Great points; thanks for your well-thought and measured comments.

Posted at June 10, 2005 2:57 PM in response to Plenty of Disrespect to Go Around

I wonder exactly what troubles you about the issues Progressive Guy raises in his post. Funny--for the all the imagined care you bring to your response, you don't bother to actually engage his critique but ask him to play nicer. But, with all due respect, why should he. If you are "troubled" by gay marriage, and abortion, good for you, but what right have you to insist that your "troubles" should limit what a consenting adult can or cannot do. More importantly, you have the duty as a citizen in the greatest democracy on earth to explain yourself rather than hide behind your polite "but I beg to disagree." If you disagree, fine but please, please, please don't say God told you it was ok to discriminate or to otherwise limit the rights of others.

Finally, ProgressiveGuy is on the money when he turns the right's rhetoric back on you charging conservative Christians with destroying the American promise of liberty and justice for all. If his post offended your sensibilities, then, to quote his subject line "Amen and so forth."

Posted at June 10, 2005 5:44 AM in response to Poor, Uneducated and Easy to Command

In principle, sure, progressive Democrats need to break bread with conversative Christians and to find a common ground of mutual respect. I am white, liberal Jewish male who has been active in the pro-choice movement at points in my life; but I can understand opposition to abortion on moral grounds. For me gay and lesbians should be allowed to wed, rear children, and divorce just like most Americans; if my Christian neighbors prefer to be heterosexual, I have no problem with that.  But here is the rub.

As progressivediehard responded to Marshall, the moment you insist your god and you have the right to limit a woman's reproductive freedom, to deny gay and lesbians the full rights of citizenship and equal protection, to oppose program's for the less advantaged, then you can call yourself whatever pleases you but what you are is anti-democratic. The first premise in America is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--all of which you may pursue up until the point you deny those rights to your neighbor. Democracy is not the tyranny of the majority in as much as it is the protection of the minority from the majority's tyranny. How readily and forcefully we make the ideals of equality before the law and justice for all available to every new comer to the American experience is the truest measure of our democracy. More than the unfolding of Christian beliefs (as the right would have us belief) American history is the story of gradual, and most times, painful democratization, extending the right's of citizenship to unlanded white males, women, black Americans...to be continued. Progressives can rightly claim that the American story mirrors our most important tenets; our faith in progress and a more humane world finds embodiment in the American experience itself.

So, it is not so much their faith as it is their anti-democratic spirit that liberals react to when faced with conservative Christians.

Finally, I would object to the use of the term religious when referring to conservative Christians exclusively. I am a man of faith, religious-not in the doctrinaire or fundamentalist sense--but more akin to  those early Americans who--without much of a sense of an organized faith--were awash in a sea of faith (to borrow from Jon Butler) equal parts folklore, superstition and an abiding hope in tomorrow. We cannot allow one group to own the term "religious" and to set the terms of faith for all of us.

Posted at June 9, 2005 8:41 AM in response to Plenty of Disrespect to Go Around

To the already impressive list, I would add

1) Jill Lepore's The Name of War

2)Donna Merwick's Death of a Notary

3)Paul Gilje's Liberty on the Waterfront

Posted at June 8, 2005 3:20 PM in response to History

While it is certainly attractive to certain bloggers and academics to imagine a country awash in moderates and independents struggling against the evil corruption of the right and left wing power brokers in DC the truth is less noble but more telling. So-called moderates in DC are political opportunists hoping to capitalize on the right's over-reaching and the left's disorganization, posing (these moderates) as more sane, noble and rational.  The middle, moderates, triangulators are no less a product of Washington than Tom Delay is; the single difference is that while Delay has managed to fatten himself on pork and power while the moderates chomp at the edges (for now) on a diet of political crumbs. These moderates are no less hungry for political advantage, no more noble, no more representative of the American people than Bush is.

When Americans identity as moderates or independents they aren't endorsing John McCain, Ben Nelson, or the DLC.  They  are more than anything expressing a boredom (at best) with the American political scene or (at worst) complete ingorance. For that matter, ask most Americans what the recent bankruptcy bill means or the number of reps in the House and you will get blank stares. Public opinion is a measure of the failure of our political system to inform and engage her citizens on vital issues. To say you are an independent means you aren't engaged in either party and sadly (but understandably) that you care precious little about the debate itself.

