Liberalism

It was not a label he embraced, but somewhere along the line Stanley Kramer became known as a maker of message movies. In the '50s and '60s, as a producer and director, Kramer (who died in 2001, at age 87) tackled such issues as racial prejudice, fascism, juvenile delinquency and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The Producers Guild of America hands out the Stanley Kramer Award annually for a film that addresses important social issues (this year it went to "The Great Debaters").

Barack Obama's election probably does not herald a new liberal era at the Supreme Court, since none of the conservative justices -- who are in the majority -- is expected to retire in the next four years. But if liberals cannot take control, Obama's win has them pushing for a strong voice for social justice on the high court. "I think Obama would want to make a statement with his Supreme Court justices.

The liberal online political activists gathered here this week found many reasons to celebrate: the growth in their numbers at the second Yearly Kos Convention, a new Democratic majority in Congress, and their power to attract the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination to a debate this afternoon. The 1,500 bloggers, organizers and partisans at the convention loudly cheered those markers of their emerging influence.

As Russell Beecher, a lifelong Republican, wandered through the political picnic at the Sauk County Fairgrounds this weekend, he was reeling from the celebration of all things liberal. Inside the fair's pole barn, hawkers sold hundreds of neon-orange "Impeach Bush!" T-shirts and "Say No to War!" buttons. Grandmothers in floppy flower-print hats gabbed about universal healthcare coverage.

Belshire Way is a street in a subdivision in Orange County. ("Close to Irvine Spectrum!" the real estate ads say. "Open floor plans!") Drive by, and the view is of 14 one- and two-story tract houses. Some have red tile roofs. Some have pools in the backyards. Some get notices from the homeowners' association about garbage-can visibility and unsanctioned tetherball pole setups.

The State Bar of Nevada reaffirmed its opposition to a bill by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) to split up the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a frequent source of anti-Bush-administration rulings. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Rew Goodenow, State Bar of Nevada president, said the group's governing board opposes Ensign's bill "given the tremendous financial strain splitting the 9th Circuit Court would cause and thereby taking away from the direct administration of justice."

In Europe's cafes, the newspapers are as wrinkled as always, the conversations still veer toward the abstract, but tempers these days are riled. Artists and influential leftists are warning that the rise of radical Islam is threatening the tradition of European liberalism.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death leaves a void in the firmament of American politics, one that will be difficult to fill -- not only because the Democratic Party has no understudy ready for his role, but also because Congress has changed so much in the more than four decades of his career. Kennedy was the polestar of old-fashioned Democratic liberalism, the constant point against which much of his party measured itself. "The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out," he told the 1980 Democratic convention.

Re "Tyranny, realism and Jeane Kirkpatrick," Current, Dec. 17 David Rieff asserts that "liberalism and realism are too uncomfortable a fit to be enduring." That is, we have an either/or choice to take out repressive dictators (liberalism) or to ignore their repressions for the sake of stability and eventual political evolution (realism). Such a position is bad logic and worse foreign policy. "Realistic liberalism," to use Rieff's terms, was doing all right with Iraq during the 1990s, containing Saddam Hussein, greatly diminishing his civil rights abuses and wrecking his weapons of mass destruction aspirations.

Clear Channel Communications Inc. said it converted three stations to a liberal talk format and this year could double to 44 the number of stations carrying such programming. After offering mostly conservative-leaning talk for the last decade, Clear Channel and other broadcasters are now embracing "progressive" talk to woo a listener base that is growing increasingly fragmented because of satellite, Internet radio and devices such as iPods.