical left was always essential to the health of the former. The liberal class, by allowing radical movements to be dismembered through Red baiting and by banishing those within its ranks who had moral autonomy, gradually deformed basic liberal tenets to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization and permanent war. Liberalism, cut off from the radical roots of creative and bold thought, merged completely with the corporate power elite. The liberal class at once was betrayed and betrayed itself. And it now functions like a commercial brand, giving a different flavor, face or spin to the ruthless mechanisms of corporate power. This, indeed, is the primary function of Barack Obama.
The liberal class, despite becoming an object of widespread public scorn, prefers the choreographed charade. It will decry the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or call for universal health care, but continue to defend and support a Democratic Party that has no intention of disrupting the corporate machine. As long as the charade is played, the liberal class can hold itself up as the conscience of the nation without having to act. It can maintain its privileged economic status. It can continue to live in an imaginary world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the uselessness and irrelevancy of the liberal class are not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who suffer the indignities of the corporate state. And this is why liberals are rightly despised by the working class and the poor.
The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite. And when someone such as Cornel West speaks out, packs of careerist liberals—or perhaps one should call them neoliberals—descend on the apostate like hellhounds, never addressing the truths that are expressed but instead engaging in vicious character assassination. The same thing happened to Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Jeremiah Wright and others who defied the political orthodoxy of corporate capitalism. The corporate forces, which have taken control of the press and which break unions, run the universities, fund the arts and own the Democratic Party, demand the banishment of all who question the good intentions of the powerful. Liberals who comply are tolerated within the system. They are permitted to busy themselves with the boutique activism of political correctness, inclusiveness or multiculturalism. If they attempt to fight for the primacy of justice, they become pariahs.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that there were three characteristics of all forms of prophecy: “First, it is entirely opposed to the general ideas of the people in the midst of whom it is uttered; second, all who hear it feel its truth; and thirdly, above all, it urges men to realize what it foretells.”
Prophets put forward during their day ideas that the mass of people, including the elite, denounce as impractical and yet at the same time sense to be true. This is what invokes the rage against the prophet. He or she states the obvious in a society where the obvious is seditious. Prophecy is feared because of the consequences of the truth. To accept that Obama is, as West said, a mascot for Wall Street means having to challenge some frightening monoliths of power and give up the comfortable illusion that the Democratic Party or liberal institutions can be instruments for genuine reform. It means having to step outside the mainstream. It means a new radicalism. It means recognizing that there is no hope for a correction or a reversal within the formal systems of power. It means defying traditional systems of power. And liberals, who have become courtiers to the corporate state, must attempt to silence all those who condemn the ruthlessness and mendacity of these systems of destruction. Their denunciation of all who rebel is a matter of self-preservation. For once the callous heart of the corporate state is exposed, so is the callous heart of the liberal class.

© 2011 TruthDig.com

[Ben]

[onmyknees]

Yea....I saw that Ben. In this particular case, I don't think
(politically speaking)...that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Prof. West wants to attack Obama from the left, I can't take particular comfort or solace in that because his alternative would be to pull Obama even further to the limits of acceptability and the political main stream. He's not saying that Obama is just another one of a very long line of liberals that have sapped the spirit and the soul of the black community by his social policies...he's intimating he wants more ....not less government in their lives. Prof. West as brilliant a guy as he is fails witness the abundance of real live evidence at his disposal as to what 50 years of social welfare programs have begat the Black Community. He's no Bill Cosby ! If you want to listen to a black man with the last name West attack Obama...listen to Col. Alan West attack him from the right. And besides....what's all this talk from Professor West yapping about how O'bama has turned his back on blacks....doesn't he know that Barry is now Irish? LOL

[Stavros]

Cornel West has been promoting Cornel West ever since I first saw him on UK tv which I think must have been in the 1980s; I thought of that group Manning Marable was the most keenly in touch with real issues, and a great writer. I was a member of the Labour Party at the time, but I have to admit that, like it or not, the left was defeated in election after election first by Mrs Thatcher and then John Major, and when Labour returned to power in 1997 it did not veer so far away from the new centre the conservatives established -because that is what people wanted. Indeed, Blair could not have been elected without throwing overboard the 'socialist' credo in the Labour Party's constitution.
It beggars belief that West hasn't woken up from his 1970s daydream to realise it, when the left has either been defeated across Europe, or as has happened in Spain recently, or France under Mitterrand, in office wasn't really 'left' at all. The Cold War is over, and yet a new kind of politics has yet to emerge to replace the jaded concepts that were worn out even by the 1970s.
There comes a time when one has to say of the old politics, it doesn't work, and people dont want it, so think of something new. That, to me, is where the left has let people down, bereft of ideas and vision, incapable of ditching over historical morons like Lenin and Fidel and refusing to acknowledge one failed experiment after another. Some on the left have migrated into green politics and turned hugely important issues into apocalyptic slogans; but many I used to know have just slumped into their armchairs to sulk.

