03-12-2017, 06:27 PM
(02-16-2017, 09:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think people more on the left are going to need to work with people who may have some different opinions, or who emphasize concerns that are not our first priority. I think that largely means accepting different opinions among those on the left. We are still going to advocate for our positions on various issues, whether it be gun control, abortion, civil rights for all people, social and health programs, the environment and climate, peace and security, fair taxes, fair wages and salaries, fair trade. We will have different opinions, but we will need to accept them, if we can, in order to support a common set of candidates and movements. Politics requires building alliances, and different groups with different interests working together and supporting each other. Ideological purity may be desirable, but may not be a winning strategy. And in these times, we need to start winning again. And we must demand that our elected officials keep their promises and stand against the opposition.
We have little to say about gun control, abortion, or school prayer that will satisfy the Right. There are some people who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the Right people get their way. You can't argue with people who believe that the only purpose in life is to avoid the damnation of a harshly-judgmental God Who punishes any deviation from His Plan with the sort of retribution that I might expect God to give such people as Holocaust perpetrators.
If things are so gone for us liberals that the only way to make progressive reform possible is to create an economic order as harsh as what we had a century ago, then this country is lost. If we can't secede we must either acquiesce, emigrate, or die.
So what can we do for the religious fundamentalists? The best that we can offer them is that fair pay means that they can better serve God -- that they might tithe more because they have more to tithe. Maybe we can show that environmental stewardship is part of the Christian responsibility to God's world. Better education? The more knowledgeable that people are, the better they can resist the wiles of the Devil.
Maybe we can show that the Master Class is grossly immoral. Why do they want ever more? So that they can indulge themselves even more fully?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.