So here we go. What are the elements of the plan to take back the middle? In this post I do not want to discuss the content of the elements so much as identify them in no particular order.
- Communication - the right has spent over twenty five years creating shock-talk radio, evangelical TV and dumbed down newscasts as cornerstones of the new normal. The centre and left have to create something comparable. Air America is a great start as it is just shock talk reversed but that is not enough. The message has to be made pervasive. Low cost radio repeater transmitters should be George Soros's next big investment. Not jsut for Air America or NPR but more benign means of spreading the message, like all news stations that report the administrative and judical works of government with repect and treat "leaders" like the public servants they are and not modern royalty.
- Recreation Entertainment - NASCAR needs a counterbalance and I see it as soccer. Fifteen years from now it will be a mainstream sport. In the interim the kids and parents who play it will expand. The message of communal effort and individual skill is a great parable. Plus, the role of order through the strength of the rules and the ref can't be overlooked. Baseball should be asserted as a leftist game as well. The right is clearly into the grid-iron and its athletic puppetry. In the pop arts, the end of celebrity must be achieved. The elitism of the right in pop culture, the unattainable status of a star legitimizes division. Pass out the guitars like the 30s and 60s, the big decades for the left.
- Faith - as discussed in passing in the thread below, the role of faith in the community has been established and cannot be undone. However, one important player in the Christian world has been largely ignored - Jesus. The Gospels are a hot bed of moderate socialism and have to be placed in front of those claiming the moral high ground to challenge their cuts to assistance to those in need.
- Economic Responsibility - program cuts which weaken the economy are short-sighted as is debt financing. An economic program which focuses on the role of responsible government in the community, the principle of spending what you tax and paying off rather than running with debt is a winner. This will mean the end of New York style pork-barrelling as well. The conservatives used to say that they run the government like businesses, until of course the corporate suits started appearing on the chain gang. Pervasive corporate responsibility must be advocated.
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Respect for Law - the right is much less inclined to respect the division of powers than the left these days. Where in the past and in Brooklyn, the bosses of the left and right picked the judges and the prosecutors and the defence and the law writers, etc., the right now avoids all that trouble by scapegoating the courts. The left has to cultivate a respect for the independent and equal role of the judicial process, the application of the general law in the context of the constitution and the particular facts of the case. Any attack on the judicial process should be called an attack on the constitution. Where required, call the right the tyrant when it acts like one.
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Support for a strong military - this is a key as the NASCAR couch potatoes are also war couch potatoes. The real role of the military as a securer of the community should be taken on as a plank in the platform of the centre and left. A strong military is also a large pot of votes and a large economic factor. Expansion of navy yards creates jobs on the coastal heartlands of the centre and left. Use of the military to impose freedom should be expanded or at least not be undertaken only where oil is also found.
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Immigration - expansion of immigration is an expansion of the overall economy. Xenophobia comes from and breeds poverty. Immigration increases diversity and also exports freedom and undermines the tyrant which might have to be taken on at a later time. Makes new ideas enter the polity. New ideas drive innovation and innovation the economy.
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Civil rights - In the colonial constitutions of both Cananda and the States, the phrase civil rights appears. It defines the forms of stability the population can expect in its private affairs from the state: the right to own property, the right to vote, the right to be free from the state is guaranteed by the state. The authority and autonomy to be human in a community requires the safeguard of the state. Who determines what it means to be human if not the individual experiencing life? The promotion of life and respect for its inherent dignity, not caused by acts but by being, is the job of the state because without its protection, dignity is under attack. The individual does not have an obligation to the state equal to the rights protected by the state. It is an unfair balance, a one-sided bargain which is exercised unequally due to wealth and capability - the play thing of the right who would use it to dupe. The obligation of the citizen is to be free and act as freely as one chooses to be. This, however, is a moral relationship while the protection of civil rights is a binding constitutional one.
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The Family - the family is a cornerstone but only where is creates strong and free people. The right to leave and define family to create the strongest and most free citizens must be left to the individual. Parents are not in charge of small fifedoms. They are in charge of future adults. Strong support of the needs of children and family by the state ensures that the greatest pool of strength in the citizenry is achieved for the future. Strong support of children and the family also avoids greater future costs to the community. Promotion of personal reponsibility in relation to children which allows for the child to fail before it can be responsbile for itself is mindless waste and a denial of dignity of the individual.
Comments
Ben aka the Tiger in Winter - November 4, 2004 6:57 pm
Now, see, that's something I could vote for. As could most of the moderate conservatives I know.
Disagree with some of your critiques of the right.
Agree with your military ideas, along with ending corporate welfare -- makes for stronger companies in the long run.
My major grievance with the post: baseball is _not_ a leftist game. It is resolutely capitalist. Any game that draws George Will as one of its major writers and George W. Bush as a candidate for commissioner _cannot_ be a leftist one. ;-)
Alan - November 4, 2004 7:02 pm
Its the game that is leftist, not the personalities (remember the death of celebrity is a cornerstone): team, taking turn, plays that require each to do their part in order. Plus it is a central New York creation. Like soccer no boss on the field. The collective wins or dies on the effort of each. Utility players win games by doing their small bit when called on.
