The last parenthetical statement is of particular interest to me. Recently, I was discussing with a civil rights activist, the recent bruhaha over a gay commentator's gripe against immigration reform (http://platosbeard.org/archives/71). In short, the complaint was that same-sex marriage should trump immigration as a left/liberal/Democrat issue. The person I was talking with, surprisingly, found this opinion unsurprising and offered his opinion that a significant segment of gay activism (and attitude) was "single-issue" driven.
While watching Fahrenheit 911 the better half and I were unimpressed with (while entirely sympathetic to) the saga of the military mother Lisa Lipcomb [sp?] in the context of an activist with a moral position. Our opinion turned out to be quite different from that of others! While we considered her change of heart (or activism) a natural outcome of a contingent event (the loss of a son), and therefore not a moral stance, others found this personal reaction to be the very thing that placed her on high moral ground (I am not here addressing the entirely different point, which I agree with, that her personal loss lends her the gravitas and immunity to state what is true/right).
To put it a bit brutally: its natural and understandable to be anti-war if you lose a loved one to it. It is natural to be pro-gay-rights if you are gay. And so on (and perhaps one has to be a non-human animal to ever feel empathy towards them). But such natural attitudes do not guarantee a progressive outlook. Rather, a progressive attitude a priori determines the consistency of such issue positions. (Zinn quoting Buffie Sainte Marie: I see visions not because I am an Indian, but because they are visions to be seen).
But what of the Western Left? Either I do not understand their theorizing, or the left orthodoxy IMHO has been a bit clever on this front. Class (working class) analysis (struggle) has been cast not as a single-issue (identity) but as the mother of all issues. We are told (as I understand it): everything is and should be explained as [arising from] class issues. Morality, with its odour of religion, is an impediment to the "science" of this new Left, and seen by their view, rightly, as a patronizing hand-out.
But without some such identity or issue based definition, what is a progressive attitude or cause or way of thought? I am of course implying in my words above that it is (a) not based on the identity of an individual or a group and (b) it is based on some universal notions of morality (that can be deductively ascertained without resort to biology). This I think can be defined in a non-circular fashion and can be loosely labelled by the term "humanism" (the Old Left).
BklynMagnus writes, while calling on those interested in progressive change: "queers can never remain silent when people are persecuted and oppressed for their sexual behaviour". Indeed, queers being those very same people, would be cowards not to do so (though such cowardice would be understandable given the violence that they are met with). As someone interested in progressive change himself, I assume he would also write, outside this context, "queers can never remain silent when people are persecuted and oppressed" ... period. That would make (or keep) them progressives.
Thoughts?
--ravi
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