When and How Did the Right Succeed in Making 'Liberal' a Pejorative Term?

[Robert Murphy]

Thoughts:

Remember back in '88 when the noble and gifted (yet seemingly politically hapless) Michael Dukakis was being savaged by the late Lee Atwater and the boys? OK, I was pretty young then, but nonetheless it came as shock to me when I saw how the Bush Sr. campaign was attacking Dukakis by calling him a... a... a... LIBERAL!! More shocking was how it seemed to work! Er, lets look this
term of venomous contempt up in the dictionary:

"Liberal: ...5 : BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms..."

Damn!! No one better ever DARE CALL ME ONE THOSE!!!

Liberalism: c : a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties." (Merriam-Webster)

Good GOD!!! Who will save America from the grave menace of such diseased-minded miscreants!!

How the hell did we let them get away with this?

Robert

[Sal316]

1. Seems to me it was right around 1994...

..right after the "Republican Revolution". Gingrich had a memo out that dictated how the right was to talk about us and talk about themselves. It even listed the words to use.

I used to have that link, but don't anymore.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

2. i seem to remember the mid-90's was when

Rush and company hammered the term liberal into perjorative form. I am pretty young though, and haven't been at this political analysis a long time. It seems that the more extreme conservative is very sensitive to word association, and not so much to content. It would be very easy to do the same thing to the word "Republican" though, I think moreso than the term "conservative". It would also be easy to reclaim the term liberal, by constantly stressing liberty (a word that makes Freepers jizz their pants, even though they don't really like liberty as it pertains to individual rights).

[MojoKrunch]

3. Reagan, back in the 80's .

He came up with the phrase "The "L" word", as if it were too nasty to say out loud in proper company.

Mojo

[NewJeffCT]

24. I agree

It was when Raygun became president that liberal became a dirty word... we didn't lose Vietnam because it was a bad war, we lost because those liberals (LBJ, Carter) were too weak. Crime in our country isn't because we have poor have-nots, it's because liberals are soft on crime and want to coddle criminals. Our public schools aren't weak because of a lack of funding and lack of parent participation, it's because the liberal elitist agenda has corrupted them.

It was an easy way to blame things, as liberals were portrayed as long haired, pot smoking hippies that were sons and daughters of the rich.

[Landlord]

26. Me 2

in agreeing with NewJeffCT, also the meaning of liberalism is different in the 21 century than in eighteenth century.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. It was a war of images & policies, and Liberals lost.

The Right made morality and family values a party issue and they succeeded in painting Liberals as the anti-Christ. Especially FoxNews would present far left whackos on their show to represent all Liberals and there was nothing to counter it. Of course, all the right-wingers were clean-cut and well-dressed by comparison. It didn't help when Clinton got caught with Lewinsky. It only helped to cement the image of Liberals as loose cabooseys.

[Goldenboy]

5. Need to take back the context

The word conservative isn't actually bad, if you use it in the traditional Burkeian sense. Folks like Coulter aren't classical conservatives; given their views and behaviour, they are more properly labeled or identified as reactionaries or radical rightists. Pin that on them.

[bobbieinok]

6. Liberal became a dirty word in the 60s!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a grad student in CA, I was shocked when some of the New Left started attacking liberals.

They constantly denigrated liberals.

[ldoolin]

12. That's true, but...

The New Left of the 60s pursued a position to the left of liberalism. Some of them were overt Marxists while others saw New Deal/Great Society liberalism as compromise. To them, the immediate face of liberalism was Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, and by extension the Vietnam War, and so they attacked liberalism from the left. I don't think they had anything to do with liberalism becoming a dirty word in the 80s and 90s. For that, the blame goes to the New Right that grew out of the 1964 Goldwater campaign and eventually brought us Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and the Bush regime. The New Left had all bust self-destructed by 1972, while the New Right kept on organizing, growing, and eventually making their influence felt on popular culture and politics. See my post below.

[grannylib]

7. Here's the Gingrich memo link

http://vander.hashish.com/books/propaganda/newt.html

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Repetition

Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition Repetition

--bkl
Repetition and more repetition

[Pinko Commie]

9. ...But not just repetition.

The cons grabbed the media, so repetition worked really well. And since they don't think, conservatives respond to brain washing.

But liberals backed down, unfortunately, and let the term be demonized. It always bothered me that the left would let them do this. Frankly, there was never a movement more in-your-face than 60s liberalism. Makes the neo-cons look like sissies by comparison.

Today, some use the term "progressive" in place of "liberal". Now, progressive is a nice term, and I like it a lot. But to me, it just reflects the fact that the liberals of the early 90s didn't stand up.

