Like Salon credited it, it's an AP story, you can find it on lots of other sites with a Google News search. Can't really fault Salon just for feeding it to us.

Hmmm. Salon runs a lot of newswire feed. The real question is how they surfaced the article, as a feature or as just another sidebar feed item, which they claim to present unedited.

The outlet that made my blood boil was NPR. Screw you, NPR news. Screw you, Cokie Roberts. They lapped up and parroted the GOP morality language all night long. (And screw you NPR for taking money from WalMart. Whores.)

But I think I'll still listen to Terry Gross, even though she can be annoyingly precious.

When papers use the shorthand term "moral values", it's a tribute to the success the Republicans have had in framing issues such that only issues that accord with their version of "morality" are considered moral.

George Lakoff explains the differing moralities that underlie conservative and liberal/progressive philosophy in his book "Moral Politics". He goes on at great length about the need to frame the debates on issues in ways that promote your side. This is the great success that Republicans have had, that they frame the debates in such a way that "moral values" means "no gay marriage" and such.

As I said today at my place:

Quote:

How is it "moral" to spend the country into bankruptcy? How is it "moral" to invade a country which was no threat to us, based on lies deliberately trumped up to fit an agenda thought up by a think tank? How is it "moral" to sell out the nation's public lands to private industry? How is it "moral" to turn a blind eye to science, demanding ideological purity over empirical fact?

End quote.

The press really has just blindly followed the Republican line of "moral" as a code word for, as Kristof said today, "God and gays." (I'll leave out the "guns and grizzlies" part, because they're part of a separate equation. We cannot let the media do this. We have to call them on it every time they do.

The goddamned democrats have been playing this dumbass game of trying to emulate republicans in hopes of fooling right-wingers. In avoiding their core values, they appear less sincere to moderates and create more disenfranchised voters. Now they're scratching their heads and wondering what the fuck happened. Go back and don't fight. Tell them you're not a liberal. Extend the patriot act. Continue to give the president all the fucking power he needs to fight the war on terror. Fuck labor. All of these concessions will pay of some day, when we're all bleeding.

I don't seem to be able to get up much indignation around this. Maybe I wore off on the word "moral" when I argued with too many Objectivists back in the '70s; they also had the habit, inherited from Ayn, of labeling everything they didn't like (taxes, no-smoking areas, rock and roll) as "immoral".

I can see that it's disgusting that the supposedly-independent "media" parrot the Republican party line on what's "moral", but the word "moral" just seems to be as burnt out as the word "fascist" to me. I suppose the trouble is it still has weight for a lot of people.

Rich McCallister: Like Salon credited it, it's an AP story, you can find it on lots of other sites with a Google News search. Can't really fault Salon just for feeding it to us.

Rich, I am responsible—among other things—for selecting which stories from AP and other feeds to publish on a webzine. Occasionally, I decide, "You know, this story is about a subject that interests our readers, but I won't use it, because the story sucks."

And I routinely rewrite headlines.

I don't seem to be able to get up much indignation around this. ... but the word "moral" just seems to be as burnt out as the word "fascist" to me. I suppose the trouble is it still has weight for a lot of people.

That's precisely the trouble. "Fascist" is, for most people, a meaningless word nowadays. It's a general insult you hurl at someone you think is excessively authoritarian. Its specific meaning has been lost in historical time. It's like saying "screw you" to someone, everyone knows that you're not actually offering to have sexual intercourse.

But the word "moral" still has living meaning. When a Republican uses the word "moral," he's saying that a homosexual, or someone who has had an abortion, is someone who has done wrong, on the level of a thief or mugger. If you use the word "moral" in that context, you have conceded a significant point to the conservatives, that homosexuality and abortion are wrong.

Hello my geese. Just a lurker here. But as the opportunity presents itself, I'd like to ask y'all in the USA to join with me in calling and writing yr Congresspeople, especially if they are Democrats, to fight fight fight the Bush nominations for Supreme Court which are surely coming. I have been beset with daydreams, this horrible today, of Bush, in black rubber gloves, puncturing my womb with a coat hanger; I am a very terrified young lass, and you would be doing me a favor if you'd just call your person. Probably you've done so, but calling again can't hurt, I daresay.

I do not believe that we lost the election because John Kerry failed to communicate the fact that he embraces religious values that are important to most Americans. I would argue that we lost because Democrats do not understand how Republican strategists use religious issues—-and every other sort of issue—-to win the only campaign that matters: the Image Campaign.

Republican strategists understand something that their Democratic counterparts do not: the state of mind of The Swing Voter. The typical Swing Voter knows that he does not understand the subtle details of the issues well enough to make a wise decision, so he relies on his “impressions” of the candidates. Is this candidate someone I can trust to rule over me? Understanding this, the Republicans focus all of their efforts on defining Democrats in the minds of the Swing Voter in a negative, vaguely threatening way. They do this by relying primarily on negative campaigning.

Republicans know that accusations and insinuations are persuasive to Swing Voters primarily because they are typically headline-readers and sound-byte-nibblers who do not seek out in-depth explanations of complex issues. If the media reports that a Republican has accused a Democrat of having a character flaw, the average Swing Voter will tend to believe it unless it is successfully answered. These attacks not only create a negative image of their opponents; they also implicitly suggest that Republicans are devoid of the character flaws they are attacking. It enables them to indirectly claim that they are noble & virtuous before the electorate.

Republicans understand precisely what they are doing when they speak disparagingly of “those Democrats.” It’s a variation of the “us vs. them” social comparisons that are so common among high school students. Throughout October, Swing Voters constantly saw video clips of George Bush standing in front of his adoring supporters, ridiculing John Kerry with his smirky smile. People do not tend---on a natural level---to want to be associated with those who are being ridiculed.

Average Americans who put Republican candidates into office with their votes do so because they are identifying with those whom they intuitively perceive to be social “winners.” They don’t understand all of the nuances of the issues, but they do have this impression that there is something “defective” with The Democrats. Once they’ve become invested in their identity with the Republican Party, they instinctively defend Republican policies even when those policies are likely to harm them. In order for the Democratic Party to win these Average Americans back, they must begin to fight fire with fire.

If they want to again become the majority party, Democrats need to define The Republican Politician as a DECEIVING, MANIPULATIVE, SCHEMING, MEAN-SPIRITED, CON-ARTIST who willfully and gleefully assassinates the character of any innocent victim that stands in the way of his rabid lust for power. They need to create an image of The Republican Politician in the minds of the Average American that is instinctively feared. In defining The Republican Politician as essentially manipulative, Democrats will also indirectly be defining themselves as The Protectors of the Average American.

Democrats tend not to want to participate in “character attacks” because they maintain an idealistic hope that a respectful debate of the issues of the day is possible in a civilized society, but they really have no choice: the Republicans have no such inhibitions. Every attack and accusation they make must be used to define them as smiling, disingenuous weasels. In doing so, Democrats must express both derision and wisdom and show an eagerness to explain what the Republicans are up to. They need to take the time to point out and explain in television commercials the misrepresentations, the deceptions, the intent, and the strategy of the Republican attacks.

It will also be important for Democrats to spend more and more time ridiculing the stupidity of Republican policies and---implicitly---those who embrace/defend them. This is necessary in order to socially isolate those who belong to the Republican Party (or to at least counteract the social pressure on Swing Voters that is created when Republicans ridicule Democrats). If the Democrats fail to do this, the Average American will not even listen to what they have to say re: “the issues.” If their image of Democrats is sufficiently negative, they won’t want to be persuaded because they’d want to protect an identity that had become very important to them.

