The Mabley Archive: Our politics would be healthier if we listened more, labeled less

In 1988, when longtime Glenview resident Jack Mabley brought his column to the Daily Herald, he made a couple of requests: 1. Let him keep his ugly, old green chair. 2. Launch an edition for his hometown. He kept the chair. And now, more than a decade after his passing in 2006, his second request has been granted. This column is from Feb. 17, 1997.

The film industry "has raised free expression to the level of a fetish, blocking out everything else - good citizenship, responsibility, simple compassion - in its name. They worship free expression as a god, which is another way of saying that they worship themselves and their own selfish interests." - Mona Charen in the Daily Herald.

"Some of my best friends favor sending our troops to Bosnia. I'd vote no." - William Buckley in the Daily Herald.

"Twenty years of being laid off, cut back, downsized, right-sized and left with a paycheck that won't buy what it did in 1975, and suddenly, there's a loyalty problem. Imagine that." - Molly Ivins in the Daily Herald.

All these quotes were in last Saturday's editorial page.

I agree with all three. What does that make me - liberal, conservative or confused?

Molly Ivins is the most liberal of columnists. Mona Charen is hard-core conservative. William Buckley has gone from boy wonder at Yale to aging patriarch of conservatism. He also writes better as he ages because he has reduced his flowery, look-how-smart-I-am verbiage.

I confess to having started only in recent months reading all the conservative columnists. I used to read them now and then, depending on subject matter.

I have become better informed. I see there isn't that much difference between the right and left.

For argument's sake, put aside abortion and gun control, which are emotional and divisive issues that detract from problems like the deficit, Bosnia, welfare, the environment, drugs, poverty, schools, on and on.

Intelligent conservatives and liberals alike want campaign reform, which is being blocked by a majority of Congress' members.

We all want to get our national debt under control. Conservatives advocate reductions in welfare and medical services.

I would try for reduction of waste and fraud in welfare and medical services, and saving billions by dropping construction of a Trident submarine and new bombers that the Pentagon doesn't even want. They are pork for employment in powerful senators' and representatives' home districts.

Conservative Buckley asks if it is possible for a nation to engage in an alternative lifestyle than the one that calls for killing, rape and looting.

He believes sending our troops to Bosnia will not achieve that alternative lifestyle, and in failing we will sacrifice American lives.

I agree, and so do Pat Buchanan and Phil Gramm and Rush Limbaugh. Do I feel a little out of place in this company?

Liberal Molly Ivins' beef in her column is the injustice of huge corporations laying off thousands of workers while paying their executives millions in yearly salaries and seeing their owners - stockholders - enriched as the Dow jumps over 5,000.

You don't have to be a liberal or conservative to see the danger and injustice in this assault on workers. Is anyone secure in his or her job?

You don't have to be a liberal or conservative to see the sense in Mona Charen's blast at the entertainment industry: "They have the chutzpah to claim the law of the marketplace - the fact that ugly and degrading films make money - somehow exonerates them from moral culpability."

We all would get along much better if we would abandon these labels - liberal, conservative, middle-of-the-roader, and take each issue by itself.

And we might open our minds and listen to and read the other person's point of view.