Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>
> Not to belabour the point, but a good example of utilizing "moral values" to
> win support for progressive social change was the rhetoric employed by the
> New Deal, such as FDR's "four freedoms speech", later raised to iconographic
> status in Norman Rockwell's famous series of posters. An excerpt:
>
When he made that speech his administration had already officially changed its name from New Deal to Win the War. It was wartime rhetoric. One can only guess how a healthy Roosevelt would have tried (or not tried) to implement all of that in his fourth term after the war ended. He had gone along with the replacement of WPA with PWA in 1939 or 1940, and that in itself was pretty much a repudiation of everything leftists dreamt the DP was or could be.
The rhetoric of the left has to be (it's not really a matter of choice) the rhetoric of solidarity, not of moral values. To give up the rhetoric of solidarity for some supposedly more persuasive rhetoric (which won't work anyhow) is to give up, period.
"Moral values" is a _mere_ name, and it is a name for something vicious: anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-foreigners, anti-black.
A political party serving the ruling class needs false rhetoric; a political movement serving working people and opposing imperialism can't use empty labels or slogans.
Carrol