a few good liberals
Byron William’s piece “What this Government needs is a few Good Liberals” at HuffPo notes that “one of the great victories of the post-conservative movement” has been “pushing the term ‘liberal’ into the outer fringes of political discourse.” He also observes that, “if history is any indicator, this country has changed for the better when led by liberal/progressive forces:”
Conservatives have the dubious historical distinction of being wrong on slavery, women's suffrage, this country's entrance into World War II and the Civil Rights Movement.It was a conservative, strict constructionist Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott decision in 1856 that stated because Scott was black he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The decision also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which restricted slavery in certain territories, unconstitutional.
Fifty years later, the same conservative notion held true in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established the precedent for "separate" facilities for blacks and whites that ultimately provided the legal legs on which the Jim Crow laws allegedly stood. It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court, engaging in "judicial activism," overturned Plessy.