Okay, Dems, What Went Wrong? And How Can We Fix It?

naw, no thanks, lash. you know how i feel about bush and all of that stuff, but i'm not into wishing anything bad on the military because of it. that's not cool at all.

Well--I wasn't aiming that completely at you--just general revulsion.

And I'm very glad to see you aren't OK with his hateful moniker.

It is sad to me that anyone can scour the bottom of their cruddy soul and find such **** as that.

gosh. i didn't think you were aiming at me at all...

A crusade is SUPPOSED to be against evildoers. I mean, it beats the hell out of Slick Clinton's crusade against innocent Christian nations like Yugoslavia.

I suspect that the less notice and attention the better. Some things are beneath contempt, and best unrecognized.

Yes, but which are the 'troops' he wishes dead? If it's the Germans, Japs, Gooks, and sunken-eyed Baathist hangers-on, then 'death to them'! Or thinking out of the box, special renditing, where cheaper per evil-doer.

I think less of you for that Bernie.

If one were to stop, midstride, all the characters in a lush green Shropshire foxhunt...and leisurely inquire of the russet hounds hanging there in the air as to their personal notions regarding the worth, to the world that is, of a fox's life, we'd hear a passionate tale of the grave afront to all that is proper and balanced which a fox, any fox, alive, clearly presents.

"Note," they would say, "how surely we are pointed in our direction. And mark," they would probably elucidate further, "that our certainty shines as bold and resolute as our reasoned hatred. You catch us here briefly paused mid-stride, but a red tide of events is easily read in our eyes. There is beauty in such murder."

We don't know who this guy is or who he represents. I think we should ignore him and assume that whatever he's up to is no good.

But I suggest we keep an open mind about whether he is a misguided conservative or a misguided liberal. Either are certainly a possibility.

War is disgusting, no matter who is getting killed. And I don't wish harm to our troops. Of course not. But I don't wish harm to any of the innocent people paying the terrible price for this outrageous war, our own children included.

Or as an old fisherman once said "If you are offered a stinking, rotten mackeral as bait, don't take it".

(and don't waste time and offend your fellow fishermen by examining it further)

I'm quite afraid that if we followed your advice Soz would be here all alone posteing to herself.

Speak for yourself, Dys. I have not trifled with you.

Goodbye

ok ?

You're obviously talking about Janet the goalie Reno. Why would she care about able2know goings on??

DTTT'S statement offensive but the name he chooses to post under is beneath contempt. But that is obviously his intention....rile everybody up and then laugh. George is right. Ignore him.

yup. ignore who ?

OK, i'll chime in: DTTT's posts are deeply offensive.

Now if only as many conservatives would speak up when Gunga puts up yet another post full of pictures with people kicked in the stomach who are meant to represent "the Democrats" - or some such violent, disturbed or hateful garbage - as there are liberals here now who speak up about DTTT - how more fair and pleasant this board would be.

I am not surprised that Thomas and Blatham disagree with the tenor of my posts, like our resident conservatives do. It kind of underlines my point.

For Thomas, the self-described libertarian (or classical liberal), the notion of a left wing assertively reverting to socio-economic populism while, if necessary, ditching some of the more controversial morally liberal tenets, is of course anathema, as it should be. Blatham on the other hand probably personifies the situation I described about current-day's liberals as much as anyone here. I don't mean to cause offence; each principled position deserves respect - and I even agree with most of his. But I do think that it's, say, the Blatham-Lola liberalism that represents the pickle today's Democrats are in: a laudably libertine spirit, defiantly principled on exactly those issues the conservatives use to beat the Democrats with into an enlightened, but narrow blue-state stratum.

I was thinking about this thread again just the other day, when I opened a Dutch newspaper - I think (though I might be projecting) it was the liberal-Christian Trouw. The existence of a liberal-Christian daily itself already symbolises something that American politics seems to momentarily have lost. I opened it and saw a picture of Agnes Kant of the Socialist Party elatedly embracing Tineke Huizinga, MP for the Christian Union. Kant had tabled a motion that was passed by parliament - I actually forget what it was about, except that it was somewhat controversial and barely squeaked through, thanks to some government party MPs dissenting from the Cabinet's position. This picture - Agnes Kant, the young woman who is the number 2 of a party whose leader already led it when it was still a Maoist splinter - warmly embracing the first ever woman MP for a party that's still based on a special membership for "the head of the family" and cheaper membership for wives and other family members - it was definitely interesting, and reminded me that something has changed in Dutch politics recently.