James J. Kroeger

www.taxwisdom.org

I could tell that URL went to an AP wire story before I even clicked on it. Don't shoot the messenger's messenger.

Wow, it's as if Mitch Wagner never posted in this thread.

I voted based on my moral values. I voted against the admnistration's immoral approval of torture and its immoral abandonment of the Constitutional values that made this country great (e.g., the "enemy combatant" canard, extraordinary rendition). Who Would Jesus Torture? is a question I want an answer for from many people who voted for Bush.

To the extent that Kerry failed to push such items as moral issues, it was a failure in his speaking to certain parts of the country and our failure on the left to define it that way--so bloggers, start defining!

Bush or Kerry being religious doesn't bother me nearly as much as Bush being a Pharisee does. Let him talk with Jesus, but let him also walk with Jesus. I grew up among people who walked with Jesus--he has all of their worse qualities, and none of their better. He should be called on it when he portrays his religious stance as a "moral value".

While you're cussing out people for conflating terms, save a little bile for Amy Sullivan, too. She's one of those people who constantly use "religion" and "morals" interchangeably, when the two seem to have almost no relationship to one another.

Sorry, that just happens to be one of my pet peeves. As someone with no religion, I'm awfully tired of people assuming that means I have no morals -- and that's precisely the kind of bigotry that hurt us in this election.

All the blogs I read are talking about variants of this issue: that the Republicans win by having clear themes, and that Democrats lose because we come across as disagreeing with them, rather than as pushing our own agenda.

I always thought that we did have a clear, overarching moral vision: Reduce Inequality.

It applies to economic issues, racial issues, gender issues; it works on foreign policy -- we should have intervened in Rwanda to reduce the inequality between those who can count on the protection of the law and those who can't. While it doesn't depend on a religious basis, it's compatible with the beliefs of those religious people who are or might be on our side. Isn't this the kind of message we should be pushing?

How do we take back the vocabulary? That seems to me to be one of our biggest challenges, and call me idealistic, but can't the blogosphere be one place to begin? I'm not as wrecked as everyone else because, out here in red Montana we elected a Democratic govenor, thus ending 30 years of statehouse dominion by the extractive industries, we defeated the reintroduction of cyanide mining (a very big deal in a state where the mining industry is, as one guy in the paper said "the only place a guy with a high school education can make $75k a year"), legalized medical marijuana (!?) and voted in a long-term democratic activist on the Public Service Commission (energy -- also a big deal). On a really granular level, we contintued to win key seats on the school board and the city and county commissions. This in a county with a sizeable population of capital-C "Christians", homeschoolers, etc ... the local stuff has been 15 year ground war, and we owe our gains to a lot of good people who were willing to run hard in races they knew they'd lose. But if the tide can begin to turn here in Montana, I think there's hope. We've got to learn to appeal to folks who don't want to think long and hard about an issue, who want to make a decision and get on with it, and who essentially don't *like* the process. I'm not sure where we begin, but I'd like to hope that maybe it's in discussions like these.

LizardBreath: I always thought that we did have a clear, overarching moral vision: Reduce Inequality.

Works for me, but I suspect that the "morals" crowd sees strucural inequality as an integral part of their system of morality - subservient wives, minorities who know their place, etc.

PNH - Mitch Wagner edits newsfeeds for an ezine, which is a very sensible policy. If Salon edits its newsfeeds as well, then yes, shame on them for surfacing that article at all.

Listening to NPR again this morning, it was all "moral values" all the time. I don't deserve to live in the emergent theocracy that the media is enabling, but perhaps the NPR News staff does. Ugh.

My thought for the day:

I think that those who think that the Democrats can start winning the votes of Christian conservatives by adopting more religion-talk are wrong. (As a member of the religious left, I don't have that much against religion-talk, I just don't think it will help that much.)

I believe that for the overwhelming majority of evangelical Christian conservatives in this country, it is their *conservatism* that comes first, that shapes and guides their religion, rather than the other way around. Their are not conservative because they are evangelicals, but they adopt a certain variety of evangelicalism because they are conservative. There are certainly exceptions, and the Democrats may be able to pull some of them away, but not all that many.

If it was really evangelicalism that was driving their conservatism, then the Republicans would be more successful at picking up evangelical black voters, who are religiously pretty conservative. We could do a little better, I suspect, at keeping pro-life Catholics voting for Democrats, perhaps by doing a better job indicating how pro-choice public policies can reduce the number of abortions. But overall, we're not going to win the votes of religious conservatives without either secrificing our own values or working to change theirs. I refuse to do the first, and I'm not confident of how much luck we'll have with the second...

Even so, fuck everyone at Salon for one editor's carelessness? Make the anger a rifle, not a shotgun.

Works for me, but I suspect that the "morals" crowd sees strucural inequality as an integral part of their system of morality - subservient wives, minorities who know their place, etc.

You're right about some of them, I dearly hope you're wrong about most of them, but even if you're right about what they believe, they can't possibly say it. This is an area where we have the rhetorical advantage: no one can campaign in opposition to equality.

Bill, I'm a human being, not an impassive tribune of infinite justice. I've read and subscribed to Salon for a long time, and I feel like Charlie Brown with the football where they're concerned: I keep hoping they'll be smart, and they keep doing things which are massively, forehead-slappingly stupid.

My central perception of Salon is that it lives and writes entirely inside the politically-dominant rhetorical frame; it's just trying to make money by marketing a niche product to a particular group which that frame defines. If Salon were to actually have any success in breaking out of the frame, they'd damage their own business model.

On top of the election, Patrick, now we learn that you're only a human being? I'm not sure how much more shaking my faith can take this week.

Seriously, the context for a remark that seemed uncharacteristically vitriolic is appreciated. (And I apologize for not having scanned the other comments closely enough before making my own.)

PZ Myers, you'll note I said I don't always agree with Amy Sullivan. I agree with her when she nails lazy journalists for letting right-wingers claim exclusive rights to the language of religion. I disagree with her when she wags her finger at secular progressives for being rude about religion. There are a lot of excellent reasons for being rude about religion, starting with the fact that religion is the occasion of a lot of people having been mistreated at points in their life when they were defenseless.

I keep coming back to the fact that people voted based on being opposed to gay marriage even though they knew they were also voting for a "Yeehah!" foreign policy. Their children will die in Iraq and, if Bush fulfills his campaign promises, Cuba.

They hate me more than they love their own children.

They call that "Moral"? Jesus would spit on them.

"I voted on Moral Issues" = "I Hate Gays"
Let's not be wishy-washy. Let's not even call it voting on religion, or "gays and X" (where X is guns, abortion, evolution, whatever).

Anyone who voted for Bush is complicit in bigotry and a homophobia. Anyone who voted for one of those anti-gay measures is a bigot and homophobe.

"Reducing inequality" is the model that *most* energizes both the conservatives *and* the libertarians *against* the progressives. (I'm somewhere in the confusing progressive libertarian quadrant, sadly.) It would be a disastrous position for the democratic party to take as central.

But the libertarians generally oppose repressive social policies and foreign wars (non-initiation of force being the primary libertarian principle), and generally favor smaller deficits over larger ones.

And the conservatives *also* favor smaller deficits, and many of them *also* oppose wars of aggression.

And everybody except -- I don't know what the fuck they are. *Everybody* opposes torture. Don't they? And supports the rule of law? Well, everybody except Republicans, anyway.

