Liberalism

I can't stop giggling about this comment from Sen. Mitch McConnell (DailyKos):

"It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France," the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Times in an unusually blunt interview at his office in the Capitol. "Americans may want change, but the question is, what kind of change?"

Well, let's see. France's healthcare system has been rated the best in the world (the U.S. ranked 37th). They have the 11th-highest life expectancy (the U.S. is 45th) and the 6th-lowest infant mortality rate (the U.S. is 43rd). French employees get 5 guaranteed weeks of vacation every year. (In the U.S., that number is zero.) And yet, despite having all that vacation and the burden of "socialized medicine" and only one-fifth the population of the U.S., France is the world's 6th-largest economy.

So, yeah, Democrats want to make the U.S. more like France. It wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.

So once you've finished the reading list of anti-conservative books, you can get started on these:

• Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, Eric Alterman
• The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman
• Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America, Robert Reich
• Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success, Paul Waldman
• Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, George Lakoff
• Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation, Jeffrey Feldman

Paul Waldman:

When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had their recent squabble over Ronald Reagan – Obama noting that Reagan successfully altered the country's political trajectory, Clinton focusing attention on the disastrous effects of Reagan's policies – neither one mentioned one of the most important pieces of Reagan's legacy: the impact he had on conservatism and liberalism as ideologies and movements. But the question of where each of these candidates might leave the country ideologically could ultimately be the most lasting determinant of the success of the next Democratic presidency. Unfortunately, neither Clinton nor Obama has addressed the question directly. But there are hints in both campaigns about where they might take their own followers, and where political activists on both sides will be eight years from now.

This is in some ways a more important question than the "theory of change" argument that Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards had for many months. It isn't just about how you move legislation or what kinds of coalitions you build, but about the ideological flavor your presidency carries, and what kind of shape your party and your movement is in once you're done.

From one of my favorite authors, Steven Pinker, writing in the New York Times Magazine:

When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. [...]

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry...

Paul Krugman in Slate:

[A] word about terms — specifically, liberal vs. progressive. Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a progressive.

And here's the thing: Progressives have an opportunity, because American public opinion has become a lot more liberal. [...]

But any attempt to change America's direction, to implement a real progressive agenda, will necessarily be highly polarizing. Proposals for universal health care, in particular, are sure to face a firestorm of partisan opposition. And fundamental change can't be accomplished by a politician who shuns partisanship.

I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred."

The Center for American Progress has created four new ads that explain the progressive movement and what progressives stand for (see all four ads at thinkprogress.org).

In particular, the first two ads are very good and essentially follow Paul Waldman's advice to create a "progressive master narrative":

The conservative master narrative tells a story that begins in the 1960s, but this progressive master narrative crosses the scope of American history, seeing it as a continuous progression to realize the noble ideas on which the country was founded. It posits government as a force that, when it works properly, creates justice, security, and opportunity. The abolishment of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the G.I. Bill, the creation of Social Security and Medicare, and the civil rights and environmental movements are all events driven by progressives that fit within this narrative.

Given these ads and Kos's recent comment in Newsweek that "Democrats believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good," I think Democrats and progressives are finally getting their act together and figuring out a coherent way to explain what we believe.

Kos of Daily Kos is now a regular contributor to Newsweek. His most recent column argues that Democrats will do fine in 2008 as long as we draw a clear contrast between what we believe and what Republicans believe:

Democrats [...] believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good and thus are invested from the beginning in governing competently, efficiently and fairly. Their ideology demands it. And what better way for Democratic candidates to illustrate this contrast than by running against the Republican trifecta — the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court — that governed throughout most of Bush's eight years in office?

Democrats should and will use Bush and his destructive policies on the campaign trail as the primary example of what happens when people who hate government are elected to run it. The message will be that Bush isn't a historical anomaly: he's the embodiment of modern conservatism.

If Americans want willfully ineffective government, they'll have a Republican Party desperate for their votes. But with 70 percent of the American people thinking the nation is on the wrong track, it's clear they expect the opposite. As long as Democrats make that contrast clear — and Bush's record will be integral to that argument — they should be headed for victory in 2008.

