What's a Liberal to do?

Great Debates
61

Thank you for all your replies so far. I’ve been giving this a good deal of thought this week, and have come to one conclusion – I need to become active in the Democratic Party.

I said it in my OP, I’m a liberal not a Democrat. I and millions of others like me call ourselves Independents with a capital I, as if it were a real third party instead of a refusal to commit to the party that we vote for more often than not. This is a BIG part of the problem IMO. We act as if we’re waiting for America to suddenly sprout a coalition government, and me and my like-minded friends can form a party and get a seat. So screw the Deomcrats, they’re just the people we vote for most of the time. We take no ownership.

I’ll bet we all know more than one person who we don’t think is a total dumshit or just plain evil, who maybe to our surprise voted for Bush. We meed to sit down with these folks, people we have some level of personal trust with, and let them explain to us why they voted as they did.

I’ve spoken to two of my co-workers in the past few days about this, and I’ve learned that more still voted for Bush that I still need to sit down with. But I’ve found the first two enlightening, and I can’t say I could effectivel respond to there concerns.

The first co-worker had really a personal trust issue with Kerry, and his perceived waffling and position changing. I have to admit that Kerry certainly did nothing effective to shake that tag during the campaign. But it’s also something that is more related to personality than policy or process,

Another co-worker also has a Kerry trust issue, but in addition is freaked out about big expansion of a Democratic wellfare state including universal health care. Like the “social safety net” will be come the “social safety hammock” for tems of millions of lazy slobs who will be assured food, shelter and health care while us working people see our health benefits decrease.

I have a pretty good long term answer for this, if I do say so myslf. We must start delvoping a universal health care system, because we are in the long term also building a universal unemployment system.

Seriously, as computers integrate ever more into industry, we will face future unemployment in unimagined numbers. We won’t need most factory workers, skilled technicaians,… what else? A whole slew of professions that involved some specialized knowledges and practiced manual dexterity. The market economy is driving us this way.

What do we do when 80 or 90 percent of the workforce isn’t needed anymore? Can we build an economy based on entertaining and amusing each other? I don’t think so… And it’s not that far away. Our children or grandchildren might see it. Do we starve the population down? Let them die of medically treatable conditions? Or figure out how to share our resources?

But I don’t have a decent short-term answer for her. I think the Democratic party needs to address concerns like this head-on. If middle class health benefits don’t at least match what most policies cover today, it is no real benefit. Surelu we can find some rocky starting path toward universal coverage that can be developed and improved over time that won’t break the bamk in the short term.

And I believe the Democratic Party needs to develop policies and processes and have candidtes publicly stand behind them, like a Democratic version of the Contract with America.
Does every Democratic candidate need their own personal platforms on every issue, just so they can debate each other in the primaries?

Anyway, that’s what I’ve some up with so far.

62

Your concerns are far-reaching and cogent, Boyo. I just hope you don’t think that such trivial concerns are of any importance next to two men making out.

63

First off, I’m not a Republican. I’m a libertarian centrist who would happily vote for Democratic centrists (Clinton / Lieberman / Biden) if they represented the party.

I’m not saying most Democrats are rooting for things to go badly; but that if your only strategy is just “wait and see if things go south,” you can only win if they do. You are ceding the initiative to your opponent and letting him dictate the terms of the contest. You may be right that things will go badly in the next four years … but what if they don’t?, you are again left without any real vision of your own.

If everything goes to hell in a handbasket, of course you’ll have all sorts of things to campaign on; that’s bleeding obvious. The question to ask yourself is what you’ll do if they don’t. How do you set yourself up to be competitive even if your opponent succeeds?

Again, if you find yourself in a position where your only strategy is to hope things go badly for the nation, you’ve been outmanuevered.

64

All martyrs are people who die for a cause, but not all people who die for a cause are martyrs. To pick an example from the other extreme, professional soldiers are not martyrs.

Martyrdom implies a certain amount of suffering, and certainly implies that the martyr received more suffering than he inflicted. A Palestinian who dies in a prison hunger strike might be a martyr (if, for example, he wasn’t in prison in the first place for shooting up a pizza joint). A guy who accepted $25,000 from Saddam Hussein to get his family out of debt in exchange for blowing up a busful of schoolchildren and an eternity with 72 virgins is not a martyr. A retarded 16 year old conned by the thugs in his neighborhood is not a martyr. It is precisely because people continue to call those terrorists martyrs that we don’t understand them. My characterization stands.

