I don’t think that "An Al Gore Liberal supports th…

I don’t think that “An Al Gore Liberal supports the war on terrorism” should be such a surprise. Most people who voted for Gore do. But I couldn’t come up with a better description.

Anyway, the leftward half of the American political spectrum, and the Democratic Party, haven’t exactly been a group of raging doves over the years. FDR and JFK were hardly pacifists. After Vietnam, somehow people decided that the natural impulse for liberals was pacifism, or the nearest thing to it. But that hasn’t been the tradition, not really. For most of American history, it’s been the conservatives who wanted to ignore the world while liberals wanted to interfere and to export American values. After Communism stopped being a danger, some conservatives wanted to retreat again from the world, but the Republican Party seems to have them under control now.

Meanwhile, there remain leftist and liberal elements that are horrified by the idea of the United States standing up for itself. They’re isolated, though. They don’t represent most left-of-center Americans. My guess is most of them voted for Nader anyway.