Some people like identity politics and fail to notice that focusing primarily on identity politics means the divisions between groups are highlighted by such a method.

In contrast, by focusing on remedies by way of policy and programs on solutions to the problems all Americans face like better wages, national health care, reduction of poverty, strengthening our education system, and reducing the obscene and quite insane amount of money we waste on the military and all their exoctic death fantasies annually we unite all the groups in our coalition. But some would rather make it all about themselves and their particular interests and genuinely do not comprehend how putting identity first instead of problems to be solved tends to emphasize division as opposed to unity.

Look at what is happening with the foolish emphasis on identity in the Presidential primary contest as one current example. Obama and Clinton have miniscule policy differences, both are pro-corporate/centrist candidates but those most rabid for one candidate or the other have far too often stridently and loudly seen anything they don't like in the other camp as racism or sexism which has effectively divided Democrats for no good reason and most of the time the offending actions were not racist or sexist unless ya decided to take it that way which is awful easy to do when one's focus is on identity instead of policy and programs for the good of the nation and which benefit all groups. Making identity the primary focus also allows the opposition to paint us as a collection of special interest which is hilarious given the fact that the Republican Party would not exist if it weren't for the special interests of the wealthy and big business in America.

If Democrats focus on doing what is right for the common man and woman in America and their families and forget trying to please the enemies of the common man and woman then our purpose would be clear and we could all fight as one. But there's something almost magical about electing someone and sending them to Washington as a Democrat. Once they arrive in the district, they completely forget the purpose for which they were sent and instead try to play a game of pleasing those who profit off of screwing the common man and woman and their families. They occasionally throw a bone toward the common people, but mostly they do as the powerful wish them to do because of this foolish backdoor conservatism that has weakened the Democratic Party for decades and sent us far from the path we should have been on for years now.

DLC Democrats and other cowardly Democratic strains continue to blur the differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties in the public mind and that keeps us weak. It is difficult to achieve anything like what the people want and good representation demands when a substantial number of Democratic legislators are Democrats in name only.

I feel that libertarianism, as I understand it, is overly concerned with theoretical liberty at the expense of its actual practice.

And both libertarianism and modern American liberalism are overly concerned with rights and liberties, in both theory and practice, as though these are the only good things in life, or the only things we have a joint responsibility to help others secure.

They are not. There are many human goods that consist in neither the freedom from something, nor in the freedom to do something. These final goods consist in the actualization of potentialities, not in the mere possession of those potentialities along with the freedom to pursue the corresponding goods. The big divide here is not, as Mr. Lindsay apparently sees it, between those who are primarily interested in the well-being of individuals and those who are interested in the well-being of societies and collectivities apart from the individuals who make them up. The more important gap is between those who seem to understand that human flourishing and fulfillment, and the excellence of individual human lives, depends on much more than the possession of rights, liberties or freedoms.

We have a mutual obligation to help our fellow human beings achieve the best kind of life they can have, to actualize their highest potential for happiness. And that requires doing much more than securing their freedom from various kinds of oppression. People can have a world of "choices" and still be miserable, because others have failed or neglected to cultivate in them the most rewarding human skills and capacities, and the moral and intellectual virtues necessary to choose wisely and well, thus leaving them in the condition of impulsive, erratic and ignorant beasts exhausting their precious, finite lives in a debased form of existence.

The enlightenment was, not without reason given its historical context, focussed on the oppressive forces of despotic government and religious oppression. And it is good that some modern liberals have more sense than classical liberals or libertarians, and also want to free people from the oppressive power of concentrated economic power along with the oppressive power of governments and ecclesiastical institutions. But liberating people from the unjust assertion of power is only half the struggle. People can be free in that sense, and still be in the intellectual, emotional or moral condition of animals.

The worst legacy of the enlightenment is its lingering, fanatical hatred of government. Government in its highest form is just what rational and mature people do, working together, to organize and regulate their social lives, work and relations for the purpose of achieving important collective and individual goods, goods which could not be achieved without organized common work. Government in the classical liberal tradition is a hostile "other" that tells people what to do and that they want to get off their backs. To the extent this is their predominant image of government, both libertarianism and modern liberalism are stuck in an adolescent frame of mind. The focus should not be only on freeing us from bad government, but on actualizing our potential to achieve the highest forms of collective self-government achievable.

The libertarian conception of human excellence and the intelligent organization of economic life is backward. Possibly the greatest period of achievement in US history occurred during the second World War, when the country transformed itself from a struggling nation of depression, stagnation and underemployment into a wealthy economic colossus. And yet, the United States economy was never more directed and regulated than it was during that period! It's pretty obvious that the achievement of great things does not happen solely through the weakly regulated individual market decisions of a "thousand points of light", who are "free to choose". People need to conceive great projects, and mobilize their collective capacity for vigorous self-government and intelligent social organization to achieve those great things.

