I agree with most of the points in my friend John Powers’ new LAWeekly article: A Vision of Our Own/Four ideas for the left to redefine itself. Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been accusing what we still call the “left” of being “reactionary” for some time now. John writes:
Whether it’s rewriting the tax code or privatizing Social Security to solve an imaginary “crisis,” the right has become the agent of change.
In contrast, the left has become – there’s no other word for it – reactionary.
He goes on to detail four areas of necessary liberal/left improvement, to get back in the game, as it were: reclaim virtue, reclaim freedom, reclaim pleasure and reclaim utopia. (In Maoist parlance – The Four Reclaims!) What John does not say is how they should go about doing this.
Perhaps there is a reason for that. Perhaps it’s because what John is trying to reclaim is nothing but an empty name. There is no there there. The ship of ideology has moved on or maybe sunk. Liberal? Conservative? Left? Right? Who cares? It’s so 1873. We live in a time when someone like me finds more to applaud in a Bush speech than Peggy Noonan. John Powers, in his heart, may be closer to Bush than Peggy as well. His criticisms of Bush seem perfunctory – oh my gosh, he uses the language of an MBA – yet John acknowledges that an election is being held in Iraq which we should all support. I couldn’t agree more. And as history will no doubt record: No Bush, no election. The rest, as the grandmothers say, is bubbe meises. (via Glenn)
UPDATE: Austin Bay provides a good antidote to Noonan. He also has a link to a Times of London article which is worth following.
If we’re reverting to the classics, I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can persuade the Left to go on a nice Long March, is there….?
And as much fun as that article was, wait until next week’s letters column. Now THAT will be entertainment. “Dear Sir, if you continue to print that fascist crap I will select my outcall prostitutes from someone else’s classifieds in the future…”
Roger:
Todays left responding to the great speech’s of the past. In the 40,s in response to Roosevelt calling for a defeat of fascism. “Lets be realistic. War never solves anything. Instead of joining the bloodthirsty warmongers lets be the example of peace and find a way to mediate and negotiate an end to the conflict, rather then condemn our minorities to die on the field of battle for oil and european imperalism.” Kennedy challenges us to go to the moon. “How can we spend money on rockets when we have starving people in the world. Lets solve the problems of this planet before we go trying to colonize other planets and possibly ruin their ecological balance with our space trash.” Reagan calls for the end of the Soviet Union. “Every expert knows that the USSR is a fact of life and will never change by pressure and by challenging the USSR Reagan is inviting a nuclear holocaust rather then solving any problems. It may take centuries but it is better to reach out to our Russian brothers and hopefully they will learn from our example that repression is bad. Granted, they will have to live in misery for many lifetimes but this is better then the end of the world”
—reclaim pleasure and reclaim utopia.–
When did they ever give it up?
Natan Sharansky defines a dissident: “They have a message burning inside of them.” Face it, the left has no fire. It is Bush–yes, Bush–who dreams big. He is the dissident among reactionary world leaders.
In words that could be no plainer he said yesterday that we will no longer support dictators but stand with the people of the world who yearn to be free.
http://www.strangewomenlyinginponds.typepad.com
Iranians, take note. We’re with you, too.
I think Noonan wanted Bush to sound more like a political realist and less like an idealist who believes in God. She thinks that will make him more palatable to more people. It is like the folks who bitch he did not mention the soldiers in Iraq. Of course if he had it would have been ridiculed just like the trip to Baghdad and the tears at the Republican National Convention when he spoke of the sacrifices.
I respect Noonan but I did not get the same feeling from the speech. In the near future there will be a State of the Union speech and they can all tear that one apart too. They will probably say he spoke too much about Iraq or something, who knows?
I think folks are ignoring the fact that the Reverend Martin Luther King was dreaming when he said that men should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, but he believed in the dream.
And FDR was being altogether abstract when he said that all we have to fear is fear itself. No, we had the Emporer of Japan and Adolf Hitler to fear..but he gave the people courage.
And when JFK said that we would bear any burdon, what exactly did that mean? Please Mr. President be more specific.
George Bush believes in God. As far as I know not one single president has refused to put his hand on that bible, nor has any president refused to speak of a higher power. Perhaps it is not the reference to God that is so different, it is our reaction to it.
And the left needs to stop rooting for disaster, this is their greatest fault.
I heard Dennis Miller say that if you are an American and your choice of enemy is Saddam Hussein or George Bush, it should be obvious that Bush is the good guy. The left has not got that yet and because of that you hear Lieberman and Bayh talking about a war on terror in a party that over all seems to think the war is bogus propaganda.
The American left needs to divorce itself from the European collectivists.
