It’s not to be assumed that conservatives of the time were in much better shape. By the seventies the American people, exhausted by Watergate and the failed war in Vietnam, held conservatives to be as honest as Richard Nixon and as smart as Spiro Agnew. At the low point, conservatism was viewed as a parody of itself; fixed in popular projection as that character in the jowly Nixon mask (so popular at Halloween for a few years there) riding down the street in the back of an open-topped convertible, grinning obscenely, waving two-fingered peace signs with stretched arms and nervous hands.

Liberalism, here, is not to be mixed up with Classical Liberalism, that nineteenth century philosophy that stressed the dignity of the individual, and scolded, in the process, the depredations of state control. We examine, instead, the liberalism perceived by a working-class population (still smarting from those unkind cracks about racism and soybeans and all) as the value-system of federal buttinskies, idealism and day-glo peace signs.

So, even as Nixon and his posse were run out of town, the people discovered that they hated “the liberals,” more than they hated conservatives, who, at morning’s first whiff of such lagniappe, poked their heads, prairie-dog style from the foxholes, rolled their eyes skyward and gave tearful thanks to the gods of authoritarianism.

The pointy heads are laughing at you, they reminded folks early and often, and, sure enough, liberalism became accepted as an ad-hominem attack on working people, makers of profit, all authority figures except liberal ones, soldiers, sailors and stay-at-home moms. The trouble was, that as the country’s media drifted rightward and grew increasingly concentrated in the hands of big corporations, the l-word was morphing into a facile, all-season calumny aimed at anyone who criticized, for example, war, or the power of the state, or the tinhorn patriotism of talk radio. James Madison admonished against blind support of militarism when he told posterity, “[I]f tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” Had he rejoined our nation anytime after the 1970s, the conservative media would have had him down as a liberal screamer; weak on national defense, and showing disrespect for our troops.

The right wing had its l-word, (much as the sheep dog had his bark), and it proved indispensable in the culture war being waged against the “liberal elite” by the real elite: special interest groups like defense contractors, Big Oil, right-wing think tanks like American Enterprise Institute and foreign agents like AIPAC. An environment was being created for the engorgement of that real-life monster identified by President Eisenhower as the military-industrial complex.

No matter. As the 1970s closed out, the common man was more consumed by worries that President Carter had lust in his heart and, it was said, wrote poetry.

Could things get any better for the conservative establishment?

You bet they could! By the eighties, a heretofore oxymoronic phrase had been born: Reagan Democrats. Hardened union members, in one surprising example, were heard to speak kindly (sotto voce, at first) of a president whose first public action had been to fire the striking air traffic controllers. Loyal, dues-paying brothers and sisters of locals through the land saw Reagan not as a righteous Old Testament union buster. They saw, rather, the flag. They heard, rather, the great communicator’s gentle, fatherly raspings that, no, you are not a racist, warmongering junk food addict. And even if you are — well — too bad.

Liberals! Liberals! Liberals! Damned Liberals!

“Liberals…,” arch bully Rush Limbaugh was heard to say on the radio some years ago. Here Rush stalled, vexed clearly at putting essential words to existential evil. “Liberals,” he finally allowed, “are against humanity.” The l-incantation was pixie dust; it could make folks forget that Rush was a mean, ignorant son-of-a-bitch who, to give the measure of the man, once ridiculed a thirteen year old Chelsea Clinton for her then-awkward looks, labeling her as the White House dog, and leaving those who could still think to wonder why a grown man would viciously attack a thirteen year old girl in public. But Rush hated liberals, didn’t he, so he couldn’t have been all bad. The nation had a mean streak and right-wing hate radio was bringing it to the surface.

Things didn’t change through George H. W. Bush’s tenure. Then Bill Clinton decided that liberals weren’t cool anymore and, just to prove he wasn’t one, scaled down welfare, talked the Red States into believing they were better off competing for wages against Mexican peasants, and implemented anti-Iraqi sanctions that killed at least half a million people, mostly kids, earning everlasting Islamic enmity toward the US. The CIA knew that with this slaughter would come terrorist retribution, which they dubbed blowback, although that specific application of the word went unexamined by a media obsessed with the oval office ministrations of a Miss Monica Lewinsky.

OK, could things get even better?

On January 20, 2001, a Texan with the swagger of a pool room tough was inaugurated as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military machine in the history of the world. George W. Bush was thought to be dim by most (including, presumably, himself, as there is no record of self-defensive argument) so, lest disadvantage ensue, he brought with him from Texas Karl Rove, strategist and political crook, who bragged that he ran his campaigns “as if people were watching television with the sound turned down.” In other words, it would be best all around if voters were treated as unthinking, reactive reptiles, with the attention span and the common sense of — let’s say — frogs. Proof of efficacy lies in the fact that America is still in Iraq after all these years. Mr. Rove’s service to his country earned him the presidential endearment turdblossom, for the little prairie flowers that are said to pop up from cow pie.

