Andrew Golis

alright, so now i’m going to contradict my own complaints and contribute a few thoughts to the “war” for the democratic party. For those of you who need to be caught up (which i’m assuming is everyone who isn’t a weirdo political junky like me), read Ron Brownstein’s piece today in the LA Times:

The money graphs:

“On one front, a liberal operative at a top think tank has accused the Democratic Leadership Council, the principal organization of party centrists, of pushing the party toward a pro-corporate agenda “that sells out America’s working class — the demographic that used to be the party’s base.”

In equally combative terms, a leading young centrist commentator published a manifesto in the New Republic magazine accusing the Democratic left of slighting the struggle against Islamic terrorism and undermining the party’s image on security — an argument instantly embraced and promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council.”

So basically, we’re looking at the center of the party pushing a more hawkish and pro-corporate message and the liberal wing pushing a more populist and anti-war message.

As would be unsuprising to people who know me, I disagree with all of these people. One at a time:

The democratic party needs to be the party of working people. Yes, in tone we must be more populist, but not necessarily in reality. What Clinton did well (sorry, I hate Clinton references because as Dean said recently “Democrats need to get over Clinton, none of us are Clinton,’ but I’m making yet another exception for myself) was to take moderate stances and show how they are the best for working people. We need to be the party of working people, but we need to be clear that helping businesses create jobs is a part of that. Everyone deserves a chance, damnit, and we’re going to give it to them by creating jobs and a fair playing field. It’s that simple.

On the foreign policy thing, Beinart (the writer for the New Republic) is right to critique some of the knee-jerk anti-war types but an unabashed pro-war approach isn’t good either. We have to be clear and concise and work outside of this bullshit “are you pro or anti war” paradigm. As Beinart says, Liberals should be the most aggressive attackers of Islamic Totalitarianism. We stand for multiculturalism, tolerance, and freedom. Eskewing those things for the sake of religion or tradition is the other guys. We must defeat the ideology for the sake of global liberalism. The war in Iraq wasn’t wrong because war is wrong, the war in Iraq was wrong because it was stupid. It was stupid to think that we could be successful in “recreating” the entire region, it was stupid to manufactuare an imminent threat, and most of all, it was stupid not to realize that this would help, not hinder, the cause of the very ideology we must defeat.

We have to squash Islamic (and any other) Totalitarianism for the sake of global liberalism and to do that, we have to be smart and aggressive. We have to be an example of what it means to be strong and respectful, we have to win the war of ideas and manipulation, we have to expose them for the disgusting oppressive people they are. To do this, we have to support those who oppose them in there own world (and understand that this is not the majority that believes the terrorists are right, just that hates us) and crush them millitarily.

Alright, that’s my rant. Maybe I’ll revise it tomorrow… See? I told you we liberals enjoy this self-absorbed reflection! I’m having a great time.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2005 at 9:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.