[BlackCap]

10. It's the Propaganda

The right in this country has always had a better propaganda machine and they've always known how to use it. The word "liberal" has been associated with totalitarianism and moral nihilism because Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and all the other conservative media outlets hammer such notions into people.

[ldoolin]

11. The right wing has been...

...organizing ever since the Goldwater '64 campaign. They lost that one big time, but took the organizations and mailing lists they built during that campaign and started building a movement with the intention of taking over America and destroying the liberal consensus that once guided this country. Among the strategies the right wing movement adopted following the Goldwater campaign, are:

1. Demonize the word "liberal", make it a dirty word.
2. Make the Republican party the vehicle for the right wing movement. They did this by bringing the old southern racist-segregationist wing out of the Democrats and into the Republicans, making the Republican party a unified base for the right wing.
3. Find wedge issues and constituency groups they could swing their way. Big wedge issues they have used: abortion and guns. An example of the constituency groups they have successfully swung their way: evangelical Christians. Does anyone long for the days when evangelical Christians voted in large numbers for Jimmy Carter? The right wing has so infiltrated and taken over their media that they are now a core right wing constituency. There are many other groups the right wing has used the same way.
4. Take over the media, and demonize the existing media by tarring them with a "liberal" bias. This went hand in hand with demonizing the word liberal. We now see the results of this, with Faux News and their ilk.
5. Build a big network of foundations, think tanks, etc. to spread the right wing ideology. They did this with money provided by people like Richard Scaife, the Koch brothers, etc. They also used heavy grassroots direct-mail fundraising led by right wing fundraising guru Richard Viguerie.
6. Break up the Democrats' traditional constituencies using wedge issues. Bust up organized labor, pursue economic policies which will shift unionized jobs overseas and shift the U.S. to a non-union service based economy, and convince working class people that the right wing, rather than liberals, are the ones who have their best interests at heart. One of the biggest scams pulled off in modern history has been when the Repugs convinced working class people - some of whom are working minimum wage service industry jobs with few benefits - to vote Republican, using wedge issues (flag-thumping, abortion, etc.)

This could have an entire book written about it, but the right wing campaign to make "liberal" a dirty word has been going on since 1964. It was sometime during the early 1980s when they were successful at this.

Sorry for the long post. This is an issue near and dear to my heart.

More on right-wing foundations and their funding at: www.mediatransparency.org

More on the right-wing more generally, how they organize, what they are all about: www.publiceye.org (caveat on that site, I take issue with some of Chip Berlet's views and his attitude - but it's still a good site for studying the recent history of the right.)

Good tool for researching various shady characters on the right: www.namebase.org

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I first noticed it in the 1980s

and I was furious when many Dems, instead of coming right back with, "Damn right we're liberal--and proud of it!" cringed and backpedalled as if to say, "Liberals? Where? Nobody here but us moderates!"

As the saying goes, "If you don't respect yourself, no one else will."

[KensPen]

14. reclaim the word

I agree with Lydia.
Dukakis seemed to run from the word, and the running hasn't stopped.
We have allowed people who are smug, self satisfied, hypocritical, often racist, to use the word conservative when describing themselves with pride.

that makes his ride in the tank with the Kazoo helmet on only his second biggest disgrace.

[TahitiNut]

15. Welcome to DU, KensPen!

:hi:

[KensPen]

16. thanks

for the welcome,
but this is a topic that infuriates me.
It bugs me that we allowed "Lib" to become a word that allows all our beliefs to be dismissed.

AND

Don't get me started on how the word "elite" can be attached to anything Republicans don't like....

we have a second generation president from a VERY powerful political family who fumbled his way through an Ivy league education and was given companies to mismanage...
but we are "elite".

[Lefty48197]

17. It was when Dukakis wouldn't fight back

In fact, nobody's defended liberalism since.

[UrbScotty]

18. Let's do to them what they did to us!

Would you rather have Liberalism?...

c : a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties

...or Conservatism?

2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change
3 : the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

[demindepublican]

19. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/tenets.htm

like i said ....http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/tenets.htm

[AlexanderBarca]

20. This one's better :-p

Entry: bigoted
Function: adjective
Definition: prejudiced
Synonyms: biased, conservative, dogmatic, illiberal, narrow, narrow-minded, obstinate, opinionated, partial, partisan, sectarian, slanted, small-minded, twisted, unfair, warped
Antonyms: broad-minded, humanitarian, liberal, open-minded, tolerant, unprejudiced

[eblack101]

21. It's "Tax and Spend", Stupid!

Friends,

Most of what you've said above is correct but not central, like branches on a tree, when the real root is "Tax and Spend". Everything "bad" about liberals grows out of that one exagerated concept--Tax and Spend.

If you don't believe me, just wait a few months, and BushCo will be accusing Dean of "raising taxes" and "expanding government"...in other words, taxing and spending.