After 9/11, the President appeared on TV wrapped, not merely in the flag but, in concentric semi-circles of cops and uniformed troops. Mr. Bush had soldiers and security to offer his subjects. To terrorists, he offered fiendish genital tortures. When Bush legal adviser John Yoo was asked if it was OK to crush the testicles of a terrorist’s child in the course of interrogation, Attorney Yoo said that it all depended. Depended on what? On why the President thought he needed to do it.

“Liberals,” Mr. Rove sniffed after 9/11, “wanted to offer our enemy therapy and understanding.”

Public apprehension of manipulative political labels is, by design, a movable feast and, where once conservatism connoted small government, sound money, constitutional law, and the minding of our own beeswax overseas, the conservatism that metastasized outward from the Bush White House (AKA neoconservatism), doubled the US deficit, neutered congress and started wars that have damaged national security, all in the name of saving us from the weakness of liberalism.

Liberals! Liberals! Liberals! God damned, frigging liberals! They knew who they were, these liberals — the ones sitting in front of the TV reckoning that the Iraq war was all a lie. And, if it was all a lie, then why were we murdering hundreds of thousands of people anyway? You see, each question had a way of begging the next. So, shouldn’t the liars be held accountable? At this point in the thought-chain, the idea that the citizenry should demand (DEMAND!) an end to the war would rise in the American freeman’s mind but, just before it reached the surface, a pall of irresolution and denial would fall upon the almost-epiphany, pushing it out with one eternal, patriotic question.

What are you, some kind of a liberal?

Who will be our next president? John McCain, that old ghoul singing his gleeful paean of mass infanticide to an old Beach Boys’ tune? More likely, it will be Barack Obama, so afraid of being called soft on terrorism, or unsupportive of the troops, that he won’t call the Iraq war what it is: an unspeakable war crime, that was founded on lies, and that threatens, quite literally, to bankrupt the US, validating, in the process, Madison’s caveat about war and civil liberties. No mainstream politician today would give offense with such political incorrectness, so Barack Obama and the Democratics prefer we look at Iraq as a mere tactical error in the global, eternal, patriotic war on terrorism, a big White House screwup really, something that Obama and his party will have better luck with over in Afghanistan, But does anyone really believe that in five years or fifty years, a credible report will come out of Afghanistan confirming that the terrorists have been defeated? Could even the five dullards who graduated from Annapolis beneath John McCain in class ranking believe that the American Empire will accomplish what the Russian Empire and the British Empire could not — the defeat of a relentless Afghan insurgency?

The War on Terrorism will work no better in Afghanistan than it did in Iraq, though Candidate Obama’s call for troop increases will prove that he’s no liberal on national defense. The terrorists who took down the Twin Towers operated (according to the US government, anyway) came out of the Middle East, Hamburg, Germany, Florida and California. Why would those intent on following them to Paradise be convinced to set up shop in the gunsights of the US Army, the bombsights of the US Air Force? Conventional military force will never defeat terrorism.

In the American political discourse, the truth is of far less value than that which appears to be true, and, de rigeur, every presidential candidate must appear tough on terrorism. The price of admission to the President’s Club is hale and unblinking support for war and occupation.

Today, that parent encouraging a kid’s White House aspirations, would be derelict in his advice, were he not to add a conditional: if you want it bad enough, don’t ever let them call you liberal on national defense.

Tell ‘em you’ll start a war or something.

But Hillary Clinton isn’t frightened, even as commentators from all over the political spectrum issue similar dire warnings. She told an ABC interviewer, “In the next 10 years, during which they [the Iranians] might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” The threat (which the Boston Globe called “foolish and dangerous” and the Saudi-based Arab News called the “foreign politics of the madhouse”) puts her in lockstep agreement with President Bush, who has pledged to “defend Israel, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

Mrs. Clinton is so desperate to play the tough guy card that she’s had herself photographed throwing shots and beers back with the boys. Now, with her nuclear threat, she proves that she’ll say anything, do anything in order to win what Ken Silverstein of Harper’s calls “the frenzied bidding war to be the most ‘pro-Israel.’” There’s no indication, as yet, that she’s ready to explain the monstrous consequences of a war with Iran to the American people.

William Lind, writing from the Center for Cultural Conservatism, fears the slaughter of US troops in Iraq, if we bomb Iran. Iranian regulars and Iraqi militias, grossly outnumbering US forces, could cut off US supply lines from Kuwait. “[W]e could lose the army now deployed in Iraq,” said Lind in an Antiwar.com piece. If that happens, “American power and prestige would never recover.” Consequences at home could be as ugly as those abroad. An attack on Iran would be an invitation to a retaliatory terrorist attack on American turf, and, as Pentagon Papers author Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, “if there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country, detention camps for middle-easterners and their…sympathizers, critics of the President’s policy and essentially the wiping-out of the Bill of Rights.”

