I am not saying that we reject left liberal or progressive movements and replace them with conservative ones, only that we recognize and are honest with ourselves about why we are in those struggles: as a means not as an end. That is not to say that there aren't intrinsic positive attributes to these struggles, only that the left views these as necessary steps towards a society free of exploitative relationships.
Take gay marriage. The left supports it because it both thinks it is correct to oppose the oppression of same sex couples, but also as a means to build a movement and chip away at the forces of capital. When people are in denial about the latter and present themselves as only interested in the former they are doing a disservice to both the cause and the left. They are dishonest about their instrumental use of the cause and this does damage to it and they deny the left and separate the struggle against capital from the movement, which strengthens capital.
I would think that at least here and spaces like this we should be able to cull out our position from the general understanding of politics. The inability to do even this minimal step is instructive on the problems we face.
Brad
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>[WS:] As I see it, this whole left/right discourse is basically a mental
football match - the teams compete not because they stand for different
values but because they are simply opposing teams, and the rules of the game
require that opposing teams compete against each other.
Both historical "left" and "right" have their shares of authoritarianism, xenophobia, populism, liberalism, internationalism, and democratic governance - so attribute some of these traits to one side but not the other is not grounded in facts. What makes a difference is that is a specific historical circumstance, a course taken by one side is almost automatically opposed by the other. For example, gun ownership is neither "left" or "right" , but under current political circumstance is a bone of contention - one side defends it because the other side opposes it and vice versa.
Ditto for environmentalism or government regulation. In itself, neither is "left" or "right", but the US left espouses both because they are signifiers of anti-capitalism, while the "right" opposes them because they are "left" issues.
The entire modern political "discourse" has been reduced to a shouting match between opposing camps. The main goal of this match is to shut down the opponents, not to decide merits or demerits of their "positions." In fact, there are no "positions" in a conventional meaning of the term i.e. logically coherent systems based on a set of fundamental principles.
Anything goes as long as it scores points for "our" team. Thus, the same health care system that was a brain child of Heritage Foundation and the Republican governor of Massachusetts became "socialism" when proposed by a Democrat president. This shift defies conventional logic, but is perfectly consistent with the logic of a football game - the very same maneuver can be either good or bad, depending is "our" team is scoring or losing points.
For that reason, I am rapidly losing interest in political discourse, just as I have zero interest in spectator sports.
Wojtek