Fundamentally, like much anything nowadays, it's a lot to do with the whole fracas about immigration, integration, Muslims and asylum-seekers. For one because it's the right - the Fortuynists foremost, the right-wing VVD strongly too, the Christian-Democrats marching along disciplinedly - who are proposing one revolutionary idea after another, drastic changes in policy, challenging the condemnation of previously deeply respected international institutions (like the UNHCR), putting even long-venerated features of our system (like the freedom of education, including the freedom to establish catholic, protestant or yes, muslim schools) to discussion, breaking taboos with an apparent glee and zeal and pioneering the previously unthinkable. This whole shift of the debate is, ironically, making the Left in comparison look, well, conservative. Cautious, deliberate, respectful to existing traditions and attainments. Contrasting himself with the sturm und drang of the right-wing populists, the once-revolutionary Socialist leader, Jan Marijnissen, is now profiling himself in talk shows as a kind of elder statesman, wisely emphasising the need to be reasonable and respectful.

All this is leading to a shift in perceptions and affinities. Young urbanites are flocking to the right, who have all the ideas and ambition. Church activists and the like - a whole stratum of Christian-Democrats - are moving to the left, which seems more keen on maintaining and respecting the long-cherished Dutch tradition of consensus politics.

Church activists are moving to the left also because, quite specifically, it's the Churches more than anyone else who are actively involved with the plight of newly homeless asylum-seekers and the like, setting up support programmes, offering occasional Church asylum. Moreover, their gradually increasing unease with the mainstream Right is also due to how some see the rhetorical attacks on Muslim schools, the Muslims' right to wear headscarves, etc, as an indirect or future attack on their own status aparte. After all, the past century or so, part of the pacification brought by Dutch consensus politics was a strictly instituionalised respect for the equality of persuasions. Eg, the law for decades prescribed that for every dollar a public school would get for, say, repairing a window, the local Protestant and the Catholic school would literally have to get a dollar too - and vice versa. Now the right-wing populists, who are mostly (and conspicuously) secular, are already asserting that the entitlements of Christian schools should be up next - no more religious obscurantism, national integration! And no wonder, for how can they justify attacking the "backward" Muslims' treatment of women if the Christians in our own bible belt, away from the media spotlight, share much the same practices? The even more strictly protestant SGP still doesn't allow women to become members or hold official positions.

Anyway. What I was getting to was that the small Christian Union, once habitually categorized together with the SGP as "the small right" and posited on the far right of our political spectre, has moved right to the centre - not because it itself has changed - but because everybody else has. And that's about more than asylum-seekers. The Christian Union is fiercely against abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, legal weed use, pornography and all such modern libertine attainments - but those are battles of the past. When it comes to socio-economic politics, for example, they're somewhere centre-left. Few parties are as concerned about poverty as the small, strictly Christian parties. Their own voters tend to be modest earners of below-average incomes. They will defend pensions, disability benefits. Together with the Greens, they are the most principled of all when it comes to maintaining a high commitment to generous development aid. They side with the left on many of the current parliamentary motions. And it stands for a broader stratum of principled Christian voters.

The Left, in turn, would be foolhardy not to make space for these potential allies. Why reject people who share so many of your social concerns, only because they don't align on some particular lightning rod issues? Why allow those to become lightning rod issues, when there is so much otherwise to share?

In short, in America, where is the equivalent of the Christian Union? And where are the liberals who are willing to accept Christian Union-type voters, even embrace them, as the potential allies they are?

Fox, just out of curiosity, I've been meaning to ask before - I've seen you post some previous times that you're not happy with everything the Republicans do - but I can't remember any specific actual policy/proposal or action of the Republican Party or the administration you criticized or complained about. Is there a thread around somewhere where you explain some thing or other you disagree with your party or administration about?

nimh

I did say, in my earlier post, that I thought you were a 'wee bit' wrong. That wasn't a mere politeness. The differences which seem to sit between your position and mine are minor and certainly up for negotiation. The perceptions and opinions (on this topic) which I do not credit are those voiced by timber, george and fox etc because, as I said, neither of them evidences a comprehensive grasp of the nature of Team Bush nor of how their power has come to be attained and maintained. They've bought and repeat the forwarded myths (eg., fox opined earlier..."the present dems are far left and the present Bush team is centrist").

How the dems ought to present themselves, who they ought to include in alignments of mutual interest, what key policies or principles they ought to push to the forefront ought to be considered open for discussion and for empirical test.

But American politics is now far less of anything resembling a contest of nuanced rationalities and more a straight battle for power, influence and control of the mechanics of governance (including particularly, media). Whatever else the dems attempt, it will fail in this climate if they do not engender rage. We agree that rage is an appropriate response to unilateral declarations of war; to the attempted dismantling of any and all international bodies, agreements, and regimens; the decimation of environmental standards; the incursion of direct corporate influence on legislation; the totalitarian-style secretiveness; the establishment of an alternate ideological and lapdog media for propaganda use; the assault on any and all internal governmental mechanisms and institutions which, by design, exist to check and balance such unfettered and ideological power as we see in the White House now. Where we disagree appears to be on just how much rage is warranted and how much of it we ought to, in light of effective strategy, voice.