The key to 08 and beyond for progressives is to force our party to respond in a meaningful way to the Republican onslaught, to expose as Dean recently did the excesses of the other side while simultaneously offering concrete solutions rooted in those great American ideals of fairness and equal opportunity for all. That is what Bill Clinton spoke of so often and forcefully during his first campaign and that is what we ought to remember. When we back away from purposeful legislation and goverance( that is the stuff of leadership) and jockey for the intellectual quicksand of the so-called middle ground we lose our standing with American voters and find our party ever sinking under the weight of beltway debates that matter precious little to most voters. Let us hope we can reach for higher ground.

Posted at June 8, 2005 7:33 AM in response to The Center Cannot Hold

The only thing broken about today's progressive wing of the Party is the tired old record that Gitlin and others play. Unlike Gitlin and his "Blame the Liberals" Choir I, gasp, actually work for a wage. I'm not a frustrated graduate student nor am I a tenured "radical" like Gitlin. I work Monday-Friday and mandatory overtime if the boss calls for it so allow me to shine the light of reality on Gitlin and his brothers- and sisters-in-arms who sip Chardonnay at their cozy conferences. The reason working class Americans have either abandoned the Democrats or worse yet now ignore party politics all together is this: Democrats have stopped fighting and dreaming large enough to touch the lives of working people. Only with ideas bold enough and a voice of sufficient pitch and reach can Democrats regain the vital center of the American political imagination--a center that Democrats in the past defined and controlled because of progressive politics and policies. Playing to the personalities and egos of so-called moderate Democrats may win us narrow electoral victories but cost the party a soul. With this loss comes political irrelevance in which we are left to argue about conferences and speakers while academics debate Lakoff and frames (and Gitlin can smuggly reference his own work.)

Posted at June 5, 2005 12:44 PM in response to The Broken Heart of Progressive America

I affirm the position staked by those who share an immediate distrust for the direction of the initial days of TPM Cafe. Instead of debating the merits and meaning of information politics, splitting academic hairs over the meaing and import of Lakoff, and even trashing Peggy Noonan (something I myself quite enjoy)how about we have an actual policy discussion, how about we create a forum that balances philosophical passion with actual policy proposals. To the degree that Josh and the other managers of this site want to be a source for progressive politics, how about developing areas that offer primers on issues like social security, defense spending and funding, corporate tax loopholes, etc. Married with the already burgeoning philosophical/theoretical discussions witnessed here, more practical, information-driven areas might provide more balance and might lead to eventual discussions and answers to the vital questions being raised by the (heretofore) one-sided conversation. If progressives want to lead, we have to start by educating and organizing, bringing more people to this forum than frustrated graduate student types. The history and funding of social security anyone?

Posted at June 4, 2005 9:53 AM in response to What "Information Age" Politics Means

In fact I have read all of Lakoff's work and stand firm in my position. It is one thing for you to simply recite a lists of his work: heck, anyone with access to a bookstore could do the same. Exactly, since you are so convinced, does Lakoff contribute that is so seeminly brilliant that you cannot bring yourself to actually divulge here?

Posted at June 4, 2005 9:12 AM in response to Principled Opposition

Someone did the world a grave disservice the day they first thrust a writing utensil into poor Peggy's hand.  Ever since that dark and regrettable day she has managed to craft some of the worst prose and arguments in the English language. She is (and this is telling) the right's attempt at a literati. What she saw at the revolution, to borrow (painfully I assure you) from the title of her 80's memoir,  must have purged all reason, sense and humanity from her soul and left her, as she now writes, devoid of judgement, literary skill or anything ressembling a moral compass. 

Felt is a traitor, perhaps responsible for the deaths of innocent men and women = Bush is a hero is that what we are suppose to believe??  I wonder if Peggy still remembers the day her last two brain cells drowned in the small cess pool  that used to be her soul?  What was that day like for her?

Posted at June 2, 2005 3:27 PM in response to Hero, or Demented Money-grubbing Opportunistic Traitor?

Watching Bush reminds me of the too many beers I had in college. The only difference is that he is the supposed leader of the free world and I was stumbling my way around second-term calculus attempting to appear as concerned about Taylor's power theorem as I was about my hangover.

Let us hope Bush was a better drunk when he was merely drinking and perhaps snorting coke than the drunk on power and privelege he portrays today. At least the formerly drunk Bush did not send thousands of American men and women to be maimed and/killed in war based on lies and arrogance.

Heck, maybe it is time Bush thought about drinking beer again. Maybe we would find him more agreeable--even charming. Maybe we could convince him to start telling the truth. I'll buy the first twenty-one rounds.

Posted at June 1, 2005 11:59 AM in response to The more I watch Bush on TV these days, the lighter my heart becomes.