Proud to be a Leftist

While I value Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letters from an American and read them faithfully, the November 13 Letter embraces a dangerous bothsidesism that cannot go unchallenged. The letter includes this problematic paragraph:

“Both ‘the Left,’ and the ‘Right’ want to get rid of the system. Those on the Left believe that its creation was so warped either by wealth or by racism that it must be torn down and rebuilt. Those on the Right believe that most people don’t know what’s good for them, making democracy dangerous. They think the majority of people must be ruled by their betters, who will steer them toward productivity and religion. The political Left has never been powerful in the U.S.; the political Right has taken over the Republican Party.”

Who is this “Left” that so conveniently parallels the “Right?” Not me, and I am a committed leftist. Not the leftists who brought us the eight-hour day, Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, and more, all while being denounced as socialists and communists and Marxists. Not the Squad in Congress, denounced over and over again as socialists and communists and Marxists by the fascist right wing of the Republican party. We leftists work solidly within the structure of our Constitution and electoral system, even while we work for reform of laws and systems. We work for the Voting Rights Act, not for the subversion of elections. 

Many years ago, I jokingly referred to friends as “communist nuns” working in Central America. I was swiftly corrected—“Do not ever call them communists,” she said. “Calling people communists gets them killed. That is what the right wing calls them, and then the death squads come.” 

We do not have death squads here, but we do have a leading presidential candidate who promises “we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country.” As Cox Richardson rightly points out, 

“The use of language referring to enemies as bugs or rodents has a long history in genocide because it dehumanizes opponents, making it easier to kill them. In the U.S. this concept is most commonly associated with Hitler and the Nazis, who often spoke of Jews as ‘vermin’ and vowed to exterminate them.”

“The Left” is not the same as “The Right.” Notably, while “The Right’s” destructive cohort clearly includes Trump and his MAGA cohort, no parallel examples of “The Left” are named in this Letter from an American or come readily to mind. Setting Left and Right up as equal and extreme ends of the political spectrum in the United States is wrong and tends toward bothsidesism, as described by Merriam Webster. 

“Bothsidesing refers to the media or public figures giving credence to the other side of a cause, action, or idea to seem fair or only for the sake of argument when the credibility of that side may be unmerited.” 

Cox Richardson describes Democrats and “traditional Republicans” as liberals, a description that I suspect a lot of “traditional Republicans” would reject. She says that liberals “believe in a society based in laws designed to protect the individual, arrived at by a government elected by the people.” As a leftist, I share that belief. Most “traditional Republicans” probably do, too. That doesn’t make them—or me—“liberals” in the context of 21^st century U.S. political discourse. 

As a leftist, I advocate positions rejected by Republicans and only occasionally accepted by “liberal” Democrats, including public and universal health care, legal protection of LGBTQI persons, increased protection for voting rights, welcoming immigrants, and implementing economic policies that will reverse the enormous and escalating concentration of wealth and power. As a leftist, I believe in the reality of racism, in its historic roots and continuing political, economic, and structural power, and in the absolute necessity and highest priority of combatting it. These are all solidly leftist positions and also solidly within the sadly unrealized American dream.