Global Economy, Local Politics: The Future of Liberalism by Ben Fritz I've never really understood conservatives. I'm related to a lot of them; I grew up around them; I'm even good friends with a few, but somehow I have never been able to reconcile most of the aims of conservatives with my vision of a good world. Even at the times where I have been outargued by intelligent conservatives and unable to justify my point of view (yes, I am admitting it has happened time and again), there are certain things which every bone in my body and feeling I have tells me is wrong (of course, I also do have good reasons for a few of the things I believe). It's hard to tell why being a progressive liberal has always come so natural to me, why I was the kid in 1988 who was pulling for Dukakis with very few reasons that didn't make me sound like a flower child. After all, I grew up in a predominantly conservative town; although my mother is fairly liberal, it has always been my conservative relatives who are outspoken on politics; and though I didn't grow up wealthy, I was hardly ever in circumstances where I would develop a deep-seated resentment of the system as it exists. All I know is that, to me, progressives have always seemed to have more of the correct answers to the problems that plague our nation and most of my experiences and observations have only backed up this view. Here at Swarthmore, of course, this viewpoint is not especially difficult to hold onto. Most people here are liberals or, at the least (and in my opinion), do not care enough to challenge liberal orthodoxy. I do try, however, to have enough of a perspective to understand that it is only a distinct minority in the general population who are as liberal as I am and that if I hope to be effective in my political involvement once I graduate from Swat, I had better be able to deal with that fact. The question that really occupies my mind is, then, "where are the seeds for a progressive resurgence in my future?" The answer, of course, is a definite "who knows?" There is, as Michael Dukakis suggests in this issue, the frustrated downwardly mobile working class as well as the increasingly vocal community of newly naturalized citizens. While I see great hope in the latter, they are certainly far from enough to make up for liberal losses in the last thirty years; and as for the former, I believe that unfortunately, due to the fact that long-held political views tend to become permanently ingrained and many of those who have reached their late thirties and older may be lost to us. This isn't to say that we should not reach out, but that we must recognize the difficultly inherent in reaching this group and perhaps focus our efforts on others. What particularly intrigues me, both because of my close association to the subject and the seemingly mysterious politics of the group, is how people my age, that is to say we who are reading this and straddle the line between the end of Generation X and the beginning of whatever comes next, can find the common ground to effect liberal change. This is a question that I have just recently begun to ponder, but one thing that is clear to me is that old-style centralized big government liberalism is not going to do the trick. We have grown up in an age where the antigovernment rhetoric of Reagan has come to be taken as truth by much of America. To a certain extent, this is right. There is much that is wrong with the welfare state America built up from the Great Depression to this day. However, this reality should not justify the wide-spread apathy amongst young people today at the dismantling of aid for those in need and the disbelief that economic reality will eventually hit and plunge those just beginning to find limited success in our booming economy back into despair. I believe there are a few beliefs young people hold today and aspects of the world we have grown up in that could help make us a politically powerful and morally just (to use a rather loaded phrase) force in the future. In particular, belief in the importance of service involvement, the widespread acceptance of the rights of all Americans to an equal stake in society (which was not present just a few generations ago), a distrust of large organizations such as big government and big business that seem to be playing the citizenry for fools, especially as they gain power in the global economy, and our amazing ability to obtain and transmit information via the Internet could all work to the benefit of progressives. A politics that speaks to the need to give average people agency in their own lives and communities could, I believe, find great appeal amongst these people. A high level of community service involvement and a distrust of large institutions demonstrate that we are not a generation that is apathetic about bettering the places we live and the lives of people around us, but rather about the institutions that supposedly help organize us to achieve those tasks. Just as importantly, a strong commitment to equal rights coupled with the Internet's emphasis on the individual and our ability to communicate with other individuals around the world through it could lead to a determination not to let the forces of the global economy and the institutions that dominate it subsume each person's right to live, organize, and act as they choose. Rather than complacently allowing undemocratic forces to control our lives from the top down, there is the potential amongst today's young people, if effectively organized, to demand local control over international forces as they effect each community and each individual. Further, our ability to communicate with those around the world can lead to the connections of local governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations (all of which, I believe, have an important role to play in a progressive future) that are crucial to effectively counterbalance the force of global institutions. Of course, all of these beliefs are based on assumptions about the traits of today's young people and conjectures about the challenges and opportunities of the future. At the least, however, the questions I have attempted to answer here are important ones to ask and ones that I will encounter in the future as I attempt to be active in politics and be representative of my fellow citizens. If there is one thought that I leave my involvement as co-Editor-in-Chief of The L-Word with on my mind and which I want to leave in the minds of our readers, it is "How do we take our liberal values and make them work for and with the world and people around us?"

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