In my lifetime I have seen no evidence that the left is particularly interested in justice, equality, generosity, or tolerance. They are interested in power – justice and equality can go screw themselves. There greatest acts of “generosity” are to transfer their own money to hate-mongering propogandists and everyone else’s money to whomever they believe they can purchase votes from. And as for tolerance, the most intolerant people I know are politically left. The Left is not liberal. It is a collection of illiberal reactionaries. Until such time as “The Left” recognizes that they don’t have a Gaia-given right to hijack terms like “justice”, that “equality” isn’t something one bludgeons “society” into, that “generosity” is not measured by how much of Other People’s Money gets siezed, and that “tolerance” means accepting that other people may have darned good reasons for disagreeing with them, they’ll never “reclaim” any damned thing other than their rightful place in the Dustbin of History.
Leftist are not liberals and sick and tired of hearing the bigotted bastards describe themselves as “liberal”.
Knuck, you got it. The Left has always appropriated the virtue words, but the meaning? Never.
Mr. Powers is rather funny when he says: “Iím not talking about some mad fantasy of heaven on earth (those usually lead to death camps), but a dream bigger than hopes that the Democratic Party will come back into power…”
At least he realizes what happens when people try to implement UTOPIA, but, what dream does he have?
None, but, he still wants to “reclaim” pleasure and utopia.
Until and unless the Left learns basic economics, and the interconnectedness of capitalism and freedom they have nothing to offer except some “new and improved” utopian vision (assuming they can actually think of one).
Then all they have to do is explain why THIS heaven on earth won’t lead to thos death camps.
I think we’re mistaken in merely thinking of these folks as reactionary. The word we’re looking for is revanchist.
You might be on to something there, Charlie. It is possible, however, that the revanchists are just the dominant subspecies among the reactionaries.
A few minutes of watching the loonies on CSPAN2 yesterday was all I needed for reassurance that America will not soon tip towards that kind of shallow-minded, contradictory self-hatred. Let them make fools of themselves; their junior high grade rhetoric will assure themselves of minority status long into the future.
Later yesterday, though, I realized that it was but a steady rainstorm on Election Day that kept the motor-voters and other illegitimate registrants from stealing Ohio’s electoral votes and tipping the balance in their favor. These are confusing, frustrating times.
I generally love the Noonan, but I think she missed the mark in her comments. I’m not particularly religious myself, but I’m damn glad the Prez is comfortable with his faith and will not be pressured into stowing it away to convenience others.
For those who haven’t seen it, Wretchard strikes again.
Roger:
The left is squirming because they still want to believe that they are the beacon of light to the world but because of partisan purposes they have slipped on the coat of the old America first isolationist crowd with all the racist , indifferece, and head in the sand attitudes that are the hallmark of that philosophy. At least the original proponents of that ethic had the advantage of firmly believing that as long as we put up high enough walls we could escape from the problems of the world and the fact that they thought that most of the rest of the world was filled with sub human animals that they didn’t give a rats ass about what happened to them. But the left has this self image of being more sensitive and caring of the worlds population and can’t stand that Bush has adopted the noble goals that they once espoused and is going to try to do something about it, instead of using the lefts tactic of moaning about the injustice in the world and hoping that the UN will fix it.”Lets talk about freedom over tapas and then we will follow that up with a march and then we will go home and never do anything about it. But at least we recognize that it is the fault of the US and we can go into self loathing mode” Read Kinsley’s tortured review of Bush’s speech on the editorial page of this mornings LA Times. He is trying to rip Bush but has trouble because it is hard to crap on someone who is proclaiming that liberty is a fnoble idea and that it is the right of everyone. He says that Bush is sounding like a democrat( the Roosevelt and Kennedy variety, not the current crowd of midgets IMHO) but he is not doing it in the correct fashion. I am sure Kinsley would have preferred a Clintonian speech filled with meaningless micro proposals that hinted at some major themes but that were just window dressing for the next election. Bush is proactive and is going to try to eliminate the problem before it happens, todays left will wait until the attrocities happen and then raise money for the victims and make a movie about it and then congratulate themselves on being so aware of the situation. Bush may fail but at least he is going to try. The left sits back and does nothing but hates anyone else who points out their cowardice.
Rastajenk:
I watched the replay of the c-span tape of the A.N.S.W.E.R. loonies and found it funny. They are to the political world what mimes are to the artistic world.They will never get past the sidewalk. I wish they would work on their chants. The traditional ‘Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Bush and Cheney got to go” is bouncy but “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, end the warmongering fascist police state and enlighten the lumpen proletariat to the eventual anarcho- syndicalist revolution” needs a little work.
Before the left puts too much effort into the Four Reclaims, maybe they should put a smidge of effort into being a little less tone deaf and picking their battles a little more carefully.
Condi Rice made to wait for Secretary of State date:
Do the Dems really think it is a good idea to have their most prominent former KKK member, their most prominent drunken loon, their most prominent recent loser delay the appointment of the first black woman as Secretary of State? What a bunch of dopes.