Spoke with a conservative friend today who voted Nader (in NYC). He is disgusted with both parties right now; he hates what "conservative" has come to stand for. He is a true conservative--fiscally responsible, believes in small govt and in govt. not getting involved in people's personal lives (in other words, he supports a woman's right to choose and doesn't think it's government's job to define marriage).

He hates that "conservative" has become right-wing, he hates that his moderate stances are considered liberal in many quarters. He's voted for centrist/moderate candidates before, including Clinton (twice), but voted for Bush in 2000, largely because of his education policy. Not this year.

But he couldn't vote for Kerry either; he didn't like Kerry's stance on military bases around the world (my friend wants to close the bases in Germany and Japan) or on taxation (my friend thinks rich people should be taxed even more than Kerry does, lol, and thinks that Kerry's plan didn't take where you live into account in defining "rich"--as he says $200,000/year doesn't got far in NYC if you have a couple of kids, especially college age).

It was an interesting conversation. He's really pissed, as much as the liberal Dems. I know.

Anyone who voted for Bush is complicit in bigotry and homophobia.

Maybe so, but there’s fifty million of them, and calling them bigots isn’t going to make them change their minds or go away. That’s the real problem we on the Left have got to face up to.

How good to know that someone has already sorted out "the real problem we on the Left have got to face up to"!

It seems to me one could as easily say that the fact that they're not going to go away doesn't make them any the less bigots. All of these truths are true. The problem with hectoring people to "face up to" one truth or another is that the verb "to face up to" is a big vague cloud. What does it actually mean, aside from an unpleasantly needling imputation that someone other than the morally resolute speaker has been avoiding something?

Reduce Inequality And when the red rooster crows on top of the barn folks are more equal and that's a good thing today as it proved to be once upon a time? Let's hear 3 cheers for corrosive envy?

Did I miss the irony here? Democrats need to define The Republican Politician as a DECEIVING, MANIPULATIVE, SCHEMING, MEAN-SPIRITED, CON-ARTIST who willfully and gleefully assassinates the character of any innocent victim that stands in the way of his rabid lust for power And the New Class of Democrats will be so much better?

Some folks may just not go to Oklahoma much any more but if I'm with family in Wichita (actually Winfield but people wouldn't recognize Winfield as a nice little college town) I'd like to be able to shop Ponca City - hardly convenient to unite the country by strands of barbed wire across the boundaries between our newly found ethnic identities - even if you throw Kansas in with Oklahoma as a reservation for Republicans.

Does it work justice to declare lifeboat rules and throw the first class passengers out of the boat in favor of the steerage? Throw the fatcats to the wolves they'll take longer to digest?

How about a consensus on Pareto Optimality - if an opportunity exists to make somebody better off without making anybody worse off let's take it.

I'm going to take this opportunity to refer you all to a blog entry by the Apostropher.

Let's call it like it is: red America (which is not bound by state borders) doesn't like blue America (similarly unbounded) and vice versa. You guys have controlled all three branches of government and a majority of the governships for years now. You are the elites, despite your cherished, illusory feelings of victimization. For every gram of liberal condescension, there is at least an equal amount of conservative condescension. At least we don't use "conservative" as an epithet.

If you're not reading him on at least a semi-regular basis, you should.

By the way, he does talk about "moral values" in the post, just not in what I've excerpted above.

I wouldn't normally post a link to another blog. But I read something this morning that seems to be pertinent to the conversation.

It is written by a gay man in Oklahoma. He is sharing his views about how the election has shown him how America feels about him.

Here is the link: http://greenguru.typepad.com/

Just thought I would share.

Oooooh, corrosive envy! People vote Democratic because they're who can't stand the thought of people getting ahead!

That's straw man bullshit, Clark.

I pull down a pretty good salary, have no debts, and a big fat 401(k), but I'm still concerned about economic inequality, because it's bad for society.

For all the brave and blithe talk about the Ownership Society and entrepreneurship, it is really, really hard for people on the bottom to get ahead. No amount of deregulation and tax cuts are going to change that.

"How about a consensus . . ."

Uh, yeah, sure. While we're at it, let's have a consensus on vigorous exercise, healthy eating, and happy babies. See? We're all one big happy family!

Please spread the word. Let's hit the bastards in the only place they understand - their wallets. I'm calling for everyone who voted against Bush to STAY HOME on the busiest shopping day of the year - the day after Thanksgiving. 43 million less shoppers might make a point. Also boycott Bush's chums like WalMart and buy from liberal friendly, overseas, or local small business. And finally - cancel your vacation to any red state destination - Florida, Kiawah Island, New Orleans and spend it instead in Maine, Wisconsin, Cape Cod, California, NYC, Chicago, etc... We don't need to pay these people to take our rights away. Please pass it on!!!

"Reducing inequality" is the model that *most* energizes both the conservatives *and* the libertarians *against* the progressives.

What he said. Many if not most people hear "Reduce Inequality," and think "Harrison Bergeron." Well, not literally, given that most people probably haven't read it, but that's the sort of world people imagine when they hear talk of reducing inequality.

The goals are fine, but the package sucks.

Brad,
Can I recommend adding New Hampshire, now that it's officially blue?

(Please don't recommend Cape Cod--we're crowded enough out there...)

Brad:

Unless you plan to get a great many people to boycott Chirstmas, what you propose will have no finacial impact at all. It will send a message that we don't understand math.

Your second proposal is better, I suppose, although still unlike to have a huge impact; I don't know many people who choose walmart when they can aford otherwise. I may have a selection effect going on.

On the last one, the red states, saving only Florida, aren't exactly big tourism spots anyway.

Personally, and at least until I calm down, I'm going to amusing myself by hoping James Nicoll achieves success with his dreams of a Canadian superpower. If the majority populations of the economically left en mass, those remaining would have to either accept civilization to attract them back or accept life in a sudden third world hell hole. (I don't think this is a good or workable idea either, really. But I like it alot; after the 11 for 11 on gay bashing, I feel like nothing in the world so much as that my country just broke up with me).

Patrick, David: I was listening to the radio in the car last night and found myself getting angrier and angrier at the DJ who was going on at length about how the election demonstrated just how stupid the American public really is, that the Bush victory demonstrated the ascendance of stupidity over intelligence and irrationality over reason, etc. I share the anger and understand the despair implicit in what the DJ was saying ... but at the same time, we cannot possibly win without convincing the very people he was condemning; and it's extremely difficult to convince someone of anything when you are busy calling them names.

I'm a nondrinking, nonsmoking, churchgoing Christian, and I find the notion that God would approve of this pampered, spoiled, aggressive man initiating a war for his own purposes, using fear to manipulate the masses, and raising money by using the buzzwords of religion when he doesn't actually attend church to be stupid, offensive, and indicative of people who are deeply out of touch with what actual religion is.

Why did reporters make a deal out of Kerry possibly being excommunicated while failing to mention that Bush, who made his close personal relationship with God the cornerstone of his campaign, doesn't actually go to church? I'm not saying that you can't be moral unless you go to church, but I would have sworn that actually planting your butt in the pew for some reason other than fundraising was somehow a requirement to be Born Again.

To everyone here railing against the "stupid religious nutcases", please bear in mind that many actual religious people are just as angry at having their spiritual beliefs used as a bludgeon to coerce the fearful. Many actual religious people are in favor of any two (or more) people being able to receive government benefits for their commitment to each other. Many actual religious people are in favor of access to healthcare. Many actual religious people are pro-choice, after having seen their perfect-world ideals get dragged lengthwise through the practicalities of United States society and healthcare.