Should the US risk existential defeat for Israel?

Clinton adviser Ann Lewis seems to think so. Lewis, President Clinton’s Director of Communications in the late nineties, is now an active member of Hillary’s campaign staff, and, in the event of a Clinton win, likely to follow her, in some capacity, back into the White House. Making Mrs. Clinton’s case for president at a United Jewish Communities debate in Washington, she recently made the astounding pronouncement that “[t]he role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.” And what are these “decisions that are made by the Israeli people?” A survey by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found “fully 71 percent of Israelis believe that the United States should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, according to a new poll.”

But Mrs. Lewis is not on record as to what responsibility, if any, Israel has here? Despite a decades-long propaganda campaign that paints Israel as an island of stability in an otherwise unstable corner of the world, this sixty year old state, without geographical borders or a constitution, doesn’t seem able or willing to enforce its own laws. Benjamin Netanyahu pledged recently that, in the event of his election to Prime Minister of Israel, he will disregard any peace deal made between current Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. So Israel would be selective in its choice of treaties to honor, but the US, as pledged by President George Bush and potential president Hillary Clinton, would go to war for Israel without reservation or qualification.

The moderate voice of President Abbas identifies Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “the most important obstacle to the peace process.” Yet Israel has broadened its settlement construction so expansively (even as an ever-groveling US State Department “warns” against it) that, according to the Israeli group Peace Now “almost nothing is left of the [Annapolis peace conference] promise that Israel would freeze construction in the settlements.” Why should America risk everything for a so-called ally who cares so little for a genuine peace process?

No matter how many illegal settlements rise, no matter how cruel the collective punishment of innocents in Gaza, no matter how many broken promises on the “road map to peace,” and – most frighteningly – no matter how deadly the consequences to the US, Clinton would write Israel a blank check.

Pat Buchanan, that severe old lion of the Paleo Right, writes in a recent column, “In early 2007, Nancy Pelosi pulled down a resolution that would have denied Bush the authority to attack Iran without congressional approval.” The Jewish Telegraph Agency, in a March 2007 piece, referred to the destruction of that same resolution: “It did not help AIPAC’s case for bipartisanship [at it’s annual convention] that the lobby this week successfully pressed for the removal of a provision in an Iraq war funding bill that would have required the president to get congressional approval for war against Iran.” In the same JTA piece, Representative Gary Ackerman brags, “you should get them [the Iranians] to know that maybe we’re as crazy as they think we are.”

Now Hillary Clinton has shown the world just how crazy she is.

He wrote in a Huffington Post piece, “I love it that a U.S. president doesn’t pretend [the] Arab-Israeli conflict is an even-steven proposition.” The celebrated lack of even-stevenness here refers to his president’s militantly pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian bias. Thou shalt not badmouth Israel — and its corollary, that Palestinianterrorist must appear as one word, blinking in neon from deep in the mire of the American mind — are at the direct epicenter of American political orthodoxy, unchallenged by the president or the power brokers of the Democratic or Republican parties, and for Bill Maher to strut about the proscenium bragging that he’s out of the mainstream isn’t a lot different than Bill O’Reilly’s nightly pleasuring of himself on Fox News, where he rants against his enemies in the “elite” media. Fox News is the elite media, for God’s sake, and so is Bill O’Reilly.

“[W]ould you grant me this?” Maher asked terrorism expert Michael Scheuer on a recent Real Time HBO episode, “That as long as there is an Israel in the world — and I’m a big supporter of Israel — and as long as America backs it — the kind of Muslims that take their religion that seriously that they would strap on a suicide belt, are always going to be out for us and always going to be trying to kill us?” In Maher’s world, the Islamic capacity for violence rises in direct proportion to the seriousness with which a practitioner will take it, which (despite hipper-than-thou “rationalist” declamations against religion in politics) puts him foursquare aligned with snake handlers like Pat (“Islam is a violent religion”) Robertson and the late Jerry (“Muhammad was a terrorist”) Falwell.

