[extropy-chat] future is up for grabs

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 12, 2005, at 12:42 PM, Al Brooks wrote:
> 
> >  After learning of Workers World Party and other communist 
> > organizations being involved in protests I wouldn't even think of 
> > protesting even if convinced the war is unjustified and wrong--
> which 
> > isn't the case.
> 
> This is a fascinating attitude.
> 
> I think -the- thing that defines the right's rise to power in the
> last decades has been it's ability to make room for everyone - to
make
> peace between staunch athiests and fundamentalist extremists, between

> anti-progressive racists and racial "minority" groups, gay-bashers
> and log-cabiners, libertarians and statist hard-liners, etc.  That
> is to say, it's ability to warp its fundamentally
> capitalist/imperialist  vision to suit the desires of many groups
> while not making any -fundamental- changes that would tarnish its
> single-minded vision of  domination of the "other" groups whoever
> they may be.  The leadership of the Republican party manages this
> balancing act by taking a very Machiavellian pragmatism as a
> fundamental approach to political ideology. Up with rich America and
> everyone who works for them or wants to -be- them, f- everyone who
> doesn't like it, the unspoken cry of the PNAC.
> 
> The left, on the other hand, being filled with -philosophically 
> committed- people - people who resist change in their ideology 
> self-consciously, are therefore unable to organize a resistance to
> the rise of the right because of the endless splintering of
resistance
> due, in my opinion, mostly to a kind of unspoken leftist
> fundamentalism more akin to the "political correctness" movement
> or the hard-line fascist/communist movements than the "peace and
> love and freedom" hippy-child attitude that still fundamentally
> shapes the culture of "the left" in the US. 
> That is, due to close-mindedness and the inability for progressives
> to put aside petty differences (like "those 
> freeking commie hippies are against the war, so I couldn't possibly 
> help their cause even though they're right about that one thing.")
> 

This is so odd that you say this, because the common understanding is
that the Democratic party is highly factionalized with many special
interests (various minorities, unions, radical left groups, peaceniks,
greens, gays, immingrants, foreign countries, the UN, the bar
associations, anti-gunners, etc), while the GOP generally only deals
with three main factions: religious, business, and libertarians, with
the lesser groups of Cubans and log-cabiners having lesser though
significant, influence on single issues. The GOP has been so dominated
by the religous faction in the last two decades that the others are
only able to play ball if they buy the fundie garbage.

> What's funny but unsurprising is the result that the right wins their
> battles relatively consistently with negligible resistance from the 
> so-called left which is unable to put together a convincing platform 
> and that people respond to this inability to "just get along" on the 
> part of the left as wishy-washiness whereas in the hands of the 
> Republican party, the wishiest, washiest of all political machines, 
> their wobbling is regarded as sturdy toughness, mostly because of
> good neocon-controlled press.

The right wins primarily because the left just doesn't have a positive
message for proposals that the American people are willing to buy. The
only success the left has had in three decades has been when they
co-opt libertarian or GOP proposals, as Clinton did quite a bit of. The
DNC is currently lacking purpose, again, as evinced by Dean saying the
party "needs a message" (any message, apparently). The left has nothing
positive to say, it only complains, smears, tears down, whines and lies
over and over again. When it does propose anything, it is always tired
old obsolete socialist BS.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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