Losing the rhetoric of morals was a crucial blow for the Democrats. If they want to recover, they need to figure this stuff out. Voting for Bush was not a Christian act by any well-thought standard of measurement.

What does it actually mean, aside from an unpleasantly needling imputation that someone other than the morally resolute speaker has been avoiding something?

It means I’m just as exhausted and miserable as you are, Patrick, and one of the things that’s further exhausting me and making me even more miserable is watching most of my friends throw up their hands and declare that the problem is that fifty million of their fellow citizens are monsters.

One friend posted in his blog that the election results changed everything. They might have changed a lot of things, but one thing they didn't change: whether they’re fifty-one percent or fifty percent or forty-nine percent or forty percent of the electorate, those people were already out there on November 1. They’d still be there even if the Ohio election had been honest.

Now, I know damn well that my 81-year-old grandmother in Nebraska voted Republican, and I also know damn well that she didn’t deliberately vote for Abu Ghraib or outsourcing torture or endless war or global warming or cutting rich folks’ takes on the backs of her grandchildren. And if our response to this election is to assume that she did, that nearly half the voting public is just irretrievably damned — I’m not saying anyone’s saying exactly that, but it seems to be the sense of the meeting — then in the long run, even if we win an election or two, we’re screwed. We might as well be voting for Nader.

I’ll shut up now, if you like.

No need to shut up. But this may not be the optimal moment to perform the kind of analysis you're trying to perform.

We're human, too; if you poke us, we bleed, et cet. It is hardly surprising that many of us feel very alienated from 51% of America following this past Tuesday. It's an emotional reaction. Guess what: our side has emotions too.

LizardBreath: I always thought that we did have a clear, overarching moral vision: Reduce Inequality.

As in, "no men are created unequal"? Unwittingly, you demonstrate part of the problem: how things are said. "Reduce inequality" is a fine and noble sentiment. It's just that, phrased that way, it has all the emotional appeal of a bank statement. "Our goal this quarter is to eliminate waste and reduce inequality." Turn it around, and make it echo the Declaration of Independence, and you get a much stronger statement: our vision is one of *promoting equality*. "All men are created equal, and all men should be treated equally, in every way." (Put it into the hands of a real writer, and you can probably get something even better.)

Which version is more likely to catch the attention of the Other 51%?

Glen Fisher

Clark, the only thing that's saving you right now is Patrick's liberal sense of values. Keep that in mind next time you post.

To paraphrase Ghandi: That justice, freedom and love always survive and triumph over evil.

A friend who is also a columnist suggested our circumstances are similar to occupied France in 1940 -- our government is run by a combination of an Occupying Force, and our culture is rife with collaborators. We went back and forth that it was foolish to romanticize what's happened to our country, but in the end I had to agree with the image, at least in part.

I honestly believe America is two countries, now. They may be countries of the mind, but the divisions are in place and can only become clearer through time. They already are.

Read Bennet's comments ("Let the great relearning begin"). Read Adam Yoshida's ("We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and [our] boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards...That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women").

I have to disagree with Amy Sullivan. I don't feel like trying to reach out and dialogue with these persons. Their "values" are as disgusting and repellant to me as my beliefs are to them -- and they have no interest in dialogue, either. This is a putsch, a bellwether of very difficult times.

Bush is a masterful liar, and he will piously chatter about uniting the country while reveling in the chance to do god's will by remaking it in Ralph Reed's image. And god save the Iranians, the Koreans, and all the men to be drafted.

So, two countries.

There is the Homeland (a term I've never been comfortable hearing) of the community of the faithful, the necon and fundimentalist christian true believers, those who agree we can only be safe by bludegoning real or perceived enemies and intimdating all others; the Homeland of a stirring sense of mission for the faithful to cleanse at home, and "spread freedom" abroad.

Whether from fear or honest desire, people living in the Homeland support their leaders (Bush is only one, but there are others, from Murdoch to Kristol to Reed and Swaggart), even if they know somehow they're being used -- in part because they believe support for the powerful is the path to personal wealth, security and success.

In the Homeland, the leaders do not believe in or accept anything except active and public acceptance of their agenda; silent agreement is accepted, for the moment.

In The Homeland, gays and lesbians are tolerated, for the moment. Educators and scientists will begin to understand 'creationisim' is a valid branch of inquiry, and that research must pass through the eye of a faith-based needle in order to receive consideration for funding. People of color have to understand that poverty, drugs, underemployment, are all problems for which faith is the answer.

Those children not being 'home schooled' should be encouraged by family and frinds to pray in their classrooms; the school districts will come along in time. Police and security agencies will have to become even more vigilant for Terrorists: the outsider, the stranger, the ones who are not part of the faith-based community; and they will need more laws to make the Homeland even safer.

One day, there may be a terrible incident in a major city. It may be a tragedy manufactured by the leaders to inflame and soldify the feelings of the faithful. After all, when one believes what you're doing is directed by god, nothing is forbidden, and all is forgiven. And isn't that a basic tenent of religious terrorists?

On that day, thecommunity of the faithful will understand when Rights once taken for granted are suspended, borders closed, travel and bank accounts restricted. No one would know how long the state of emergency would last. And after that day, for those not "part of the community", arrests and detention may follow.

Then, there is America. I don't think I have to tell you what that country is like -- you and I live there, in our minds and our hearts. It's a country that hopes to live in peace, and believe in the value of a single human being, as they are, without the litmus of faith or politics, race or economics. It's my country. It's a progressive, humanist country, where lifting all boats isn't just a hollow phrase, and that literature, art and science have no imposed horizons or destinations.

It's my country.

We need to keep that vision clearly in our minds in the months ahead, until Ghandi's thought becomes real for our entire country. Meanwhile, like people in France after May of 1940, we resist.

Glen:

You're right -- "promoting equality", "equality of opportunity" -- either one is much better than my formulation. But still, that's our vision (or it's mine, and the reason I vote Democratic is that seems like my best hope of getting there) and it's a strong, persuasive one, and one that the right can't run against. They can say that we're lying about wanting equality, but they can't say that equality is a bad thing.

(I think the "Harrison Bergeron" critique isn't all that persuasive -- there's a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of results.)

(A small plea that we also keep the correct spelling of the standard transliteration of Gandhi's name in our minds, too. I swear, it's the commonest spelling error in the blogosphere.)

More common than "loose"?

That's straw man bullshit, Clark. Actually in context I'll take that as a pun. Whatever my sympathies might be for Anabaptist thought I repeat that setting fire in the thatched roof of a barn as part of a peasant's revolt does much to make people equal and much more to make them hungry.

There are the worse the better strategies to which much of this country has always echoed the immortal words so often associated with Bill Bixby - don't make me mad, you wouldn't like me when I'm mad - see any of the pundits on the Scotch-Irish-Jacksonian strain of American thought especially to include war making. As a nation we may act just as individuals do, judging ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions - but whether for that reason or any other it is a mugs game to seek to persuade the majority their own intentions are bad.

Besides everybody knows Democrats vote that way because they are all gun grabbers who envy their neighbor's guns and want to tax their ammunition outrageously.

