I saw this picture in a few different places on the web, and everywhere I saw it, I saw an accompanying argument about the party affiliations of the people who did those things. To be honest, I don't think that matters. The relationship between ideology and party affiliation is sufficiently fluid over the length of time they're talking about that you just can't tell much. More importantly, people should answer for (and celebrate) their own actions and beliefs, not those of others.
I happened to see this picture for the first time on the same day that I saw this Walter Russell Mead piece in the American Interest. Among its contentions is that many of those who claim the label "liberal" are engaged in a conservative, or even reactionary, project designed to preserve unsustainable levels of public spending against the increasingly obvious signs that doing such would demand a substantial diminution of human liberty. This sentiment goes back a long way and might be best identified with Friedrich von Hayek's essay (PDF, sorry) "Why I am Not a Conservative." I would suggest that the true heirs of those who brought us equal rights under the law (and remember, segregation was by no means a creature of free society) are those who are fighting for free speech against those who would muzzle it for those they disagree with. The true heirs of those who designed welfare programs to lift people out of poverty are those who are trying to put those programs on a sustainable footing and match them with a tax policy that will allow for the economic growth necessary to pay for them, not those whose strategy is to combine tax breaks for politically favored activities with big increases for others. The friends of liberty are those who realize that capitalism means profit and loss, not those who paid off the politically favored with taxpayer money, in defiance of the rule of law.
I wear the label of "liberal" with pride. You, Lawrence O'Donnell, are unworthy of it.
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