James Flynn (as in, The Flynn Effect), asks in his latest book: “Where Have all the Liberals Gone?”
But what does he mean by “liberal?”
Thomas Jefferson
Without Jefferson, we would not have the lucid statement of the ideal that binds Americans together: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Today, even the liberal left is in danger of making his ideal a Sunday truth rather that the focus of American politics.
Thomas Jefferson
Eugene Victor Debs
Debs was the greatest of the Social Democrats who tried to give working people what Jefferson admired in the self-sufficient farmer. Equality with their employers through trade unions, equality under the law by popular control of the government, and equality before misfortune through the welfare state. His selflessness contrasts with the millionaires who champion the poor today.
- Eugene Victor Debbs
Harry Truman
The last President to unequivocally endorse socialized medicine. Also, in the early days of the cold war, he pursued a rational policy of containing the USSR in stark contrast to the hysterical “war on terror” at present. He had the courage to dismiss General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War rather that allowing him to provoke a full-scale war with China.
Harry Truman
Estes Kefauver
The only Democrat in the Senate who stood firm against the “anti-Communist” crusade of Joe McCarthy. In 1954, when the Democrats sought safety by out-doing the Republicans in passing oppression legislation, the vote was 81 for – and only Kefauver against. His office staff sitting in the gallery burst into tears assuming that his political career was over.
- Estes Kefauver
John Rawls
James Flynn is author of What Is Intelligence? and Where Have all the Liberals Gone? (Due in October)
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