John Farrell, if you send tourists up our way - send them to the remote south-west, out around Keene and past, because those are the poor, rural towns who voted blue. The Lakes Region and the Ski Areas and the Seacoast are pretty and popular, but those are the ones who voted for not sharing their wealth. Except for Portsmouth and those blue towns - I don't think we should support New Castle or Newington or Newfields who voted for Bush but also Lynch, (hm, non-significant pattern there, coincidence of names.) I vow that next time I'm out there, I won't buy fish and chips or ice cream from that stand in New Castle, even though it's good. Let's not reward the wealthy townships' citizens by supporting their quest for bigger and bigger Escalades.

I can't think of any tourist places in Berlin/Gorham, but maybe I'll research some and create an "alternative/progressive vacationing listing" for us. It can be the Temperate Zone's version of ecotourism.

Oh, here's one specific outfit in NH we can support, in Walpole, a blue western township: Alysons Orchard Inn, a bed-and-breakfast which sponsored a skywriter towing an anti-Bush banner over Manchester on Sunday.

I don't think it's a bare 51% of our nation who have supported the worst administration in my memory. It was 51% of the people who voted. In my opinion, the people who couldn't be bothered to vote also supported torture, murder, and right wing theocrats. That's way more than 51%.

MKK

Exit polls that were grossly inaccurate during the election now tell us that "moral values" drove the Bush win?? How is this exit poll any more or less accurate than the others?

I don't buy it for a moment. 'Moral Values' my ass.. I think the media has dropped the ball on this - again. Their answer is too simple an answer, occam's razor well considered.

Folks I know in 'Red' counties insist that the war & the economy drove their votes. I'd add that perception of the candidate drove some decisions, and frankly people in middle america don't really like stuffy Senators, any more than sophisticated urbanites like coarse frat-boys from Texas or over-muscled immigrants from Austria.

I do know that the Dem party needs to be fixed, and it will take some brainpower to do it. I wish I knew where to start (well, calling 51% of the voters stupid isn't a great strategy, but what do I know??).

Well, speaking of the Dem party needing to be fixed, there's a cheerful red/blue map over at DailyKos that shows us that if the election had been up to 18-29 year olds, Kerry would have won 375 to 163. Check the map out, if you like the color blue. At the bottom of the post entitled "The Kids Did It -- Our Map Is True Blue", there's a "There's more..." link that will take you to the map.

I'd link to it here, but I'm not sure of the Local Customs re: linking blog posts, etc.

This came up somewhere else on nielsenhayden.com recently--somebody being unsure whether it's okay to link to other blog posts. Of course it's okay to link to other blog posts. We do it all the time.

Ah. Kewl. Here is the cheerful map, then.

I'm a New Zealand Evangelical/Pentecostal Christian, and strongly opposed to Bush. That man has done more to move me leftward than my brother's ten-year-and-counting missionary stint doing community development in the urban slums of Brazil.

Most of the NZ church looks at Bush and winces. But some of his message resonates. The anti-gay thing... I struggle with that myself. I'm not a fan of redefining the word 'marriage', and the Apostle Paul seems pretty clear where he stands in his letters. If that and abortion were the only issues, Bush would have stood at least a 75% chance of convincing me to vote for him. But the sheer venom spewing from the GOP about gays absolutely takes me back, and as for Iraq and the WoT, Abu Ghraib pretty much nails it for me.

How these snakes convinced the American evangelical church to legitimise their war crimes I find terribly hard to believe, but I do understand. I grew up in a small dysfunctional Pentecostal church and I recognise the dynamics of abuse of power under the guise of spirituality and morality a mile away. Only this time, it's happening on a country-wide scale with global implications. If there's anything I can do to put my spanner in the Death Star's cogs, I want in. I think I know how they think -- and I think I know what God, the real one, thinks about them. The terms 'prophets of Baal' and 'brood of vipers' come to mind.

This election, even more than 9/11 or Iraq, is going to shatter the evangelical Christian church in America. There are some sane folks still among the wreckage. Jim Wallis, Tom Sine, Glen Stassen, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren - these are some of the names I trust - but I'm worried, I'm really worried now, what will happen to these dissenting voices of sanity. They're already on the margins of the American Protestant church-state complex - will their voice grow, or will there be purges and consolidation among the Bible colleges, the 'leadership schools', until anything that's not directly coordinated from Texas gets effectively excommunicated? Perhaps I'm being paranoid - America is a big place and I don't see how even an SBC/GOP combine could wage an effective cultural purge on that level - but I've been expecting the worst ever since Bush's 'for us or against us' speech got such high approval ratings, and I've yet to see the bottom of the cliff.

I think the American evangelicals can be turned. I think they don't realise yet what kind of monster they're about to unleash. They don't believe what they believe could ever become fascism. I think they'll wake up very shortly and find out, but unless there are people ready and in place to take care of them, who speak their language and feel the pain of faith gone horribly wrong - and it's a very deep and agonising pain that many glib seculars just can't begin to understand, because you can't fight this by throwing up your hands and wishing God away, no matter how you might want to, you have to wrestle through to your own convictions with Bible in hand - unless there's a net in place ready to welcome them, they'll keep fighting for the wrong side with increasing desperation.

If these people think anything like me, they'll see 'becoming a liberal' as worse than death itself, as a loss of faith so devastating as to be literally unthinkable. Crossing that chasm won't come easy. Think cult deprogramming, but without the intellectual violence.

We have to build that net, and we have to start building it now.

Sadly, Lizardbreath, the Austrailan election was losta good primer on what happens with that value set.

Reducing inequality becomes "the politics of envy"
Promoting equality becomes "reducing choice"

Because promoting equality is always done by those who want the money siphoned direct from your wallet *and* want to drag everybody down to their level of crap, thereby ruining your for success in our competitive world, don't you know. (yes, I'm being sarcastic)

Increasing inequality becomes "providing a safety net" because of course, real people need a safety net, as opposed to those dirty rotten free riders sucking your tax dollars.

..and this despite attempts to frame the "ladder of opportunity" for "aspirational voters".

(slight rant, like I'm not already ranting)
It makes me feel so bloody impotent. The only thing it seems like you can do is to predict what they will skew and skew right back. where's the room for honesty or integrity any more? It's market-driven politics and market-driven economies. When did people-driven or community-driven or society-driven become so sneer-worthy? Come to that, when did society become a dirty word?
(enough rant)

Bah. Pass me the cherry vodka.

Okay, I really like Patrick's blog, and have been reading it for months concerning the election. It's an oasis for the thinking person.

I live in Mississippi, in a county that does not even have a Democratic Party. So I understand "The Evangelicals." Never underestimate them. In fact, none of us should underestimate what ordinary good country folk are capable of when they think Jesus is on their side. And they do. Literally.

I know, this sounds pretty simplistic. My language is plain, there is no detailed analysis, and so forth.

But I know these people, the Reds. I have lived with them all my life. I see them at family reunions, at the grocery store, at the ball park, the theater, and so forth.

Ordinary folks. Nice manners. Smiles. Polite.

But they are unbending, relentless, filled with a consuming conviction and duty when it comes to what they call moral issues. They are determined to take their country back, and don't ever forget it.

I wish I lived in a Blue state or that I had one "reality" friend to share some conversation with over a cup of tea. No way, I had to go to Shelby County TN, just to find a Kerry/Edwards sign for my front lawn.

So be grateful that you live in a Blue State and have friends, and don't have to be afraid to put a political sign in your flower bed.

So the press thinks we leftwingers ought to reach out to these people. I don't think so.
They do not compromise.

Janie

You want moral values? Here's moral values:

"Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the Red States, former President Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the Senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, "I'm not going to ever do that."

