brad wrote:
> Well said SA. I have been trying to politically walk and chew gum
> lately when it comes to the Dems. We need to be able to use them when
> we can and not just attack them because they don't support our whole
> program.
>
This is distorted.
^^^^^ CB: No, this and Brad's whole statement is very welcome and needed on this list.
^^^^^
The problem with the DP is NOT that "they don't support our whole program." The 'trouble' with the DP is that they constitute the main enemy.
^^^^ CB: Now this is distorted.
^^^^^
I don't 'criticize' them anymore than Churchill 'criticized' Hitler. They (or rather it, the leadership) oppose (quite successfully most of the time) everything a "left" (if one existed) would favor. This is incoherent.
^^^^^ CB: Churchill is a bad role model to follow.
Carrol's is an ahistorical and inaccurate statement. In the long run the DP has made law half the stuff that the liberal left so vigorously defends today, like Social Security, collective bargaining rights, Medicare, et al.
^^^^^^^
And the statement that "we should use them" is unintelligible. In the first place, "we" do not exit as an entity that can "use" anything.
^^^^^ CB: This is ok.
^^^^^^
Democratic voters are something else -- especially as they are "voters" for only two or three minutes every two or four years. Otherwise, they are just people, some of whom under some conditions will work with particular projects of part groupings of leftists. We don't ask for a person's party identification when she shows up at a demo. Bat in that case "we" aren't "using them; for their own reasons they join us for that particular activity. They even often help plan it and carry it out. "We" here refers not to some nebulous left but to BNCPJ. Most of its members are, I suspect, Democrats when elections come around. That's why political action comes to a screeching halt one year out of four while the population plunges into the strange religious rites that occur at that time.
Carrol
^^^^^^^^ CB: It is NeverNeverland notion that elections won't play a big role in any successful shift of the US to socialism or major left reforms.
There is no effective political arena in the US today that is unconnected to elections and voting. It's boring, dumb, not fun, ritualistic, and the only game in town.