Sean Andrews wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 19:43, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
>
> Oh no this guy just doesn't get it. They really should have been
> reaching out across the aisle to them, trying to bring them on board.
> You have to win over the TPers with rational arguments and a
> sympathetic leftist ear. Otherwise the only thing that standing up to
> them will produce is...
I know Seanis mostly having fun here (and the whole post is delightful), but I want to use this point to say something further on what is a liberal. The discussion of that topic was important, collecting and focusing a good deal of political history. But I don't think anything in that discussion dealt with the ways in which ACTUALLY EXISTING liberalism clutters and is a barrier to left orgnizing., The sentiment Sean mocks here exists, powerfully, in less easily mockable form. Let me give as a key example the sign MoveOn inserted into the anti-war movement and which so many people new to politics (themselves liberals in some sense) grasped with glee: "Support the troops: Bring them Home." That slogan makes sense only as an attempt to "persuade" those who support the war. And no anti-war movement does that directly. It operates by mobilizing those who are actively anti-war and "reaching out" to those who are passively anti-war, anti-war without knowing they are. The chief problem of any anti-war movement (and it has only its agitational signs and slogans to use here) is to reach out to those who think resistance is futile and remain passive for that reason.
The actually existing liberals relevant to left organizing then are those liberals who agree with us but are convinced change cxomes through changing peoples's mind.
Carrol