Kevin:
Let’s not forget the simple but catcy fuck Bush.
Do daring, the f word, I bet the hicks in Texas never heard that kinda talk.
what idiots.
If I were still a Democrat I would also tell my buddies in Europe to stop helping. I saw some of the papers on Drudge and they were soooooo highschool.
And Good Golly Miss Molly! The morons claim their reason is that they want more time to read the transcripts of the committee’s confirmation hearing. The idiots didn’t even read the legislation they voted on and then tried to use to discredit their intellectual superior in the hearings that generated the transcript. What possible value is there to them to delay the inevitable for the sake of reading how stupidly they behaved?
Yo, Robert, Ted, and John, skip reading the transcript and delaying Dr. Rice’s full Senate confirmation vote and, instead, use your time wisely to do something like, Idunno, having Barack Obama give the rest of the congressional Dems a quick seminar in behaving like an intelligent adult during Senate Committee hearings.
Ah yes, another lefty looks back with heavyhearted nostalgia at the glory days of the 60′s. Perhaps if unreconstituted liberals were capable of making sober, critical and unjaundiced assessments of what they wrought in the 60′s, they might be capable now of positive forward movement.
For example, might it not have been possible to advance the rights of women in public life and the workplace without completely trashing the traditional and indispensable roles of wife and mother?
Couldn’t the left while it “crackled with pleasurable possibility” have found a way to provide the downtrodden with the tools necessary to lift themselves up without condemning at least two generations to the untender mercies of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society?
Was it possible to deal with the horrors of pregnancy termination by coat hanger without substituting the ability of any female of any age at any time in any place for any reason to demand and receive an abortion as our highest human value?
Was it really necessary to base all forward progress on the notion that God, country and family were “dead traditions” symbolizing “the repressive past”?
And I could go on and on.
(There was one great positive to come out of the 60′s: Civil rights. And that movement was inspired and led by a man of God who regarded his flock as the children of God. I do not recall MLK denigrating the traditional family nor suggesting that America was a “wrecked ship”.)
One gets the impression from Powers that all would be well again if only the workers of the world would unite behind the union label with its just rewards of more leisure time to pursue hedonistic pleasures.
Kevin P – I did hear the very catchy “Bush Bush we know you, your daddy was a killer too” along the parade route.
I liked the article, but where he asks:
“America should be actively promoting the freedom of everyone on the planet, and the key question is, how would the left do it differently from the Bush administration?”
I argue on my blog here that Kerry already answered this question: “nothing”
If they had had an alternative, they would have used it during the campaign. Instead Kerry just gave us drivel about more international involvement and gobal tests.
Kyda:
Back in the day all we had was hell no I won’t go, I won’t fight for Exxon Oil and All we are saying is give peace a chance. How tame we seem in retrospect.
Note the left’s preoccupation with oil.
Silly people. Saddam Hussein was one of the world’s most vicious dictators and the people blowing up civilians in Iraq today are his surrogates. How any decent person could wish such a man to remain in power is beyond me.
What an odd mix of vision and blindness. Powers correctly perceives that the left needs to articulate a positive vision, needs to be for something. But what kind of vision does he offer?
Anti-globalization.
Equating capitalism with exploitation of workers.
Workers’ paradise ideals.
Really big entitlements, not piddling prescription drug programs.
The ability to articulate a positive vision died with the ideas. Get some new ideas first, Mr. Powers.
Kyda:
I loved it when one of the leaders of the group was proclaiming how horrid the economic situation in the states was and then asked the crowd “How many of you took the day of from work to join the protest” Huge roar, ” Now how many of you are still looking for a job” Small cry. It must have killed him to have to say ” Oh, just a small amount of unempoyment, thats good”. It must be a drag to have your own pre-conceptions shattered by your own followers.
The Troika senates are skating on thin ice. I’m sure there will be repercussions for their action. I’m not sure how, but they’ll likely rue the day they crossed Bush over Rice. I would not want to make him my enemy.
Kevin P:
That reminds me of the scene from Life of Brian:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhatHaveTheRomansEverDoneForUs
Terrye — Well, there was “Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today”. And I thought the slogan for the times “Sex, drugs and rock & roll” had a certain cachet–lots of fun too.
The Troika Senators are skating on thin ice. I’m sure there will be repercussions for their action. I’m not sure how, but they’ll likely rue the day they crossed Bush over Rice. I would not want to make him my enemy.
…privatizing Social Security to solve an imaginary “crisis”…
I am now constantly seeing the “imaginary ‘crisis’” meme going around in both the print and online media. Where exactly did this take off from?
If Social Security is okay, then what was all that blather about Al Gore’s “lockbox,” then? Why have I been told for the past 20 years (since I graduated from college) to save for my own retirement, as Social Security was unsustainable? Has it miraculously been fixed in the past week, and I just missed the memo?
