[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

[ravi]

On Jul 24, 2009, at 10:07 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> Carrol writes:
>
>> You still don't understand. Of course my views of the DP are not
>> dispassionate. They are in fact quite passionate. Why shouldn't they
>> be?  You seem to hold the odd idea (as does Doug) that the only  
>> grounds
>> for passion are moral. A Christian hangover I guess.  I hate the DP  
>> and
>> want to destroy it. It is a major source of immense human misery -  
>> but
>> it is a mere superstition to think that those feelings require a
>> moralistic basis.
> ===========================================
> But passionate hatred is no substitute for analysis, and you rarely  
> if ever
> seem to engage with the substantive issues. We still don't know, for
> example, whether you accept that the Democrats in the US and their  
> social
> democratic counterparts abroad represent different interests and  
> values than
> the Republicans and the other conservative parties to their right,  
> and that
> these differences find expression in domestic and foreign policy,
> particularly when the masses pressure their leaders to act on their  
> demands.
> It's not by chance that trade union rights, civil rights  
> legislation, and
> the major social programs have been won under Democratic  
> administrations
> against fierce Republican resistance. Such gains illustrate that  
> mass-based
> left-centre parties are CONTRADICTORY formations which demand a more
> considered response than the Manichean one you habitually provide.
>

Does a gradualist programme peter out? All the gains you list above  
seem to be either tapped out or in regression. And if Democrats are  
"the good cops" to the GOP "bad cop", does that mean we can attribute  
even a bit of the gains to them? Why not rather see it as the system's  
way of granting a few concessions in the face of rebellion (the active  
socialist movements at the beginning of the 20th century, and the  
civil rights movements of the mid-20th)?

It seems that even the social democratic European counterparts (much  
further left of the Dems, yes?) are in retreat.

Carrol is merely stating things as they are. Its Manichaean only if  
you ignore his differentiation between the DP and [some of] the  
liberals/progressives who vote for them.

	--ravi

--
Anyone who takes an effort to intellectually challenge the status quo  
and established habits is infinitely more venerable than hacks  
defending that status quo and established habits, regardless of the  
truth function of their propositions. -- W.Sokolowski