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In reply to the discussion: Chris Matthews delivers the damn smartest reply I have seen to the "Socialist" accusation [View all]Midnight Writer
(21,768 posts)A liberal for (of) his time. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, a staffer for Tip O'Neil, and a reporter with a liberal bent. A mainstream liberal.
Yet he was bewitched by the Ronald Reagan fantasy, charmed by W. Bush. He sees politics as a noble calling, the best chance to change the world. He tends to give the benefit of the doubt to pols, and considers himself a pragmatic leftist.
So sometimes I am face planting over his comments, but I know where they come from. I am from his generation, and back then saying blacks and whites should peacefully share the same bathrooms and lunch counters was "liberal".
And as a student of history, he surely knows that every Empire we know of, from Rome to modern Syria, has toppled because the commoners rise up against the aristocrats.