George McGovern still a bleeding-heart liberal at 90
Former Sen. George McGovern speaks on stage at the AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to Shirley MacLaine at Sony Pictures Studios June 7, 2012, in Culver City, Calif. / Getty Images
(The Nation) My friend George McGovern has turned 90, confirming the status as an American elder that he has enjoyed unofficially across the quarter-century since he finished his last campaign -- if not, notably, his campaigning for peace and economic and social justice.
I have known McGovern for many of his years and almost all of mine, since we met in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1971. We have spent a good deal of time together over the decades since he first entertained my adolescent questions, talking politics but also contemplating our shared passion for American history and literature. I remember an afternoon in Keene, New Hampshire, when I was supposedly interviewing McGovern about his under-appreciated campaign for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination; we spent several hours trying to determine where Henry David Thoreau had stopped in the region during the week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers that would form the basis for one of the author's finest books.
McGovern was delightfully, and I dare say uncommonly, familiar with Thoreau's canon. As he was with many of the other great American writers of the American Renaissance. Though his fellow anti-war senator and presidential candidate Gene McCarthy was better known for his poetic affiliations, McGovern was no slouch when it came to the writings of Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Emily Dickinson and the Alcotts. This was a soldier-scholar who, as a decorated bomber pilot during World War II, would pass time between missions reading a copy of Charles and Mary Beard's 2,000-page "The Rise of American Civilization" that he had lugged into combat. And it has been one of the great pleasures of our acquaintance to know that, even in the most heated of political moments, George McGovern can be drawn into a reflection on American history and literature.
Perhaps if he was driven only by political ambition, McGovern's presidential campaigns of 1968, 1972 and 1984 would have been more conventionally successful. Yet it is because of McGovern's rich humanity and broad range that those who aligned themselves with his politics decades ago continue to him not just for his position papers but for the whole of the man. McGovern's campaigns remain definitional political experiences because they were about more than politics. They were about a deep vision of the republic's past, present and future; so much so that his 1972 campaign slogan was "Come home, America." Generations of Democrats recognize McGovern as a touchstone figure, just as generations of Republicans have made him the face of what they fear: a politics of compassion and decency that would, in the words of one of McGovern's heroes, former Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, "place humanity above the dollar."
Few figures in American politics have resonated so well over so many years. And at 90, McGovern remains engaged, still mixing politics, history, literature and humanity in ways that few American elected officials have, do or will.
In the most recent of his many fine books, "What It Means to Be a Democrat" (Blue Rider Press, 2011), McGovern maintains that mix. My favorite passage notes that, "During my years in Congress and for the four decades since, I've been labeled a 'bleeding-heart liberal.' It was not meant as a compliment, but I gladly accept it. My heart does sometimes bleed for those who are hurting in my own country and abroad.
"A bleeding-heart liberal, by definition, is someone who shows enormous sympathy towards others, especially the least fortunate." he continues. "Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills. And sympathy is the first step toward action. Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'"
McGovern has always practiced a politics that runs deeper than what we get from most Republicans, and most Democrats. It is a purer politics, a better politics, because it is so rooted in his love of America's history, its literature and its possibility.
John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
- 46 million people on food stamps,
- over 40 million kids getting free school lunches,
- 9 million more on WIC,
- about 8 million in subsidized housing,
- 5 million on TANF,
- 8 million on SSI (including 1.2 million kids),
- about 49 million on Medicaid and
- 71 million households (47% of tax filers) not paying income taxes primarily because of EITC and the Child Tax Credit.
Does anybody really think more debt or taxes to pay for more income re-distribution programs is really going to help anything? We already have 70 programs now.
How can a tax system be called "fair" when 47% of households are getting a free ride on the backs of the 53% who are paying income tax and carrying their own weight in society? What part of that is sustainable? Do we really want a society where half the people have to be carried by the other half? That is neither freedom nor equality.
All the corporations combined have never received this much of the taxpayers money. The cost of all the wars this country has ever fought doesn't come close to this massive shift of wealth.
And no - I am not wealthy. I am tired of paying other people's bills while tens of millions have been trained to keep crying "woe is me". And I see their "benefits" just keep growing and getting passed from generation to generation.
It is going to take individual responsibility and millions of decent paying private sector jobs to get us out of this mess, NOT more government intervention. No, I don't have the answer as to where those jobs will come from. I just know it will not and should not be from the government.
If the poor could not get food through food stamps, and they can't get jobs because there is a shortage of them, do you really think charitable donations will meet the need? If not, then some may turn to crime to feed themselves and their family, which is bad for everyone. It is best for the economy and best for society if we help the poor. Now could we do a better job to make it a hand up rather than a hand-out? Absolutely. We need to tweak the programs not get rid of them.
Implementing current Republican proposals would make things worse, not better. Obama's stimulus saved us from the depression we were headed towards. Things have been getting better ever since, slowly, but still getting better. Ironically, the Republicans in Congress want to blame Obama for the slow recovery when they have been standing in the way. We might be in a better place to day if the Republicans weren't such obstructionists.
I am tired of the lack of empathy shown by people in this country. Those who often talk of their morality while lacking in any compassion whatsoever. I believe that everyone should be forced to walk in someone else's shoes for a day before being able to cast aspersions upon others.
Seriously, do you 'cons even listen to what comes out of your mouths?