Eric Alterman blog

“Media Matters” http://mediamatters.org/altercation/

May 29, 2007

The Mattson/Jumonville collection [Liberalism for a New Century] is recommended not only to all liberals, but to anyone who takes political ideas seriously. While raising plenty of problems, it represents a mini-renaissance in liberal intellectual thinking. Again, the proper word, I think is "bracing" that liberals are again demonstrating the necessary self-confidence and sense of ownership of their country to be able to assess their strengths and weaknesses and disagree with one another without inviting accusations of apostasy. I think the unarguable catastrophe of the Bush administration's eight years of misrule -- whether you attribute it to ideology, incompetence, corruption or deliberate malevolence -- coupled with the inability of its cheerleaders in the media to disassociate themselves from their acquiescence in helping to destroy, rather than defend the nation -- has opened up a space in millions of Americans' minds to rethink their attitude towards liberals and liberalism. This book won't reach these people, of course, but it will reach the people who do reach them, and we'll all be better for it. One quibble: The word "liberal" is so elastic that it can be used properly and applied to both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (though not to George W. Bush). Therefore, I suppose Peter Berkowitz qualifies under some definitions, but if you read today's piece on the WSJ op-ed page, you'll see he really does not belong in the company of Brinkley, Dionne, Kazin, Tomasky, etc, since he is obviously unsympathetic to the entire project, as well as wrong.