(Okay, yes, I know, it’s because Dubya said there’s a problem, that’s why the opposition is so sudden – but still, the idea that nothing’s wrong with Social Security spread so quickly, it’s amazing.)
Kyda:
How could I forget?
It must have been all the drugs.
A former member of the KKK has decided to withold his vote for or against the appointment of the first black female to the position of Secretary of State. He has literally decided to leave her hanging. The jokes write themselves.
The left are not trying to reclaim utopia but the definition of utopia and the means of achieving it.We in the West are enjoying the fruits of left wing idealism which have resulted in social disasters across the globe.
One mans right is another mans burden,the only mechanism that the left have for accomplishing their aims is compulsion,this results in ever more regulation.
When this fails it is either that the reactionaries impeded the great enterprise or that compulsion was not rigorous enough.If the 18th century was the Age of Enlightenment,then surely the 20th century was the Age of Entitlement.
A system that that never regards itself as wrong will always end up with the concentration camps,if the system cannot be wrong and those administering the system will never admit to being wrong,there only remains the people, who by definition must be wrong.
I really wish the cable news channels would mock these people. Maybe they’d think twice if the people on television were mocking them and pointing out their idiocy.
I agree that the ANSWER folks definitely need a new writer. Eminem?
I saw one guy who, after venting his spleen for a while, said, “OK, I’m going to lead you in a chant that, I admit, is a little unwieldy.” And it was. I’m paraphrasing somewhat, but it kind of went: “Asians, Latinos, blacks, gays and transgenders; who here ordered the chicken tenders?”
Kevin P – I’m not sure their pre-conceptions can be shattered. Facts? Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts.
In theory, the optimal democratic system we should all encourage would have a strong left of center, and a strong right of center party. This would imply debate and *conflict* over specific issues in the eternal debate between freedoms and equality, but not a contesting of the legitimacy of the democratic system, or free markets, as a whole. The latter is always the strategy of those who don’t play fair, because they know it is easier to rouse youthful and embittered passions with big resentments and rejections than with respect for the need simply to improve the mechanisms of political and economic markets. We will know the left has grown up when it throws off the idea of “reclaiming utopia”, and when its party no longer consorts with celebrities. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to this chap that one lives most happily without utopian thoughts since no one who talks of reclaiming u. has really ever left it behind.
For those of us who do want to see a return to projects of humanitarian good will, could we somehow help the fallen left out by, say, promoting tough love boycotts of university profs who have nothing to say but America and the market system suck? (how many parents still pay for the profs they despise, just because they see no future for the kids if they don’t go to the elite college?) These people need some saving grace which they will have to find for themselves. But can we give them a friendly shove or two? Or are we ex-liberals ourselves too dependent on hating the LLLs as a way of trying to corner the market in ideas, instead of taking a further step towards downsizing all forms of academic and media celebrity and embracing decentralizing freedoms and anonymous individuals (e.g. just ignore the Boxers and love all the more thy humble wife and friends) in our spare time?
P.S. re downsizing academic and media celebrities: that of course is why we are all here and not watching tv; still, what is the next step?
I just wish we could all decide on the basic facts.
Saddam Hussein was in material breach of UN Resolution 1441 and had broken the cease fire.
Cutting off people’s heads on TV is not something the good guys do.
Elections should reflect the will of the people and are as a general rule good things that the citizens of a republic should support, especially when the altenative is a vicious and oppressive regime.
It is not a crime to believe in God and those who do have the same political rights as everyone else.
Womens rights should be a good thing even when the women live in another country or culture. Women are people, not property.
Is that so hard?
truepeers:
I just received an email from the Missouri Democratic party titled “Fight the GOP Propaganda Machine”. They want me to sign up with them to write letters to the editor and call talk-radio shows to make sure the Democratic viewpoint is being heard. I suspect that if I sign up I’ll receive talking points.
Do you suppose that if I signed up and called/wrote to express off-point, slightly left of center views people would believe I was a Democrat?
I suspect not, because extremism has become a badge of the left. Don’t wear it, and you aren’t recognized.
A bit OT, but Powerline has an interesting Democratic Party Response to Lincoln’s second inaugural address. Amusing reading.
Morgan,
I suppose extremism becomes a badge when real debate and dialogue fail and the bogeymen are pulled out of the closet. If that’s the situation, then we need people of good will to take both sides in real debates. Of course, those who control certain venues will make it difficult. Which is why my sense of democracy is centered on the need to decentralize, or to make every individual a strong center in his or her own right. Often the start is to just walk away. We need strong, ordinary people as models to emulate, not the people who command the public stage with outrageous rhetoric and resentments. The left is loony right now because it does not have many good models or leaders, and has too many shameless, victimizing, blowhards.