There's been a lot of debate going on at AMERICAblog over whether transsexuals should be included in the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) along with gays and lesbians (the votes are there to pass an LGB bill, but not an LGBT bill). And while that subject itself is somewhat off-topic for this blog, John Aravosis at AMERICAblog has some interesting things to say about how liberals and conservatives approach the challenge of getting difficult legislation passed (Salon.com):

Conservatives understand that cultural change is a long, gradual process of small but cumulatively deadly victories. Liberals want it all now. And that's why, in the culture wars, conservatives often win and we often lose. While conservatives spend years, if not decades, trying to convince Americans that certain judges are "activists," that gays "recruit" children, and that Democrats never saw an abortion they didn't like, we often come up with last-minute ideas and expect everyone to vote for them simply because we're right. Conservatives are happy with piecemeal victory, liberals with noble failure. We rarely make the necessary investment in convincing people that we're right because we consider it offensive to have to explain an obvious truth. [...]

Civil rights legislation — hell, all legislation — is a series of compromises. You rarely get everything you want, nor do you get it all at once. Blacks, for example, won the right to vote in 1870. Women didn't get that same right until 1920. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided a large umbrella of rights based on race, religion, sex and national origin, but failed to mention gays or people with disabilities. People with disabilities were finally given specific rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, but gays as a class have still to be granted a single civil right at the federal level. If we waited until society was ready to accept each and every member of the civil rights community before passing any civil rights legislation, we'd have no civil rights laws at all. Someone is always left behind, at least temporarily. It stinks, but it's the way it's always worked, and it's the way you win.

The Campaign for America's Future, which organized this week's Take Back America conference (see next post), released a review of public-opinion research showing that conservatives are simply lying when they say the U.S. is a conservative country (tompaine.com):

Polling by the Pew Research Center shows 84 percent support to increase the minimum wage. Gallup shows that more Americans sympathize with unions than with companies in labor disputes (52 to 34 percent). NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polls indicate that nearly twice as many people think the U.S. is more hurt than helped by the global economy (48 to 25 percent). [...]

[R]esearch by the University of Michigan National Election Studies reveals that 69 percent of Americans believe government should care for those who can't care for themselves. Twice as many people want "government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending" (43 percent) as want government to provide fewer services "in order to reduce spending" (20 percent). Majorities say we need a bigger government "because the country's problems are bigger" (59 percent) and a "strong government to handle complex problems" (67 percent). [...]

On health care, Gallup's latest poll reveals that 69 percent of Americans think it's the government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage. Only 28 percent disagreed. Polls by CBS/New York Times in February 2007 reveal that 76 percent of Americans would give up the Bush tax cuts to make sure all Americans have access to health care.

The article also reveals the majority positions on abortion, sex education, energy policy, and global terrorism.

Welcome to the new readers from DFA's Training Academy over the weekend! At the training I mentioned the book Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success by Paul Waldman. Here are some goodies to encourage you to read Waldman's book:

• Elections aren't about issues (they're about identity)
• Conservatism is a failed ideology
• The progressive identity complex
• Interview with Paul Waldman at Buzzflash

What do you think the essence of your political beliefs are? What does it all come down to for you? I got a lot of different answers, but most of them contained some version of the idea of common responsibility, and the fact that our fates are tied together. The way that I decided to articulate that is to say that "we're all in it together."

One of the important elements of that is that it implies its opposite. Conservatives have always been very good at building contrasts, and that's another thing that progressives have to start doing. We need to say that we're all in it together — that's what progressives believe. And what do conservatives believe? Well, they believe that we're all on our own, and we're all out for ourselves.

Then I take this fundamental idea and I say, okay — where do we go from this basic idea that we're all in it together? I build out five fundamental principles — government that works for everyone, opportunity, security, individual freedom, and progress. From those five ideas that grow out of the idea that we're all in it together, you can go on to discuss almost any policy issue. Why do we believe in Social Security? Well, it's because we believe in security. Why do progressives support education? Because they believe in opportunity. This whole pyramid that I construct is not going to be a bumper sticker, but it provides a way of thinking and talking about progressive ideas that people can use and repeat, and use to contrast. That's critically important.