Framed Again!

This is an email I sent to a dear friend who seems to think that we liberals are responsible for much of the Evil in the world. I love this guy but I cannot allow anyone to cast a shadow over my liberal credentials; I have bled too hard to earn them and I will defend them to my dying breath.

Les Aaron



“A worthy perspective, my friend.

As you know, I consider myself a liberal or a progressive but the unfortunate part is that we have let others define us and by not speaking up, we have become framed, disparaged and misunderstood…

When you talk about liberalism, perhaps you should think first about some of the good things that are associated with liberalism….

Instead of thos pejorative terms used to describe us by the right wing haters, here’s some things that wouldn’t have happened were it not for liberalism…

Instead of being painted with the handles of “do gooders,” “tree huggers,” “pinkos,” “fellow travelers,” think of the GI Bill, cheap mortgages, Silicon Valley, Rural Electrification...

And while we get a bad rap for governance, these facts remain:

THe government grew under Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush II faster than any democratic government in history....concurrenly with vast indebtedness. Remember Clinton. Under him, we had a surplus….

What you may not hear either is that the recession that Bush talked about was actually helped along by his buddies at Enron who conducted highway robbery with energy prices in places like California, the fifth largest economy on earth…


Two, that beginning with Reagan, there was radical redistribution of income. Beginning in the time of Reagan, 60% of the nation's wealth was held by only 5% of the population; today, it is 1 1/2% holds more than sixty percent of the wealth giving the lie to the fact that we are a nation of equals.

Under Reagan, jobs started moving overseas.

Today, 80% of the Unions have disappeared with a growing migrant population most of it illegal.

Our indebtedness has gone into the trillions with most of this country being owned by China.

Today, we are a leading exporter of what? SCRAP believe it or not and agricultural products and leading importer of manufactured goods which qualifies us as a Colony rather than a Super Power.

Today, the Chinese are beating us in the rush to alternatives to energy....whereas only a few years ago they were in the dark ages.

Today, America can only graduate something like 40000 engineers; India graduates 400,000 and only ten percent of their young people go to college.

Today, America has 9 cities over a million people; in the last few decades, China has built 121 cities....

By every measure, American policy both domestic and foreign is a policy that serves a narrow base, is misguided and doomed to failure.

We are going to pay a price for ignoring the environment and allowing Iraq to blind us to what is truly happening in the World.

None of the above can be denied by anyone who can think his or her way out of a paper bag.and, sad to say, aside from the corruption, the money laundering, the building of bridges to nowhere, your friends in government do not even know how to govern.

Republicans of this ilk need to return to the streams and rivers where they were spawned and give democrats an opportunity to eliminate monarchies and return us to a balanced nation of people who respect the public good.

Les