Of course this is always a difficult fight. Weblogs are a start, but somehow they need to be connected to the other arenas – both political and economic markets. So maybe my previous post was a bit unbalanced. Turn off the tv when its in the hands of old school grandstanders, but try to find ways to create hybrids between new and old media; I think the entrepreneurialism of such hybrid-making would necessarily entail debate about the health of our information and political markets. I wish I had more ideas than I do.
But what do you think of using blogs not simply to trade ideas but to organize people in concerted responses to politicians and old media? Should blogs have votes, representative voices, petitions, etc.?
I’ll have to leave this thread now until late tonight.
Knucklehead:
Lincoln lied, People died!
The left is loony right now because it does not have many good models or leaders, and has too many shameless, victimizing, blowhards.
I think a lot of the problem of the left is simply that it is deeply unserious. The people in the movement don’t have a stake in the outcome, because whatever happens, it won’t effect them much. The value of their positions is social, not material. There was a time when many people thought that big L Liberalism made a difference in their lives, and indeed many people benefited. I think that that pool of people is much smaller now. Really, what does Barbara Streisand have to gain or lose by taking the position she does? As far as I can tell, only the approval of her peers.
Roger –
The problem with the left is much more than Powers’ correct diagnosis that the Left is reactionary.
It is that the left is elitist. Kerry, and before him Dukakis, were just the last gasps of the Puritan utopianism/idealism that we saw in the 1960′s. To put in California terms, the old left was comprised of guys like Pat Brown, who built the University of California and the Freeway system. The new left is the utopian idealists like Jerry Brown who preached brown rice and granola denial.
This utopianism appeals to the wealthy, privileged, and elite few, like Soros or Barbara Streisand. It is most definitely NOT going to win over the great masses of people who respond to populist politics of either the center-right (Bush 43) or center-left (Clinton). However since the Democratic Party is completely dominated by the utopian idealists centered in the Urban areas, the ability to compete with the Republicans in the realm of ideas just doesn’t exist.
Virtue, freedom, pleasure, and utopia are all still expressed by Powers in elitist terms. The idea that the common man and woman might not want their young daughters and sons exposed to constant commercial sexuality as Virtue doesn’t even occur to Powers. Neither does the perception that Toby Keith’s wanting to put “a boot up” Osama’s ass might be both popular and good policy. Utopia is not expressed in the populist “building” sense of say Zell Miller’s Georgia scholarships, but some nebulous longing for a grand proposal.
The Left’s problem is simple: they are elitists out of touch with the economic and cultural interests of the average person. The solution is less Soros and MoveOn (which only increase elitism) and more populist building of things that directly benefit the common man. Sheila Kuehl’s bold proposal for single payer Health Care is a step in the right direction.
Knucklehead:
Lincoln also failed to plan for the peace nor did he have an exit strategy.
The boys in blue were in the South for more than a decade following the war and their presence did not stop the growing threat of terrorism by the likes of the KKK. In fact the resentment the southerners felt at the prolonged occupation by northern forces added to the growing bands of terrorists and vigilantes.
Of course it is true that when the troops were pulled out of the south it was followed by widespread abuse of the black population but that in turn can be attributed to Lincoln’s failure years before to respect and understand the cultures of others.
Jim:
The left may be in disarray but Bush did win by a relatively slim margin.
We can not underestimate the strength of cynicism. Maher and Moore and the smart ass, nothing is for real attitude is very real. It is hard to make a national party out of this kind of drop out, tune out, it all sucks way of looking at life but do not doubt there are a lot of people like this out there.
knucklehead: In my lifetime I have seen no evidence that the left is particularly interested in justice, equality, generosity, or tolerance. They are interested in power – justice and equality can go screw themselves.
Blair linked to a good quote about this the other day. His guy is talking about the Australian Labor Party, but it applies to our bunch too:
If you were wondering why modern liberalism and bureaucratic class interest so often seem uncannily identical, that’s why.
I think the liberals are angry because Bush stole their thunder. For years they ranted aobut realpolitick. From Pinochet to Saddam they said we made friends with the wrong people. They said we failed to live up to our ideals.
Now there is a Republican president saying that the goal of Americans should be freedom for all.
And they just can’t stand it, so they call him Hitler because they don’t know what else to do.
And now they are the ones making deals with the devil.
Just listening to Chris Matthews talk to Deborah Orin (NY Post) and Chuck Todd (from Hotline, I think), and I think we’re making the mistake that we’re trying to lump the whole “Left” under one rubric, when in fact we’ve got a spectrum. (Hmm. “Rubric” makes me want to use an ongoing “red” metaphor, but somehow the Republicans are now the Red States. Hell. Anyway.)
