this sums it up for me

[rone]

dennisperrin:

Like so many liberals, numerous reactionaries appear to believe that Obama's not a willing servant of capital and empire, but that he harbors a secret self, saying what he must in order to be elected.  Come Inauguration Day, the Real Obama emerges, which for liberals is a progressive patriot channeling FDR, and for right wingers, a treasonous surrendercrat, wiping Iranian and North Korean asses with Old Glory.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

FDR was a willing servant of capital and empire. I know people thought he wasn't, but they were pretty stupid too.

To my mind, "liberal" means a moderate, not a leftist radical (see Phil Ochs, "Love Me, I'm A Liberal").

Personally, I'm more liberal than leftist, but I want there to be a viable harder left in America. I figure that if you think your own political ideology is more or less correct (and who doesn't?), but you also believe you're probably not right about everything, then in your ideal world you'd be somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum, with people pulling from both sides (and maybe from other political dimensions too) to help correct you and your fellow ideologues in case you're wrong. So as a liberal, I want the US to have some non-crazy conservatives, and I also want it to have some real leftists.