Meanwhile, they run ads so vicious and dishonest that the candidate's ex-wife is furious and wants to go to bat for him:

"By August, the attack of the Swift Boat veterans was getting to Kerry. He called adviser Tad Devine, who was prepping to appear on "Meet The Press" the next day: "It's a pack of f---ing lies, what they're saying about me," he fairly shouted over the phone. Kerry blamed his advisers for his predicament. (Cahill and Shrum argued responding to the ads would only dignify them.) He had wanted to fight back; they had counseled caution. Even Kerry's ex-wife, Julia Thorne, was very upset about the ads, she told daughter Vanessa. She could remember how Kerry had suffered in Vietnam; she had seen the scars on his body, heard him cry out at night in his nightmares. She was so agitated about the unfairness of the Swift Boat assault that she told Vanessa she was ready to break her silence, to speak out and personally answer the Swift Boat charges. She changed her mind only when she was reassured that the campaign was about to start fighting back hard."

I've criticized Kerry, a lot. But in the end I'm back where I was in September of 2002, when I trusted him absolutely to do the right thing on Iraq: he is a fundamentallly decent man and would have made a very good president, probably the best of my lifetime.

He had some very bad advisors, and he listened to them more than he should have, instead of his instincts and the better angels of his nature.

Which is getting to be a very familiar story.

"I'm not a fan of redefining the word 'marriage', and the Apostle Paul seems pretty clear where he stands in his letters."

It does seem worth pointing out that this is civil, not church, marriage. This is a legal abstraction; the government in the USA is strictly forbidden from telling churches what to do and, for instance, many US civil marriages are not recognized by the Catholic church.

I think Susie Bright, of all people, nailed it when she said, "'Morals' is their code word for sex, all issues related to sex." (Via the Sideshow, of course.)

Big problem. On the one hand, who wants these people for enemies. On the other hand, we hardly want them creating the Kingdom of Gilead, which they are working to do.

"Read Adam Yoshida's ("We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and [our] boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards...That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women")."

Adam Yoshida is a Canadian. Probably not the best example to quote if you're worried about United States Republicans. I'd like to think he's not representative of us right-wing Commonwealth types either.

I wasn't a big fan of redefining the word "marriage" either, but then the putsy feminists got rid of the dowry system and replaced a well established system of social transactions with this crazy liberal stuff based on "two people's feelings for each other." Is it any wonder that gays want a piece of the action? The straight community ruined marriage for those who prefer our wives to be indentured bondslaves, like the tradition says they should be.

Fuck it, give it to the gays, they probably won't get divorced as often.

The thing is, from my moral/ethical perspective, both the Democratic and Republican parties have serious problems.

If elected United States President I would ban handguns on Monday, abortion on Tuesday, nuclear weapons on Wednesday, and be assassinated Thursday morning by a bipartisan committee.

Salon get some things right

they are unbending, relentless, filled with a consuming conviction and duty when it comes to what they call moral issues.

Funny, that describes me. There's a rule for writers: everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, or at the very least they think they're justified in doing what they're doing.

casting Bush voters as evil, mindless, flesh-eating zombies might be carthartic after losing the election, it might even be funny, (see http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/2004/10/31/ ), but it misses the truth that poeple generally think they're doing what's best.

Lemme splain it to yall this way.

we're all "do good" robots.

The reason Bush won teh election is because his cronies wrote a program that defined "do good" that prioritized stopping gay marriages over terrorism, the economy, the environment, and civil rights.

They were then able to convince enough "do good" robots to load their program and run it.

Kerry wrote a program that defined "do good" his way. And a bunch of democrat "do good" robots loaded that program and ran it.

So, we're all unbending, relentless, filled with a consuming conviction and duty when it comes to whatever it is that we define as "doing good".

the only difference is what we define as good.

Demonizing the opposition isn't likely to win any converts. You need to convert some of those "do good" robots running the Bush program and convince them to redefine what is good.

I mentioned this before, but a common Democratic response to undecided voters leading up to Nov 2 was a disgusted rant screaming "what more do they need to know?"

That doesn't define what is good. And it doesn't convince anyone to run your "do good" program. It simply demonizes the opposition, says they are doing wrong, and goes against the "most poeple think they're doing the right thing" axiom. And if someone thinks they're doing the right thing by running the Bush "do good" program, simply screaming "You're evil!" isn't going to win converts.

"Lemme splain it to yall this way."

You just don't get it. When LBJ signed all the "Civil Rights Act," he gave up the South. But the South was really already lost, years before. If you came South and lived here awhile, you would realize--and I am giggling--that it really goes back to Abe Lincoln when he ended slavery! OMG! You are all so intelligent, but you just don't get it.

"Lemme splain it to yall this way."

These good country folk go to church every time the doors open, but when the sermon is over, and they get out to the parking lot, they talk about how "the n word," the "gays," the "socialists," and "baby killers" are destroying our country.

This mindset has always been in the South, but now it has spread west across the Big Muddy River.

So do yourself a favor and go read some Faulkner.

"Lemme splain it to yall this way."

You just don't get it. When LBJ signed all the "Civil Rights Act," he gave up the South. But the South was really already lost, years before. If you came South and lived here awhile, you would realize--and I am giggling--that it really goes back to Abe Lincoln when he ended slavery! OMG! You are all so intelligent, but you just don't get it.

"Lemme splain it to yall this way."

These good country folk go to church every time the doors open, but when the sermon is over, and they get out to the parking lot, they talk about how "the n word," the "gays," the "socialists," and "baby killers" are destroying our country.

This mindset has always been in the South, but now it has spread west across the Big Muddy River.

So do yourself a favor and go read some Faulkner.

So do yourself a favor and go read some Faulkner.

perhaps you should listen to him and not just read him:

"I decline to accept the end of man."
---William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech

http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/faulkner/faulkner.html

I decline as well. I am one of those unbending, relentless, filled with a consuming conviction and duty zombies that you speak of. And I will never accept the end of man.

All you prophets of doom need to wake up!

This is no time to throw yourselves on your swords. The enemy is at hand. If you want to impale yourself, do so on the sword of the enemy so you at least slow them down for the rest of us.

Get up and fight, damn you! I do not need your cheerleading in times of victory, I need you at the walls when the enemy is at hand!

I can not afford your commiseration and self pity, it will only make your prophecies of doom self fulfilling. And you're starting to piss me off.

I will not give up! Do you understand! Never! This is too important to me! I will never surrender!

Those who wish to lay down and die, there's an empty spot on the catapult sling. Put your dead weight to good use at least.

A fundamental change in strategy is required. We liberals need to realize that effective social change is more important than feeling good about what we're doing or the ideals of our cause. And that it can't be enforced from above; it must be generated from the ground.

One strategy that comes to mind: Present to the red-counties that we respect your values (though we may not agree with all of them), and will find cause to help protect what's important to you (within the parameters of the constitution); in response, you must respect our values. To that end, for example, leave marriage to the religious institutions, and legal unions to the state. The state will define a legal union regardless of sex and not interfere with religious constructs. I.e., we'll keep the state out of your church if you keep the church out of the state.

Clearly, there are those on the far right and far left who won't subscribe to this; so what? If there is a vast center, which I believe there is (having lived in the midwest for 30 years), this approach has an excellent chance of working *and* of proving to be a method with which to elect Democrats to office.

This also goes toward marketing: the Repos learned that Pat Buchanen is the exactly wrong spokesman for their party in urban, liberal cities. Likewise: Hollywood elites, who whether they like it or not represent a set of values not appreciated in red-county America, are the wrong representatives for the Dems. The success of Barack Obama speaks to this; as does Mario Cuomo's speeches in conventions past.