Here it is: Matthews and the Democrat and media “elites” are deeply conservative. Oddly, looking at The Corner, Buckley and Peggy Noonan and David Frum seem to be in more or less the same place — all of them doing what Buckley famously said was “standing astride history, yelling ‘Stop!’”. Stability — in the Middle East, in the Balkins — is what’s important, and that, after all, is what the UN was supposed to preserve: stability. And anything, including hundreds of thousands in mass graves, is acceptable as long as it maintains that stability.
Pat Buchanan, John Kerry, Byrd, … others, names don’t come to mind — all reactionary, all of them not just trying to stop history, but trying literally to roll history back: Buchanan, to the world his father promised him, with white guys running things as the cops and the politicians, Kerry to the days in which he was sailing with the Kennedys and seeing himself the successor to his own initials. Still basically conservative … but curmudgeonly, basically old, white men.
And Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Michael Moore, they’re the real revanchists — they want not just to roll things back, they feel that their rightful political power has been stolen from them, and they want not just to stop that, they want their positions back.
On the other side, we’ve got the real liberals, the people who remember that the goal of liberalism was to extend liberty to everyone. GWB is one of these. Natan Sharansky, Ali and Omar, and the 1st MEF, they’re the liberals here.
MAJOR lefty moonbattery just ended on C-SPAN.
About what they do now, there’s a book, too.
It has it all, eeevviilll president, climbed out from under a rock, theocracy, theft of an election, …
One woman said they should go after union members, feminists, conservative blacks,..
As to language, via LGF:
Don’t say “reform” sez the moonbat – don’t use their words -
call it “tort destruction”, call it “social security removal”
‘Socialist Equality Party’ – ‘the Dems had a conspiracy against us’. …
“How do we the intellectuals reach the ‘unintellectuals” the dumbed down Americans – dumbed down by the mainstream media”
Sheila Kuehl’s bold proposal for single payer Health Care is a step in the right direction.–
Because it works so well in Canada, Jim? Or Britain? Australia? Scotland? New Zealand??? And can you fill us in at to their military capabilities?
Kuehlís proposal would establish a single health plan that would replace private insurance, as well as Medicare and Medi-Cal and other state-run programs. There would be no deductible or co-payments, and if you come across the border, FREE!
but instead a patchwork of taxes:
an employer payroll tax equal to 8.2% of salaries; on top of 6.2 for FICA
an employee payroll tax of 3.8% of salary; on top of 6.2 for FICA
a 12% tax on the net business income of the self-employed; Way to go, drive the small businessman from CA, isn’t it already at 8-10%?
a 3.5% tax on unearned income; Too small for the truly rich who want to pay more taxes – think Ter-AY-zha
and a 1% surcharge on all income of more than $200,000 a year. Unfortunately in parts of CA, that’s a middle-class income.
—
And if the policy I have is better than that what they’re going to offer, and it would be at some point, why do I have to get the lowest common denominator? Not rich enough to fly out of the state/country for treatment, I’m stuck.
Don’t want to change the thread, sorry everyone.
End overpopulation, support socialized medicine.
Sandy:
I got a real kick out of the discussion at lgf, but I won’t listen to that crap on Cspan. Blood pressure is high enough.
What do we do now? Learn how to run a campaign and stop bitching for starters.
I think we should take up a collection for new voting machines in Democrat districts, since they would prefer complaining to actually doing anything constructive. And then we let them get a head start of about half a day. We provide rides for everyone and just to make sure that no one has to stand in line we go from house to house and ask them if they want to vote absentee or early so that the bad Bushies can’t steal their votes.
sheesh.
Not a leftist here but am open to new ideas; also think it’s very bad for a democracy to have an opposition that is as weak and intellectually feeble as the Dems are. So here’s some off-the-cuff thinking expressed in terms of slogans–facile, OK, but a start– as to how the Dems and the left generally could approach the Four Reclaims:
reclaim virtue – define virtue in terms of protecting the weak, leveling the playing field, and playing by the rules. Attack the shameless energy bill passed by Congress. Attack corporate welfare. Sic the Spitzer Attack Dog on corporate fixers and criminals of all sorts, esp Wall Streeters (look out, Corzine, Boxer et al). More generally, espouse capitalism for adults, socialism for kids. More assistance for the latter and less for the former.
reclaim freedom – see Bush the Gambler’s defense of liberty and raise him one (or more): challenge him to support the Iranian democracy movement as well as rule of law in Russia and an eventual democratic triumph in China. Outflank him on the right, as it were.
reclaim pleasure – recall investment banker Ace Greenberg’s declaration of his management philospophy while head of Bear Stearns: “We support capitalism and we support sex. We want our people to make lots of money and we want our people to have lots of sex.” Heap scorn on puritans of all stripes. Embarrass the religious nuts, esp when (as in that court case in Utah) video rental records show a very high correlation between church attendance and porn consumption. Goodbye, Dworkin… so long, Hillary…
reclaim utopia – beats me. I don’t believe in utopias of any kind. I suppose that makes me a conservative of sorts, but if I had to define utopia it would be a state in which everybody has the maximum amount of freedom to develop to his potential, and nobody is a nobody.