Ben aka the Tiger in Winter - November 4, 2004 7:05 pm
I'd say it isn't as collectivist as other team sports -- much of it comes down to showdowns between one pitcher and one batter. Much more of a chance for individual glory than, say, football or basketball, by my lights. :-)
Alan - November 4, 2004 7:09 pm
Baseball illustrates diveristy without authoritarianism. The pitcher is not the quarterback. He is the hero who steps forward yet (in the purest form) also pulls his weight at the plate. The pitcher also illustrates mortality as he is one of the few players in sport who by definition most often leaves the game or enters it late. He plays only every few games. He cannot lead single-handed yet, like Shilling, can expose us to the immortal. It is a balanced community.
Ben aka the Tiger in Winter - November 4, 2004 7:22 pm
It's also the game that lends itself most easily to books and theories and philosophy...
Alan - November 4, 2004 7:27 pm
Thoughtful repose is one of the conditions of the centre/left.
Wayne - November 4, 2004 9:00 pm
Not really, Ben. Have you perused the bookshelves in the Golf sections lately? I have read many, and none have helped. And, I haven't put a dent in the numbers that are in publication. Golf would keep the Democrats busy for quite a while trying to figure it out...good passtime over the next 4 long,lonely years.
Ben aka the Tiger in Winter - November 5, 2004 12:22 am
Ah, golf. Always forget that that's a sport.
(runs away ducking thrown objects)
Hans - November 5, 2004 9:02 am
Hey, Al!
Not bad for a night's work!
You should email it James Carville. He might actually be able to implement it.
Don't bother sending it Warren Kinsella, though. I don't think he would understand it.
I don't know who in the NDP you could send it to, but they could sure use it!
Wayne - November 5, 2004 9:22 am
Being a (and "the") Right game, I wonder why Europe keeps kicking the crap outta the U.S. in Ryder Cup action.
SayNay? - November 6, 2004 5:25 pm
Al, could you expound on your statement:"Parents are not in charge of small fifedoms. They are in charge of future adults"? What are you trying to say here?
Alan - November 6, 2004 11:11 pm
Families are not autonomous, individuals are. People are raised best in good families and as such are a cornerstone but the task of the family is to raise them to be individual citizens, adults - they are not <i>the</i> cornerstone. Limits on parental rights are good but at about the level they are now. The court can intervene where parents pose a danger though criminal or extreme religious behavior such as preventing blood transfusions. Laws require them to be educated to minimum standards. Children enjoy rights but most of all they have the right to make it to adulthood as little hindered by their parents as is acceptable.
SayNay? - November 7, 2004 12:57 pm
"...as little hindered by their parents as is acceptable.." Acceptable to whom? Your ideal "state"? And by whose standards? Yours? Or whatever is "fashionable" today?
Can you see how this might be taken by middle America as the left's attack on the "family"?
Alan - November 7, 2004 3:03 pm
You are something of a dingbat on this point. Just try discussing things as opposed to parroting. You provide the response to your own point: "and by whose standards? Yours? Or whatever is "fashionable" today?" <p>It is your wacky dreams that are fashionable today. The era of paranoia can end as the right has triumphed. But what will it do as it is only a plan of negation, or response. Try to discuss being for something as poosed to listening to the jerk of your knee...or rather someone else's knee.
SayNay? - November 7, 2004 3:31 pm
Well no, you throw these ideas out there wrapped up in language which is (you'll like this) "nuanced" - I just want a little clarification. Maybe problems with nuance, is that it leads to suggestion of a hidden agenda. When you talk about limits to parental rights "about at the level they are now", are you just talking about state intervention to protect the child from "physical" harm? or something else? For instance, would your proposal support parents being able to raise their children according to the parents values,let's say, religious values, where the parents views on morality may conflict with the currently held views of the state? I mean, you might as well confront this head on.
Alan - November 7, 2004 3:40 pm
Not if the values of the self-described religious group were abusive like restricting blood transfusion as some groups promote or fulsome use of the rod as was seen in a recent criminal case in PEI. The right of a parent to teach values has limits which are met when the wellness of the child is at risk. The right to indoctrinate comes after the right to be free from opression. <p>But by lumping everything as "religious values" you fail to express that nuance and hide your own hidden agenda. There is not such thing as "religious values" or "Christian values" but particular ethics of particular congregations and traditions. I would be considered perhaps abusive and definitely nuts if I imposed strict Mennonite ways on my kids coming as I do from outside of that tradition.<p>Please just define what you think rather than poke at my statements. That way we get to avoid your tedious little trapping game and actually have a discussion. Learning to discuss will require you to put something postive actually on the table to be reviewed by others.
SayNay? - November 7, 2004 8:53 pm
Look, no desire to be tedious or trap - no agenda. Quite frankly, and you can believe this or not, I find much of the "black and white" right wing conservative positions as you might find in a group like the Christian Coalition of America, troubling.
You're talking about a plan to swing middle America. Your list above is a good one and inclusion of "the family" shows insight, as one might argue "the family" is the building block of middle America.
But your comments suggested to me almost a starting point on "the family" of a distrust of parents to raise their children properly ("parents are not in charge of small fifedoms", the "hinderance" of parents etc.).
Maybe I read too much into your points, or simply misread them, but I thought there was a perhpas too much of a view that "the state know what's best for your children".
What about "Education" as being an essential element of this plan? Certainly one can argue that a strong public education system is one way to assist children to becoming informed adults, in a pluralistic society, independent of their upbringing. How should this fit into the plan? What about parochial schools? Should they be supported or even allowed?
Alan - November 7, 2004 9:58 pm
Good point. I did not think the list was exhaustive as I typed it out off the top of my head. I plan to now go through each one in further detail when I get around to it.