Right now, we need to transform our economy in a dramatic way to address the energy and environmental challenges we face. This is not going to happen simply as a result of the individual business decisions of a million hucksters free to hawk their "green" products, growing us out of the mess. People are ready to address themselves to this kind of transformation, but they need a plan. We need libertarians with their childish understanding of human potential to "get off our backs", and get out of the way of the dormant American colossus which is ready to be roused to accomplish the next great thing.

BevD, I think your notion is worth consideration, Obama hasn't convinced me of his "liberal" inclinations either.
It is still my idea that the attempt to wrangle the definition of "liberal" into a tag line construct is a mistake. It is a definition foisted on progressives by "conservatives" as boogeyman material...like "communist." We are so adrift from reality that one poster in this venue wanted to argue the point that Cheney is a communist...this came from a seemingly intelligent kid.
Let's define ourselves with our own vocabulary and stop trying to fit into the emperor's old clothes.

DanK - it's not that liberals and libertarians are overly concerned with negative rights (what the govt can't do), it's that America as a whole is overly concerned with negative rights. This makes historical sense because, originally, the federal government was designed to not interfere with States' power. In this libertarian/federalist conception of government power, nothing philosophically constrains States from adopting and promulgating positive rights (right to housing, home, food, camping every weekend, etc.). That is, until the negative rights conception of liberty was used by activist judges (in the 1800's) to constrain all sorts of State action.
I totally agree; it's weird that libertarians shun the non-economic collective's (representative government) determinations and exercises of power but seem to embrace economic collectives' (markets, corporations) exercising of power over individuals. It seems to me that the ideal of democracy and the promise of representative government is that no matter one's resources, one has a voice coequal with everyone else's. This balances the unequal economic power exerted by individuals and groups who have far more wealth and resources.
Libertarianism puts all of society's eggs in one basket - that the exercise of power based upon distribution of resources leads to the most freedom. This is not rational; individuals and corporations inherit accumulated wealth without 'earning' it, thus a good portion of society's resources are deployed by those who (in a libertarian rationalization of economic efficiency), by not having earned the resources, do not have any better chance of efficient (socially productive) use of those resources than a random person. Libertarians may say that such aggregations of wealth are exploited by entrepeneurs (those who can and do efficiently use resources); but there is no grounds for believing that those with access to such accumulations are the best suited, rather, it is those who have positioned themselves in(or have lucked into) social networks with access. It is in the breaking up these accumulations that libertarians charge liberals with socialist redistribution programs.
If redistribution of wealth is all that it takes to be socialist, then we're all socialists. However, the redistribution of resources in an American liberal regime doesn't necessarily destroy the amount of privately-held property, rather, it ensures (or attempts to ensure) that the philosophical ideals of meaningful liberty are met. When the least of us need not worry about housing, food or a deleterious environment then society can go about distributing the balance of resources via free markets.

Ack, long post. Well, I'll let you folks take it apart.

I dabbled with libertarianism long ago and rejected it. I saw it for what it was...a naked attempt to redistribute wealth upward.

I have adopted quite a while ago a philosophy of Libertarian Socialism, a la Noam Chomsky...so in short I would be considered an anarchist and much farther to the left politically than democrats, lol. Classical "Libertarianism" is a sham philosophy imo, at least democrats and their occasional embrace of a true "liberal" philosophy are on the right path.

All that said: Socialism, and more specifically the ridiculous conflation of socialism/Marxism with the communist totalitarianism of the 20th century, whether Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, serves as a wonderful strawman for libertarians to burn in effigy in argument after argument. The "coercive," or in a less sinister incarnation, "nanny" state is blamed for all of society's ills.

Obviously, this ignores a number of basic facts on the ground (the need for reasonable social policy, for instance). But it also ignores the fact that private institutions can be just as oppressive and unfair as public ones.

That said, I certainly think that reframing liberal doctrine more explicitly around "freedoms" and the difference between freedoms and social policy isn't necessarily a bad idea. The real problem that liberals have on the ground is having to deal with the unholy coalition of social conservatives and economic neoliberals that the American conservative movement has built. Either that coalition comes apart (as it seems to be doing!), or we figure out how to ignore both sides.

The science of economics has a large impact on our society. You can deny it but you would also have to deny evolution. I encourage all of the commenter and readers here to think about science in their posts. Do the children have a better chance of being successful? Do the parents have a better chance of having children? Think about it.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument why anyone should pay a higher tax RATE (as opposed to total tax) simply because the market values their labor at a higher rate.

They should pay a higher tax rate because they make more use of the common resources than people who make less money that's why. If a primary purpose of government is to protect property rights, it makes sense that those accumulating property tha fastest are getting the most protection- simply becuase they have the most to protect and therefore should pay the most.