In a land where Hillary Clinton says, “Israel is standing for American values,” (in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon), where George Bush pledges to defend Israel, no questions asked, where Nancy Pelosi swears that, “America’s commitment to … Israel is unwavering,” and Rudy Giuliani says, “America shouldn’t be even-handed in dealing with … an elected democracy … and a group of terrorists,” the question is begged: just what mainstream is it that Bill Maher finds himself out of? On a 2006 episode of Real Time, Maher and right-wing ex-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were commiserating on a wonted Maher lament that, in times of war, Israel is held to a higher standard of martial restraint than other countries, when the man the Huffington Post calls, “one of the most politically astute comedians in America,” felt compelled to say, “It seems to me the world just doesn’t like it when the Jews win.” The context here was a discussion of the State of Israel, and criticism thereof, which Maher quickly linked to anti-Semitism (“… the world just doesn’t like it when the Jews win,” is, after all, as good a working definition of anti-Semitism as one can conjure). Pope John Paul II said famously (inarguably, in light of the holocaust) that “anti-Semitism is a sin against God and humanity.” Soooo — if one agrees with Bill Maher that asking Israel to show restraint is anti-Semitic (though I suggest against it) then, using John Paul’s qualification of said anti-Semitism (which I’ve nothing against), the view, let’s say, that China uses slave labor is accepted as a rather quotidian political statement, while the charge that the State of Israel builds illegal settlements, at great injury to the peace process, gets bumped up to a sin against God and humanity, resulting, inevitably, in moral and political intimidation in the American discourse, and, what’s worse, sloppy thinking. A non-Jew (or a Jew, come to think of it) would be narrow and mean indeed if, after reading of Moshe Dayan’s infamous exhortation, “Israel must become like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother,” walked away thinking “them Jews are crazy bastards.” Grammar aside, he’d be guilty of conflating, as Bill Maher does, the actions of the State of Israel (in this case, the statement of one of its leaders) with the values of all Jews, everywhere.

From another HuffPo piece: “As I watch so much of the world ask Israel for restraint … it strikes me that the world IS Mel Gibson.” Gibson was contextualized here for his drunken, authentically anti-Semitic blatherings the night they ran him in for DUI. If we go along with Maher, then — clearly — Human Rights Watch has labeled Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes as illegal collective punishment out of a hatred at seeing Jews win, and — just as clearly — Amnesty International condemned an increase in “attacks against Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers,” out of similar agenda, but it’s less clear what caused an outfit in the Occupied Territories called the Yesha Rabbinical Council to pronounce, during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that “according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as ‘innocents’ of the enemy.” In other words, Israel can kill all the civilians it damn well pleases. Restraint? These guys don’t know from restraint. Maher, to be sure, has advanced no such Yesha cuckoo talk (Yesha is Hebrew for occupied territories). Yet, might one who made his media bones with pearls like “I think religion is a neurological disorder,” better serve the causes of Truth, Justice and the American Way by taking on the primitive, theocratic ravings of the Yesha Rabbinical Council?

Does Maher think Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu IS Mel Gibson? In 2007, Archbishop Tutu was disinvited from a speaking engagement at a Minnesota university in order, according to the university, to avoid offense to the Jewish Community. The Archbishop had noted in a 2002 Boston speech that “In our struggle against apartheid, the most outstanding stalwarts were Jews.” He should have shut up then, but went on to skunk-at-the- American-lawn-party status with his talk of home demolitions and collective punishment of Palestinians. Not an inarticulate chap, Tutu had made it clear in the same speech that, “we don’t criticize the Jewish people, we criticize…the government of Israel,” a disclaimer to which the conflation (Israel = All Jews, everywhere) crowd (including Maher) tend to answer, “liar!” The academic lynching crowd, having seized the baton from the conflation crowd, sputtered, “He compared Israel to Hitler! Gag him!” Actually, he mentioned several repressive regimes in the same breath as Israel, before concluding with “an unjust [by Tutu’s estimation] Israeli government will fall…” Big deal – one could swap the word American for Israeli in the same sentence. Lots do, of late, though without fear of being banned from campus (“for now…,” taunt the wiseacres, “… for now …”). Archbishop Tutu never, by the way, called for the destruction of Israel.

And, to be fair, Bill Maher never suggested anyone be banned from campus. But equivalence reflexively drawn between legitimate political speech and sins against God and humanity goes such a long way in the greasing of the fascistic skids. If a speaker had shown up at the student union a few years back to share the judgment — let’s just say — that the Irish Republic Army had been the enemy of peace, would a fatwa have been issued against the free exchange of ideas? Even if, as held in some parochial circles, criticism of the IRA was an inferred slam on the Republican Movement, by extension the Republic of Ireland, it’s unlikely that banishment from the national academy would have been the suggested remedy, and besides, most American ICs would have hidden their daughters, locked the liquor cabinet, and extinguished every light in the house at news the IRA was coming down the street, raising funds with, “give a dollar to kill a Limey,” a ham-fisted slogan developed (as the United Way developed the more elegant, “A Little ‘You’ Goes a Long Way”) to meet the eleemosynary needs of the moment. Perhaps things could have gone smoother if they’d had Bill Maher, who despite a career-long show of afflicting the comfortable, was offered this bouquet by the right-wing Jerusalem Post: “The foreign minister would do well to watch ‘Bill Maher,’ to learn how to sell Israel’s case to a TV audience.”

New Rule, Bill: Americans have every moral and political right to criticize Israel and its sugar daddy, the USA. And it’s not because they hate to see Jews win. They hate to see America lose.