“But as belief has disappeared as a crucible, careers and jobs and the prospects of the glittering lights have replaced them. And so people are lining up in terms of where they nail their colours to the mast — not in terms of what they believe, but in terms of what opportunities they perceive will fall their way”
Brian, that’s it. Because what justifies one’s presence on a postmodern stage, especially before a leftist audience, has very little to do with whether one has anything much to say, but what constituency (usually victimary) one represents, or what it is in one’s personal story that justifies “me” being up there and not you. Much of the left is little more than a procedure for recycling resentments over who does and does not deserve to get attention at this moment. That’s a market of sorts, and there are jobs for those who want to organize it.
The amazing thing about the Bush revolution is that it engenders or acknowledges again a serious game, it creates a new kind of market and frankly declares that virtuous competition is its basis. The Bush doctrine says, if you want to play in our world, you have to compete according to new rules whose object is to create more virtue not victims out there. Just because you are, say, a nation with a seat at the UN, or a poor and angry Islamicist, now means diddly squat. Are you willing to play ball in overthrowing a dictator or not? If you don’t like how we are doing it, can you show a better way by participaing in and not rejecting the game we’re playing. In other words, are you willing to ignore the impotent arenas of anti-Americanism.
Those arenas are hot today, but they are also holdovers. During the cold war the thing was to avoid open competition, to insure stability by keeping the two sides apart, glaring and ideological but never dancing a tango. Bush is now saying, follow me or compete with me, get out on the dance floor, in a way that ratchets up the stakes; the idea is to get involved in open-ended change, not keep a lid on the cooker.
I know i haven’t put this succinctly. But how to descibe the new politics that is unfolding? The game is organized around unabashed competition to realize classic virtues expressed in the simple, and to the postmodern mind, naive, style of a Bush who has nonetheless captured some truth regarding the human need for honest competition and transcendence. The US is not just one nation among others, or the sole superpower, it is the most successful because it is the freest and most creative. In the economic marketplace, one emulates success, does what successful competitors do. In the universities, one aspires to be unique and “innovative”, i.e. to pretend that one is doing something new, and not emulative but rather quite different from the game of one’s competitor.
While the two games interact on some level, cold war politics perhaps tended to the style of the intellectuals, e.g. the romantic JFK figure and corollary ideas of leaders who, paradoxically, must somehow be disengaging in order to engage the game. But the future is perhaps with a politics that is more frank about the need to emulate success and to give up romantic ideas about individual, collective, or national, sovereignty.
Kevin P: Have you seen this? You’ll never make a mime joke again.
(Sorry for the OT.)
Ah, so opposing Social Security privatization is “reactionary”. I see. The English language gets ever more mangled.
truepeers:
In response to your earlier (3:40 pm) post, I think there must be a psychological pull toward the easiest answer and the simplist rhetoric. Laziness? Maybe, then, it’s not the simplicity that counts, but the consistency. “I always believe this person/group, because they are always ready to explain what’s going on.”
Either way, I agree that it would be good to make each person “a strong center in his or her own right.” But if there is a pull toward lazy, we either need to make being an SC even easier or exert a stronger pull towards it. As a practical matter, we need both elements.
I’m not quite sure how to define an SC, but surely it involves forming our own opinions through independent pursuit of truth, and being willing to do the necessary work to turn those acquired truths into an understanding. Both get easier every day – finding information through the internet, having multiple analyses only a few clicks away that we can “try on” and agree with or react against.
To the extent that this makes it an enjoyable thing to do, there may be enough impetus to push people away from lazy toward the SC. Do we need something more? A viral meme that advocates independence of thought? A renewed cultural ideal of independence, complete with social sanctions for the herd? I don’t know.
Someone here recently characterized blogs as being akin to a local watering hole or coffee shop, or maybe the salons of 18th century France – places where people who generally share the same outlook (or at least the same interests) get together to discuss things and shoot the sh*t. In a sense, then, they are already acting to organize people in a way that allows collective action toward goals that those people have independently decided are worth pursuing.
And, in fact, this kind of action happens frequently. Sarah Boxer probably received 1,000 emails over her Iraq the Model story, Barbara Boxer certainly knows by now that a great many people are aware of her willingness to play fast and loose with the facts and that they interpret it as compulsive grandstanding. And, of course, CBS got dinged pretty hard.
Harry:
If Social Security needs to change to remain solvent, and someone proposes a change that may allow it to do so, and you oppose that change wihout offering an alternative, then you may fairly be said to be reacting against the proposed change – you are a reactionary.
So no, opposing privatization of Social Security doesn’t make you a reactionary. Only a certain sort of particularly vapid opposition qualifies.
