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Edited on Fri Mar-10-06 12:35 PM by welshTerrier2
we have become a house divided against ourselves ... we have fallen prey to the myth of the political spectrum ... the Party plots its political strategy on this paradigm ... if you view the political spectrum as a scale from 0 to 100, Democrats "own" from 60 to 90; republicans "own" from 0 to 40 and the battle is for those on either side of 50 ...
in the context of human rights, this underlying belief leads to some very abhorrent policies and tactics ... for example, it offers a "don't ask; don't tell" compromise to gays in the military ... of course, if you "tell", because you're obviously not as worthy if we "find out about you", you're immediately identified as an "undesirable" and you get kicked out ... that's the marginalization that results from the tactics of political compromise ... campaigning for a little makes it much more difficult to gain a lot ...
the underlying tactical approach is that we'll fight for crumbs which is, after all, better than nothing ... and we're more likely to meet with some success if we're flexible and don't ask for "too much" ... you're asked: "don't you want to win?" ... "can't you see this is better than what the republicans are offering?" ... "if you stick to your purist beliefs, you'll wind up with nothing" ...
implicit in these tactics is the misguided belief that by achieving a small gain, you are not hurting the broader objective ... the truth is that you are absolutely reinforcing the discrimination by fighting for crumbs ...
such tactics are justified by the fallacious argument that they are politically necessary ... their proponents see themselves as the pragmatists while you are the head-in-the-clouds, rigid, naive, immature idealist ... the belief is that it's easier to achieve a little than a lot ... some would even go so far as to call it common sense and call it obvious ...
but it's neither ...
the objective of idealistic thought is to offer a vision, a concept, a paradigm, a model, a "could be", and a simple distinction between right and wrong ... it need not be inflexible or black and white or intolerant ... but idealism, as a tactic, should start with the premise that we will say what we believe is right and fair and we will fight for it ... idealism need not turn its back on political realities; not everything can be achieved with one election ... but nor should we fear saying what we believe our society should aspire to ... we should not accept the myth that we will be punished politically for doing so ...
the Democratic Party has been taken over by political technicians ... they are so focussed on pulling the strings on the puppets that they've forgotten what the play is about in the first place ... in the end, idealists need to destroy the myth that issues like reform, issues like restoring the ideals of American democracy and issues like fundamental human liberation are "leftist" issues; they are human issues ... until we destroy the myth that such advocacy is not politically viable, we will fail, our Party will fail and our country will fail ...
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