Of course, repetition in politics makes "truth". If "truth" could be established quickly, then "reduce the tax base and spend" would work wonders against Bush; but, lamentably, the factor of repetitive criticism over time hasn;t been applied any where long enough in the case of our Resident.

there is also "tradition" which can be cynically manipulated to enforce the very things it was established to fight. Some conservatives are coming awake to this fact, and have recently begun to call for Bush's head(assuming that they can find it)because when it comes to expanding the economy he's a bust, but when it comes to expanding government spending and massive debt, he's in class all by himself. Yet, tradition has it that he's a Conservative. LOL. Next to Bush, all the liberals that have gone before him are mere amateurs: Johnson, Kennedy, even FDR can't hold an entitlement to Bush's sins against fiscal intelligence. If Liberalism is defined as spending money, than Bush is the greatest Liberal in the history of the Western world.

So, be forwarned, if any of you want to resussitate "Liberalism", you'll have to battle "Tax and Spend" first.

eric

[Norquist Nemesis]

34. I completely agree!!!

Tax and Spend is the original tag line to Liberals and Democrats. Then play in the well-researched words like tax-"relief" and a whole host of others, repeat them, and voila! I have to admit, the marketing plan on this goal has been genious and now runs itself.

Our greatest assets of open-mindedness, wanting to lift people up into the middle class, giving back to our community and country, a high sense of social responsibility, etc. have been used against us. Because we are open-minded, we actually listen to differing points of view and that has been memed to weakness. Lifting people, social responsibility, etc. has been equated with stealing your hard earned money to spend frivously on dead-end, lazy, sexually promiscious drug addicts in perpetual welfare.

I'm glad to hear this discussion taking place. It irks the crap out of me when I a "con" dismisses me as just a "liberal loon". I'm also glad to hear at least two candidates (Dean and Clark) putting the issue into play and bring a sense of pride to liberals.

[zbdent]

22. I would say, around 1964 . When the racists, en masse, left the

Democratic party.

[Davo Dinkum]

23. The timidity of the left.

I think some of those reasons are pertinent as to why the term 'liberal' is demonized within the political mainstream. However, I reckon one of the biggest reasons why is because lefties now buy into this crap. Worldwide, left governments are so desperate to get into power so they will do almost anything to get into power. Does the third way ring a bell? The situation between conservatives and liberals is like the bully and his victim, 'Stop punching yourself.'

Political strategy rule 1: Don't allow your opposition to define you or the ground rules of debate. Why did Clinton win in 92? Because he didn't allow Bush to run the campaign on military issues. He changed focus onto the economy.

[dave46]

25. The term

conservative has been demonized as well, so I guess it makes since that the same would be done to the opposite end of the spectrum by the conservative side. Either way, the definition of liberal and conservative really don't fit the steryotypes of the likeminded people anymore.

[LoZoccolo]

27. When we started disowning it.

That's why we need to take it back.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[amber dog democrat]

29. Happened during the Reagan years

with the deregulation of laws governing the media ownership.

Once the press and media are largely influenced by vested interests, then much of what is dissiminated becomes a reflection of adminsitration policy.

My guess is it got started in the 1980s.
Its almost a done deal now.

[chrisfaithalin]

30. What about conservative?

What about conservative. That would is full of stereo types and can be just as demeaning as the word liberal. I am conservative. How do you picture me? Probably a stuffy male or female that is stuck up, rich maybe, close minded, and unintelligent.

Well, I am 16 year old female attending high school. Just got my report card that was a 4.0. I have many left-winged friends. I am taking french. Its my favorite class as is my very liberal teacher and best friend in that class. Then I am going to take a trip to France this summer thanks to my great grandmother, since my family is not well off.

The word liberal is just as much of a stereo type as conservative. I don't know what the problem really is. I don't think of liberal being a bad thing. The left did the exact same thing about conservative because extreme liberals think ill about conservative and it is the same way about conservatives.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IowaBiker]

32. Civil Rights Era is when it started

Back then, the folks who we now know had a term for people fighting segregation. When that term became unpopular in general society, the name changed. It's part of the code.

For those of you old enough, you can interchange that old term with "liberal" and see that the use is not much different.

--Brian

[guitar man]

33. Anti-American

The thing that pisses me off the most is how often the term "Anti-American" is attached to the term "Liberal". "Damn Anti-American Left-Wing,Liberal,Commie Pinko bastards."

How long has this shit gone unchecked? Damn sure sounds negative as hell to me!

we need to make a point of countering the regressives EVERY TIME one of them barks this shit out without fail.

I have come up with some terminology of my own.

"God damn ANTI AMERICAN right wing,neoconservative,jackboot,fascist nazi sons of bitches"!!!!


Has a nice ring to it,I think:)