SocraticGadfly: More #GlennGreenwald is not a liberal, I think

October 06, 2012

More #GlennGreenwald is not a liberal, I think

He has a decent article on the first presidential debate. He says that while many people decry the alleged lack of bipartisanship in America, that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agree on many things.
Fair enough, and true enough.

However, all the top items of those "many things" that he goes on to list is a foreign policy or civil liberties issue. He does mention Wall Street issues of bankster coziness, health care reform and free trade as non-civil liberties issues where they are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, without mentioning his own stsances.

Their similar policies on neoliberal-to-conservative lack of financial institution policing and regulation (which the libertarian Greenwald might like), their similar policies on energy and environmental issues, their similar stances on cozying up to Wall Street for campaign money do get attention lower down, but, that doesn't convince me.

Glenn has written favorably about the Occupy movement in the past, but, the focus has generally been more on the banksters breaking the rule of law than on income inequality. As for free trade issues, I Googled that phrase plus his name, and didn't get any hits to actual columns he wrote.

I still say Greenwald is as much if not more libertarian than true liberal, and a bit peculiar of one at that. He touted Ron Paul as a good presidential candidate long after it was clear he not only had no traction in the GOP but would not seek the Libertarian Party nod. He didn't tout then-presumative Green nominee Jill Stein at the same time.

And, on the "peculiar libertarian" side, Glenn also at the same time didn't tout Gary Johnson, who already way back then had hinted he WOULD seek the Libertarian nod. And, under that rubric, I don't recall that Greenwald's been that denunciatory of Paul's racist past (and probable racist present). Nor has he ever, to the best of my knowledge, "called out" Paul for being a goldbug fiat-money-fearing nutbar.

2 comments:

PDiddie said...

Did you know Jill Stein was in San Antonio today, Gadfly?

Gadfly said...

Yeah, I did. Unfortunately, I recently moved from Marble Falls to Marlin, near Waco, due to the newspaper at MF being a ..... horrible place to work. And, speaking of, I have a bit of work to do for my paper here.