> formerly the Party of Lincoln! -- but maybe civil
> rights is another one of those lifestyle things that
> it's bad for long haired layabouts of
> nose-ring-wearing students to bother about.
This is a rather disingenuous characterization of what Taibbi was saying. The piece was not perfect, to be sure, but Taibbi makes a very good point:
That point is that it is a happy reality that the left has made serious advances in the last 50 years in a number of arenas: women's rights, gay rights, civil rights, free speech rights, environmental politics, and so forth. This is not to say that further advances are not necessary, or that some of these gains are not being reversed. _But_, IMO, many on the left continue to overestimate the subversive value of working in these arenas. Emphatically, it is a good thing that these issues are no longer considered nearly as subversive as they used to be, but that is because capitalism thrives in a world that is far less sexist, racist and homophobic -- and capitalism has proven good at adapting to popular concern about the state of the environment. I would submit that organizing on behalf of a formerly-reviled, now-mainstream organization like the ACLU or the NAACP is only marginally more subversive than organizing a golf tournament to raise funds to cure breast cancer. What is wrong with saying 'look, we've made decent progress in these other areas, let's get back to economics for awhile'?
-WD