Jane Galt wonders if the left is out of ideas…
That gets batted around every so often, and it (understandably) enrages liberals. And yet, it seems to me that there’s a kernel of truth there. Not in the literal sense: liberals do not vote Green or Democrat just because they like the logos. But the left, as a movement, does not have any very coherent Big Idea that it can sell. The Movement doesn’t agree on much, except that it hates George Bush. Orwell to the contrary, hate does not sell particularly well in American politics.1 Fear . . . now, fear sells. But only if it’s at least quasi-believable, which, to the vast swath of the American public, “George Bush is planning to lynch minorities and put everyone else in illegal detention camps” doesn’t. Fear only works if the majority of American voters believe that whatever they are supposed to fear will happen to them, not some comfortably anonymous nobody in a far-off state.
Conservatives have a few things that pretty much all of them can agree on: the lower taxes are, the better; government programmes and regulations often create more problems than they solve; keep your damn hands off our guns. Pretty much everyone from the Libertarians to James Dobson and Co. can get behind this platform, and sell it to the American public. You can even add “The US military should be able to kick the [expletive deleted] of anyone who threatens us in any way” and keep all but the most hard-core Libertarians. I’m sure there are a couple of other things you could throw in, and still get a platform that is reasonably large, coherent, and agreeable to not only pretty much the entire conservative movement, but a fair number of moderates besides. There are lots–LOTS–of things that the conservatives disagree on, from gay marriage to flag burning. But there are enough that the conservative movement can craft a mission statement and sell it to America.
Outstanding post… and I have ot say that I agree.
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
booo, I was expecting a better political post. Like…comments on current events such as the selling of American Ports that’s got both sides up in arms. We want substance!
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:30 am
I think you missed the point of the post… there is no substance. That’s the problem.
February 26th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Please, we’re too busy with all our peace and free love to care about a cohesive platform. Chill out, dude.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Well, I wouldn’t mark down smaller gov’t as a universally held conservative belief. Sure, it gets lip service. However, I don’t see the gov’t getting any smaller under complete Republican control.
Lefties agree on many things, e.g. -The gov’t is always evil and it can help society, The rich shouldn’t get tax cuts, and laissez-faire does not equal freedom, etc…
February 27th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
“Republican” and “Conservative” are not the same thing. One who doesn’t believe in minimal government is, quite simply, not a conservative in any honest definition of the word.
The article did point out that taxing the successful was a main tenent of the left, though it’s hardly something to put on a platform because, at the end of the day, most Americans want to be rich and realize, somewhere deep down, that if/when they are rich, they don’t want to give their money to someone else.
February 28th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Differentiating between conservative and republican here is about the weakest argument I’ve ever heard. Can I differentiate between liberals and democrats now? Wouldn’t your whole argument completely fall apart then?
Taxing the successful? Like people who successfully were born to rich parents? Man, we’re so mean!!! Everybody gets taxed, except for those who are rich enough to avoid it? Americans really love that flat tax!?!
Your last point is either telling about the state of the union or an insult to society. How many people “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”? I have not met a single one. For you to talk about self-sufficiency and future wealth as you attend a government funded university is the height of hypocracy.
February 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Jake, please. Learn something about both a) conservatism and b) the republican party. You will see that they are two wholly different things. Conservatives have, for pretty much the entire duration of Bush’s term, decried his spending habits as more liberal than conservative.
Second, the wealthiest 25% of the country provides 3/4 of the tax revenue in this country and the poorest 40% of the country have no income tax burden whatsoever. The top 40% pay almost 90% of income taxes. Now, if anyone is going to get a tax break, they should get them proportionate to what they put in. Why would we give the group that pays less than 10% of the tax 90% of the tax break?
As to your claim of “hypocracy” (sic), I fail to see how attending a federally funded university is hypocritical. Especially as I was speaking not of my own personal beliefs but of the average American. If you’d like to learn more about what “hypocrisy” is, I can post some links for you.
But even if I had said that I don’t want to give my money to someone else, it’s still not hypocricital to attend a federally funded school. For starters, I do in fact pay taxes. Even if I believed that federally funded schools were wrong, wouldn’t it be foolish of me to not take back out of a system that I’m contributing to, if I can? Those of us who have held jobs have payed into an unemployment fund, even if we disagree with that fund, it’s foolish not to use it: it’s already been paid for.
“Voting with your dollars” only works in advance of paying them.
Finally, not wanting someone else to manage my money and charity does not mean, by any stretch, that I disagree with subsidizing eduction.
In the future, you might try not imputing so much extra meaning to my words as to create a strawman, if you can.
March 1st, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I fear that you have mischaracterized your own arguments more than I have.
1) The premise of your original post was that liberals were disjointed as there is relatively little ideological unity within the democratic party. I pointed out that conservative unity did not extend any more completely in the republican party. You then argued that it was unfair to confuse conservatives with republicans even though you had originally done the same with liberals and democrats. I worry this goes back to a pervasive conservative bias that all democrats are ‘liberals’.
2) You are now arguing the relative merit of the tax cuts. Really off the topic. My only original argument was that there was a general left-wing agreement that the rich should not be favoured in tax cut schemes. I believe we agree on this.
3) I completely agree that it is generally foolish not to play within the bounds of the system and take advantage of those bounds. However your point was about people wanting to lower the taxes on the rich so that they would do better without when they were rich. I was simply pointing out that without the increased assistance made possible by tax funding, it would be relatively hard to become wealthy. The fact that you attend government funded university illustrates that fact.
4) Government does not monitor charity. Charity is optional. What I am talking about is a societal contract.
5) In the future, you might try not allow your arguments be clouded by emtion, if you can