Carl responded: Not to mention 20th and 21st century liberals haven't been interested in lots of them. AFAIC, the practice of singing hosannas to liberalism should have expired with Isaiah Berlin.
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The content of competitive elections has been skewed by money, other forms of wealth and power since day one of the liberal-bourgeois revolution. And today, competitive elections are essentially fixed so that only the candidates of the rich are given media legitimacy/official name recognition--it's a competition between those who already endorse the continuation of wage-slavery and all that, that implies in terms of the democratization of power. This, in turn works to castrate/clitorally circumcise universal sufferage. As for our civil liberties, they are being subverted and undermined by the same powers who undermine democracy e.g. the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is nowadays more form than content. For the realities of democratic decision making....well, see the above and then think about how much "freedom of speech" applies to you as an employee in the workplace or on some corporation's private property or within governmental institutions like the military or the ubiquitous national security agencies.
I'm sure everyone on this list and maybe even an overwhelming majority in the general public would agree to expanding and deepening our democratic rights. But, the people who actually rule us will fight that desire tooth and nail and to be sure, most of them are in leadership positions of the bureaucratic structures which rule the rest of us, from the major parties and corporations to the tops in the business unions. They all call themselves "liberal", "conservative", "advocates of the free market and free trade" and "democrats" and/or "repulicans" with small "ds" and "rs". Some even label themselves "Social Democrats" or "men of God". These people see us as pawns in their in their very undemocratic game and they feel no threat to their power as long as we see ourselves as mere consumers, narrow individuals, pursuing our personal, familial interests in competition with the Smiths and Jones for the latest i-Pods.
Mike B)
An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org/
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