She and the justices who voted with her dictated that the people of Massachusetts take an action they had no intention of taking whatsoever. People can justify it however they want – heck, one might even conclude that given the language of the various statutes she was technically correct (I have no idea). But the fact is that when the people of Massachusetts endorsed their constitution they had no idea that it might someday be construed to require gay marriages and they’re plenty pissed off to be told to do it.

I have my own view of substantive due process, a view which is softer than that of, say, Bricker. But my view doesn’t matter in the least. The people have shown their willingness to amend constitutions to get around judge-made law if they have a sufficient disagreement with it, and constitutions are the one thing courts can’t mess with (much).

Oh, I don’t dispute that there were marches and discussions. But there obviously weren’t enough of them in effective forums. Here’s Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, quoted in opinionjournal.com: “We’ll win some states and we’ll lose some states, but eventually the Supreme Court is going to look at the Bill of Rights and isn’t going to give a damn what’s in any of these state constitutions.” Someone call him and tell him it ain’t gonna happen and if it does the people will change the federal constitution if they’re not ready for the change. He’s gonna want to drive out to Nebraska and meet with some ministers instead of flying to New York to meet with lawyers.

Hey, as a deficit hawk I’m as mystified as anybody about this (except that I realize that so far we keep getting bailed out by the economy’s seemingly unstoppable ability to grow in excess of long-range forecasts – maybe people are more optimistic than I am about the ability of the economy to repeat that performance over and over again). But as you agree, it doesn’t take away my larger point that this would be a big aid to liberalism if they can get their hands around the issue, particularly on the spending side.

De nada on the name, of course. :slight_smile: Sometimes I’m not sure what to call myself. It’s all good as long as you don’t call me late to happy hour.

65

Maybe he wasn’t clear. What he meant was to demonstrate the value of redistributive policy in people’s own lives by showing how they benefit from it without knowing it. It’s not about abandoning folks in red states - number one, most of us aren’t into watching human suffering, be the humans Republican or Democrat, and number two, there’s still quite a few of our own out in the red states.

See, the Left and Right both favor redistribution of wealth (sorry, libertarians, free-marketists, and other my-money-is-my-own-types.) We Democrats want to send it where it’s most needed and to make sure everybody who needs it is in on the deal. That includes both mail delivery in Wyoming and education for kids in Detroit. The Right, unfortunately, does its redistributing to corporations and to its constituency, while essentially abandoning everyone else.

Frankly, by the way, the constant “they think they’re better than us!” whining is getting old. Firstly, we don’t think that, and we don’t say it either. (Well, most of us. Don’t take the loudmouths here on the boards as representative samples of the American Left, or we’ll start comparing all you guys to Brutus.) Secondly, why should it bother you? If we think we’re better than you, and you know we’re not, just smile to yourselves and shake your heads a little, and walk off to find better company. I don’t talk to people who think they’re better than me. You shouldn’t put up with that either.

66

Great show, Mr. Foreman! There’s hope.

And being an optimist, I think it’s winnable in the culture.

67

The first thing that you hafta do is quit ASSUMING so much. Everyone likes to think that they have the right answer and that any reasonable person would agree with them. Well, that’s not the case bunky. Try being open minded for a change and try to see the validity in the other persons point of view. Just because you call yourself “liberal” or “progressive” doesn’t make it so. Take a step back every once and while.

Secondly, you could accept that, despite all best intentions, that leftist ideas have been tried all over the world and have failed. Plain and simple. They just don’t work no matter how much you want them to.

As for gay marriage, let’s face it: as soon as the gay community stops trying to blame Ronald Reagan for AIDS and actually has a parade that doesn’t focus on the “pride” of folks in leather chaps and pink boas, I can’t blame middle of the road folks for being a bit apprehensive.

68

That must be why all of Europe is one big third world slum, right? If only you’d been there to tell them their liberal policies would fail, they might be as successful as we are today, and the Euro might even be worth more than the dollar!

69

I find it odd that the very people who say that addressing the legislature is the best way to correct injustices in the law never lift a finger to address those injustices.

70

Yes, we should adopt that tactic. Conservative religious people have used it with spectacular success, and have made great strides.

Yes. There are no successful examples of countries that have universal health care systems, nor are there any successful countries these days with a further strict seperation of church and state.

I have yet to see more than a fringe minority of gay people blaming Ronald Reagan for AIDS per se. More like blaming him for ignoring it while it was breaking out on his watch, and allowing the problem to get worse than it should have been.

And you heard the man. Gay people shouldn’t express themselves anymore. Sorry.

71

Well that was my recommended daily dose of irony.