Spend enough time talking to University students about politics and you will inevitably hear someone tell you some variation of the following: “I don’t think I really fit perfectly with either political party, because I’m pretty socially liberal but also fiscally conservative.” It doesn’t take long to realize this is probably the dominant ideology of the University. The administration spares no expense for the McIntire School of Commerce as it molds future chief executives while simultaneously establishing a permanent Board of Visitors Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, and most student leadership is silent on the working conditions of University employees while intensely condemning the use of bigoted or insensitive language on Beta Bridge. While we should be grateful for the real gains in social inclusion and rhetorical commitments to equality we’ve seen, a “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” — or neoliberal — worldview often veers too close to upper-class identity politics and is indifferent to issues of war and poverty. In recent years, neoliberal ideology has increasingly revealed its limits while illustrating the necessity of grounding any kind of progressive vision in the lived experiences of the disadvantaged and marginalized.
Nowhere have the contradictions of neoliberalism been more apparent than in the unfolding of America’s most recent war in Iraq. Despite first gaining the national spotlight by decrying a “dumb war” that was a “cynical attempt” to distract the American people from crises like a “drop in the median income,” Barack Obama has launched the third large-scale bombing campaign in twenty years in the same country without any semblance of an exit strategy or defined scope to the military’s mission. While there has been some largely feckless chin-stroking from Democrats about mission creep, an overwhelming Senate majority of 78-22 fell in line to vote in favor of intervening in the Syrian Civil War by arming the “moderate” opposition forces while refusing to vote at all on the broader anti-ISIS campaign.
The silence of the mainstream left on these military operations stands in sharp contrast to the outrage over sexist comments made by a Fox News host about female fighter pilots involved in the bombing campaign. When “The Five” anchor Eric Bolling disgustingly referred to UAE pilot Miriam Al Mansouri as bringing “boobs on the ground” to the anti-ISIS mission, the outcry was deafening. Prominent liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo, comedians like Jon Stewart, media critics at The Washington Post, and the liberal Twitterverse all united to condemn Bolling for his retrograde attitudes. While informally monitoring our public discourse for crass language certainly puts liberals in the right, the vociferous nature of that criticism rings hollow when there are likely to be female military personnel and civilian casualties victim to the increased military push Obama and the Democratic Party have enabled in the region. Criticizing social attitudes like Bolling’s is necessary, but it will do little to improve the lives of women in either the United States or the Middle East unless it is linked with action to back up the rhetoric.
The same coupling of rhetorical and social commitment to equality with a rejection of progressive action on war and the economy manifests in Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign. While she has offered a few platitudes generally praising the idea of expanding opportunity for women, Clinton has mostly focused on making foreign policy statements so militaristic that the neoconservative outlet The Weekly Standard saw fit to republish many of her statements as a guest editorial. Something that similarly would be anathema to progressives is the fact that many influential Republican investment bankers on Wall Street either privately support or are quite comfortable with a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. As Clinton traveled to Iowa to seek the blessing of the retiring influential progressive Senator Tom Harkin, Harkin warned progressives to be wary of any candidate who though seemingly socially liberal in rhetoric is actually “far to the right.”
As I wrote a few weeks ago, there are in fact signs of hope that on the local level Democrats may be turning away from neoliberalism. That hope for change, however, should be accompanied by calling out the “socially liberal fiscal conservatism” when it fails to adequately address our current challenges or turns a blind eye to the people who need change the most.
Gray’ Whisnant is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at g.whisnant@cavalierdaily.com.
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