The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias on why  liberalism is a dirty word in the U.S. -- and why the liberals partly have themselves to blame.

An excerpt:

... In an un-civil war, tears are not enough. You need fighting words. But liberals seem to have lost their voice, or their nerve, or both.

Make no mistake: Both sides, left and right, of the debate are angry. The paradox is, the one that's winning, the one with control of the government, the judiciary and most of the corporate world, including the media, is the side that plays the injured party, as if the left has its Birkenstocks on the right's collective throat.

Which is why, during the U.S. presidential campaign, we saw supporters of Vermont governor Howard Dean dismissed as a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show."

In short, the "liberal elite."

It's also why Democratic candidate John Kerry was derided as "the second most liberal senator after Ted Kennedy."

Never mind that liberals fought for social security, civil rights, reproductive freedom, environmental protection, child labour legislation and the G.I. bill. Thanks to the right, its media mouthpieces, and a lack of cohesion on the left, knowledge of liberalism's benefits has slipped down the memory hole.

Instead, Americans think of "compassionate" conservatism. ...

It's one thing to throw mud. It's another thing for it to stick.

Thomas Frank, author of What's The Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart of America, wrote the following in a Nov. 5, 2004 NYT commentary, Why They Won:

The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.

And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.

Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.

Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives, without any consideration for our values or traditions.

The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.