There are plenty of people in 'flyover country' with whom there can be common-cause; if only we stop insulting them by calling them stupid, and if we believe that 'the perfect is the enemy of the good'. We can't get ALL of 'em to come to the table. We can't get all of our own folks to the table! But we don't need all.. we need enough to get our guys in office and enough to re-start social reform from the bottom-up.

Mr. Moles: What, then, was your Dear Old Granny voting for? Was she unaware of Abu Ghraib? Was she unaware of Bush's seething hatred of homosexuals? Had she been living in a hole for the past four years?

Mr. Moles: What, then, was your Dear Old Granny voting for? Was she unaware of Abu Ghraib? Was she unaware of Bush's seething hatred of homosexuals? Had she been living in a hole for the past four years?

Granny didn't care about what Bush thinks of homosexuals; Granny had visions of her church being "forced" to marry Bill & Tom from West Hollywood, or of going to services on Sunday morning to see Jane & Elaine get hitched.

Reality? Nope. But what was presented to them? And by whom? Overwhelmingly, commentary at a local level from well-meaning Dems was presented as an attack on 'stupid gay-hating evangelicals' and as attacks on religion. Not a way to convince people, is it? Can't blame this on Rove. It's easy to say "The Dems want to change the rules in your church" when they can point to articles that say exactly that. Again, for some people it was more important to feel good about bashing religion and evangelicals than it was about finding a way for genuine change. Not for all, but enough where, whether we like it or not, it was made very easy for Repos to make the argument.

We can't find common cause if all we do is bash the hell out of them & then expect them to follow us because "we know better".

Well, I think Barack Obama is an excellent speaker, and his record in the Illinois state senate is that of a pretty smart politician, but I don't think his lopsided victory in Illinois strongly "speaks to" any conclusions about "values"; rather, it shows that Illinois is a state where demovraphics increasingly favor the Democrats and at the same time a state where the local Republicans have managed to do almost everything wrong. Which is to say, Obama would probably have won anyway, but he had a nearly perfect set of circumstances.

To his credit, he's smart enough to know that, and is pretty cannily trying to damp down expectations that he'll be Liberal Superman.

tonecluster writes: "We can't find common cause if all we do is bash the hell out of them & then expect them to follow us because 'we know better'."

You know, your sense that somebody thinks they "know better" doesn't actually entitle you to put the phrase inside quotation marks as if someone had actually said such a thing. As it happens, nobody in this thread has actually said such a thing. Perhaps you're quoting someone from outside the thread. In that case, it would be well for you to cite your actual source, because as it stands, it looks a lot like you're making a false claim about other people in this conversation, and that's not very nice.

BSD,

You cannot hate someone's guts at the same time you're trying to persuade them to your point of view. An election is a game of Thing and the side that is most persuasive wins. Not the side that is "right", the side that is most persuasive.

"Vote for me, you f-ing morons"

This kind of attitude ain't gonna win, no matter how right you are.

Patrick,
Agreed, his win doesn't speak to the values of people across Illinois. It does speak to success in presenting liberal platform to voters outside of traditional liberal districts.

He was able to appeal to, or to at least acknowledge, the 'values' of mid- and down-state midwestern liberals, most of whom go to church. He won counties that otherwise vote Repub or conservative-Dem. He is a very smart politician, and a part of those smarts is the ability and skill to further a liberal platform while engaging, not alienating, votes in the exurbs.

In other words, he was (and is) a good representive of the kind of 'marketing' that works without betraying his own ideals and values.

True: had the IL. RC not been joke, he'd not have won with.. what was it, 193% of the vote? He still would have won, since the Dem power of Cook County is incredible. But the fact that he was able to get the votes that a)Keyes alienated and b)Obama embraced, he still stands as a good example of how a liberal can appeal to the kinds of voters currently being blamed by some as 'stupid'.

I agree that Obama is very good at breaking--and getting past--the conservative rhetorical frame. I'm delighted at his emergence. I just think he's also had some amazingly lucky breaks. (And used each one of them very skilfully, indeed.)

No one in this thread has said that; thanks for advice & clarification.

I'm recalling conversations outside of the web I've had with folks, and some op/eds in the media where Bush voters are called stupid and uneducated (the current uproar in Slate comes to mind). Comments on various weblogs, etc.(not this one, which is why I feel I can post here & enjoy intelligent conversation!!) Michael Moore comes to mind, and he'd be unimportant I think had he not been prominently displayed at the Dem Conv.

No one in this thread has said that; thanks for advice & clarification.

I'm recalling conversations outside of the web I've had with folks, and some op/eds in the media where Bush voters are called stupid and uneducated (the current uproar in Slate comes to mind). Comments on various weblogs, etc.(not this one, which is why I feel I can post here & enjoy intelligent conversation!!) Michael Moore comes to mind, and he'd be unimportant I think had he not been prominently displayed at the Dem Conv.

No one in this thread has said that; thanks for advice & clarification.

I'm recalling conversations outside of the web I've had with folks, and some op/eds in the media where Bush voters are called stupid and uneducated (the current uproar in Slate comes to mind). Comments on various weblogs, etc.(not this one, which is why I feel I can post here & enjoy intelligent conversation!!) Michael Moore comes to mind, and he'd be not applicable to my point I think had he not been prominently displayed at the Dem Conv.

yikes... what happened? Sorry for that multiposting..

Get up and fight, damn you! I do not need your cheerleading in times of victory, I need you at the walls when the enemy is at hand!

for those of you at VP'04, picture John Wayne saying "On. On. On. On. To the breach. To the breach."

Melissa Singer: Spoke with a conservative friend today who voted Nader (in NYC). He is disgusted with both parties right now; he hates what "conservative" has come to stand for. He is a true conservative--fiscally responsible, believes in small govt and in govt. not getting involved in people's personal lives (in other words, he supports a woman's right to choose and doesn't think it's government's job to define marriage).

I spoke with a conservative colleague a few months ago and felt this wonderful camaraderie with him. At last! A sensible voice!

I quickly realized that, if we had had a political conversation, say, five years ago, I would have probably disagreed so strongly with him that I would have had to restrain myself from yelling and becoming abusive.

I don't think either he or I have changed all that much. It's just that the political climate in this country has moved so far to the right under Bush that a liberal like me and a Reagan Republican like my colleague are starting to look politically superior.

Indeed, I think the Reagan Republicans are one of the great hopes for freedom in America. And that is one hell of a thing.

David Dyer-Bennet: And everybody except -- I don't know what the fuck they are. *Everybody* opposes torture. Don't they? And supports the rule of law? Well, everybody except Republicans, anyway.

Sadly, I think you're 100% wrong on these two points, David.

The Republicans have successfully moved the goal posts on both of these debates, and have made opposing torture and supporting the rule of law to appear to be naive and child-like.

These days, the common wisdom is that everybody knows that torture is unpleasant, but sometimes necessary. And the common wisdom is that everybody knows that rule of law is needed most of the time, but occasionally laws only serve to slow down police in their necessary work.

Of course, the common wisdom is insane on both those points. In reality, torture is counter-productive and evil, and the rule of law is necessary to control bad or overzealous cops (absolute power, corrupting absolutely, etc.)

Hell, even Charles Schumer—flaming liberal Democrat from New York—was quoted not too long ago, post-Abu Ghraibm as saying that of course every reasonable person knows that torture is sometimes necessary. I was flabbergasted as much as if he said, "Of course everyone knows sexual molestation of kindergartners is almost always wrong."