In a certain sense I think someone like myself who has had to overcome much to support a guy like Bush tends to start caring less about the rhetoric or package and more about the goals. Peggy, though onetime a Democrat, has been a Republican for so long that she has more concerns than I about the package and public relations aspect of Bush’s speech (hell she is a speech writer herself, so a natural critic). While I can sympathize with her concerns… I JUST DON’T CARE PEGGY!
Bush can credit God or whoever, I look at the policy, goals, so with that I credit, the envelope please… George Bush. As Roger said… No Bush, no election. The rest, as the grandmothers say, is bubbe meises. No truer words can be said but I’ll add what my own father says, “This guy Bush has Chutzpah. For me if this Chutzpah comes from Dubya’s religion, then so be it and preach on! And Brother Dubya, there a few other people you can preach to that like Roger or myself may also find your rhetoric more appreciable, maybe in… Iran?
Y’all might enjoy another take on how the Democrats fall short. Link.
Peggy Noonan is way off the mark with her “way too much God” comment.
I write it off to her social milieu. We all know that the Democrats and their MSM enablers have almost finished building the “we were beaten by the evil religious people, ergo we didn’t lose” narrative. Silly as it is, that narrative is nearly set in stone now so any reference to the Deity must needs be embarrassing for poor Peggy. I’m sure she was hoping Bush would just sweep all that under the carpet so she could tell her friends, “See! He’s ok.”. Alas and alack it was not to be.
Morgan,
I think the direction in which we are going is one where the difference between independent thought and the herd is going to be turned over more and more quickly, making it less easy for anyone to dwell at either end. On the one hand, the herd is going to be moving quickly because of the connectivity and information flow we now have; and this is going to demand of any averagely successful herd member an ability to do a lot of the work of integration or synthesis we traditionally ascribe to independent thinkers. In other words, we are going to need to accent ever more the team player, but successful teams will have everyone taking turns as leader and not just in cautious, inoffensive, half-assed ways. With ever more global competition, this will be such a challenge: people will have to put an emphasis on the virtues that make it possible both to perform and to get along with each other taking turns standing out – not just taking turns in a PC rotation, but making proposals or hypotheses on which we all must risk our success and failure. In other words, truepeers(-:-)
The following statement by John Powers helps summarize much. While most of my family and former lefty associates pejoratively call me a neo-con, which I have chosen to wear as a badge of honor by the way, in truth I have never felt more liberal…
These days, all that has been stood on its head: In the wake of September 11, the right claims it wants to free oppressed people – why, democracy is on the march! – while the left is too often caught saying “I told you so” about the mess in Iraq, even as that country speeds toward an election that any decent human being should hope goes well. In 1968, who would have believed it possible that the left would be home to the dreary old “realists” while the right would be full of utopians?
Old labels just don’t apply anymore do they? Not for me, that’s for sure.
And they say we’re conservatives.
Morgan _ Blogs, like the salons of France, are not just for the like-minded. They are a means of circulating new ideas that would otherwise have no channel of distribution.
They are also akin to the old Committees of Correspondence, in that they permit political organization outside the controlled and approved “official” channels.
Someone:
I have not seen the movie, although I know it is considered a classic. My use of mimes as a comparison wasn’t intended as a slam on the art per se, it was just a comment on the lack of real influence that the protesters have on the body politic, that they have become like a mime on Venice Beach that scrounges for quarters to make a living. If that is a passion for them, more power to them, but if these sidewalk chanters think they will draw a crowd to their political philosophies and if they think they are going to change the world they are in for rude shock in the coming years.
Roger:
In their rabid hatred of Bush the chattering classes of the left are forced to bring back the real politic of Kissinger and Nixon of “If he’s our dictator, then he is ok to us.” Of course Bush is not going to change the world in a day and of course we will have to deal with some bad actors temporarily but he has announced that the acceptence of permanent repression will not fly and to hear the ABB crowd heap scorn on Bush’s idealism and have them adopt the bitter cup of “well those arabs really don’t want or can’t handle democracy like us white europeans can” is just to ironic to bear. If they had a brain or were not so politically tone deaf they would have applauded Bush’s speech and then sat back and watched him try to implement the herculean effort that his lofty goals are going to require. But instead they are heaping abuse on Bush and indirectly are becoming the marching and shouting society for the Dictators and the Despots of the world. They watched Kerry fail as he tied to win an election on being the anti-bush and know they are treading down the same road by just saying that Bush is a fool to aspire to freedom and democracy for the world. The Democratic party and the cynical Kissinger, what a match!
richard mcenroe:
I agree that blogs are not only for the like minded, though I stand by the “common interests” part. There is, though, a tendency for any particular blog to attract people who generally agree with one another (or perhaps the consensus develops over time through discussion – probably both), and that leads to the potential for truepeers’ concerted action.