quotations about liberals
Uprisings against that ossifying version of New Deal liberalism made the '60s "The Sixties." Political emotions were at a fever pitch as rebels faced off against a liberal "establishment." Matters sometimes became so overheated they threatened to melt the surface of public life. And yet here was a question that, no matter the temperature, was tough to raise at the time: What if liberalism wasn't the problem? Admittedly, that thought was in the air then, raised not just by new and old lefties, but by Martin Luther King Jr., who famously enunciated his second thoughts about capitalism, poverty, race, and war.
STEVE FRASER
"Liberalism Is Under Attack From the Left and the Right", The Nation, June 2, 2016
What Americans call "liberalism" is the ideology of Western suicide.
JAMES BURNHAM
Suicide of the West
Ever since Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the presidential election of 1972, political pundits have treated as a truism the proposition that liberals are out of step with the rest of the nation, and therefore all but unelectable outside the precincts of the Northeast -- give or take a college town here or a ski resort there. During the course of every presidential election for the past forty years now, Republicans have sought to wield the word liberal as if it were a six-gauge shotgun.
ERIC ALTERMAN
Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America
The Eighties proved we don't need liberals.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
interview, Playboy, Nov. 2011
As a reformer the liberal is dissatisfied with things as they are because they violate his exceptionally tender conscience.... Liberalism does not advocate change for its own sake, but for the sake of something better in the direction of what he regards as good, namely, the maximum of liberty consistent with a regard for all men and all interests -- the general happiness based on peace and justice.
RALPH BARTON PERRY
Characteristically American
Liberalism is a belief in radical change made through practical measures.
ADAM GOPNIK
"Liberal-in-Chief", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016
The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
speech, Sep. 29, 1936
Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
attributed, The Nastiest Things Ever Said about Democrats
The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o' clock and the Conservatives at eight.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
My objection to Liberalism is this -- that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind -- namely, politics -- of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech to House of Commons, Jun. 5, 1848
The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public ignominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
The Worst Years of Our Lives
Most liberals never lost sight of the potential for evil in big government. They have consistently opposed government power in matters of personal and political belief. Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom.
ROBERT S. MCELVAINE
The End of the Conservative Era
Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies.
PAUL KRUGMAN
The Conscience of a Liberal
Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
interview, Playboy
A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children.
ANONYMOUS
Liberal -- a power worshipper without power.
GEORGE ORWELL
"Politics and the English Language", Shooting an Elephant
Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.
ERNST JUNGER
Eumeswil
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it.
PAUL KRUGMAN
The Conscience of a Liberal
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
The Illuminati Papers
Nowadays, what is meant by "liberalism" is progressivism, socialism, the welfare state, statism; systems that American conservatives lump together as "Big Government."
JON N. HALL
"What's Wrong with Europe", American Thinker, June 1, 2016