Isn't Obama in the context of popular activism in Chicago a disciple of Saul Alinsky, the fascinating American radical criticised by the left for leading the urban poor on a march out of poverty and into bourgeois respectability -as if the prize for all that protest was more bad housing?

[hippifried]

Prophets???????????? When did Cornel West become a "prophet"?

Hedges is full of shit. Still. There's no such thing as a "liberal class". We're not a class. We're not necessarily "progressive" (whatever the hell that is), or left wing either. I get pissed off getting lumped in with every crackpot radical on the fringe of the political sphere, & I don't give a shit who's doing the lumping. As far as I'm concerned, this asshole is just a Limbaugh clone attacking me from another angle. I'm really tired of crackpots from all sides claiming to speak for me or claiming they know what or how I think. They're just liars.

[Faldur]

I get pissed off getting lumped in with every crackpot radical on the fringe of the political sphere, & I don't give a shit who's doing the lumping. As far as I'm concerned, this asshole is just a Limbaugh clone attacking me from another angle.

For once you were making damn good sense then in the next sentence you do exactly what you were "pissed" was being done to you..

[hippifried]

For once you were making damn good sense then in the next sentence you do exactly what you were "pissed" was being done to you..

Wrong! Mention of a different liar's name does not automatically change the subject. Hedges was trying to label me with a bogus brand, the same way Limbaugh tries to label me with a bogus brand every single day. Pay attention.

[Silcc69]

Yea....I saw that Ben. In this particular case, I don't think
(politically speaking)...that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Prof. West wants to attack Obama from the left, I can't take particular comfort or solace in that because his alternative would be to pull Obama even further to the limits of acceptability and the political main stream. He's not saying that Obama is just another one of a very long line of liberals that have sapped the spirit and the soul of the black community by his social policies...he's intimating he wants more ....not less government in their lives. Prof. West as brilliant a guy as he is fails witness the abundance of real live evidence at his disposal as to what 50 years of social welfare programs have begat the Black Community. He's no Bill Cosby ! If you want to listen to a black man with the last name West attack Obama...listen to Col. Alan West attack him from the right. And besides....what's all this talk from Professor West yapping about how O'bama has turned his back on blacks....doesn't he know that Barry is now Irish? LOL

Well when blacks have tried to do there own things this happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwo...Wall_Street.22


Rosewood massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Rosewood_Florida_rc12408.jpg" class="image"><img alt="A black and white photograph of ashes from a burned building with several people standing nearby; trees in the distance" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9c/Rosewood_Florida_rc12408.jpg/300px-Rosewood_Florida_rc12408.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/9/9c/Rosewood_Florida_rc12408.jpg/300px-Rosewood_Florida_rc12408.jpg

[Ben]

Prophets???????????? When did Cornel West become a "prophet"?

Hedges is full of shit. Still. There's no such thing as a "liberal class". We're not a class. We're not necessarily "progressive" (whatever the hell that is), or left wing either. I get pissed off getting lumped in with every crackpot radical on the fringe of the political sphere, & I don't give a shit who's doing the lumping. As far as I'm concerned, this asshole is just a Limbaugh clone attacking me from another angle. I'm really tired of crackpots from all sides claiming to speak for me or claiming they know what or how I think. They're just liars.

What is liberal anyway? Or conservative?

Conservatism is classical liberalism. And conservatives, well, going back 100 years rejected centralized power. Whether it be STATE power or CORPORATE power. Even ol' Adam Smith was all for SMALL businesses.
So-called conservatives today embrace centralized power. Meaning centralized corporate power. And they fully embrace it because they believe the country will be more stable. Stability is key. And power placed in very few hands brings about a stable country.
Read Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind. He believed that a tiny elite should run things. And placing power in the hands of the rabble, well, will screw things up. And: a tiny sector of wealth and privilege will simply sustain society. Plus the gentlemanly sort are RATIONAL. Whereas the peasant class or working class are simply IRRATIONAL. You cannot have irrational members of society, meaning the majority, dictating policy. It's too frightening. As John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said: the people who own the country [the super-rich] ought to run the country.

Have the terms Liberal and Conservative been rendered meaningless?

What Chris Hedges has pointed out is that the Democratic Party used to be the party that fought for working class and the middle class values.
Today we've two parties that are pretty much similar. Except for a few slight differences. (Dwight Eisenhower today would be considered a radical. If you look at the Republican Party platform of 1952, well, it was left of the Dems. How things have changed.)

[Ben]

QUOTING THOMAS JEFFERSON:

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."