GIT LOST :

Liberalism's Patriotic Vision: One year after the massacres of Sept. 11, surely many Americans are primed for a patriotism of action, not of pledges. (TODD GITLIN, 9/05/02, NY Times)

Liberals should affirm that American power, working within coalitions, can advance democratic values, as in Bosnia and Kosovo--but they should oppose this administration's push toward war in Iraq, which is unlikely to work out that way. Against oil-based myopia, there are murmurs (they should be clamors) that we should phase out the oil dependency that overheats the earth and binds us to tyrants.

On the domestic front, corporate chiefs have lost their new-economy charm--and the Bush administration's earlier efforts on their behalf have lost whatever political purchase they had. With the bursting of the stock market bubble, deregulation no longer looks like a cure-all.

Whom do Americans admire now? Whom do we trust? Americans did not take much reminding that when skyscrapers were on fire, they needed firefighters and police officers, not Arthur Andersen accountants. Yet we confront an administration whose policies reflect the idea that sacrifice--financial and otherwise--is meant for people who wear blue collars.

A reform bloc in Congress, bolstered in November, could start renewing the country. But we need much more than legislation. One year after, surely many Americans are primed for a patriotism of action, not of pledges. The era that began Sept. 11 would be a superb time to crack the jingoists' claim to a monopoly of patriotic virtue. Instead of letting minions of corporate power run away with the flag (while banking their tax credits offshore), we need to remake the tools of our public life--our schools, social services and transportation. Post-Vietnam liberals have an opening now, freed of our 60's flag anxiety and our reflexive negativity, to embrace a liberal patriotism that is unapologetic and uncowed. It's time for the patriotism of mutual aid, not just symbolic displays or self-congratulation. It's time to close the gap between the nation we love and the justice we also love.

Ah, the liberal vision--cede power to the UN, convert to solar power and windmills, embrace the redneck values of the all-male and all-white cops and firemen, reregulate the economy, and whatever it is that last paragraph is calling for. Incoherence, self-contradiction, and big (even internationalist) government rolled into one indigestible ball. Mr. Gitlin has been a public nitwit since before most of us were born; one could almost admire his perseverance and consistency were they not so often put to the service of squelching freedom and destroying America. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 6, 2002 5:06 PM