David Moles: Maybe so, but there’s fifty million of them, and calling them bigots isn’t going to make them change their minds or go away. That’s the real problem we on the Left have got to face up to.

Treating bigotry as difference of opinion isn't going to solve anything.

Here's a little something I wrote in my blog:

Homosexuals in America today are the Jews of 1930s Germany. Voting to take away the right of marriage--a right the overwhelming majority of homosexuals never even had in the first place--is another step down the road with camps and gas chambers at the end of it.

It's not inevitable, and we're not close to the gas chambers. But we're moving toward them, and we're a heck of a lot closer to today than we were Monday.

Homosexuals are the enemy of the party that controls the White House, the Congress, and is gaining on the courts.

People who have had, performed, or support abortions are also their enemy.

Why should you and I worry, when we are neither homosexuals nor abortionists? Well, first they came for the homosexuals, and I did not say anything because I wasn't a homosexual, then they came for the abortionists...

They'll get around to the liberals eventually.

I know how crazy all of that sounds, and yet I believe every word of it. A nation doesn't turn to genocide overnight—especially not a freedom-loving nation like the U.S.—they have to work their way toward it. It's a long process. Took at least 30 years or so in Germany.

Do I really believe it will happen? Actually, no. But I think it will be blocked by decent people standing up and point out to the bigots who they are and what they've been doing.

Tom S.'s post is excellent.

I'm having difficulty getting any sense at all from Clark's posts, except that in a general way he seems to be liberal-bashing. Is it just me?

Boycotts are nice to talk about, but they're ineffective.

Janie: So the press thinks we leftwingers ought to reach out to these people. I don't think so.
They do not compromise.

Reach out to the ones whose minds can be changed. Roll over the ones who can't or won't. What else can we do?

Gareth Wilson: "Read Adam Yoshida's ("We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and [our] boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards...That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women")."

Adam Yoshida is a Canadian. Probably not the best example to quote if you're worried about United States Republicans. I'd like to think he's not representative of us right-wing Commonwealth types either.

I don't know about that. I had a political conversation with a Canadian expat, living in New York, a few weeks ago; he seemed very angry and contemptuous about what he called Americans' willingness to lay down and die. He repeated the phrase several times: Americans' willingness to lay down and die.

What I did not say, but found myself thinking, was this: That's pretty big talk for a fucking Canadian, isn't it? I mean, it's not your fight, is it? If we all vote for Bush and flush America down the toilet, you can move back home to Canada and say, "Whoops."

What I also did not say is: If you think this is so fucking important, why don't you become an American citizen and vote—or, even better, enlist.

I'm not saying all Canadians are like this. I'm not even saying most are (hi, Cory!). Indeed, if I were to generalize about Canadians, I'd say that they are, on the whole, excellent people, even-tempered, laid-back, congenial, decent, intelligent. The world needs more Canadians!

But there does seem to be a uniquely vocal minority of Canadians who get off on lecturing American liberals on how worthless and weak we all are. I think there's a bit of a national inferiority complex at work here—and it's particularly wrong-headed because Canada and Canadians have absolutely nothing to feel inferior about; it is an excellent country, one I've enjoyed visiting several times and I've liked almost all of the people I've met from there.

Hell, I even liked the guy I was arguing with a few weeks ago; I just wanted to quite the immortal Warren Oates: "Lighten up, Frances."

(I needed to lighten up myself, by the way. I became exasperated with this guy's unshakeable assumption that, because I questioned the Iraqi invasion, I was therefore a dove. I started shouting at him that I wanted Saddam Hussein dead, I wanted his head on a pike in Time's Square, where I would then piss in his mouth. We were in a bar at the time. It was crowded early on. After I shouted the piss-in-his-mouth thing: not so much with the crowded.)

Greg London: All you prophets of doom need to wake up!

This is no time to throw yourselves on your swords. The enemy is at hand. If you want to impale yourself, do so on the sword of the enemy so you at least slow them down for the rest of us.

What you said. I was framing something similar, but you already got to it.

Of course, what I was going to say was more contemptuous: If you're going to fall on your sword, do it already. If you're going to expatriate to Canada, then go. Get the hell out of the way, because we real Americans have work to do.

tonecluster: "One strategy that comes to mind: Present to the red-counties that we respect your values (though we may not agree with all of them),"

I respect some of their values. Hard work, fair play, rule of law: yes. Keeping the niggers, fags, and towel-heads down: not so much.

I'll close with the words of another Patrick. I've almost committed them to memory: "Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

I will not permit this nation to be destroyed by a boy prince who's never done an honest day's work and who has failed at every job he ever held. And I won't let it be destroyed by the people stupid, deluded or evil enough to support him.

Fuck equality. Delivering a message of equality is subject to being twisted around into a Harrison Bergeron-esque message.

I would say this, instead: Liberalism is the philosophy of fair play. It is the philosophy of a good day's pay for a hard day's work. It is the philosophy that says that every human being is born with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberals know that the "pursuit of happiness" phrase is the one that most Americans don't really understand, and it's most often taken for granted, but it's arguably the most important phrase in that whole document.

Liberalism is the philosophy that celebrates diversity, because we know that the world is made more beautiful by variety of languages, cultures, cuisines, clothing, art forms, customs, religions, skin colors, and body and facial types. I'm a Jew, but my friends all my life have been Christians,. When I was a teen-ager my parents encouraged me to attend Christmas Mass with a Catholic friend; my parents said that (a) Christmas mass is beautiful and (b) it's important to understand other people's religions.

Liberals are tolerant of other people's religious views, political philosophies, and lifestyles, because we are humble and we know that (a) maybe we don't know everything and (b) if you tolerate other people, they tolerate you. If I work on Christmas, one of my co-workers will fill in for me on Rosh Hashannah—and, while I'm working on Christmas, maybe they'll come buy with a nice plate of turkey with the fixin's and some mince pie. Wouldn't that be nice?

Liberalism is also the philosophy of fiscal conservativism. That may not have been the case throughout 90 percent of the 20th Century, but it's certainly true during the Bush Administration. Liberals know that government provides valuable services, and we'll willingly pay for those services.

Liberals think everyone should have good health care. We know that's an impossible goal with 21st Century economics and technology, but we also know that we can come a lot closer to achieving that goal than we have now.

Gee, I was only going to check in here for a minute while I waited to see if Outlook was going to un-hang by itself, or the process needed to be killed and re-started. Oh, well.

Clark said: Besides everybody knows Democrats vote that way because they are all gun grabbers who envy their neighbor's guns and want to tax their ammunition outrageously.

Better keep an eye on your precious bodily fluids too.

"Keeping the niggers, fags, and towel-heads down: not so much. "

Is this really among the values of people across the midwest and the south? A huge percentage of 'em just voted for a Black man in IL; I personally know of Arabs and Sikhs in the rural area of Michigan who have had no problems living amongst the farmers with Dutch and German last names; and so on.

But I hear your point: values of prejudice are not tolerable. I disagree that these values (of keeping them down) are held by the majority across the middle of America, and those people who hold on to these beliefs won't bring themselves to the discussion anyway.

I agree that they are not in the majority, but they're becoming more commonplace.

We've recently seen serious, mainstream political discussion of establishing concentration camps in the U.S. Hell, we already have at least one. It's not a very large one, as such things go, but still, one of any size is shocking.

And.. we may not be able to change minds; I a