June 15, 2005
Are you a Liberal or a Democrat?
There is a huge difference. Democrats are partisan, and Liberals are not. Liberals believe that they are somehow above the political fray and hold some sort of moral high ground.
Not me. I'm a Democrat. I'm for a woman's right to choose, against the death penalty, and I believe that Bush, Foul-Mouth Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the gang should be shipped off to The Hauge to stand trial. But I'm not a liberal. I'm a Democrat who believes in these things. There are Democrats who don't believe in all the things in which I believe, but I can accept that, because I know that the alternative (Republican control) is worse.
The distinction is quite an important one. Partisans politics have escalated from being a rough-and-tumble game to all-out war. If you go into a war thinking it's a game, and that at some point rules will kick in and save you, you're going to get killed. Liberals have been getting rolled since 1994 because of this attitude.
If you don't like the direction in which the Republican Party is taking things, whining about it won't help. Taking action will. Action starts at the grass-roots level. The conservatives and fundigelicals know this; it's why they control all three branches of the federal government today, as well as so much more at the state and local level.
Can they be stopped? Yes, indeed, and it's not going to take twenty-plus years for us like it did for the conservatives. The Internet has changed communications so radically that the cycle of developing grass-roots influence has compressed a great deal. Democrats have learned to use the Internet to our advantage, through grass-roots weblogs all the way up to organized efforts such as MoveOn.org and MediaMatters.org.
But while our modern communication tools give us hope in recovering Congress and the White House, they don't help as much on the local level. For that, we need fewer Liberals and more Democrats. We need more partisans who accept that politics isn't a game, but war. We need partisans who are willing to get out in the community and take back the various local elected offices that have been lost to conservatives. Democrats need to engage their Republican friends and show them why their support of the Republican party is a bad choice. With the exception of fundigelicals and racists, there is common ground between members of the two political parties. War is not about comparing the other side to Hitler. It's about winning. Let's win, then we can call them names.
When one enlists in the army to fight a war, you agree to do things the "army" way, and you don't get to cherry-pick tactics. More Liberals need to adopt the same position when it comes to the political war. If you don't like the leaders of the "army" fighting the war against the Republicans, work to change them, but don't desert.
To all Liberals, I'm asking you to become Democrats and join the fight. I'm going to post regular "combat tactic" suggestions on YatPundit (www.yatpundit.com) as well as on the LA-Democrat mailing list. I invite others to help out.